Monthly Archives: December 2020

Bird Flu update

Posted on 29/12/2020 by Jon Garvey

I haven’t kept many of my computer files connected with the old life as a GP, but I did recently come across a poster I did for the surgery notice-board in October 2005, on the Big Health Scare of the time, Avian Flu.

Posted in History, Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science | 1 Comment

We have always been at war…

Posted on 26/12/2020 by Jon Garvey

…with Eastasia I think the most sinister image I have seen during the whole of this debacle over SARS-CoV-2 during 2020 is this one:

Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science | 5 Comments

Music in Babel

Posted on 23/12/2020 by Jon Garvey

It came upon the midnight clear, That glorious song of old, From angels bending near the earth, To touch their harps of gold: “Peace on the earth, goodwill to men, From heaven’s all-gracious King.” The world in solemn stillness lay, To hear the angels sing.

Posted in History, Music, Theology | 2 Comments

Asymptomatic transmission

Posted on 22/12/2020 by Jon Garvey

An expert on BBC news this morning was decrying the high false negative rate of “lateral flow” COVID tests, in the light of a study which re-tested negative asymptomatic students with PCR tests, and found half a dozen positives. This suggested that statistically 60 students in the group were in fact infected, rather than the three (if I remember rightly) revealed by the original test.

Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science | 1 Comment

Le Carré on Covid

Posted on 20/12/2020 by Jon Garvey

With the death of John le Carré this last week, I felt it was about time I read some of his work, as opposed to seeing the film versions on TV. So I picked his December 2000 book The Constant Gardener, since in dealing with the rapacity and unscrupulousness of Big Pharma, it seemed somehow topical.

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What the Bible should have said #19

Posted on 18/12/2020 by Jon Garvey

1 Chronicles 21: Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel. So David said to Joab and the commanders of the troops, ‘Go and count the Israelites from Beersheba to Dan. Then report back to me so that I may know how many there are.’

Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Theology | 1 Comment

Delegitimation: a force for anarchy and liberation

Posted on 15/12/2020 by Jon Garvey

Peter Boghossian is a US philosopher who has recently drawn attention to the post-modern phenomenon of “delegitimation.” Boghossian is a militant atheist, and no friend of Christianity, having worked on rather crass ways to “deprogram” believers in casual conversations, on the mistaken belief that we are captive to irrationality imposed by authority. But in these strange times, the champions of Enlightenment rationalism can sometimes be co-belligerents, simply because the Enlightenment grew out of Christianity’s commitment to truth, and we are now, without hyperbole, rushing into a post-truth society.

Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | Leave a comment

Dr W.H.O.’s COVID prophecy

Posted on 13/12/2020 by Jon Garvey

Many decades ago in a galaxy far away, before Dr Who became a vanilla woke propaganda vehicle, it was a science fiction series for older kids. When it began in 1963 (the day President Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley and Anthony Burgess all died) I was already a seasoned Sci-Fi buff, filling my head with Heinlein, Asimov, Simak, Blish and Aldiss, and my 11 year old verdict was that Dr Who was very good science fiction. For TV.

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Reflections on the Pfizer COVID vaccine trial

Posted on 12/12/2020 by Jon Garvey

You can download the FDA Briefing document on the new vaccine, presumably compiled by Pfizer, here, which is the nearest we have yet to a scientific paper on the vaccine trial used to authorise the vaccine here in Britain.

Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science | Leave a comment

Considering an ancient Adam

Posted on 06/12/2020 by Jon Garvey

The Genealogical Adam and Eve paradigm, as described in my book and that of Joshua Swamidass, makes a recent Adam plausible in the context of the mainstream sciences. Some objectors to this “recent Adam” interpretation wants to put Adam and Eve much further back in the past (which is equally compatible with GAE), and their main reason is the status of the “people outside the garden” in our scenario.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology | 15 Comments