Covid 19: Where Are We Then?

 What exactly is going on in the UK today? Having only 9 months experience of a new strain of a known branch of coronavirus, our scientific experts are still of the opinion that what we should do is hide. It didn't work before, but they assure us, that was because we didn't lockdown everyone hard enough and the public keep disobeying their masters. 

Evidence suggests the virus was receding before lockdown commenced in March, but science today seems to rely exclusively on predictions and ignores evidence. At the outset, when some science was involved, we knew we had to take care, but wait for herd immunity to do it's thing.

Then someone had a great idea; why don't we get some modelling done on the likely path of the disease. Why not get a known failure to work out what he thinks will happen. He can gather all the data we have on how infectious the virus is (none), any likely existing immunity (unknown), what the fatality rate is (unknown) and various similar parameters that were, at the time completely beyond us.

Using this almost total absence of data, a figure of 510,000 deaths if we don't lockdown was produced. Cue Boris Johnson panicking. 

In the early days, hospitals were the main source of infections and the staff some of the only people allowed to travel and work. To clear space in hospitals for the undeniable tsunami of Covid cases, medically trained people saw no issue with sending people who may, or may not have the disease we are terrified of, to care homes. (To help things along, care homes' PPE was diverted to hospitals).

Hospitals have, of course a terrible record for infection control and so it proved again, killing many of their own. Now, with our sophisticated approach to this disease, we know that we should shut pubs and restaurants, when as many as 5% of infections are thought to come from there. Hospitals remain uncriticised, even though recent figures for those hospitalised with Covid 19 included up to 24% who caught it there!

Students have returned to their universities, a time when we see all kinds of infections soar. But imagine our surprise when this included coronavirus! So, a cohort who are resolutely not ill with the virus leads to all kinds of renewed panic. More dire predictions and lamentation. Lockdowns follow.

Just what are we basing our continued pursuit of lockdown, with all its concomitant misery, economic destruction and unnecessary deaths, on?

Well, we are testing vastly more than previously, targeting where we expect to find it, like university towns and then even more so, the contacts of those testing positive. So we are finding loads. But we don't know if it's 'loads more' or not.

We know that the PCR tests are grossly inaccurate and do not tell us who among them are infectious, which is actually all that matters (it's probably around 10% of the total). Hospitalisation means a patient in hospital, with Covid 19 - but many didn't go into hospital with it. so it is not a representation of the public at large, being infected. 

Then the bizarre notion that we should include anyone who a doctor felt, not definitely knew (they could have tested positive, or had a cough) had coronavirus within the 28 days before they died. Even where the coronavirus had no role whatsoever in their death. And some who were going to die anyway.

Again, the 'died of' Covid will be very much lower than the government figure, which strangely they seem keen to inflate.

We are left with inaccurate tests, leading to unknown numbers of hospitalisations and an unknown number of deaths which causes our politicians and not least, their scientific (!) advisors to go into an absolute panic. There is no other way of describing it.

The other point is; we could be more accurate but we don't seem to want to. We could factor in the inaccuracies but we don't and the public are certainly not alerted to any of this (and the media, outrageously, don't ask).

Me And My Shadow

 So, we have now long known what should have been blindingly obvious from the outset, that the charlatan Neil Ferguson's modelling was, once again, a million miles off track. 500,000 deaths without lockdown. So we shut our country down on his say so.

The test though was Sweden, who didn't lockdown and ran numbnuts programme for their country, producing a figure of 90,000 dead by the end of May. Slightly out Neil, slightly out. By which I mean parallel universe out.

Currently, something interesting is going on as the virus seems to not be as killy as it was. Hospitalisations are down over 96% since the peak and reducing. Deaths are running at 10 a day. But Boris the Weak is absolutely terrified because the massively increased testing is finding more infected souls. Which apparently, no one expected. 

The infected are not getting ill, but that doesn't matter any more! Wear face masks to show your loyalty to the regime. They are pointless as the scientists told us before, but now they are a symbol of those committed to being frightened of their shadow.

However, I hear nothing about what we think is happening with the virus, has it weakened? Have we virtually achieved herd immunity (all that would ever save us - hiding as we did guaranteed a 'second wave')/ If we have got that deplored and laughed at herd immunity, then even the second wave won't happen. 

After all, from the Swedish experience, we should be pretty much done with deaths. If you think we had too many deaths already, then you need to concentrate on the geniuses who decided to ship elderly people out of hospital, untested into care homes, so they could introduce the virus there and kill many. Another outstanding example of the leadership of our wonderful NHS.

Also, causing many more deaths from ignoring the sick, while waiting for the tsunami that never came. But the sloth with which it started return to it's usual role, whilst blaming people for not going to hospital if they were ill, tut!

What this virus has really done is shown up the weaknesses in our public sector and its supposed experts, the talent in the Civil Service for deflecting blame and the ineptitude of government and the mentality of politicians today, who concentrate on entitlement rather than service. Root and branch, Root and branch.

Give Me Hope, Help Me Cope, With This Heavy Load

Apologies to the late George Harrison for stealing his lyrics, but they seem to fit the times.

It is the essence of the absence we are faced with currently; a lack of hope. Hope is the prospect of things getting better, the light at the end of the tunnel.

What hope is the government giving us? It's going to get worse? Nope, don't think that would cut it. Their strategy for dealing with the outbreak? Well, if they have a strategy it's a closely guarded secret, with less leaking than at any time in the history of government.

The indicators to look for, as to when we can start returning to normal? No idea.

Whilst the information from and indeed even the access to the senior medical figures to answer media questions (even if none of them seem to think any analysis of the issue, leading to proper and searching questions, should trouble their empty little heads), is laudable, when did they get to make policy?

Surely anyone would realise that 'this thing will last six months at least, reviewed every two to three weeks' would be interpreted as 'lockdown for six months'. Because actually, that's what you said.

The government urgently needs to get the message across that there is hope. And then explain why. Now if the reason they can't is because they don't have a plan then we probably are all doomed, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

May I help?

The challenges are - stopping too many people getting seriously ill at once

limiting the disease transmission

planning for future prevention

increasing medical preparedness for higher levels of demand

We can only deal with this virus with knowledge. In the long term a vaccine, but in the short term lethality and spread. We don't have this information. Also, we could do with dialling down the panic in the NHS. The theme is that this is apocalyptic and a tsunami is coming, so doctors and nurses live in fear of that.

Then there is the fear of catching it. I'm not sure why we are hearing so much about how scared medical staff are, whilst the general public (well, the young) don't see what the problem is. Maybe it is because the media, with the goal of sensationalism constantly harp on about it and the BBC only interview union representatives, to get expert medical opinion (about what the [Tory] government is doing wrong).

Politicians have said they don't like the term lockdown and so I offer an alternative that is at least more accurate - hiding. By locking ourselves away and avoiding associating with others (or avoiding non-essential travel, as the police have interpreted it), we are not catching Covid 19.

We are also not building herd immunity. Why is this important? Well, flu could be just as troublesome, but it isn't because we have had long exposure to it's like and many of us are immune (I'm getting on and I have never had flu). That means the virus struggles to find people it can infect and kill.

Don't get me wrong, it kills loads of people every year, but you don't hear much about it. Apparently, if you have a pre-existing condition and catch flu, which then finishes you off, it gets recorded as death from your pre-existing issue (cancer, for instance). Not flu.

But with Covid 19, anyone dying who tests positive is a coronavirus death. It's illogical and doesn't help us understand the lethality of the disease. How many people does it kill? And it is part of the NHS panic. Another is the closure of hospitals to anything else and often, if you turn up with a temperature they want to send you away, rather than you bring this dangerous disease into their hospital (as happened to my one year old granddaughter).

So, the strategy as I see it should be, test as widely as possible to discover the extent of the disease today. If we find a significant proportion of the population have already had it (and I gather something like 40% would confer herd immunity, or something like it), then bingo! Let's reopen the doors.

If it is only partial then get the 'immune' who have had it back to work wherever possible. But we need to know and we need to stop mis-recording deaths and we need to get our strategy across to the public.

If you go back to the early days, all the warnings fell on deaf ears because we have heard it all before; SARS was going to be the apocalypse, Avian flu would kill us all and the delight at the WHO that this time their claims of doom seemed to be getting wings, didn't help. People were getting it and soon got over it, barely noticing.

The simple point that, as a new virus we could all get it at once and swamp the NHS was never clearly enunciated until Boris' broadcast about lockdown. Now, they are keeping from us how we get over the herd immunity issue, all hiding at home.

This crisis has shown there are some truly great people in the NHS, that many things 'impossible' in our medical system can be in place in hours and that large numbers of the administration is entirely unnecessary. Actually creates problems.

We have also seen the talent of politicians to talk to the wrong experts too often and take on what they are told rather than asking searching questions and making the decisions themselves. Boris originally wanted to get herd immunity as quickly as possible and so tried business as usual.

 Now this would risk swamping the NHS, but the reason he really did a U turn on this, was the loudness and shrillness of the 'experts', predicting 250,000 or even 500,000 deaths if he didn't do as they said. Something which, having got their way, their day in the sun, they are now backing away from.

Big Beast Boris's Burqa

You measure a man by what he does rather than what he says. Being completely gender non-specific (rather than fluid, a non-existent type), Theresa May has rather proved that point. Boris has his heart in the right place, but is a bit inept when trying to play political games. Now, whilst that might suggest he is ill suited to politics, this would only be correct if you believe the sole purpose of politics is to corrupt the meaning of words, rather than sometimes manipulating.

As such he has an appeal to the ordinary voter, precisely because he doesn't seem like the machine politician with which our parliament is very much plagued. In that regard, we emulate the US, but perhaps without quite the flamboyance. But isn't it ever this way between us and the USA?

In the extraordinarily closed world of the Westminster bubble this is something that is understood, even if the general workings of the world outside the bubble is magnificently beyond their recognition.

When I was being obliged to sit still, face the front and listen, I was given history as it was instinctively taught within the British culture. When the story of the peasants revolt was told to me, what actually sank into my consciousness was, that the people had become fed up with the way those in charge ran things. Sure there was detail, but it was the overview, the impact at a subconscious level amongst those peasants that was what I understood.

We have the same today with the decision to leave the European Union, a vanity project of shining hubris, too bright for anyone to see. Except the we-own-the-law, different old British. When Ted Heath lied with great passion about how happy he and a bunch of other blithering idiots would be, if only he could be allowed to join and be a part of this lovely edifice, we obliged his whim. A bureaucrats wet dream.

As loving, obliging parents we let him have his way and in an almost patronising way ignored the politicians playing with their tea set, dolls house, train set and cars for decades, in the firm belief that 'Europe' was over there and of no consequence, really, to us. It didn't matter. Nobody knew or cared who 'their' MEP was, what they did or even bothered to vote in Common Market, EEC, EC, EU elections.

And in this way the British were the ideal dupes dreamt of by the founders of the Project; the people had to be kept in the dark, the mission of the Project had to be kept from them. After all, like full blown Communism, who in their right mind ever voted for that? And European history is full enough of revolutions (or in Britain petitions), to suggest care and secrecy were needed.

If you are old enough to have lived some decades under the EU, ask yourself a question; can you remember ever hearing a debate about the EU? You can't, because (as with Man Made Global Warming) you got lots of instructions about how important it was (that was actually propaganda), but no unbiased information and certainly no debate.

The truth is dangerous to any organisation that is really, at root a bunch of international gangsters.Empire builders by the back door. Consider, why are we so afraid of the consequences of leaving the EU? Sure the detail would be messy, like any cancer, it seeks to spread throughout your system, but really it is because we know, we have seen that the EU cannot be trusted. It is not a machine based on logic and it certainly has no intention of allowing International Law to interfere in its malice (Sudetenland, anyone?)

So, the actual objection, the reason why Britain still managed, despite a long time under incessant propaganda, to vote down the EU membership, was because at a visceral level we just knew it was a wrong 'un. Maybe in these deliberately uneducated times, you need to look to the American Constitution to understand the true British character, the way we do government, because it was based on British constructs. Magna Carta means more to them than us, because we have been told that freedom doesn't matter any more.

But the reason we left the burgeoning empire of the EU, was the same as for the Americans. They did not seek to break with Britain and initially the broad feeling was that injustice must be dealt with as a detail, no greater change was required. But, imperial and impervious the upstarts had to be ignored. And so they proved that another course was open to them.

But they still continued to base their lives and laws on what they knew and what worked; British law and custom. 'We the people' is a great start to any sweeping document of state and it cannot be said too often that Britain evolved (through some trial and error) the best system of government in an imperfect world. We own the law and our politicians fear the people. In the EU, the State owns the law and the people need to fear their government.

The biggest mistake? Drawing attention to the EU. Once we started looking at what they were up to, what they stood for, what they did and intended to do it became inevitable that we would revolt (or, send in a petition). And we did. 52 to 48% is a decent difference and remember, for once a lot of people voted. That it was not wider is entirely due to the success of the weakening of our education system, but enough traditional British grit remained.

But then, in all the agonised ranting about how damaging leaving a bureaucrats paradise will be, we forget that the very act of being subsumed by the EU was illegal. Sure we talked of 'joining', but when you are handing political and economic power to a foreign government, it mirrors the way Poland 'joined' Germany in 1939.

No British government has that power, that authority and yet Ted Heath did it. The Conservative Prime Minister Ted Heath. And what mocking irony it is that, at the denouement of our dalliance with corruption, we should be under the 'guidance' of such a similar creature, the British Prime Minister Theresa May. Ted Heath lied shamelessly to get us in and Theresa May is lying just the same, to keep us in.

There used to be a fire safety advert that ran 'Get out, stay out and get the Brigade out', which is excellent advice regarding the EU (though here it would be the Brigade of Guards).

So, all the confected outrage about Boris and some misquotes about what he said and intended, is actually about how scared a bunch of ne'er do well politicians are of Boris Johnson and the likelihood that he would do a proper job of Brexiting. The Burqa is peculiar, it's like a bag and it is a symbol of the beginnings of extremist attitudes. We would do well to heed wise words.

Not Boris Then

What exactly is Boris about? Is he able to run a straightforward political career? About as likely as not noticing a pretty girl it seems.

Anyway, the leading Brexit campaigner won't be leading the Conservative party any time soon. So, who can? It is almost as difficult these days to think of a politician with any real conviction, any leadership qualities.

Labour are in a devil of a mess because they have a conviction politician as leader, with no leadership qualities at all. But then, when you want to end democracy and be in power forever, I suppose leading is not that important.

Gove is brilliant but I don't think he gels with people and the Left have done a good stich-up job creating a false image of the man. I feel for Jeremy Hunt who is presently being demonised by another Union, but leader of the Conservatives? No thanks.

Theresa May? If going missing when a decision is needed, when the going gets tough, then she would be in line. Otherwise, no.

Daniel Hannan? Definitely, but oh dear, he is only an MEP. Don't know Crabb, which might be his problem all over. amusing isn't it? They spend their time avoiding being of any utility to the country or its people and now cannot find a reason to be elected, a platform.

Anti Gay Campaign

Mayor of London Boris Johnson has stopped a poster campaign supporting the Christian notion that homosexuality is a sin. It is an interesting position for a servant of the public to take, in a country where the Christian faith is supposed to be a central part of its 'Establishment'.

The posters were particularly offensive apparently, because they claimed that homosexuality could be 'cured'. The objection is to the word 'cured' but the Gay supporters also carefully avoid the word. Their assertion is that to cure something you have to believe that something is wrong in the first place.

Christians would say, without needing a recourse to malice, that the human species continues due to sexual congress; it is not surprising then that other sexual unions would be considered unnatural. For me, this is probably too extreme a reaction to the condition in which a homosexual finds themselves. It is not something the homosexual 'does', they are born with the trait, in just the same way a heterosexual is born with theirs.

Society then has to decide how to react to the situation. Surely it should just be ignored and the homosexuals keep their activity to the confines of their homes as should heterosexuals. But we come back to that word cure again. Because homosexual activists don't want to be ignored or tolerated, they want to be 'equal' (by which they mean privileged, treated as victims).

This means they must insist on irrelevant 'needs' that are only demanded to cause schism and disagreement, to antagonise. Marriage is one such antagonism. Marriage is a human construct to tie together two people who intend to raise children, their children. The society bestows what support it can on these people as children are the future. Homosexuals have absolutely no reason to get 'married' and the requirement to do so is not envy, but political.

Mayor Johnson's support for the political activity of this group, to oppose the political activity of another shows how all of us are in thrall to the victim claims of homosexuals (a tactic of the Left generally). They have the 'moral' high ground, because they have constructed a situation where certain things cannot be said, not because they represent some clear evil, but because they oppose homosexuality (for instance). All part of the Political Correctness drive to control language and thus people; very Orwellian.

I am sure that we could discover how to change the brain chemistry of a homosexual to turn them into a heterosexual, but I'm not sure I understand why you would want to. They are unlikely to have an innate feeling that there is something wrong with themselves, as opposed to someone who cannot walk for instance. The utility of being able to use your legs is somewhat more apparent.

Because of the aggression that activists have attached to their 'cause' however, should someone wish to 'convert', say to have a relationship to raise children in the normal way, I fear that they would be intimidated not to. It is an unlikely scenario but it is one that the activists are not careless about; they are very careful to challenge any such thought. Naturally, they would be enraptured if a heterosexual wished to become a homosexual. That would be OK. But oppression is oppression no matter what its self proclaimed intention.