Vaccinated vs unVaccinated is a false dichotomy. Here's why.

First thing to make clear is that there are billions of people who don't have access to vaccines. Vaccine equity is not happening at the scale needed to protect all those people. 

Second, epidemiological and public health strategies to suppress community transmission of the virus to minimal levels are not being followed across the major developed states and that puts everyone else at risk - we have seen repeated cycles of transmission getting out of control because under the guise of 'protecting the economy' community transmission is being allowed to occur at 'low levels' - defined as not overwhelming Health Services, but allowing constant extra stress on existing Health Services - and that guarantees surges will happen and variants will emerge.

So what populations ought to be united in demanding is support to reduce the transmission in the community to the minimum, and certainly quarantine at borders to limit export/import of the virus. The techniques to do this can be supportive rather than 'draconian'. It can be done.

The vax vs unvaxxed adversarial narrative - essentially a concocted angry argument - is obscuring clarity on what needs to be done. So here's an exploration of why this matters. 

Beefs.

There's an industrial scale practice of starting endless arguments, between people imbued with a belief, opinion, bias or bigotry in order to exploit their activity.

 It is known as The Internet of Beefs.

It started out as a tactic to drive up traffic to a page that carried advertising, in order to generate income from the page. Start an argument, get believers on board, troll them, get them angry and sit back as more pile on to argue to win. 

Start an argument, divide the room.

What is a 'beef'?
 

Venkatesh Rao the creator of Ribbon Farm Website wrote really informative piece where he coined the term 'beef-only thinking.'

"You’ve heard me talk about crash-only programming, right? It’s a programming paradigm for critical infrastructure systems, where there is — by design — no graceful way to shut down. A program can only crash and try to recover from a crashed state, which might well be impossible. I came up with a term for the human version: beef-only thinking.

A beef-only thinker is someone you cannot simply talk to. Anything that is not an expression of pure, unqualified support for whatever they are doing or saying is received as a mark of disrespect, and a provocation to conflict. From there, you can only crash into honor-based conflict mode, or back away and disengage.

The connection to crash-only programming is more than cosmetic, but it will take some set-up before I can establish the conceptual bridge.

Online public spaces are now being slowly taken over by beef-only thinkers, as the global culture wars evolve into a stable, endemic, background societal condition of continuous conflict. As the Great Weirding morphs into the Permaweird, the public internet is turning into the Internet of Beefs."

source: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/

Continuous conflict. Facebook algorithms that increase 'engagement' are rooted in this dynamic. Fight or flight hormone cascades drive the internal urge to win the unwinnable. Addiction patterns of behaviour becoming habitual. Rational discourse becomes almost impossible, and those who try to maintain a rational stance become exhausted. 

Many of the online arguments that rage are rooted in this practice. Brexit was an example of this practice being deployed online and in News Media in order to seed irrational divisions across the electorate. 

How rapidly the English democratic debate descended into Leave vs Remain as an endless argument largely void of rationality. How quickly previously calm folk became enraged, enervated, to the degree of poisoning familial relationships!

The Vaccinated against The un-Vaccinated against The Vaccinated.

We must protect vaccinated and unvaccinated populations equally, in order to bring this pandemic down to safe and managed levels that prevent avoidable harms. This is critically important given the inequity of global Vaccine distribution, unwillingness to share Intellectual Property rights and technology, which is rendering billions of people vulnerable to SARSCOV2, it's variants and the adverse outcomes associated with it.

Pitting one against the other is toxic and is a large part of the misinformation activity that impedes the preservation of our Right to Health within the specific context of the Pandemic.

image source: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-july-2021/ - a study of attitudes which reveals the potency of misinformation, political grooming and adversarial messaging in influencing sectors of the population, in generating lateral distrust and social incoherence, preventing social solidarity at a time when it is quite clearly needed. Question: who has the most to fear from social solidarity?

what effective suppression of community transmission of the virus using non-pharmaceutical interventions and social solidarity in a population of 1.4 billion people looks like.

Vaccinated vs unVaccinated is a false dichotomy.
First off we are all human beings, deserving of care and the preservation of our Right to Health. Secondly, the vaccinations are superb, and they do offer some reduction in helping to avoid some of the avoidable harms, but not all. Thirdly, there is no real dichotomy in being vaccinated vs not being vaccinated.

That adversarial narrative is a concoction, a logical fallacy, or at least the adversarial aspect of this narrative is a logical fallacy. 
It is part of the weaponization of words and ideas that is part of the wider political grooming operations underway.

Byline Times have published a few insightful and damning articles on misinformation networks linked to the Covid Recovery Group and The Great Barrington Declaration.
Here's why.
Given that the vaccinations were never touted as stopping transmission, only as reducing severity of symptoms, and incidence of fatalities, to function as a cushion for entire populations that reduces systemic stress to lower levels, giving us resource space. and time, to suppress the transmission of the virus in the community, locally, nationally and globally, the issue of vax vs non vax as an adversarial dynamic or narrative is a deflection of focus away from the deliberate failure to suppress transmission, and is therefore yet another way to obscure the public discourse on what is needed to manage this pandemic.
Suppression of transmission must be the global over-riding strategic protocol, because we know it damn well works. I and others have written millions of words on this, drawing from the lived experience and the available evidence. Allowing spread guarantees the emergence of unpredictable variants, some of which may result in greater harm. The only bulwark against that under the current situation is luck. We cannot afford to throw such a dice.
Mis-use of the Vaccine.
In the UK, which is where I live, (I can speak to the experience here) the Johnson regime abused or exploited the vaccine to lower hospitalisations/deaths knowing full well that their policy options enabled and allowed spread of the virus. They talked a lot about slowing the spread, they never talked about suppressing community transmission to lowest possible levels, except to dismiss it. Instead they spoke and wrote about 'acceptable; levels - which means that avoidable harms continue, at a lower yet still socially significant  rate, the '1000 deaths a week' as a 'cost-benefit rationalisation' of allowing spread to continue since July 19th.

Epidemiological recklessness. Emotional blindness.

75 seconds to describe Johnson Regimes opening up in July 2021

The point of the vaccines then, from Johnson's perspective, the perspective of those who wish to hold onto their existing almost completely hegemonic power, is to protect their power: because they sense that hospital, health care and social care systemic collapse would threaten their position. They fear that if and when public ire becomes too intense, support would evaporate and the people would demand their complete removal, to be replaced by a government of national unity tasked with suppression of community transmission (which has never been attempted yet in the UK) and so it was never about protecting the NHS, it was about protecting those in Power.

That stance is by definition an evil stance.
So when they called on us all to 'protect the NHs, save lives', they were gaslighting in full flow. It was all about them, not about us.

Certainly their concern was not about the welfare of all NHS staff, who were denied the pay raises they so clearly deserved. Certainly not about the millions of people receiving paltry state assistance.  Furlough protected the large corporate employers for the most part, 3 million small business people were excluded from financial support. Certainly their concern was not for the health and safety of all our children.

Trust.
Mike Ryan at WHO is someone I trust. He made it plain in March, April, May, June and July 2021, and ever since that the vaccines on their own were not the way out, that they were a cushion, and that the elimination or reduction to lowest possible levels of community transmission had to be the global strategy to protect whole populations, locally, nationally and globally and to start to bring an end to the pandemic. He was and is still correct. Stopping the Spread is Spreading the Love. 

Why not spread the Love?
The reason USUK and EU chose to not do elimination is because to do it you must support the population in ways that amount to Socialist policy. Using central State funding to empower local authorities to do effective elimination strategy, confronting misinformation and political grooming head on with clear, evidence based communications so that the population is clear as to what needs to be done, and why, providing financial support that enables people to isolate, businesses to stay viable via grants, furlough and other protective measures are all socialistic policies. Those who argue they have tried ignore the facts. Test and Trace is a failure, PPE provision was handed to profiteers, the virus is spreading at a significant rate, people are dying, Long Covid is afflicting millions of people. That is not a success story by any measure.
The Wealth Extraction ideologues, the Neoliberal/Free Marketeers and others detest this approach - suppression of community transmission - because it shifts power away from the Executive to the Community, away from individualism, to the collective, and they know that if a population experiences beneficial collectivism, their reign, in philosophical terms, is practically over. The NeoLiberal ideology of the Sovereign Individual competing with others would be over, finished, dealt a death blow by experience. They will never let that happen. 

We must make it happen to bring this pandemic to safe closure.
And it becomes more obvious when we understand that the same applies to climate, poverty, war and other issues- that the lived experience of working together to adapt to a problem and resolve it would inspire a huge perceptual shift, away from core individualism, (there is no such thing as society) towards collectivism. We are all in this together and we are only as safe as the least safe among us.
Democracy at it's very best is consensual collectivism. 

The Wealth Extractors will never cede this point, because it destroys their foundation and sense of entitlement to power. 
We are all in this together. Vaccinated and unvaccinated alike.
The Vaccinated vs unVaccinated is a deliberate gaslighting, a false dichotomy designed to protect the established power system.
It really frustrates me, that almost no-one sees this for what it is.
Sometimes I feel utterly alone in this perception, and while I have some doubts, I think the evidence supports it, as it explains what is being done better than any other thesis I have come across. By miles. 
I hope more of you will recognise the validity in the essence this perception, and add to it and I hope, fervently, that it will lead towards more effective action, locally, nationally and globally.





Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Preventative Public Health Measures are not 'restrictions' - pushing back at cunning linguists.

 A letter to various Editors of News Papers and others. Concerning the use of bad language within the context of policy decisions in the middle of a global pandemic. A gentle nudge of sorts.


Dear Editor,

After 20 months of Pandemic,  I have had enough of a certain, deliberate linguistic inaccuracy.

Preventative Public Health Measures are not 'restrictions'.  They are measures designed to protect Public Health, a fundamental moral and legal duty of care of every decent Government.

'Restrictions' is an emotive word trap. It engenders an emotional reaction to resist being restricted. It is a wholly inappropriate term to use under the current conditions.

There are some cunning linguists in positions of Public and Civil Authority, and in the Press and News Media and elsewhere.

We must outwit them. To protect the Public Health.

Yours sincerely,

Corneilius Crowley

London

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Make Education Safe Again : II - a letter from a 12 year old student, a letter from a concerned, responsible parent and a People's Inquiry

~

September 2021, I published a blog entitled 'Make Education Safe Again'. In this blog I collated some of the evidence a) that schools as they were set in September leading into the autumn term were unsafe for children and teachers alike and b) that we know well how to make them safe for children and teachers and c) what the implications of the persistent demand by this Government that schools, unsafe as they are, remain open were. We could see the harm ahead of time, which by definition tells us that that harm was avoidable. To refuse to avoid avoidable harms, to children, is gross negligence.

Independent SAGE have published a series of papers, outlining rational, proven methods to make schools safer, to suppress transmission among children and teachers.  These recommendations are well reasoned, by experts in epidemiology, virology, immunology and behavioural science and economics. The Government has not been able to counter with a rational evidence based response. Their stance is to ignore and deny, and to persist with placing our children and their teachers in harms way. This is an atrocity.
~
Then The New Statesman published a story on November 15th, which revealed why the government imposed unsafe schools, demanded full attendance, issued dictats to that end. The policy was designed to use children as superspreaders to deliver a booster to vaccinated adults in their community, the assumption being that a) children do not get seriously ill with Covid and b) wild reinfection confers greater immunity to those vaccinated, and to those who are not vaccinated. This assumption was promoted by the JVCI.  
~
The title of the piece was 'How the UK sleepwalked into another Covid disaster' subtitled  'By failing to prevent the rapid spread of coronavirus in schools, Boris Johnson has thrown children and adults to the wolves.'

I wrote that that headline was inaccurate, This Government was not asleep, they were fully awake and aware of the situation, and they chose, consciously, to impose the role of superspreaders upon all our school children and their teachers.
~
December 5th 2021 - Rates of Infection recorded, which are likely lower than actual rates, as asymptomatic cases might not be detected, and even these are only estimated, let alone recorded.

Infection rates amongst 5-9 year old children,  December 5 2021

1% of total population of 5.6 million children is ... 50,000 per day..
~

A child wrote a letter to her MP, Michelle McIlveen, DUP. describing her reality. The letter is remarkable in two regards. The 12 year old child has clearly got a better understanding of the situation than most News Media Journalists and MPs, which she articulates precisely. Her concern for the welfare of others is similarly advanced in comparison to both those groups of adults. Intelligence and empathy, qualities lacking in Government and the News Media with regards to this epidemic.

Over dinner our 12 year old asked who she could write to about how bad covid is in schools. We said for her to write to @MMcIlveenDUP .

The anger in her letter surprised us. Her feelings are clear- young people see the government as complete failures. They deserve better. pic.twitter.com/sV9WZ2yVzn

— Queen_Arwen (@Queen_Arwen1) December 5, 2021

~A parent writes a letter to her school, who have been threatening her with fines and court action, because she withdrew her child from school, on the basis that the school was an unsafe environment, putting her child and her family at risk, and by extension putting the entire community that used that school at risk, of contracting the virus.

A parent facing threats from School writes a response, which has been approved by a Barrister.

It might help other parents, or students who wish to make schools safe again.... https://t.co/bF5XrqNU7C

— Corneilius : Egalitarian Culture = Justice/Peace. (@coreluminous) December 6, 2021

~
The Good Law Project is taking up the case, has written pre-action letters to some councils, and will be presenting to the courts, if they do not heed the warning. Courts whose rulings this Government wishes to create and legislate the right of Ministers to throw out, ignore and otherwise abrogate. Democratic accountability undermined as Government Policy?
~

The People's Inquiry 2021 led by Micheal Mansfield, QC, one of the UK's leading Human Rights Lawyers, produced a report that detailed the many failures of this Government, (Executive Summary) and made the case for a series of criminal charges and civil litigations.  Misconduct in Public Office, failures to uphold Human Rights Law, The Right to Health and other statuary obligations to protect the populations health during a pandemic. The full report is a document that  makes for sombre reading indeed. It is fully evidenced.

https://www.peoplescovidinquiry.com
Every school, care home, work place ought to have at least one hard copy of the executive summary on the premises, made available to it's constituents,  and efforts should be made by management and parents groups at every school, care facility and workplace to share the document electronically amongst students, teachers and workers to assure maximal reach. 

~
The behaviour of the Johnson Government is criminally negligent in intent, horrifically harmful in action and is a clear and present threat to the health and safety of 77 million people over whom they now Rule as an emerging elective dictatorship. The combination of an 80 seat majority and the desire to enact legislation that curtails public protest, allows ministers to reject court rulings they dislike and much else that egregiously undermines democratic oversight and accountability leads towards an elected dictatorship. No question.

 That this case - this Johnson Regime's criminal behaviour is a direct and serious threat to the welfare of the people - is not being made across the National News Media nor in Parliament, be it the House of Commons or The House of Lords, is a national scandal enabling a national atrocity. Following from Iraq and Austerity this is the worst offence and abrogation of Duty of Care and Human Rights Law by any English Government in the last century.

'Let the Herd take it on the chin, protect the Hoard' : The Johnson Government  policy position explained, placed in it's historical context. Only the transparent most honest telling of the truth can set us free.

~

It is neither a neutral nor a morally viable and honest centrist position to stand between Good and Evil, (Protection of The People from Harm and Harm Causation to The People), and to then claim to be asserting a balanced view. We must always err on the side of the good.
~

This Government must face a vote of no confidence, supported by the majority of the population, carried through by Parliament and be dismissed, routed and removed. A government of national unity must be installed to manage this pandemic in the best interests of the people. No question.
Write to your MP and your local councillors :  https://www.theyworkforyou.com


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Callous Reckless Behaviour - Endangering a Nation for Profit.

Cycles of this English Epidemic, this Global Pandemic

Avoidable harms deliberately not avoided.

~
March 17 2021 - Mike Ryan at WHO
~

~

1. Callous reckless behaviour. From a teacher, who is probably exhausted, at the end of a tether of chronic stress, and who had Covid, tested positive, and was aware he or she was bringing it into the school. A teacher has a duty of care to the health of those in his or her care, above and beyond any other duty. Teaching is the lessor responsibility in this situation. A teacher should be evidence led in this regard.
"So, my 12 year old's maths teacher decided to come into work and teach maths today, despite having tested positive for Covid, "because I'm vaccinated". Fuming."
https://twitter.com/biscuitsgod/status/1460288748948762624?s=20
2. Head teacher  sends letter to a parent.
"My son's Headteacher has just sent a letter saying we must "build up our #Immunity by having the children in school during an outbreak to become infected with #Covid19. 
I thought that the #herdimmunity theory was debunked? 9 of 30 are testing positive."
https://twitter.com/HelenOLeslie/status/1460272268127490054?s=20
And here's why - Government Policy is to infect 8 million children to confer 'enhanced immunity' onto the adult vaccinated populations - using the children as 'immune boosters'. For profit.

3. New Statesman report on this policy with utterly shocking citations from Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
"How The UK Sleepwalked into another Covid Disaster."
https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2021/11/how-the-uk-sleepwalked-into-another-covid-disaster
The headline is inaccurate.
This was not sleep walking. Not by any stretch of the imagination.  Government was fully awake, JCVI was fully awake, but definitely not 'woke'.
They chose deliberately to expose millions of people children, parents, relatives and others to the virus.
4. An article from this time last year examining the English Government approach to Covid, from a perspective of The Right to Health of the population.
https://hhrjournal.org/2020/11/the-right-to-health-in-times-of-pandemic-what-can-we-learn-from-the-uks-response-to-the-covid-19-outbreak/

"Experience in the UK also shows the need for a clear national strategy from the outset, as soon as a risk is reasonably identified through scientific evidence. Political action must be prompt, based on scientific evidence, transparent, and communicated clearly to the population. A soft approach like the one adopted by the UK in the weeks preceding the lockdown, where private actors with economic power remained in charge of deciding whether people should travel to work and whether events would be maintained, should be avoided."

5. There are no words to adequately describe this callous, reckless, misinformed and frankly lethal policy.
More than 1000 people a week are dying awful, horrific deaths.
11% of school children have been infected.
We're averaging around 80-100k child cases a week.
Around 250 hospital admissions of children every week.
Close to 3000 children with Long Covid every week.
And between 3-7 child covid deaths a week
NHS is close to a critical state, with 1/3rd of ICU capacity occupied with COVID.
6. This makes the corruption story look like walk in the park.
7. The long term health implications of this virus are unknown, but there are solid indicators of serious sequelae that could last for the life of those infected. An interview with a respected immunologist, Immunologist Dr. Anthony Leonardi,  outlining some of the risks he sees now and foresees into the future, with so much unknown.
https://wsws.org/en/articles/2021/11/11/leon-n11.htm
"BM: You recently wrote a letter to California school boards which was very powerful. You raised some very important issues. What are your concerns about COVID infections in children?
AL: Well, it does really worry me. We are just assuming that infection won’t have long-term consequences in people, and especially in children. And there’s almost a systematic exposure of people and children to the virus before they’re vaccinated. I know from what I’ve read in the studies that have come out that some people are going to definitely be genetically susceptible to very bad outcomes and death. And I think it’s not right for kids to be just exposed to this without a fighting chance, without vaccination.
It’s very disturbing when I think that we’re running the risk for everybody to get something like any Lewy body disease or neurodegeneration and we’re systematically exposing generations to this. I was trying to help. My hope is that we take it seriously and we give people protection. If these children have genetic susceptibility or health concerns, or if their family has health concerns, they’re given remote options. I was thinking if I were in their position, would I want to be consigned to definite exposure to SARS-CoV-2? No, I wouldn’t! And I would want to be protected, with acknowledging that the virus is airborne. So, better ventilation in classrooms, mask wearing and vaccination of children.
There’s a terrible assumption that kids are okay with SARS-CoV-2 infection when there’s data coming out that they have lost out on a greater number of healthy years than adults. Kids have better immunological response to vaccination than adults as well. And kids are more likely to be infected than adults and kids are more likely to be reinfected than adults.
We’re messing up! We’re doing this completely wrong only because probably, my assumption is, kids have less agency. Kids don’t have the agency adults do. That’s fine that they are not like grandma or grandpa when it comes to being infected, it isn’t as dangerous. But it’s unjust to not protect them and vaccinate them. Infection in children should not be written off.
A lot of people are saying it’s endemic and everyone is going to get it. So, they relinquish responsibility of controlling its spread and making these areas safe and just consigning kids to definite inflammation and infection where they’re less likely to make immune-competent memory."
8. In May 2020, after the Cummings Road Show, I wrote a a blog piece suggesting we needed to take drastic action to prevent further harm to the population. I suggested arresting Johnson, Cummings, Whitty, Valance and the entire Cabinet, removing them from office, placing them on remand and instituting a national unity government with a directive to manage the epidemic using elimination/suppression of the virus strategy, which was proven to work much, much better than 'herd immunity' aka 'living with the virus'.
https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/05/cummings-need-not-resign-they-should.html
I argued the case for Malfeasance and I, and many others even in those early days predicted a series of waves of infection, fatality, chronic disease and economic hardship, into the future, with no end in sight.  Given the way the virus generates variations through travelling through a population, meeting new evolutionary pressures and beating them, that was an obvious call. 
That was when deaths were at about 25,000 people and long Covid was showing it's first signs of being a real and last impact.
9. My argument stands. Everything we are learning about this Government, the news media and various misinformed lobby groups reveals a callous, reckless and utterly inhumane attitude, an avarice so deep and so corrosive that it places the entire population a risk, a risk that can be avoided, for what?

For Corporate profits, that's what.


10. Earlier in April 2020 I detected a pattern that has historical roots, notably the attitude and actions of the British Government in relation to the Irish and Bengali Famines of the mid 1800s. Late Victorian Holocausts. 
https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/04/uk-take-it-on-chin-historical.html
11. Today we are living a late Elizabethan Holocaust.  I wrote this in March 2021, as the winter 20/21 surge was underway, and showing signs of abating, as the nation was in lockdown.
https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2021/03/late-elizabethan-holocausts.html
12. Was it Her Majesty's back or was it her awareness of the holocaust underway and a desire to not stand with Johnson as the nation commemorates the grief, horror and immense human tragedy of WWI? Who knows? I don't.  But, if I was in her position, I would not stand besides Johnson or give him my stature to lean upon.

13. It has to be said that Labour, under Starmer, has not been the advocate for elimination strategy that the English people so badly needed and deserved from an 'Opposition'. The whole of Parliament bears responsibility in all of this. 'No ifs, no buts'.

He fired Rebecca Long-Bailey and abandoned the National Education Union at a critical time, in mid 2020. He excluded Corbyn from the Parliamentary Party. He is not in position for the people of this nation. Marcus Rashford did some of the work he neglected to do.
14. I am at a loss for more words. The trauma visited upon the English people is too great. 
Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Vaccines are not the way out - suppressing community transmission of the virus is the way out, it's simple enough. Complex to deliver.

Good advice.

Long read, this is a review of sorts, and here's the basic points : Vaccines are not the way to end the epidemic nationally nor the pandemic globally. Our Government policy is causing harm. Misinformation is now on public domain News Media standing as 'opinion' and being held equal to scientific, epidemiological and public health best practice, and trying to undermine trust in the evidence. Help!

More good advice.

WHO , The World Health Organisation have been advising Governments since last year, 2020, that reliance on the Vaccines is a massive epidemiological error - the need to stop the spread among the community remains the obvious priority for a few good reasons. We need both working at peak efficiency. Everywhere. Now. Global co-operation that must be transparent.

There are multiple announcements, press and media briefings, papers and presentations where Mike Ryan and Jane Ellis and others have said repeatedly. "The Vaccines are not the way out of this Pandemic." Countries and areas must must suppress transmission from person to person in the community to quell exponential growth of the infection, beyond populations capability to treat, which leads to shutdowns.
People like Mike Ryan are serious people. He's not a corporate shill. He's not a conspiracy maker. He's public diplomat, for the worlds health organisations.
November 16 2020https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-11-vaccine-pandemic-chief.html
January 4th 2021https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-01-04/who-says-vaccines-won-t-be-enough-on-their-own-video
February 7th 2021https://www.cbsnews.com/video/top-who-official-says-vaccines-alone-not-enough-to-defeat-covid-19/
March 18th 2021https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210318142500.htm
27th June 2021https://www.livemint.com/news/india/vaccination-plus-masks-who-official-says-vaccines-not-enough-with-delta-covid-variant-11624751611704.html
July 8th 2021https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-40ac92b1-1750-4e86-9936-2cda6b0acb3f
August 21st 2021https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/21/who-warns-a-coronavirus-vaccine-alone-will-not-end-pandemic.html
A very good blog on the way 'Vaccine/live with the virus' compares to 'eliminate community transmission' as strategies in terms of health, economy, civil liberties and societal cohesion.
August 26 2021https://gowans.blog/2021/08/26/as-an-anti-pandemic-tool-vaccines-have-turned-out-to-be-more-mirage-than-oasis/

"All countries examined here have seen the number of deaths per million increase over the same period last year, despite Fauci’s promised arrival of the vaccine cavalry. (China and New Zealand, are exceptions. Deaths per million in these two countries have remained at zero.)

Of the eight countries, the United States has the highest number of deaths per million, up 19 percent over this time last year, though half the population is fully vaccinated. The calvary has arrived, and more people are dying.

New Zealand, South Korea, and Australia, which have pursued a Covid elimination strategy based on public health and social measures,  have comparatively low numbers of deaths per million, and at the same time, comparatively low levels of vaccination—half that or less of the US rate, and many times less than the rates for Canada, the UK, and Israel. Even so, their deaths per million are much lower than those of the highly vaccinated countries.

China, which is peerless in pandemic control, has pursued a zero-Covid strategy along with a robust vaccination campaign."

The Elimination countries do better, on every measure.

I have been writing about this through out, arguing the case - I understood from the beginning that elimination of community transmission, from person to person, depriving the virus of it's natural habitat is both simple and complex. I understood that 'living with the virus' means a cycle of opening  and shutting down society.

Simple is the basic fact that when the virus cannot find a new host, it dies out.
The complex is that to do this a Government and population have to work together.
That means they must understand the situation, accurately. NO misinformation.
That means they must trust in each other. Can you imagine? A metric for Healthy Government?
Complex means meeting the many different needs presenting, as effectively as possible, in order to support a population taking the steps to stop the spread.
We know a lot now on how to stop the spread in the community, after 19 months of practice and we have seen two strategic variations.

How did we end up here, again?
The two approaches
a) rely on vaccine to limit damage, allow some spread, surfing surges, people take it on the chin, economy is 'protected', wait a while, infections start to surge, ooops!, here we are again, leads to shutdowns.

b) reduce transmission to the minimum, remain vigilant, devote required resources to the mission, stablise the economy, prevent out of control surges leading to Lockdowns.
Now look around the world and see who is doing what, and how is that going?

Even the BBC put out an article reflecting the WHO advice.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-40ac92b1-1750-4e86-9936-2cda6b0acb3f - 
BBC July 2021 report lays out the basics. Vaccines are not the way out of this epidemic and this is a 'here is why' kind of article, citing numerous scientists and studies. It's reasonably accurate.
So what!?
Today, 25th October, 2021, that is all forgotten, as the BBC announces continuing policy of no policy change on behalf of the English misGovernment. No-one in BBC News Journalism would be so brave as to point out the obvious. Plan B is waved like a flag of hope, which the government and anti-lockdowners see and present as a surrendering flag. Some are equating another lock down with a tyranny of removed civil liberties, a citation that stirs emotional reactionary sentiment.

The current practice across the G20 is this insane attempt to continue  'living with the virus'.

In effect this amounts to leaving the virus alone, allowing it to spread, which it will do, and it will keep spreading until a lockdown has to be imposed by Law, because the impacts of the uncontrolled spread are noticeable. That line of behaviour is a dead end. It has not worked and it cannot work. 
One cannot hide people queueing outside ICU units to find a place to receive treatment.

The Government metric is so keep the dying at under that threshold, and stay quiet about long term complications for many hundreds of thousands of people, and pretend it's all groovy.
Health, Economy, Civil Liberties of the population all suffer intense distortions, mostly avoidable. Competing powers jockeying for position, profiteering, ideology and psychological recklessness are exacerbating the situation, in spite of the best efforts of a majority of the population and the medical science community.

So how did we end up here? Oh yeah - 

Meanwhile back at the office. Cabinet Office.
"Who could we not save? "
Who makes that choice? How many people drive that choice, to not save - to not avoid the avoidable harms? 
It's not just the matter of doing nothing, it is the choice not do what it would take to prevent harm, when it is largely preventable. Who are these people?

To not do what could be done.
This is a close-up of a picture Dominic Cummings posted on his Twitter feed 2020, annotated as follows: A white board display from within the Cabinet Office deliberations in March 2020. 

“65/ First sketch of Plan B, PM study, Fri 13/3 eve - shown PM Sat 14/4: NB. Plan A 'our plan' breaks NHS,>4k p/day dead min. Plan B: lockdown, suppress, crash programs (tests/treatments/vaccines etc), escape 1st AND 2nd wave (squiggly line instead of 1 or 2 peaks)... details later”

Looking at the board you can tell there are no epidemiologists, public health or social care officials involved in the discussion.

Think about that.
"WHO COULD WE NOT SAVE"
They knew they could save people, and they chose not to.
Obviously not a Public Health and Welfare motivated decision. Britain had the resources. 
For a clue to the origins of the strategic diktat we need to refer back to a victory speech given by Johnson, in Greenwich, on February 3rd, 2020.
An elective dictatorship in action. The Exceptional English Way.



This is the official transcript from Johnson's speech on February 3rd.
"And in that context, we are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other.
And here in Greenwich in the first week of February 2020, I can tell you in all humility that the UK is ready for that role.
We are ready for the great multi-dimensional game of chess in which we engage in more than one negotiation at once and we are limbering up to use nerves and muscles and instincts that this country has not had to use for half a century."

Bad Science.
Here, in March 5 weeks later, Professor John Edmunds, on the inevitable policy metric of 'achieving Herd Immunity'. John is a member of SAGE, the State body that advises Government on such matters as handling an epidemic or any other mass disaster, with Science, Advice and Emergencies in mind.

Protect the hoard, let the herd take it on the chin. Policy is decided. This was the announcement of that strategic stance, and it did not originate in Boris Johnson's mind. This speech was meant to be victorious Brexit speech. Coronavirus was a topical addition. 
Johnson in his February 3rd 2020 Greenwich speech brazenly accused other countries and their governments of panicking, most of whom have had much less serious outcomes precisely because they did not panic.
He deliberately misrepresented the stance of those other countries that were taking elimination strategies and making them work, thus avoiding avoidable harm.

There was no call for market segregation at that time, or any since, related to the pandemic. His Government policy on COVID has been wholly medically irrational. This Governments policy has caused real and un-necessary economic damage, and vast human harm.

We witnessed where that led to. All of us. Many waves.

Johnson has failed his own commitments, disastrously.

Many waves later, Matt Hancock was eased out with a snog, and Sajid Javid left his part time job at JP Morgan Chase, and was appointed Health Secretary for the English Government.

The CDO Salesmen Calls!
Sajid Javid "We will be healthier when we open!" blagging it in the Mail on Sunday back in July. 

A CDO Salesman, repackaged as a Health Secretary, with political responsibility for the entire Health system that serves 75 million people, was himself repackaging an epidemic within a pandemic as a seasonal flu, nothing to be concerned much by. Don't 'cower' from the virus, he said. The emotional gaslighting of fear and courage. '"Buy my goods, Gov. Great investment!"

"Since Sajid Javid’s appointment as health secretary on 26 June, the UK has confirmed a further 188,538 coronavirus cases, with approximately 25,000 extra people testing positive each day. On Sunday, Javid said that the best way to protect the nation’s health was by lifting the main Covid-19 restrictions, even though this would result in a further significant increase in cases. “We are going to have to learn to accept the existence of Covid and find ways to cope with it – just as we already do with flu,” he said."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/04/politics-trumps-covid-science-in-javids-push-to-live-with-the-virus
Sajid Javid claimed at the time that the case fatality rate of Covid is, with the vaccine, equivalent to influenza. It's not. Nowhere near it, and there's a whole bunch of other adverse health outcomes that his glib throwaway thought ignores. That he, in his position, could speak that way, reveals wilful ignorance at best. 

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/no-mr-javid-shouldnt-treat-21006783

A good look at what Javid said, what it means. 

As it happens, Medical best practice says we ought to treat COVID like we treat Noroviurs.

"Of course, SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – does share some characteristics with influenza viruses, which makes comparisons tempting. Around20% of people have no symptoms at all when infected with SARS-CoV-2, and many people infected with a flu virus also don’t get sick. Both viruses are prone to a lot of mutation. And with both diseases, older people and people with weakened immune systems are at a higher risk of severe illness than healthy young adults, with infections spreading rapidly in care homes, hospital wards and schools

But a lot of these traits are also shared by another germ: the norovirus. It too can be asymptomatic in some people, and mutates rapidly – different strains of norovirus have been found circulating around the same hospital during one season. In fact, as it spreads around, norovirus sometimes changes so much that standard testing kits can’t recognise versions of it that have evolved."
"Knowing what we know about these viruses, these plans should consider controlling SARS-CoV-2 more like we would norovirus than flu. With norovirus, we keep people with the infection away from others. We ask parents whose children have symptoms to keep them off school. And in hospitals and care homes, patients with norovirus are nursed separately from others, staff use PPE for protection, and surfaces are deep cleaned. Handling COVID-19 in the future should be more interventionist like this. It should be more akin to living with norovirus than the flu."

In other words, the way to live with the SARSCOV2 virus is to minimise transmission of the virus, take the steps to stop the spread of infection and disease with all available resources, creativity and kindness with adequate logistical support for the population to achieve this logical public health goal.

Remember this: The World Health Authority. WHO, have been advising all national governments that vaccines are not the way out of this pandemic, that we need elimination of community transmission. 

They ignored what was known.
It's not like Matt Hancock or Javid's Office and Department has not seen the WHO advice, at least Whitty, Valence, Harries and Van Tam must have read it through - that is the job of the Health Department, and the Departments of Social Care, Finance and Industry. Every department needs to be on this. But they are not. The British News Media are blanking the WHO, so that the population are none the wiser. Appalling.
COVID is not the flu.

A detailed look at what similar, what is different, and what is new in how COVID impacts people and populations, based on current evidence and observed reality.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30577-4/fulltext - 
"In The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, Piroth and colleagues  report results of a retrospective study using data from the French national administrative database (PMSI), which includes discharge summaries for all public and private hospital admissions in France. The study compared 89 530 patients with COVID-19 admitted to hospital in March or April, 2020, with 45 819 patients with influenza admitted during the seasonal influenza outbreak between December, 2018, and February, 2019. "
Big study, major differences in the two diseases on almost every measure. 

Jacob Rees-Mogg
The arrogance of the Parliamentary lounge lizard Mr. Right Honourable Rees-Mogg on Masks, and a government minister defending his stance, and flailing - source

Here he waxes lyrical about Socialist Mask Hypocrisy, and the fraternal immunity to transmission of the virus among the sitting MPs of The Conservative and Unionist Party. Arrogance, relaxed arrogance.

Here's a tweet showing a Government Care Minister defending Rees-Mogg's dismissal of masks.

"Adil Ray - Jacob Rees-Mogg said if you know someone you can't catch Covid from them.. is that the new advice?

Gillian Keegan(care minister) - That's not technically right

Adil Ray - So Jacob Rees-Mogg was wrong?

Gillian Keegan - No, he's right " 

#GMB pic.twitter.com/en5IcnWDXr

— Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 (@Haggis_UK) October 22, 2021

Majid Nawaz
On Saturday and Sunday October 23 and 24, Majid Nawaz on LBC was promoting misinformation in a diatribe against lockdowns, masks, vaccine passports. Full on. He was citing papers, studies, claims and presenting long twitter threads with all the misinformation, as the definitive science on each and every matter. CRG Radio.
It was shocking.
I recall one caller, who claimed she believed she would be discriminated against because she could not take a vaccine, for medical reasons, and therefore she felt the passport would discriminate against her. Nawaz didn't stop to think that there would be exceptions built into any legislation to work around those who, for medical reasons cannot be vaccinated.
He just piled in : "Yes, it's being in a oppressed minority, hmmm..." or words to that effect.
I spat my coffee out, for real. Then I laughed a full belly laugh. He can't doing that, can he?
He was. That was just awful, reckless public radio - exacerbating misinformed opinion in order to enrage the audience.

Masks work :
https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2021/10/15/do-face-masks-work-look-more-than-two-dozen-scientific-studies/ - Do face masks help reduce spread of the infection?

141 studies, peer reviewed studies. They do. No question.

https://www.reverbnation.com/corneilius/song/32749437-wear-a-mucking-fask - Ballad for Mask Wearers!

Lockdowns?
Lockdowns do not cause more harms than they prevent  - what causes lockdown is uncontrolled spread of the virus in the community - more precisely is that allowing spread to get out of control is what causes more harm, not least because it generates repetitive, cyclical harm and is avoidable. Lockdowns are a last resort to halt exponential increase in infection.

To allow the virus to spread entirely out of control , until everyone is infected is inhumane.
Elimination of community transmission avoids lockdowns.
https://gh.bmj.com/content/6/8/e006653
Different Bias News 23 October 2021 : Superbly clear presentation, on the danger of no Plan B, C or anything else as things stand in England. Roasts Johnson and Javid. Chilling. 

The Tactic
Citing the harms caused by previous ill-advised policy to argue for worse policy is the emotional blackmail tactic the Right Wing Media are now fully, openly moving from on line micro targeting into the News Media public domain. This is insane. It is also nasty, Very, vert nasty indeed.

Remember what the WHO advice has been? Vaccines are not the way out of the pandemic stage.

As I have written above, the solution is simple, the delivery will be complex and there's really no need to make it more complicated by twisting the situation for power or economic dominance agendas.
At the very least the powerful, the Ruling Class, they could sort the situation with the Virus, and return to business as normal destroying the Earths living biome. It's too much to ask? I don't think so.

I don't actually accept that - there's no call to return to business as normal, when that normal led directly to the serious problems we are currently not dealing with very well.

In other news:

A few days ago, 291 Conservative and Unionist MPs voted to pollute our rivers, sea & land, 172 voted against it! Almost 1/3 of all MPs - 187 MPs didn't vote at all. 187 people who did not bother allowed the bill to pass. Relaxing the sphincter of  regulation on behalf of the sewage treatment industry. How power flows.

This map shows the areas where untreated sewage is being dumped into rivers and our coastlines because the costs of preventing this would eat shareholders profits, and that is 'impractical' we are told.

It is clear that allowing disease to spread is now Government policy.

~
Compost loos!
~
My song "wear a mucking fask, stop the spread, spread the love!"

#COP26 - Stay Safe, Mask Up, and co-operate with one another

MP3 Download of the song. Enjoy.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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