Lawrenson in his penultimate Facebook journal.
A 58-year-old solicitor has died of Covid after recording a diary of his symptoms in which he told his followers it was "nothing to be afraid of".
Leslie Lawrenson pronounced to viewers on June 23 that he had a high temperature and was suffering from aches, pains and shivers, but that he hoped it was Covid because it was "no more than a normal cold".
Awaiting his test results, the Dorset lawyer said that if it transpired that he had contracted the disease, "I'll gladly take it. Get the antibodies in my blood and have natural immunity - and also experience that it's nothing to be afraid of - no more than a normal cold".
"I'm nailing my colours to the mast", he said. "I'm going to let me immune system ride it out. I'm not going to go into hospital - if it gets no worse than this, I'm nowhere near having to be hospitalised. I won’t impose myself on NHS resources", he said. "We'll see how I feel in the morning."
The next day he posted a video in which he appeared shocked, but remained defiant.
"Last night was pretty dreadful" he admitted. The sole practitioner described how he spent "probably about six hours" in "a foetal position trying to block out the pain. Every part of my body was racked with pain".
"And the fever..my God...that ramped up incredibly hot. You could have fried an egg on me... it was just agony", he said.
But, "I didn't feel like I was in any danger" he said, reiterating that he would rather take his chances than risk the "experimental jab".
However, nine days later his condition deteriorated to the point where his family called an ambulance, and 10 minutes after paramedics had checked up on him, his stepson found him dead in his bed.
Lawrenson, who graduated from Cambridge University, "was highly educated...so if he told me something, I tended to believe it", said his wife.
She was also unvaccinated despite suffering from diabetes and hypertension, and was admitted to hospital with Covid-related pneumonia the same day her husband died.
"Les made a terrible mistake and he’s paid the ultimate price for that", she said, vowing that she would get jabbed as soon as doctors said she was fit enough.
Her daughter and Lawrenson's stepdaughter, Carla Hodges, said the lawyer had been "brainwashed" by "the stuff that he was seeing on YouTube and social media".
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Comments
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very poor taste
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Despite the sheer stupidity and danger of people like him, it’s still sad to hear that he lost his life.
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Are you absolutely sure you want to leave this one open for comments, ROF?
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The vaccine should be compulsory end of
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Even if he thought the risk of Covid is overstated, he must surely have known that people are in hospital and dying. Knowing that, and still not seeking medical attention when showing severe symptoms, is a sign that he was brainwashed into a death cult. His desire to gain clout in his anti-vaxx cult was greater than his sense of self-preservation. Very dangerous stuff.
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Those critical of the vaccine tend to be unqualified in medicine. Think about that for a minute. Get vaccinated.
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I'm in my 30s. Relatively healthy. Very sporty and a 'gym lad' who also enjoys a pint.
Caught Covid and for 2 days I was in terrible pain. Then the next 5 days were spent in bed recovering. I was scared at some points.
I'm double jabbed.
Get your vaccination people. PLEASE.
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It is good that this is posted on here.
There are users, like Rhamnousia, I see posting on the "Discussion" board who are adamant they know more than doctors and will not get the vaccine. They bully those who post comments which they do not agree with. Why do such a large amount of lawyers feel the need to state they know more than anyone on everything...!?
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"There are users, like Rhamnousia, I see posting on the "Discussion" board..."
Bluntly, it's a wonder that people there are still indulging them by responding. Pay them no mind.
They're a one-dimensional attention seeker who has been posting on the discussion board for years under various guises and the routine is the same every week. The Covid-denialism thing is just this year's bait to tempt people into yet another thread of talking about them.
When it's all blown over they'll go back to one of their more usual themes - inevitably wailing about being personally persecuted, eternally miserable, considering self-harm, and yet flatly refusing all reasonable offers of help/advice/assistance on flimsy pretexts in an effort to keep the pity-party running for as long as physically possible.
Then, when people lose interest, they'll just post another thread saying whatever tasteless thing they think will get the most attention so that the whole jamboree can run again. Like the rising of the sun each morning. But every 90 minutes instead.
It's the other users who should be ashamed of themselves though. Rhamnousia is clearly mentally ill. But as alleged adults the rest of the userbase should have found the willpower to stop indulging them a long time ago. It's so transparent and predictable that I'm amazed they keep getting suckered in.
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He's like Braveheart
They took his life but they couldn't take his freedom
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Please take this down ROF - he's suffered enough, and his family really don't need people making fun, although I'm sure it isn't intended that way. You're much better than this!
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Why the moaning about this article?
He advised other people not to have the vaccine, some of whom might well have died.
Why do we only get upset when he’s also one of the people dying?
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To those saying this shouldn't be an article, surely it draws attention to the need for vaccinations which is something he wanted at the end when it was too late. This is necessary to help debunk false news.
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What is truly sad about all of this is how intelligent people can be manipulated through effective propaganda. We all know it from WW I & II that propaganda works. It's also why we still have advertising.
Several years ago, I consciously withdrew from social media, and limited my consumption of news. Worried about how insidious and partisan news outlets were becoming in an increasing race to clickbait their way out of financial ruin due to FB/Twitter etc.
What is most disturbing is that if its a child manipulated into an inappropriate relationship, society calls it grooming. The child is a victim.
If a young Muslim (most likely fed up with discrimination) is drawn to the internet to find some support, coming across IS material, society calls it radicalisation, and we must lock them up. We are the victim.
When seemingly intelligent folks become scared and go down the covid conspiracy rabbit hole, society thinks that they wouldn't have fallen for that and the person must be stupid. Serves them right.
To me its all the same thing. Ordinary people being lied to and convinced of an alternative reality, often to the persons detriment, and to allow the con-artists to make money from them. We should find a way to locate the actual perpetrators, and not just punish those who fall for clever propaganda.
I don't know what the solution is, but I wish we could regognise the power of lies.
My condolences go out to the man's family.
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If a young Muslim (most likely fed up with discrimination)...
Citation needed.
While I agree with most of the rest of your post, and while we're veering way OT, the majority of UK IS recruits came from comfortable middle class backgrounds and were graduates. There is little evidence of any record of oppression or persecution in their lives in the UK.
So the idea that they were being driven to radical Islam by 'discrimination' is tenuous at best.
Worth remembering that we don't apologise for other kinds of murderers and terrorists by suggesting that white people probably drove them to it really. You wouldn't say it about Brevik. You never hear it about the Capitol Rioters in the States. You wouldn't say it about the guy in Plymouth.
Waving away Islamism as being the result of a hazy notion of structural racism is lazy thinking that fails to grasp the root of the problem.
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This year's Darwin awards are going t be great!
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Anonymous 13 August 21 15:07
The fact that most IS recruits were graduates only strengthens the point. Objectively, it makes no rational sense for someone highly educated to run off and join an organisation that wants to kill, especially if this goes against the actual doctrine of that religion. Therefore, such a person has been conned/groomed/radicalised- take your pick.
I don't know the full details of the incident, but I am willing to bet my house that Brevik spent lots of time on internet getting his head filled with right-wing nonsense before he acted. Same issue, someone looking to make sense of the world and finding "answers" in all the wrong places.
Finally, no highly educated solicitor would rationally read one article on the internet and believe that they know more than trained doctors/epidemiologists. However, expose that person to many articles over a period of time, and.... res ipsa loquitur
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"The fact that most IS recruits were graduates only strengthens the point. Objectively, it makes no rational sense for someone highly educated to run off and join an organisation that wants to kill, especially if this goes against the actual doctrine of that religion. Therefore, such a person has been conned/groomed/radicalised- take your pick."
Oh, I agree with you. They've absolutely been radicalised by a hate-filled ideology. No question about it (though I think it's a bit of a difficult sell to say that the killing infidels bit of that ideology really 'goes against' the doctrines you can find expressed in unequivocal terms in the Quran).
The bit of your post that I took issue with was the notion that they went online looking for that kind of material 'because of discrimination'.
There's just no evidence for that suggestion.
It's unhelpful to caveat Islamist violence by suggesting that it's somehow a response to 'discrimination' or some other kind of vaguely defined oppression. It isn't. It's an endemic behaviour whose perpetrators share no common history of persecution (in the UK, or globally when studied as a wider group). The problem is the underlying ideology, reflexive 'white guilt' about it is misplaced and only gets in the way of tackling the actual issue.
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"no highly educated solicitor would rationally read one article on the internet and believe that they know more than trained doctors/epidemiologists"
I'm not sure that you've met that many solicitors...
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Oh put a sock in it, Cookie...I mean... "Anonymous 13:07".
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The NHS claim is that there are no viable outpatient treatments for Covid and that you either survive it at home or survive it in the hospital.
The official policy on "treating" Covid is to assume that you can tough it out until you feel sick enough to warrant hospital admission, then you either go there yourself or call and ambulance.
So many people have died on account of this morally unconscionable policy and it makes no difference whether they are vaccinated or not.
The problem is that too many people are too stupid to realize that this actually gross medical negligence and medical malpractice on the part the Government, the NHS Trusts and the GPs who implicitly condone this policy.