Published On: Sat, Apr 18th, 2020

Boris Johnson’s big lie in, and lying; Part Two

Further to the first part of this two-part series (to be found here), when Boris Johnson was “in hospital” and “in intensive care” there was a lot of talk about how it was demonstrative of a “coronavirus” fact: no one, whatever his title, rank, or position, was invulnerable from “Covid-19”. Like death itself, it was the great leveller. Of course, this is not remotely true, and “Covid-19” is incredibly discriminatory, and at the moment appears to be victimising old folk who are so unfortunate to find themselves at this time in NHS or private hospices or residential care homes. And yet, on the day of Johnson’s discharge from intensive care, Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson’s selection for Chancellor of the Exchequer, said:

[Johnson’s situation] reminds us how indiscriminate this disease is… We’ll (sic) all trying our absolute best, none of us are superhuman and impervious to getting sick during this process… And that’s what makes this whole thing so awful for all of us.

It’s guff. But of course it turns Johnson’s “illness” into propaganda, and the sustained campaign of messaging (that hasn’t ended) aligned with Johnson’s trip to hospital is a huge indication that the whole episode was a psychological operation. No doubt an accusation that the NHS would actively conspire with Johnson and 10 Downing Street will not sit well for many who can’t begin to understand that the organisation is not a maligned national treasure which, in spite of “global-capitalist” victimisation, heroically struggles to bestow love and healing on a welfare-denied people.

It probably won’t even sit well with many of those supposedly more critically minded who were a couple of years ago asking after the whereabouts of Sergei and Yulia Skripal who disappeared while in the care of the NHS, and yet cannot see any correlation. But be that as it may, though the field of enquiry be strewn with many a cowpat from the rear-end of stupid, this cannot deflect those with eyes to see from treading where the evidence leads them.

At the start it was said that Johnson had mild symptoms of “Covid-19”. He “self-isolated” in the flat above Number 11, Downing Street. Even though at one point there had been the prospect of a recovery during the preceding week, on Sunday 12th, he was admitted to hospital with a persistent cough and a high temperature (or fever) – in fact, let it be noted in these days of coronavirus symptom ambiguity, he suffered a very precise case.

In the evening of the day after Johnson’s admission to St Thomas’ hospital, he was transferred to intensive care, with the official reason being “in case he needed to be put on a ventilator”. On retrospect, however, this information is clearly over-egging the pudding. According to the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre (ICNARC), which reports on patient performance in intensive care, a less advanced form of respiratory support treatment than a ventilator is available. This means that an intensive care response is scalable, and generally speaking, Johnson could have been admitted for a less dramatic reason; but no, his transfer to intensive care must be reported in terms of ventilator treatment, and therefore with hyperbole.

Indeed, it’s quite clear that Johnson’s health did not collapse so that he could be considered as being at risk of being seriously ill because it was reported that he had been stable over the Monday night – his first night in intensive care – and not suffering from pneumonia. A Number 10 spokesperson briefed corporate-media to reveal that Johnson was “in good spirits”, and was further quoted (in this case, in The Independent) as follows:

He is receiving standard oxygen treatment and breathing without any other assistance. He has not required mechanical ventilation or non-invasive respiratory support.

All the information indicates that the most treatment that Johnson received was a tickle with the oxygen.

Helping us come to this conclusion is the information that is contained in any ICNARC audit regarding Covid-19 patients in critical care beds that has yet been released. Most, but not all patients received some kind of respiratory support.  Basic support ranges from oxygen by face mask to something called non-invasive ventilation.  Johnson didn’t receive the latter because he was conscious on his first night, and the treatment evidently involves sedation. In any case, Number 10 ruled it out.

Amongst other useful information to be gleaned from an ICNARC audit is that which tells of how approximately 90% of patients who receive any respiratory support also need cardiovascular treatment. There is no mention, of course, in corporate-media coverage of Johnson receiving any more treatment than “standard oxygen”. Needless to say, if Johnson fitted the profile of being a more seriously ill patient needing cardiovascular support, there would have been news of it.

Perhaps the most useful piece of data in an ICNARC audit is that which presents average lengths of stay by patients in intensive care. For survivors and non-survivors alike (so, those who are discharged from, and those who die in intensive care) who receive basic respiratory support, the average length of stay is three days. During the morning of Johnson’s third day (ignoring Monday evening, he had been admitted for all day Tuesday and Wednesday thus far) Rishi Sunak held the press conference where he made the comments published at the top of this article. He also had the following to say about Johnson:

The latest from the hospital is the prime minister remains in intensive care where his condition is improving… I can also tell you that he has been sitting up in bed and engaging positively with the clinical team.

Could anyone read this and not understand that Johnson was in rude health, and also wonder if in fact he was in too good a shape to warrant being in intensive care? The author certainly could not, and so in the comments section under Breitbart coverage of Sunak’s update, using the FBEL Disqus account, he opted to share his knowledge of averages for intensive care stays so that anyone interested in whatever might happen to Boris Johnson next could remain informed. It boiled down to this: as Johnson, as a survivor (and not looking likely to relapse), was about to overstay according to the average duration, either he should be expected to be out of intensive care soon, or be switched to advanced respiratory support. At the time that the comment was made, the average stay for non-survivors was two days, and so it was also pointed out that if he was going to die, Johnson would very likely already have done it.

In what was quite the coincidence, a few hours later came the news that Johnson was indeed being discharged from intensive care back to the general ward. Of course, no one is claiming that FBEL output is monitored so that it provokes reaction from the powers-that-be in the land. The point is that if one person could realise from data that Johnson had spent enough time in intensive care, then the same fact could also occur to others. And as such, we must ask, was Johnson’s discharge based on a medical appraisal, or was it because a longer stay would become factually inconvenient?

Frankly, there doesn’t seem to be any explanation of the medical reasons for discharging Johnson – not even in the brand new piece that appeared yesterday in The Guardian which was, for some reason, collectively written by a number of its “journalists”, including some high profile names. This article in question, which claimed to tell “the inside story” of Johnson’s illness, merely implies that a decision not to put Johnson on a ventilator in the first 48 hours had something to do with it. The reader is reminded that discussion of ventilators in regards the Johnson hospital story is exaggeration.

No wonder, then, that it is evidently the purpose of the array of writers who have their name appear on The Guardian article, to reveal that the severity of Johnson’s illness was at all times understated. As the reader will see, the material is so thoroughly sodden with its proofs that the best way to illustrate the point is to just reproduce it here verbatim:

A Guardian analysis of what was said in public suggests the relentlessly upbeat pronouncements from Downing Street were at odds with what was known in private.

A lack of candour at a time of national crisis? It wouldn’t be the first time …

Behind the scenes, colleagues were painting a more alarming picture of Johnson’s health at the end of his first week of sickness. He did indeed have a fever. Left unmentioned, however, was his persistent cough: an unmistakeable splutter. During cabinet video conferences the prime minister’s symptoms were painfully evident. They confirmed the growing seriousness of his condition. One source suggested the PM was coughing up blood. Not true, Downing Street said…

By 2 April, doctors were worried that in Johnson’s case, the infection was taking this second, ominous path. St Thomas’ hospital – just across the Thames from Downing Street – began making preparations to admit the PM.

According to one source, staff were told his condition was significantly worse than had been publicly admitted – really bad, in fact. And that he was likely to need oxygen support…

Stories of Johnson’s decline were now circulating among Tory backbenchers and journalists. Downing Street insisted these whispers were wrong. In hindsight, this guidance seems misleading.

The rumours were loosely right: the PM was seriously unwell, more than admitted. Perhaps Johnson was minimising how bad he was feeling, even to those in his inner circle?…

[Matt] Hancock claimed all was well, telling Sky News on Sunday morning the PM was “working away” and had his “hand on the tiller”.

In reality, Johnson’s breathing had deteriorated. On Sunday afternoon the plan to admit Johnson to St Thomas’ was rebooted. That evening he was driven across the Thames and taken to a private room on the 12th floor. Downing Street did not deny reports he was immediately given oxygen. Once again, his spokesman sought to downplay events, saying this was “a precautionary step”. The consultant in charge of the prime minister’s care was Dr Richard Leach, the clinical director of the hospital’s pulmonary team and a leading lung expert [implying that Johnson’s illness warranted expertise].

The following day, Monday 6 April, things took an almost Soviet turn. While the PM was gasping for breath, aides insisted at a lunchtime press briefing that he was busy working his way through red boxes…

It appeared the government was covering up, or incompetent, or both…

On Monday afternoon the PM’s condition got significantly worse. A decision was made to transfer him to one of St Thomas’ two intensive care units. Johnson was put in a side room, on the east wing’s first floor. The development stunned Downing Street.

It’s quite clear that this article is trying to pass itself off as journalism reporting a scandal: the outrageous secret conniving designed to fool the British public that Johnson was fit to fulfil his Prime Ministerial role at the time of a crisis, when in fact he was very ill indeed.

So ill, in fact, that he had to be driven across Westminster Bridge to be tickled by some oxygen.

Well, there comes a time when the facts just won’t feed a fantasy, and the trying to do it gives the game away. The Guardian article, in its attempt to reaffirm the necessity of Johnson’s intensive care stay, merely aids the revelation of the lie.

For instance, we discover that such is the practice at St Thomas’ hospital, it would be extremely likely that Johnson would need to have been put on a ventilator if it was thought that intensive care was necessary – and that’s only the half of it:

Typically, Covid-19 patients in ICU are put on ventilators. This is an invasive and traumatic process. Some hospitals prefer to treat severe cases with a continuous positive airway pressure ventilator (Cpap). St Thomas’, however, favours full ventilation, believing this is how you save people, specialists say.

One source inside the hospital said Johnson was “very sick” when taken into ICU. “It was touch and go whether he would be put on a ventilator,” the source said.

The same source, however, wonders whether the PM really should have been in intensive care.

About 130 other patients were in critical care at the time, the vast majority hooked up to ventilators. At no point was Johnson on a ventilator. Nor did he receive Cpap, a less invasive form of treatment.

The source said: “Before the coronavirus crisis you could be in ICU without being on a ventilator but pretty much every bed is now taken by a coronavirus patient with a ventilator. I know people who work in ICU and I know the technicians who prepare all the equipment and they all say he was not put on a ventilator. He was taking up an ICU bed when he didn’t need it. The idea that you would put a patient who didn’t need a ventilator on an ICU bed is nonsense.”

The Guardian’s source, then, is saying that Johnson should not have been in intensive care – to which we say, just as it was thought. Needless to say, the article offers the opinion of a second source who thinks that Johnson, being overweight and over 50, fits a classic profile for risk, but in fact the discussion is for an entirely different purpose than weighing the merits of intensive care treatment for Johnson: it works to assert that intensive care was a reality.

This assertion continues with an elaboration of what Rishi Sunak told the press conference about “sitting up and engaging positively”:

According to hospital insiders, he was reverting to his old self. “He’s charming all the nurses, insisting they call him ‘Boris’,” one reported.

This information is complimented by detail of the speech Johnson made upon his release from hospital:

I’m going to forget some names but please forgive me. I want to thank Po Ling and Shannon and Emily and Angel and Connie and Becky and Rachael and Nicky and Ann. And I hope that they won’t mind if I mention in particular two nurses who stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way [Jenny from New Zealand and Luis from Portugal].

It’s unsophisticated, but neatly done: because Johnson can recite the names of nurses, it proves he was in hospital. And so, the impression of a hospital stay is intended to be complete. But in a detail that is perhaps rather too untidy for our liking, Johnson’s speech turns out have been pre-recorded – “a video message sent from Chequers”, as The Guardian article called it. It was released hours after his midday discharge. It could have been recorded at any time, but supposedly in those “hours” after his departure from London – minus the time it would have taken to drive to Buckinghamshire. It was a 670 word speech – about a page and a half in a Word document – no doubt delivered flawlessly (the author will not watch it), with Johnson wearing a suit and a tie. Is this what to expect from someone who had just come out of hospital and was supposedly relaxing at home?

And then there is this final piece of involuntary condemnation from The Guardian piece:

Photographs taken from a public footpath showed Johnson and Symonds [his fiancée] walking with their dog in the grounds of Chequers, the PM bundled up in a duffle coat and gloves. He looked pale but well enough to go for a stroll. Most ICU patients leave hospital in a wheelchair. They suffer from exhaustion, muscle wastage and other chronic problems. The prime minister appears to be in much better shape.

One can’t help but wonder if Johnson had been at Chequers the entire time.

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Displaying 5 Comments
Have Your Say
  1. Skeptic says:

    Thank you very much P W Laurie for being one of the few to question this and then following up by supporting your case in such detail.

    With respect to St Thomas, well they have form when it comes to participating in theatre. Previously they featured heavily in the Westminster Bridge attack psyop. I’m not sure if you already covered this, but given your discerning inquisitiveness it might be worth your attention as there are several irregularities there also. Frankly when St Thomas and Boris were mentioned in the same sentence, my skepticism sirens wailed and I worked backwards from there. Your brilliant sleuthing helped tremendously with confirming my suspicions.

  2. Mara D says:

    His opening line is “I have today left hospital after a week in which the NHS has saved my life, no question.”

    Was his brain deprived of oxygen as well as his lungs? A normal English speaking person would have simply said “Today I was discharged from St Thomas’s hospital where the NHS professionals there saved my life”.

    Not only was it obvious that he was no longer in hospital stating that he’d left hospital can only be seen as an effort to convince either himself or everyone else that he was actually there. The rest of his message is garbage as well, including the fact that (according to him) his body FIRST managed to regain oxygen via the “watching, thinking and caring” of NHS professionals. Who woulda thought medicine was as simple as that eh?

  3. Kyle G says:

    Hello, of relevance is the below account of the lack of registration of the nurses (reported in the comments at https://www.checktheevidence.com – which I cannot vouch for as a trustworthy source, so may need further corroboration of facts), which does support the obvious indication that these “nurses” are merely spooks, and supports the conclusion that the the secret services insult our intelligence by not even bothering to do a thorough job of faking identities (which is supposed to be their speciality!):

    “Not disagreeing with the Boris bullsh*t “poor boris has bravely fought it off story”, but… you also have to take this article with a pinch of salt. Searching the NMC register for a name isn’t very accurate. You have to spell the name precisely. Jenny McGee returns zero. Jennifer McGee returns a nurse registered in SE London (Guy’s hospital is in SE1 I think). Her expiry date suggests she’s on a temporary registration so would fit with a NZ nurse. The NMC search for Luis Paterma isn’t even shown with the same spelling as it was written in the article so unlikely to get a hit from the search (neither spelling does though – but that doesn’t mean Luis/Louis/Lewis doesn’t exist).”
    The story is that Boris was in ICU for a period of time – but only on oxygen, not on a ventilator. This is unusual – as oxygen can be given at almost any hospital bed.

    In a story about Bo Jo’s recovery http://www.chroniclelive.co… two nurses were named – Luis Pitarma from Portugal and Jenny McGee from New Zealand. But neither of the named nurses that looked after him are listed on the NMC register (see below), oddly enough. My wife who is a registered nurse explained that because they are non-EU workers, it’s possible they might not be registered with the NMC. Also, some EU nurses have some arrangement for working through the RCN (Royal College of Nurses) – but “what are the chances….” of Bo Jo being looked after by 2 of them?

  4. Mara D says:

    Jenny McGee, a nursing sister who has worked in ICU (critical care)for 10 years, is quoted as saying that having Boris Johnson in her care was “just another day at the office”. When a nursing sister uses the word “office” instead of “ward” or “unit” it tends to stands out. It is only an apt word if Ms McGee’s role is generally administrative. It’s a minor point, but I don’t think nurses tend to refer to their work as being “just another day at the office”.

  5. James says:

    Dunno about that Mara – I refer to my job as a day at the office, and I’m a postie!

    This whole con-virus stinks like last weeks kippers.

    I think he was in St Thomas’, but that he didn’t need to be there. If I’m feeling charitable, I’ll allow that *if* there’s the slightest possibility that the PM could die from a novel virus, then everything will be done to prevent that.

    No matter how tiny or non-existent the risk.

    Bojo in hospital, true or not, was a valuable propaganda piece. Until Bojo went into ICU, almost no-one in the country knew of anyone who had done so. I’m always sceptical, so I didn’t believe it, but it became really offensive to me when I saw that they described him as being in good spirits. So he’s ill with this devastating new disease and he’s in “good spirits”? How bad can it be?