Avoiding avoidable harm. Is it really so much to ask?

“How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century.” Aneurin Bevan

Deaths per million, August2021:  does not include cases of long covid or the many other avoidable harms caused by deliberate mismanagement, which is a political choice taking precedence over public health best practice. source

Where we are right now, in the UK.. just the raw truth! Watch this, then read on.


China's population is twice that of  US and EU.

Why are so few people of the Press/News media and government in USUK not taking into account the experience and lessons learned by China, New Zealand, South Korea and the other countries operating Elimination of Community Transmission strategy, and reporting on the successes, and the problems they encounter, and how they resolve those problems?   

When they do comment, why do they appear to deliberately portray these strategies inaccurately and describe them as meaning eradication or Zero Covid, and thus dismiss what is already being done, what is proven to prevent the harms associated with mitigation and 'living with the virus' as 'impossible' or a 'fantasy'?

New Zealand is looking like it's suppressing and eliminating Delta - they are cautiously optimistic. They reveal the efficacy of a caring government, a caring population working together to stop community transmission even as Morrison of Australia, the Murdoch press beloved, tries to denigrate their efforts.

Reports and political commentators often describe those countries as living in isolation', as if they are cut off from the rest of the world. This is clearly not the case. A quarantined border is still allowing human traffic through, even if it limits tourism - consumer goods continue to be shipped across borders. Tourism is a luxury business, it is not a necessity. Indeed internal tourism has increased in pretty much every country, circulating money within economies. For a short term set back, Tourism could be supported to help eliminate community transmission and prevent immense avoidable harms. Instead the tourism industry has become a primary vector of the virus.

As Elimination Strategy functions to leap into action whenever a cluster emerges, usually due to an imported variant, invariably a variant that emerged in the reckless countries, the pundits of USUK et al are quick to crow about how ineffective elimination strategy is, falling silent when the clusters are controlled, and the community transmission is stopped.

The denial and the dismissive attitudes seem to me to be about protecting USUK and other reckless Governments from public scrutiny and close attention, to shield them from an open critical analysis of their deliberate, repeated mismanagement and the huge economic costs of avoidable harms they have deliberately not avoided.

1.8 billion people, c.23% of global population being protected by elimination of community transmission strategies across such a wide variety of economies and cultures is a huge evidence base. 

The USUK mismanagement teams dare not speak of it, honestly.

Freedom and being realistic

Even the 'Freedom!' crew who are highly critical of USUK Government are denying the evidence of China, New Zealand and the other countries, who have experience far less restrictions on their lives citizens of mitigation strategy countries, let alone the adverse health and mortality impacts. Death by Covid is not freedom. 10% of positive cases enduring long Covid is not freedom. So much for freedom. 

Seems to me to be that they are one the same side as the super spreader governments they proclaim against. The spreaders of misinformation are also spreaders of the virus.

Fatalism is understandable

Dr. John Campbell, a youtuber medic who does a decent job of reporting on the evidence from around the Earth, avoids political observations like the plague. So he dare not mention elimination, which he did early on, suggesting UK was insane to not learn from China and East Asia. Now he has abandoned all mention of elimination strategy, and is reliant on vaccine efficacy to get us through to a better situation.

I imagine he’s being ‘realistic’ accepting there’s no way to dislodge this English Government and just getting on with it. 

I get it. He has no option but to get on with his job, which is providing the best information he can find, from the perspective of a medic, a nurse.. Nothing will change, people need best info in order to make better decisions for themselves. Crack on.

But I see that as a form of fatalism, and I simply cannot accept that - and just as I still want to see Blair and the others indicted for war crimes, and even though I know I can’t do that myself, I refuse to let go of the need to see justice done correctly, in full, not so much as punishment but as a preventative - and so I still hold that elimination strategy is feasible, supported by vaccines, and the best way to reduce the avoidable harms that 'living with the virus' mythology leads to.

Stop causing avoidable harm. Is it really so much to ask?

IndependentSAGE is also on youtube, they broadcast a live briefing every Friday afternoon looking at the data, trends and issues, with a Q&A session for press and the public. They are a team of eminent and respected scientists in all the various fields that are affected by Covid, and they are firmly for elimination strategy, rather than 'living with the virus' or 'herd immunity'. 

IndependentSAGE have produced an informative timeline comparison which lays out the Scientific, Epidemiological and Public Health advice offered to English Government and compares it to the actual policy carried out by the English Government.

The situation in England is now that there are close to 25k new PCR confirmed cases daily, going by Government statistics.  ZOE records c. 55k new cases. Current estimates suggest that around 10% of positive cases are likely to contract Long Covid. We don't know how many asymptomatic cases that have not been tested are out and about in the community, people who are probably unaware of their status as potential vectors of infection. The existing test and trace systems are inadequate to the task assigned them.

Daily hospitalisations are currently running at around 750 in England. 

Death by Covid is Horrific

There were 207 Covid deaths in England's hospitals yesterday. How do people die from Covid? Breathlessness, breathing pain, oxygen depletion, headaches, inflammation, secondary infections, organ failure, sepsis: a parade of pain and increasing disability.

This is the thing few people are willing to look at but health workers are forced to see. Death by Covid is very painful indeed, the process is disgustingly awful. There’s no dignity, no peace only suffering often in utter isolation.

The person knows long before they die that they are in deep trauma, unlikely to survive, and that is it's own unique terror - the medical staff spend their days watching frightened people die awful deaths. 

Clap, clap, clap for heroes and no preventative action by government or citizens.

Is there a substantive pay rise in recognition of the extra burden NHS staff are bearing? Is there funding for extra staff to ease the work load of burned out medical staffers? No way. Not with this English government populated by those wealthy enough to take £40,000 holidays, add swimming pools to luxury homes during the summer break, spend hundreds of thousands refurbishing the prime ministers flat as they withdraw £20 'uplift pandemic support' per week from people receiving Universal Credit, which supports as many low paid workers as unemployed people, a benefit employers take profitable delight in.

The situation is similar to a war, with the braided generals at home, sitting in comfort and their combat troops in the trenches, engaged in the reality of combat, who see what it is really like, and then the patriotic civilians who just do not know and cannot therefore understand what war really is at all but who are encouraged to speak about ‘our boys and girls’ and ‘bravery and sacrifice'. 

War is always avoidable.

Every death by Covid is pretty much avoidable.  Stopping the uncontrolled spread of the virus in the community is feasible, and it does not need lockdowns, other than when the strategy fails - and we know why strategy fails.  Each and every death is a horror movie that goes on for days and days and days. Witnessed by medical staff who are powerless to do much more than manage death, and whose insight, wisdom and knowledge is given almost no hearing in offices where Government policy is decided.

Those poor souls. 

English Government cost benefit analysis is accepting one thousand ten days torture ending in death every week.

Can you imagine that as a war price?

Would you accept that?

And what of  our Schools, as they reopen this Friday, and are predicted to become super spreader events, with our children exploited as vectors of spread to attain herd immunity, intentionally so?

Must we accept that future for them?

As a culture, Climate Change, Environmental Degradation, War, Poverty are all Externalised Costs which our children must bear the brunt of, they will pay the price.

This then is the question of our era, in a dark metaphor.

"Have we spent our lives filling our children's shoes with shit, before telling them to go for a long walk?"





Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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