Guest essay by Eric Worrall
As the British National Health Service screams about the intense stress of dealing with rising Covid-19 hospital admissions, a strange story has emerged of an anti-lockdown activist being arrested for the crime of publishing a video of an empty NHS hospital.
Anti-lockdown activist who walked into hospital and filmed ’empty’ wards is handcuffed in her dressing gown and arrested by police who turned up at her door
- Debbie Hicks filmed herself wandering around Gloucester Hospital on Monday
- She was arrested by police on Tuesday for an alleged public order offence
- Hospital deny her claims that wards are empty and pandemic is a ‘massive scam’
- Ms Hicks was a Labour council candidate who said the 2017 Manchester terror attack was ‘wonderful timing for Theresa May’
- She was charged under coronavirus act at an anti-lockdown event last month
By MARTIN ROBINSON, CHIEF REPORTER FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 01:24 AEDT, 1 January 2021 | UPDATED: 17:41 AEDT, 1 January 2021
An anti-lockdown protester and comrade of Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-vaxxer brother Piers has been arrested for filming inside a hospital and sharing footage on social media she claims shows the coronavirus pandemic is a ‘massive scam’.
Debbie Hicks wandered around Gloucester Royal Hospital on Monday saying it was ‘shut down’ and ‘dead’ and was arrested in her dressing gown by two officers who visited her home in Stroud 24 hours later.
In the eight-minute film, viewed by 158,000 people on Facebook, she says: ‘We’ve been put in Tier 3, for this? It’s a disgrace. I’ve seen less than 20 people. It’s completely dead in an empty hospital with wards shut down and the lights off.
‘Where are all the people dying and where is the mutant virus? I can’t see the evidence and neither can the public watching. We’ve been robbed of Christmas for this’.
Gloucester Royal Hospital has hit back and insisted the wards are ‘extremely busy’ and accused her of ‘intrusion’ and upsetting patients filmed waiting in A&E. One doctor told MailOnline she had filmed a deserted outpatient area on a bank holiday Monday, hence why it was empty.
…
She is an active supporter of Piers Corbyn and his ‘Freedom Rally’ movement, attending protests in London with him and posing for a selfie on the Tube using a party hat as a mask.
Mr Corbyn tweeted the video of her arrest today with the caption: ‘Fascism’.
…
Read more (includes video): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9101999/Anti-lockdown-activist-46-arrested-secret-hospital-footage.html
Piers Corbyn, cited as the leader of the movement, is a high profile British climate skeptic, and a radical left wing activist who led squatters rights protests in the 1970s. Corbyn is the brother of far left former British national opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Piers Corbyn appeared in climategate email 0837094033.txt, in which former CRU Director Phil Jones described Corbyn as Britain’s equivalent to Fred Singer, Pat Michaels, Bob Balling or Richard Lindzen.
Corbyn also now appears to also be a leader of Britain’s anti-lockdown movement.
I’m not disputing that there likely is substantial stress on the NHS. But what a strangely heavy handed response to the activities of a citizen journalist, even if she did break a few rules. Instead of aggravating tensions by responding with force, the Gloucester Royal Hospital could have attempted to de-escalate the situation, say by inviting Debbie Hicks in for an official visit, so she could get a more complete picture on what was happening.
Local news (terrible website) gives the actual figures for Gloucestershire’s hospitalisations.
Coronavirus hospital admissions and infections spike across Gloucestershire – latest breakdown – Gloucestershire Live
If you get the comments to work you will find a loony who fell for the twaddle of the pseudo-journalist. They are immediately corrected by someone who has actually been to Gloucester Royal.
Idiots who pretend that people aren’t dying are not sceptics. They are deluded.
This site used to look at evidence and question it. Nullius In Verba.
Now it looks to ignore evidence.
Of course people are dying. But the vast majority are people who would have died of something else instead if the Chinese Flu wasn’t around.
In most countries, the average age of death is higher than the average lifespan. Last I heard, less than 400 people under 60 had died in the UK while infected with this virus. It would be a non-issue if governments had just ignored it.
The argument that the preventative actions are not worth the economic cost is a reasonable one.
We have only one plan for a new virus; isolation, test the moving parts of society and wait for a vaccine or herd immunity. It’s a plan designed for Ebola or a new Black Death. Is Covid bad enough to warrant using the plan? That depends on your political beliefs. And in fairness to the Tory Government, almost all politicians from across the global spectrum think it was.
But I respect those who disagree on the cost/benefit analysis. I do not respect those who just pretend this isn’t happening.
“And in fairness to the Tory Government, almost all politicians from across the global spectrum think it was.”
They work for the same people. Who want lockdowns to continue forever… or at least until they’re ready to turn the Great Reset into the Great Cull.
The mere fact that the majority of Western governments imposed the same crazy policies on their populations for a disease no more dangerous than a bad flu tells you that there’s something else behind this.
The real question is why does she think it’s all a scam? If she came down with this bug, how likely is it that she’d be first in line, howling about The Horror of It All, pushing people out of the way?
Nobody likes wearing those masks, but frankly, despite the ‘no dust’ slogans on cat litter, I find that they’re a lot better at keeping cat litter dust particles out of my nose than my T-shirt, so I use them when I clean the cat boxes.
What’s really the Big Deal here? They don’t believe there really is a plague of some kind – got that part – but they’ll come crying for help if it hits them. That’s almost guaranteed.
Sara you can wear your mask, but why do I have to?
To inhibit the spread of the virus (which you can have without symptoms).
There are other people to think of than just yourself.
It sure is working 😉
Ignore the skyrocketing cases
And yet actual science shows:
Almost no evidence of transmission without symptoms.
Cloth masks spread it better.
Almost no-one dies from it unless they were close to dying from something else instead.
This is a debate between the empiricists and the fantasists.
We empiricists quote research to debunk the wishful thinking.
Like this:
What the data say about asymptomatic COVID infections (nature.com)
But it won’t persuade those with a neo-religious belief in their own opinions.
M
Correct, the “upgrade” of the virus with the new Kent strain will sharply increase the amount of asymptotic transmission especially among the young. They won’t need to feel left out any more. The strain’s higher infectivity is across all ages. This ain’t over by a long shot.
Stay away from Humans M….your sanctimonious BS is awfully thick in your religion
Sara, you refer to “cat boxes.” Are you a real Cat Lady of legend?
I have only one cat, a small, shorthaired black cat whose opinions about things in general are related to whether or not her food is what SHE wants, and how many birds will come to the feeder to amuse her.
Concerned? Try elsewhere.
WUWT is a science site, with an emphasis on climate. Anthony and crew publish articles on many scientific topics. If you don’t like one of the topics don’t read it and, especially, don’t comment on the article. Please, people, get a grip and unwind yourselves from those axles.
Hmm. If hospitals are going to complain about being busy during a pandemic, why shouldn’t I complain about that?
That is only the start.
<<TODAY The emergency Coronavirus Bill will be rushed through as law. Today sees the 2nd reading, if passed it will immediately proceed to 3rd and on. It contains the most draconian powers ever proposed in peace-time Britain. It will be rushed through Parliament and the powers will last two years. The powers will affect your freedom and take away your rights. Forced detention and isolation can be of anyone, including children, and for any amount of time. Authorities can FORCEABLY take biological samples from your body. There’s no clear access to legal rights from as-yet unidentified isolation facilities. Powers last up to 2.5 years Lockdown powers could prevent protests against measures. State surveillance safeguards weakened. Protections from forced detainment and treatment under Mental Health Act lowered. Cremations can be enforced against personal and religious wishes. Changes to the court system. Registration of deaths. No inquests into suspicious deaths! No requirement for any medical certification for burials or cremations! It also indemnifies the health service should they fail for what ever reason to provide care. The most frightening part. Only one medical ‘officer’ is required to sign off COMPULSORY TREATMENT ORDER which means… in the real world you can be forced to accept medication. Or held down and injected with whatever is seen fit. THAT is the biggest and worst threat to your own freedoms. Schedule 8 Pt1. Local Authorities will now be exempted from compliance with their duties under The Care Act 2014. Schedule 11. The BBC wont be telling you that bit. So. If someone dies in police custody or any type of custody they can simply dispose of the body without any paperwork medical exam or certification or inquest.>>
Link to parliamentary site:
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-01/0122/cbill_2019-20210122_en_1.htm?fbclid=
1984?
“and take away your rights”.
What about the rights of those of us who want something done to protect our health against the idiots who think the pandemic is fake? From those who think governments worldwide, irrespective of left/right position are colluding to destroy their countries’ economies and, potentially, their citizens’ futures for no genuine reason other than an experiment in controlling behaviour?
“What about the rights of those of us who want to get a good night’s sleep without the racket from the anti-aircraft guns fired by those who think the Jerries are flying over to bomb us?” – your ancestors, 1940
If you want to be ‘protected’, you can simply stay cowering in your home for the rest of your life while the rest of us get on with our lives. There’s no need to come out of your house any more if you want to be ‘protected’.
You’re either a troll or a perfect example of why the West is about to collapse.
Are you suggesting that collective rights trump individual rights?
Why not just line up all the idiots against the wall and shoot them? I demand to be on the tribunal that picks the idiots. That, however, didn’t protect the leaders of the French Revolution, did it?
Beware a strong government; no government wants independent-minded citizens.
Thanks for the link JeffC. Every bit of the act represents a significant change in the relationship between the state and the individual. I noted section 13:
An NHS Trust does not have to comply with—
(a) the duty imposed by direction 2(2) of the 2013 Directions (assessment
of eligibility for NHS Continuing Healthcare)
Which means that if you are terminally ill, the NHS no longer has a responsibility for your care – you can (and will) be discharged from hospital to a neglect home run by some mendacious spiv and you will foot the bill.
I have little doubt that these regulations, in some subtly modified form, will remain on the statute book indefinitely.
IMHO, George Orwell does not come close. The future is much worse than he could imagine.
Looks like the UK is going the french way.
I see lots of “Gilets jaunes” (yellow safety vests) in the future.
This post is justified I believe since it draws attention to two important things.
The first is that democracy is indeed being eroded in the UK much faster than the fictitious erosion of coastlines by fictitious accelerating sea level rise. This lady should just have received a warning but instead the police who have become a hard left militia throw the full weight of the law at her. One senses that British police have far more motivation to act against political enemies than against old fashioned criminals. This is the same police who forcibly arrested a woman in her home while she was breast-feeding her child, for the “crime” of misgendering a “trans” person on Twitter.
The second thing of importance this post shows is that hospitals are indeed half empty. This is not very relevant to the covid19 situation however. For acute covid cases it is only intensive care beds with respirators that are relevant. The IC units are indeed approaching saturation and overload, and available standard beds in other wards aren’t really relevant. Acute covid patients need 24/7 intensive care.
The hospitals are half empty because people – perhaps rightly – are scared of catching covid19 there. What it illustrates is in normal (non-pandemic) times how many hospital admissions are bogus; just for attention-seeking or comfort, or just old folks who prefer hospital to their own cold lonely home. That’s a huge problem that the UK creates by clinging to the ideology of no payment for hospital visits. A small payment for admission would have a similar effect to a pandemic – keep away a lot of unnecessary time-wasting visits.
My son is an aide who does patient transport in the Health Science Centre in Winnipeg Manitoba Canada. He tells me that depending on his shift he is either run ragged or sits and does almost nothing. That’s because, due to the pandemic, all sorts of other hospital work has been stopped. Elective surgeries, clinics and so forth just are not happening. He has very few patients to take to X-ray because very few people are in hospital except COVID patients. They don’t move COVID patients for x-rays due to the possibility of spreading infection. They use portable machines. Mean while when he is doing a shift in the COVID ward he works like crazy. He also told me he sees staff from the orthopaedic or surgery wards and other places in the hospital pulled from their regular duties to work in the COVID ward. It’s so crazy and so short staffed that even though he is just a transporter, he has found himself doing nursing duties like cleaning up vomit, explaining to doctors and nursing how to handle the PPE, how to properly place the oxygen tanks relative to the patients, or handling security issues (he’s a big man) and other duties outside his union prescribed one because new staff don’t know how because this is not their regular job or they are just overwhelmed. he told me he is not going to leave a patient lying in their own waste for hours because staff are too busy simply because his job description doesn’t include that. He has spent more than one break comforting a weeping nurse. Staff are being pulled in from other areas of the hospital because of how staff must isolate for 7-14 days if they have been exposed. They are desperately short of staff. He reports the ER is a nightmare because one of the symptoms of COVID is feeling short of breath and people panic and head to the ER instead of staying home, risking more exposure. This also ties up the paramedics for hours at a time because of people calling for an ambulance because they feel they can’t breath. Even though the majority of those COVID patients are simply observed and then sent home a few hours later, they still take up huge amounts of resources. So I can see why this woman would find some areas of the hospital empty and yet hospitals are screaming about lack of beds and staff being overwhelmed. My son also reports he has been making many many more morgue runs than usual. He had 12 morgue runs in a single day and some of them were dialysis patients he knew because they had to come in for dialysis three times a week. This crisis is real. It is not being made up. It is not a hoax. While I disagree with many aspects of he response to the pandemic, this kind of article is sorry garbage.
Everyone I know working in hospitals says the same – the crisis is horribly real. No useful purpose is served by trying to wish it away or trivialise it by conspiracy narratives.
This was a bit of a stunt, since it is easy to plan to make a video to support whatever narrative the maker wishes. Obviously she will be both praised by anti-lockdowners for “highlighting” the scandal of the empty hospitals and condemned by the hysterics (and the MSM) for trying to deny that the hospitals are overwhelmed with Covid patients. However, this sort of making, editing and broadcasting videos is exactly what the climate alarmists and the covid alarmists do as well. Contrast politically media videos on weather or protests. whether lockdown, climate, XR, inaugurations, or BLM; see how the same gathering can be reported as a “mostly peaceful” protest or a “violent confrontation”, a “massive rally” or “a handful of hooligans”.
Regardless of the wisdom of creating this sort of video the rise of the anti-lockdown movement during 2020 is gathering pace at grassroots, though it covers a wide spectrum, including fringe elements such as the anti-vaxxers and the anti-5Gs, along with “protest groupies” who join in anything going. We’re getting a lot of talking heads on the BBC and MSM who insist on how essential The Lockdown is, though they are more vague about The Great Reset. Some are even beginning to recommend that people who deny that C19 and Climate Change are unprecedented challenges that must be met with vigour and erosion of freedoms. The next UK step will perhaps be to explicitly ban anti-Lockdown protests, rather than break them up under the “temporary” covid diktats regarding more than two people meeting in public. That would make explicit the huge differentiation of police handling of anti-government anti-lockdown compared to the government-approved XR and BLM rallies.
IMHO the more insidious change has been the “normalisation” of mask-wearing and the rest of the Lockdown paraphernalia. The initial shock, and then grumbling, has given way to complete compliance. Few now object when a school or performing arts group or any social organisation or business announces that it is “covid-secure and complying with all Government orders” and uses that stance to justify the clampdown. The institutions have complied; the grassroots are beginning to rebel. The 2020s will be a decade of upheaval as The Great Reset and Agenda 2030 are progressively introduced.
Britain has long been an elected dictatorship. All it took was a government with no morals to turn it into a real one.
The force is strong with the 77 in the comments section today.
It is no stretch of the imagination numbers of deaths have been intentionally exaggerated and caused.
It was rumored about NY that so many died they were burying people in the park. Everyone knows NY has strict rules on digging in the park. They simply jacked up the numbers by putting virus cases in nursing homes that killed off a lot while the hospital beds were empty, especially on the ship.
They burying unclaimed bodies on Hart island, a designated cemetery. thousands are there in mass grave trenches.
Meanwhile in Oregon…
I’ve seen no reports of Sasquatch with CV19.
Probably they were all off making TikTok videos
No need to waste sympathy on this narcissist – arrest appears to be her hobby:
https://www.stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk/news/18860119.stroud-freedom-rally-speaker-charged-covid-offence/
Don’t forget, Stroud is the birthplace of Extinction Rebellion. Some funny chemicals in the water down there perhaps?
Apparently, Stroud is full of highly sensitive people.
https://www.stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk/news/18982171.opinion-stroud-full-highly-sensitive-people/
Something about a boot and a face…
ETA: To be clear, I’m referring to the disproportionate response here. Seen too much like it lately.
The issue with these vaccines is they are not vaccines as we traditionally know them, which also helps explain why they were able to be developed so quickly. They don’t immunize you like a traditional vaccine so you can’t catch covid, they just prime the body to better fight it off when you do catch it.
The main idea of vaccines was always herd immunity, stopping transmission so those that are too weak and cannot be vaccinated are protected by herd immunity created by the vaccine among the majority healthy population.
And that we don’t know how long this effect lasts.
So the old people with multiple existing issues will still be at risk no matter how many are vaccinated as the vaccine does not prevent infection and spread, if we get thru this winter and summer it’s going to take off again next fall?
This might save a few of those old folks but not many
And I guess if you were the 1in a million young healthy person that was susceptible anyway, maybe this helps you
But since you were 99.95% likely to survive it anyway, how would we know it helped?
I’m all for vaccines, I have them all up to date, I just got the second pneumonia shot as if I get covid as an otherwise healthy 55 year old my real danger is likely pneumonia but I’m not sure there is any way out with these
what!!! a vaccine can only prime the bodies defences it obviously cannot stop the virus before it invades the body. all vaccines so far cause the body to build t-cells (long term immunity) and b cells
HOW DO VACCINES MEDIATE PROTECTION? Vaccines protect by inducing effector mechanisms (cells or molecules) capable of rapidly controlling replicating pathogens or inactivating their toxic components. Vaccine-induced immune effectors (Table 2.1) are essentially antibodies— produced by B lymphocytes—capable of binding specifcally to a toxin or a pathogen.2 Other potential effectors are cytotoxic CD8+ T lymphocytes that may limit the spread of infectious agents by recognizing and killing infected cells or secreting specifc antiviral cytokines and CD4+ T-helper (Th) lymphocytes. These Th cells may contribute to protection through cytokine production and provide support to the generation and maintenance of B and CD8+ T-cell responses.
These vaccines are made differently and work differently but still prime the immune system in the same way traditional vaccines do .
We simply don’l know if these vaccines prevent transmission and how long they last simply because there has simply not been enough time to collect that kind of date. There is a good change that they will stop or slow transmission. And the latest studies from existing patients is the the immunity probably last longer than many think.
Silence the liars (and all debate) and the ability to discern truth will vanish. Since AGW proponents seem to rely on silencing dissent and debate, the relevance of this article should be obvious, whether this woman is being deliberately misleading or not.
Feel free to disagree, but don’t attack debate or discussion in general; unless free speech is something you deem as inappropriate in general.
try this for real data:
https://www.icnarc.org/DataServices/Attachments/Download/9dc99e38-964b-eb11-912d-00505601089b
ICNARC – Reports
Watching the video she posted it seems she walked quite a way through the hospital wards not just an out patient area and the only people there looked like ward orderlies wandering around without doing much. Gloucester hospital could refute what she claims by showing video of the busy staff dealing with many patients backed up with data about how many are in hospital with COVID symptoms being treated. Instead they report her to the plod to go to her house and arrest her. She may well be wrong but the authorities are not disproving it just covering it up.
Total garbage Andre There were no wards walked – she walked the public area which would have been kept free of covid patients for obvious reasons. And she was there on a Bank holiday.
She walked the OP lower floor and in the A&E entrance only see map
https://www.gloshospitals.nhs.uk/media/documents/Gloucestershire_Royal_Hospital_Interior_Map_0917-V6.pdf
I assume the video you watched was this one:
Investigating empty Gloucester Hospital – Debbie Hicks (lbry.tv)
A trustworthy now rotary medevac converted friend reported that the big white tents well visible from his chopper at the Insel Hospital of Bern (big university compound), presented by Swiss media as COVID emergency morgues, were in fact storage spaces for contractors involved in the massive renovation of the hospital.
Reality is that right after the first lockdown, occupation dramatically fell and allowed the already long planned renovation to go on steroids.
I don’t believe COVID is a scam but l do believe the media loves dramatic hype and fake news
Here are some other views on the issue:
Katie Hopkins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UXXNf98eCk
Tony Heller: for some reason, the video on Newtube does not stream properly. I gave up on it and used their download option (see the down-arrow button below the video player), but this too is proceeding at a snail’s pace.
https://newtube.app/TonyHeller/wT8uHfr
If alternatives to the leftist media are to become effective, those using them to host their content need to do a couple of things:
PS The downloading of the Tony Heller Newtube video has finally finished. It took 10 minutes to download 140 Mb.
they’re drunk on power and control…. when will you realize that this will only end when YOU say “enough”…and not 1 second sooner….the answer to more lockdowns, restrictions, and masquerades is “no”… but it cannot be one sacrificial lamb at a time… either we all hang together (there’s power in numbers) or we will surely hang separately (one by one until the fear is so widespread that there’s no one left to speak up for YOU).
Before Covid I could take you to newly completed empty psychiatric hospitals totally empty, due to the policymaking of political ideology.
The NHS was deliberately underfunded and when it was needed most it wasn’t there.
No, the NHS is incapable of making the best use of the funding it gets.
DaveS January 3, 2021 5:29 am
No, the NHS is incapable of making the best use of the funding it gets.
======================
Peoples expectations of very expensive drugs and procedures to extend life are usually met (at no cost to the patient)
The NHS explained in eight charts (theconversation.com)
I do like the idea that so many people appear to believe that a large NHS hospital is lying empty, I expect the same people will be complaining about overcrowding or the waiting lists next week. Generally you would find NHS wards have beds in them and don’t look like corridors with occasional waiting room chairs. Currently there are sever restrictions for people going into hospitals, she probably wouldn’t be able to gain admission to a ward and certainly wouldn’t get onto an intensive care unit. There are even laws that control who can film patients and the need for written consent, I expect if she had of gained access she would have been prosecuted but being a rather sad fabulist they may have let her off.
Is it really the case that anyone can wander around a US hospital, even filming people in intensive care? and is it also true that even none treatment areas where people go to see specialists are open 24/7.