Showing posts with label Government. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Government. Show all posts

When Institutions seek to protect themselves, rather than protect the most vulnerable - the pattern we must confront.

A letter I wrote and sent to various media and political representatives.

"I write as a Survivor. 




In recent articles covering The Catholic Church, the careful host of innumerable predatory clerics, and the case of Ms. Lethby, the serial killer of babies within an NHS setting, the same pattern emerges - an institution seeks to protect it's reputation and status when atrocious abuse is disclosed, the abusers continue to gain access to the most vulnerable and cause more intolerable harm.  When they are eventually stopped, it is already too late.

Avoidable harms to the most vulnerable are not avoided in order to avoid perceived harms to one's public reputation. This is a pattern, a behavioural characteristic, a cultural dynamic.

"The psychology of any given culture or society is both revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat the most vulnerable among them."

The primary task of healthy social management is to prevent harm and to increase safety in any organisation.

From Austerity to Catholic Institutions, from NHS management to the managers of the London Met, from the way Fossil Fuel Industry has masked awareness of what continued use of fossil fuels was long proven to cause, and then how each of these devoted vast PR resources to campaigns of denial and propaganda to deflect responsibility and evade accountability in order to enable continuation of their operations, we see this pattern and the vast harm it causes.

This goes well beyond the 'few bad apples' trope, another careful and often used line of defence. This is clearly a question of unhealthy social management.

Is it not time we turned and faced this problem, this pattern of behaviour, as a cultural and institutional matter of the utmost importance?  

How do we change the psychology of a culture where those who occupy positions of distal power seek to protect their power and in so doing the evade their duty of care to the most vulnerable, leading to more harm rather than more safety? 

Well, the first step is to publicly recognise the pattern, to be open and honest about how wide and deep it penetrates our Society, with a view to breaking that pattern. 


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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Make Education Safe Again

Make Education Safe Again - where we really are right now.

 

#SchoolStrike2021
#SafeEdForAll
@SafeEdForAll
~
The best leverage we have is collective solidarity. Acting together, we have each others back. Because the Government do not have our backs. They are exposing us, and our children, to avoidable harm.
~
Proposal : UK and Global School Strike every Friday to confront this insanity of deliberately, recklessly exposing our children to a known pathogen when we know it does have adverse impacts, including fatalities, long term disease and associated psychological trauma for bystanders and afflicted alike.
~
#MakeSchoolsSafeAgain #MESA
~ Update : 26/10/21 ~
~

#SafeEdForAll
#MESA
#MakeEducationSafeAgain

IndependentSAGE have issued detailed guidelines on how to make schools safe for children, teachers and parents and ultimately for the wider community, to reduce to a minimum the spread of the COVID virus within schools, if not to stop transmission entirely.  Prepared by a collective of experts in epidemiology, virology, public health, education, data modelling, social care, human behaviour and other areas pertinent to handing an epidemic/pandemic. It is not rocket science.

IndependentSAGE issued similar guidelines at the end of Summer 2020, guidelines which the English Government dismissed. We saw what happened as a result. Then we did not have vaccines, now we do. Then we did not have Delta, now we do. Everything has changed, and yet the English Government's policy is, if anything, more reckless than before. Schools are still unsafe for everyone involved, and for the wider community.

The effects on some children of SARS-COV2 infection leading to COVID19 disease and long Covid  include toxic shock syndrome and other unpredictable adverse outcomes which are related to 'super-antigens' found within the virus. There is still so much that is unknown, and in American and Israel where they 'opened up' after vaccination programs for adults were rolled out, outcomes for children exposed to Delta appear to be more intense than with previous variants.

More children were presenting with adverse health outcomes than previously.

While the overall or global percentage rates appear to be small, it is when the are applied to populations of millions of children meeting limited available space in health care systems, the numbers become a serious problem, logistically, and threaten the Governments status.

But for the children and parents involved no amount of minimising the population level impact as a small percentage offers any comfort.

Not least when uncontrolled spread of the virus in the community is avoidable.

Independent SAGE

In recent months IndependentSAGE has issued detailed advice on making schools as safe as they can be to prevent uncontrolled spread of the virus, and the harms to children that will entail, all avoidable harms.

September : https://www.independentsage.org/september-2021-an-urgent-plan-for-safer-schools/

Urging caution, requesting mitigations be re-established in schools to prevent surge of infections, and the harms associated with all of that.

October : https://www.independentsage.org/independent-sage-response-to-the-20th-october-press-conference-by-health-secretary-sajid-javid-we-need-a-winter-plan-now/

Urging extreme caution, requesting mitigations be re-established in nationally to prevent surge of infections, and the harms associated with all of that.

SARS-CoV-2 suppression, rather than attempting to live with the virus, creates best outcomes for health, the economy, and civil liberties. By every measure living with the virus causes more harms. Three studies confirm this.

1, Elimination aka suppression of community transmission reduces incidence, prevents uncontrolled spread, avoids the need for lockdowns, protects people's health, civil liberties and economies.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00978-8/fulltext

2 . The Westminster Government has failed to protect the right to health of the English people.

https://www.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/

3. Human Rights study of UK Governance during 2020/21 with regards to Corona Virus, and upholding the populations Right to Health. 

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.646285/full

This is an Italian academic study of the way Government and Science were set within the ongoing epidemic. The Government failed on multiple counts to accept proven epidemiological scientific and public health advice, and this, combined with a News Media that allowed, and continues to allow that neglect free passage, created an environment of zero accountability. 

What kind of culture allows this to happen?

What is going on here? Whose needs are being met, and whose needs being neglected?

What are schools for, and why should they be safe for children, teachers, parents and the wider community?

What is Education for?

We all accept that Education is a necessary institution, We are a learning species. It's something we do really, really well, often independent of formal instruction.

John Taylor Gatto, a teacher who won many, many awards for his work with children, educating in urban and rural areas of deprivation in New York. He won those awards for the results of his advocacy as a teacher, in deprived areas, beyond delivering the curriculum, teaching and advocating for better support, as an activist teacher, by being a superb, kind, empathic friend and advocate for all the children - being real, congruent, honest and creative in terms of helping the children resolving social educational problems in real time. His efforts changed many, many lives for the better, and he influenced the Education system in New York, and beyond, to good effect. 

Mr. Gatto,  upon being awarded Best Teacher in New York for a third time, decided to use the opportunity of the award ceremony to quit, publicly. Here are  the first few lines of his award speech, where he accepted the award and rejected the system that gave it to him. A very brave thing to do.

"I’ve taught public school for 26 years but I just can’t do it anymore. For years I asked the local school board and superintendent to let me teach a curriculum that doesn’t hurt kids, but they had other fish to fry. So I’m going to quit, I think."

The Westminster Government are forcing parents of the nation to send their children into unsafe schools.

Mr. Gatto quit close to the end of a long and distinguished career, because he did not want to harm any children. His quitting was symbolic, piece of public theatre, on behalf of all children, everywhere. An appeal to the power, into their faces, so that there could be no confusing it with a roast. 

I'd not ask working teachers to do  that, go that far.  I know teaching is a complex activity, with many demands and needs to be met, equally well. Being responsible for a class or a year or a school is intense.

I would say instead, "give his words some thought".

How do we stand and advocate for the children, beyond the teaching role itself?

How do we and how do students explore and learn together, to meet this situation?


Another great educator, Paolo Friere had this to say about teaching:

"Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."

What we are witnessing today in England is a massive failure by Government, by the Department of Education and to a lessor degree head teachers, teachers and parents to do the latter - to deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world for the best possible outcomes for all concerned. Collectively England's adults are failing to avoid avoidable harms to their own and each others children.

England's primary and secondary schools are not COVID safe, and neither are it's universities and yet Government has ordered that all students return to full time study without the necessary protections in place, without the non pharmaceutical interventions that ought to be mandated and supported by Government that would make schools safe for all involved. Does it have to be this way?.

This failure is not the fault of the parents or of the teachers of the children those parents have entrusted into their care. 

The English Government's communications, advice and regulation on COVID have been an unmitigated disaster by every available measure. COVID is not over. Blatantly. Gavin Williamson has been more whip than carrot.

Given the political grooming inherent in England's public discourse, where a news media industry that is mostly owned by Oligarchs jealous of their power and wealth is deployed  not to inform, but to protect the interests of Power and Wealth above all others, including in this instance the best interests of all our children, and a Government that lies as it breathes, it is no wonder that many, many people are confused, disoriented, mislead and misinformed. 

To mask or not, to take up the vaccine or not, to isolate or not, to travel or to shelter, HEPA air filters or open windows, class sizes reduced or maintained at pre COVID levels, LFT or PCR testing, is it a flu or a cold or something more serious, does it afflict children, are CEV children safe, are they truants, will their parents be prosecuted, what is 'herd immunity', what do variants imply for future behaviour, what is the precautionary principle - where is the clarity and logistical support that clarifies these and many other questions? £

37 billion budget for two years of an inadequate test, trace system without funded isolation against £68 billion on furlough and even still community transmission is now at higher levels than it was this time last year. This is what lack of clarity, lack of due diligence in Government applying itself to the science delivers.

That much needed clarity is not coming from the English Government, that much is clear. This timeline of scientific advice compared to Government policy choices, which I mentioned above, prepared by IndependentSAGE, a collective of experts in the full range of issues related to COVID, illustrates that with absolute accuracy. The English government's claim to be 'following the science' is untrue. It is a lie.

England's Government is not providing the support England's teaching staff and students need to be able to teach and learn safely. How many times must it be said before the people demand the most basic of tenets of a democratic state be upheld?

Education must never harm the learner, nor enrol the teacher in any harmful practice. 

And here we are. Education is now a place of harm causation. This difficult situation does however present an opportunity. 

Making Education Safe Again!

The current situation of un-safe schools and orders to send children into them is a challenge parents and teaching staff must meet - they must confront this recklessness in order to best serve the children's needs. They do not need to do this on their own. They need all of us to work with them, and to that end they must become educators of the nation, the whole population.

I think there is no other option worthy of our collective duty of care to the children.

As Paolo Friere wrote : "Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."

Solidarity in protecting our children's best interests in this situation is the pathway to work the changes we need to bring about to make education safe again. And when the pandemic is over, can we do something about bullying in our schools where 1 in 5 students report being bullied whilst on school premises? Actually, no - we need to deal with that at the same time. We cannot let bullying slide, in any sphere of our lives. We can chew gum and walk.

I wrote a blog a few weeks back about solidarity, the need for a union of students, parents and teachers working from an evidence base. The best practice covid principles are outlined in the IndependentSAGE report on schools listed above. This blog on solidarity lists the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, a study on Right to Health in terms of the English Government's response to COVID and other pertinent pieces of Law and legislation. 

The Good Law Project are also engaged in helping parents present a legal position on this, and they are experts. 

I'm just a shouty auld git with a guitar and a laptop. This matter needs the majority of citizens on the case. Please get on the case.

Then this on October 1st. Johnson's most important metric. And he's lying, of course.
#MESA
#MakeEducationSafeAgain
#SchoolStrike2021





Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

The Fit, The Chronically ill, Poverty and the Economy - between a rock and a hard place. Stop the Spread.

The thing that strike me most about this virus SARSCOV2 is that it is a highly infectious viral infection, in that it transmits from human to human with relative ease.

There is a period where the infected person shows no symptoms,  the person feeling no symptoms is wholly unaware of it and is therefore spreading the virus to other human beings without knowing that he or she is a vector of the viral spread.

Therefore  the virus can run through any culture where there are many large group phenomena such as international travel on planes, boats, trains, shared public transport, pubs, clubs, football matches, prisons, care homes, parliaments, apartment blocks, temples of all kinds and large family homes and much else besides.

There is a blind spot among some fit healthy people that I have been feeling into and I will explore what this is in this article. "It can't be all that bad."



The dynamics of close urban living organisation and a silent virus.



In effect an invisible spread before any signs of it happening ever emerge.

Many people will become infected and they will show no symptoms at all. Their immune systems get on top of the virus before it causes any problems. Nobody is any the wiser. Nobody is at fault. We do not know why this is the case. All we have to go on is the experience. What happens.

Fit, healthy people can pretty much shake it off.  There are exceptions, of course, and whilst media tend to hype those or minimise them, we are still learning about the disease state as we go and fear is not really useful, whereas caution is.

Stay calm, act responsibly for the whole community.

For the people with strong immune systems the viral infection appears to them to be a not so serious problem. For some it's not. There is no way to predict in advance if one is one of the unlucky few. It is a gamble, a risk.

For people whose immune system is compromised, the issue becomes the disease, COVID19.

The disease is what happens when the virus begins to replicate faster than the body's immune system can cope with, and starts to impact on the body. When the body's immune system response is not robust enough to stall the viral replication which destroys body tissue.

That is what the disease is - the destruction of tissues within the body as the virus takes over cells and then destroys the cell once it has replicated many more copies within the cell, releasing the replicates which seek out new cells and these repeat the cycle, thus destroying enough cells to cause a variety of breakdowns depending upon which tissue is affected, that can then lead towards death : liver, kidney, gut, lungs and heart can all be impacted.

The disease COVID19 is really, really dangerous to a significant percentage of those who have chronic immune compromising health issues, or co-morbidity's.

That is why the Government and NHS has issued instructions to people at risk to shield themselves.

If you can imagine what it is like to live in what is called shielded status, where you cannot be touched by anyone in your immediate family, for months on end, for a year, for a year and a half. A situation where everything that comes to you has to be washed and cleaned, a situation where all your facilities such bath, toilet, clothes washing and handling and all your cooking, if they are shared,  must be policed with constant attention to detail every time anyone in your household uses those shared facilities. Imagine being confined to one room.  Imagine have to think about every move you might make outside that one room.

Add to that the conflicting narratives that percolate across news media and social media, spreading confusion and uncertainty, and then we can see that there is an extra avoidable element of situational  stress loaded onto people who are already dealing with significant stresses not of their own making.

Can you imagine living as an elder in care home that is shielded? The complexity and pressures that are added to those that already exist? What must it be like to be a carer at home?

What must it be like for carers working in large care homes?

In the UK population of people with multiple conditions is about 15 million people.  Not all are shielded of course. There are degrees of vulnerability.

In the USA it is about 83 million people.

The existing data from around the world suggests that about 20% of that cohort will, if exposed to the virus, experience severe and critical symptoms of the disease, and about half of those will potentially become fatal. Breakdown of the bodies systems and organs. This is a horrific way to die. 

How do we protect those people?

To protect the 10%  most at risk we must protect all of those people who could be vulnerable.

Co-morbidity, Disability and Vulnerability within a stressed culture.

The impact of multiple stressors on the human body and psyche that arise from living within a culture where chronic stress and inter-generational trauma patterns remain largely unresolved is well understood in the medical world and not widely understood across the grass roots.

Observe  how even media will publish articles that castigate people suffering from obesity: fat shaming is one aspect. Blaming smokers, suggesting they are doing it to themselves and should pay for their treatment, whilst protecting the Tobacco makers, even though we know that smoking involves addiction, The NHS offers treatment for that and other addictions.

There is the all too common negative attitude towards disabled people.

This makes gathering the intention of the population to focus on the needs of the vulnerable more difficult than in ought to be. Nonetheless the majority of people are decent, and will take into consideration the vulnerabilities of their fellow citizens.

To protect the vulnerable, those people with multiple combined health issues, the only proven strategy is to stop them from getting the infection in the first place.

They must not meet the virus.

We do not have a vaccine. There are no medicines that can reliably prevent escalation of the disease or can be used as treatments of the disease. There is evidence that vitamin D and C have offer some degree of immune system boost. There is evidence reducing stress reduces immune system effectiveness, so it stands to reason that reducing stress improves immune response.

SARS was a corona virus pandemic that happened in 2003.  It was less infectious than SARSCOV2  but more more lethal, with a case fatality rate of 60%, and because it generated symptoms rapidly it was much easier to trace and close down.

We still have no vaccine for that particular virus. The Governments in countries affected by SARS working with the WHO,  informed populations of the threat and what needed to be done, contact tracing, quarantine, treatment in isolation, limiting movement for a period, and they stopped the spread, and in time eradicated the virus from the population. The same procedure was applied in 197-18 epidemic. The process has been learned over a 100 year term, with new learnings since SARS in 2003. In clearest terms we know that suppression of transmission can lead to elimination of transmission, and that cause eradication of a virus that cannot live outside a human body.

We hear talk of a vaccine.

However vaccines are very difficult to make, and even more difficult to test to the degree that they can safely be used across entire populations. Such is the risk that Governments indemnify vaccine makers from litigation and financial compensation that arise when a few cases of vaccination cause severe and lethal reactions.

There are only two strategies that can protect vulnerable people in this situation.

One strategy is to isolate all vulnerable people from the general population, to isolate them from any possible community infection vector.  To enclose them behind a virus proof barrier.

That is really, really really difficult, and made much more difficult if you allow the rest of the population to slowly become infected while you wait for a vaccine. Waiting for a vaccine is not a health and safety protocol. Slow spread is not a health and safety protocol.

Those who service the vulnerable must  also be isolated from the general population.

If they become exposed,  then they must be set away from the vulnerable until they become provably immune, and can then re-introduced to continue their caring work - but they will still have to adopt clean site protocols upon entry into each caring facility as they could still carry the virus in by fomite transmission. Or they must live and work within the isolate environment of the point of care situation.

You have to somehow generate a population of immune people to service the vulnerable to maintain that separation from the virus, and you have to maintain that population in constant state of vigilant surveillance for viral particle presence.

The other way to protect the vulnerable is to stop the spread across the entire population.

That is to say to eliminate the transmission of the virus from within a given population, which leads to eradication of the virus. Stop the spread, spread the love.

This is also difficult, but it is proven. We know it works.

It was proven in SARS and MERS, and in other outbreaks of infectious disease where human to human transmission was the vector of spread. Suppression of the spread of infection, leading to elimination of community transmission and eventual eradication when the virus can find no new human hosts, and it dies out.

The process is complex, yes. It requires a lot of human resources, and a lot of co-ordinated action willingly undertaken by citizens, businesses and state officials. What makes it complicated are political and economic agendas intruding on the Health and Safety requirements.

New Zealand, Vietnam and others are showing that stopping the spread is a viable policy choice, across very different populations and economies.

Economics and Health and Safety.

Governments that have chosen the slow spread approach have all done so for economic and political reasons, not for health and safety or public health reasons.

And there is another dynamic that clouds the judgement of many people in this matter, going back to the start of this article.

Fit, healthy people are to a large degree thinking of and quite rightly concerned with how any of the protocols to stop the spread, social distancing, contact tracing and quarantine of workers, and a general shut down impacts them, their jobs and livelihoods. Because of the media narrative that the disease does not affect fit, healthy people, that many if not most will have no symptoms or will experience very mild symptoms,they are not so much worried about getting the infection and suffering severe symptoms.

Many believe that getting the infection will grant them immunity, and that as such getting the infection is desirable, to get it out of the way. This is understandable.  They have not been given the full accurate picture. 

Support - in economic terms - to take on the task of stopping the spread in the UK is minimal, and conditional and not well organised, as it was offered in an off the cuff move. This makes it less likely that working folk in the UK will readily consider what it might take to stop the spread - if your livelihood is under threat that is a reasonable feeling to have. They solution is to provide adequate and timely support. That is the job of the State in this kind of situation.

Austerity.

In the UK there is a further complication, that being cuts to public services  and the decades long policy of restricting support to disabled and chronically ill people who require state benefit support, as pursued under the policy banner of Austerity.

That the general population has been unwilling  or disinterested in confronting this over the past ten or twenty years or so in any meaningful manner is largely a matter of how media refuses to cover the dynamic honestly, how ineffective Parliament has been as a body with oversight that reins in harmful policies, and how the media and right wing politicians have been pursuing narratives that undermine empathy for people who need and deserve support - the attack on the welfare state as a thing that undermines the economy.

The UN report into the mistreatment of low income, unemployed, chronically ill and disabled people in the UK, by Government policy, was barely noticed by the population, and almost totally ignored by the largely right wing media, and robustly denied by Government, without any firm rebuttal - because there was and is no defence of those policies given the harm they have caused.

With regards to SARSCOV2 and COVID19 the Government attitude and it's stance is clearly focused on the economy, rather than on the welfare of the whole population, fit and vulnerable alike. The poverty of 14 million people in the UK is real. The feeling of deprivation amidst a growing population of billionaires whose wealth gains are in inverse proportion to the wealth losses from the low income groups is real.

Ironically, many of the fit and healthy feel as if they are being oppressed by the situation of the shut down. That said most people are adhering to the social distancing measures, and are diligent in their compliance and that is a really wonderful phenomenon - I know that most people are decent people, caring people. That decency is not reflected in the corridors of power, as the PPE scandal and others reveals.

And there is a large degree of confusion and resentment across the divided UK electorate  which is largely a consequence of Brexit and the deliberate bipolar adversarial dynamic deployed by it's proponents. So we can see that there's a lot going on here.

Protect the Economy, allow slow spread of the infection.

The confusion of political and economic and ideological perspectives in News media and across social media that filter perceptions of the nature of the threat and we have a perfect storm that creates confusion when what is need is clarity so that the population as a whole understands what is happening and what needs to be done.

Stop The Spread is the only viable policy facing this infectious disease.

Slow the Spread renders the whole population vulnerable. Loss of income is a serious leverage in deflecting attention from the realities of the Governments chosen stance. But we must transcend that and integrate it to resolve this situation.

What we are looking at is a factor that will determine the lethality of this viral infection will be socio-economic - low income population are much more at risk in any situation where an epidemic occurs.

This is born out by the most recent statistics produced by the Office of National Statistics.

Socio-Economic Status

Low income is a factor, as much as health and fitness, or lack of it in outcomes during an epidemic.

Universal Basic Income for the duration of a stop the spread policy duration could resolve that issue, and it would put cash flow into the local economies. 

Global international general trade must take second place for the duration. Internationally, resources movement must take precedence over personal travel so that areas that are less developed are more effectively supported in stop the spread policy implementation. We need every state to follow the stop the spread protocols. We have to help each other through this.

Tourism and Air travel are luxuries that must wait. Both were major vectors of the global spread of the infection. Nobody is talking of blaming either of these, and nobody should. That said, caution must be the stance, a until we are in control of the pandemic.

The dynamics of power as a factor in the exploitation of the situation.

Bullies will always, always seek to exploit any emerging vulnerability in a family, village, town, organisation, institute or population where they hold degrees of power over others. This is a behavioural dynamic, almost an un-thought about reaction other than they will think about how to maximise the opportunity - they will not have to think about choosing to exploit the vulnerability, that will feel natural, second nature to the bully.

Trump, Johnson et al are clearly part of a bullying dynamic, as are their hard core supporters. Their behaviour reveals this. The hatred poured out at those who are their political opponents, the bile and the misleading narratives with which they project and scapegoat others is well documented.

I think that British Government and their sponsors have made a  huge strategic error in allowing and endorsing a slow spread in order to protect the economy. That choice means that the hit to the economy will be much, much worse than if they had chosen the stop the spread policy, because it will mean extended periods of economic disruption as successive waves of opening up and closing down inevitably flow from the slow spread policy towards the fiction of 'herd immunity'.

The hubris and the arrogance of that decision stops them from admitting it, and now they are just bluffing through, which is why the media denial is so intense.

There is still time to stop the spread, but it means we must remove those in Government who refuse to take on that policy, because they have ideological and economic attachments to the slow spread policy and they cannot be trusted to carry through a stop the spread policy. Because they have already caused so much avoidable harm, they must be prevented from causing any more. They must be held accountable, and they must prevented from causing any more harm. The prevention of more harm has to be the primary concern right now.

We must address the issue of acknowledging that the often unspoken origin of distress, disease and ill health across entire populations lies in how power is mediated,  and where that observation is avoided, ignored, muted and suppressed - we must confront the deliberate gaslighting focus on what is 'wrong' within the individual, that avoids addressing what is harmful about the culture itself.

That is a serious problem - the resolution of which must come from a widespread, accurate and wholly evidenced understanding of the situation and fuller engagement across the population based on that understanding. Honesty and transparency matter profoundly. Spin causes harm. Lies are wholly unacceptable.






Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"

Thank you for reading this blog. All we need to do is be really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.

The argument for Stopping the Spread of Infection, as opposed to Slowing it down.


#StopTheSpread #SpreadTheLove

The lock down, keep your distance, no large crowds, stay at home, isolate the elderly and the vulnerable for 12 weeks and wash your hands approach is best described as the top down approach.  Government Advice.

It is imposed or suggested from above.

It is an umbrella policy. 

It is a very broad brush.

It has no detail.

It is partly an order,  and partly an advice, issued by the UK Government.

The policy is to slow the spread of the infection.

As things stand there is no policy in place to stop the spread of the infection.

Two entirely different policy choices, with profoundly different outcomes.

The UK Government's claim is that this slowing of the spread is necessary in order to prevent a potential overwhelm of the NHS as it stands.

Their claim is that by isolating the elderly and those in care settings we can allow the infection to spread among the general population of 'fit' people and thus protect the vulnerable and the NHS.

Sounds good.

What does slow the spread of infection really mean?

It means to allow the spread of the infection, albeit more slowly.

How is that possible?

When we all  carry on as normal, what do we need to do to make the infection spread more slowly than if we deliberately exposed ourselves to the viral infection by continuing with our everyday interactions.

Masks, physical distance, hand hygiene, limits on indoors gatherings, work from home is what is on offer.

What is not available is the resource base for rapid suppression of localised surges and outbreaks - expert effective local contact tracing,  economic support for quarantine, economic and medical support for isolation treatment, local real time data and information so that locally people can see where outbreaks are happening and take action to reduce contact or exposure to infection and then stop the spread of the infection.

What is on offer guarantees that the infection WILL spread, just slowly.

That is what slow spread means. There is a problem - slow spread cannot be controlled, it will always lead to exponential growth at some stage.

The Government ignored calls by responsible health professionals an epidemiologists to properly resource the NHS and the 15,570 care homes across the UK with PPE.

The UK Government ignored calls to make other provisions in advance, calls that were made from early January when the genome of the new virus was sequenced, and the virus given it's name (SARSCOV2). The disease was named COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease 2019).

Because of that failure to respond to rational warnings,  the NHS frontline staff have been placed in harms way,  they are forced to deal with a multitude of cases of infection without the appropriate protection kit, and other essential supplies amidst staff and bed shortages, and they are suffering the impact of the governments choice, and we can see clearly now that the claim that they are protecting the NHS was and is obviously false.

They knew it was false the day they announced the policy to slow the spread of the infection.

Slowing the spread means infections have already hit care homes, and the entire population within care homes, carers and the cared for alike, are now at serious risk because they do not have the PPE kit and other situational practices to prevent infection spread.

Therefore the claim to be protecting the elderly and the people in care homes was a non-starter, it is demonstrably not the case.

What does slowing the infection spread mean for the 5,000,000 people in the UK with known  chronic compromised immune system conditions?

It means they are guaranteed to be imprisoned, in isolation or in shielding, for as long as the spread is allowed to progress, however slowly.  It means masses of early, painful, horrific deaths within that cohort -  a conservative estimate would be 1% of that population would be 50,000 deaths.

Slowly, over a period of a many months, or more up to a tear - what does that mean?

How many deaths a month is acceptable?

Why not adopt a stop the spread policy?

https://bylinetimes.com/2020/04/01/the-coronavirus-crisis-eight-week-suppression-strategy-could-stop-covid-19-in-its-tracks-says-ex-who-director/

"We know we can get this under control,” says Dr Anthony Costello, a former Director at the World Health Organisation (WHO), where he headed up maternal, child and adolescent health. “The problem is that Europe has been too slow to act compared with Asia; and America is now facing a huge crisis.”

Costello, who is Professor of Global Health at University College London where he previously headed up the UCL Institute for Global Health, spoke to me via telephone from Yorkshire, where he is currently isolating from his family members, many of whom are experiencing symptoms of the novel Coronavirus.

Having worked at the WHO from 2015 to 2018 before returning to UCL, Costello pulls no punches about the failures that, he says, have allowed the virus to rampage across Western countries.

He is also concerned about tepid Government messaging. “It’s not enough to just have modellers, virologists and behavioural scientists.

You need people who can translate this into action. Social scientists. Public health experts experienced in community mobilisation.

Right now, we are locked into this strange idea that the Prime Minister or President makes a speech and suddenly the entire country changes its mind. That’s just a fantasy.

Throughout my career, I’ve seen that just giving people a few of the right messages won’t necessarily change behaviour. We need a more serious, decentralised approach and to share data with local communities.”


He refers to some of China’s mass communications measures.

“The Chinese managed to suppress the virus in provinces outside Wuhan without the same sort of total lockdown by operating quickly.

They had a TV station giving out information on the virus round-the-clock on a 24-hour basis.

We had policing of supermarkets and pharmacies.

But most importantly we had a comprehensive mass testing and contact tracing programme. And proper protection for frontline health workers. And that’s how this was brought under control within seven weeks.”


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2636331/ - a paper outlining how the SARS epidemic was stopped in it's tracks.

Which is to say take the proven steps to eradicate the virus from within the population in any given area, from a village to towns, to cities and entire territories.

Because we have no vaccine we have no time to waste.

There is no lee-way, no room for any margin of error. Every error will cost lives, will cause avoidable horrible deaths.

So here is the protocol to stop the spread of infection.

A) Officially declare a legal shut down, and pay all non-essential workers to stay at home, by providing a Universal Basic Income for the duration of 3 months itwho  would take to stop the spread, and eradicate the virus from the population.

To make this easier to bear, if UBI is not acceptable then consider a pause rents, mortgages, major bill payments and roll out temporary income support for the duration of the program to stop the spread of the infection.

That money will not be wasted, it will  be going back into the local economy.

Support all essential workers - food production, distribution and retail, public transport, utility, health, police, fire brigades, NHS, military and civil service by ensuring they have full PPE and training adequate to their roles, and provide them and their employers with exact and accurate information on the virus, the infection, the disease and the protocols demanded by the situation.

Clear communications that  treat the citizens as rational adults.

B) Roll out fully resourced contact tracing - Trace all the contacts of every case that presents, and meet each and everyone  of those contacts with a team who can gently and firmly assess and test every one of those contacts to see if they

1) have the virus - send for treatment in isolation wards to avoid treatment at home which leads to more spread

2) have the antibody - have survived the infection, are presumed immune

3) have not yet been infected - people who could become infected - they must be protected from contracting the infection and also quarantined for two weeks to see if symptoms emerge.

Use school buildings that are empty as co-ordination centers locally. Distribute testing and organise local contact tracing through these as well.

C) Treat symptomatic people from the contact list and all who present with symptoms in isolation hospitals, rather than leaving them at home, where they can spread the infection, and where the patients condition can escalate without support to deal with that.

(This was observed in Wuhan before the contact tracing and new build isolation hospitals kicked in - in the end they had 1800 teams of 5 people each meeting all the contacts, contact tracing is resource heavy in that it needs lots of people working at it, nonetheless it works really well, and then mobile phone tech was integrated into that to monitor symptoms and spread. Potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs which puts more cash back into the local economy and build community cohesion at the same time.)

D) Quarantine all asymptomatic contacts, and as soon as they show symptoms, move them to treatment hospitals to prevent or reduce escalation to severe or critical  - this also means less pressure on the available intensive care units and general hospital admissions.

E) Everyone who is quarantined is supported financially and monitored for signs of symptoms so that earliest treatment can be given, to reduce escalation of symptoms into severe or critical.

If the Government had taken this route, back in February, or even in Early March, a method which is proven already in 5 largely urbanised states, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea and is being deployed successfully in others as I write, we would be closer to stopping the spread and then eradicating the infection spread within the UK population.

We know that it would take 8-12 weeks to stop the spread across a large populous state.

Those states that have applied this protocol are experiencing imported cases, that is to say the infection is being carried in by travellers from outside those States are bringing the virus back into those virus free territories.

F) Quarantine all incoming travellers, via Air, Land or Sea, for two weeks, and monitor them strictly.

If the Government were to move immediately to stopping the spread with an eye to eradication, we could clear the infection within three months.

https://bylinetimes.com/2020/04/01/the-coronavirus-crisis-eight-week-suppression-strategy-could-stop-covid-19-in-its-tracks-says-ex-who-director/

We have the resources, we have the people, we have the desire - but do the Government share this vision?

The aim is to find all infection routes and to chase them down to where everyone infected is known and observed, and no new infections are starting - when the virus runs out of new hosts, it vanishes in that population. Quarantine must be fully implemented upon all incoming  and returning domestic and international air, sea and land travel. Even from Northern Ireland.

We need both the shut down and the bottom out approach.

Instead the UK Government policy is encouraging the slow spread of infection, and pretty much guaranteeing importing extra new infections by way of air, sea and land travellers arriving from other countries where there are serious infection outbreaks, because, as of today, 17 April 2020 is no testing or quarantining of those arrivals.

This is insane.

Let me repeat - within the UK we could, given the fullest resourcing, eradicate the virus in 3 months.

Then a fully funded quarantine must be in place for all incoming or returning travellers to maintain that eradicated status, until a vaccine is available or we have implemented the stop and eradicate policy across the Earths states and communities...

Allowing the slow spread will play out over many,  many more months, possibly years...

In economic terms the difference is between losing three months of GDP or losing a years GDP plus the other costs as various systems reach collapse or stress beyond repair due to continued shut down, re-opening and further waves of infection outbreaks generating a cyclic pattern that persists because there is no vaccine.

It's not just about me, or you my dear reader, it is about all of us.

This situation is about all of humanity as one human family, one society of many cultures and languages, it is about unity across diversity.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"

Thank you for reading this blog. All we need to do is be really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.

Our Lives Matter. I need a Government.



Our Lives Matter.

My life matters.

Your life matters.

I need a Government composed of psychologically and emotionally healthy adults who refuse to participate adversarial opinion based or ideological based power struggles, which is a key strategy in the prevention of all the ills that such power struggles generate.

I need a Government composed of psychologically whole, emotionally healthy and kind adults who energetically and passionately discuss the evidence, work through it, and then work together on delivering civil policies that resolve problems, that nurture social happiness.

I need a Government whose policy is based, I repeat it again and again, on all available evidence pertinenet to the policy, none omitted, and with an eye to new evidence emerging, requiring a healthy response, a certain plasticity for freedom to grow.

I need a Government and civil service that understands I pay it's wages, that pays all dues respect to me as an individual, and as part of the social collective.

Me and the millions of other tax payers.

We pay their wages.

We must be the ones to tell them what is working well and what is not working, or is unsafe, and that information ought tell them what to do.

Our money.

Our lives.

Our Lives Matter.


The Grenfell residents who were burned alive needed that. They asked for it. They were ignored. Individually, collectively and institutionally.

And so they died.

There is a line of responsibility here, a social influence that has corrupted sound Governance.

A breach of trust, of duty of care, a failure and a catasprophe that is only worsened by any attempts to deflect responsibility and manage perceptions of a 'crisis', in order to remain in Government or get away with statuary negligence.

Public Inquiry?

I need a Government of honest folk, who, when accidents occur and bad things happen that were avoidable, when harms are caused, they will be the kind who with all intgrity, put their hands up and take due responsibility, where it lies, in such an event.

Better still I want a Government of honest folk who will prevent the avoidable, rather than merely insure against it.

I want an honest Government, a Transparent Government and I want civil and social infrastructure to be a publicly owned and managed common wealth, I want homes not investiment vehicles and I want peace abroad rather than War.

The current set up is not inevitable, it has no natural entitlement to our lives, our hearts or, for that matter, our wallets and our children.


Let's make it plain, it's not about Labour, it's not about parties - it is about a ruling class that have disabled a geneuine democracy from emerging.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"

Thank you for reading this blog. All we need to do is be really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.

I want to hear the people, not the media.







I want to hear the people, not the media.


I am listening to the people.

I want to hear from the media - how the survivors are being cared for, in detail, to know that they are being cared for with the best, most professional, most loving care possible.

In detail. What institutions and who are doing what....  and how it is working out.

I don't really need to hear a death toll score board being slowly updated in the public domain.

I can wait for the final death toll.

The Survivors and their families and the families of those who died do not need a public theatre, whilst the fire recovery and investigation is under way.

They will likely need to go through this in privacy, in safety, according to their own needs and wishes. Their situation must guide this above all else.

We can wait.

Meanwhile.

I do not want to hear about Inquiries governed by those who bear responsibility for the policies and the way those were implemented that led to this disaster.

I want that Government to stand down, immediately, and allow a national unity alliance to take the helm, and those other parties must put down the party split, there must be no opposition to the will of the people.

They cannot be allowed to investigate themselves, or have a hand in the investigations or access to confidential investigation materials or information or personnel.

The media must cease the drip drip theatre of horror.

Show some respect.

Show due respect.

We have social media, each other and open lines of communication across the grass roots, and we know enough to not need that theatre slammed in our faces day in, day out, as they sell advertising space.

We want facts, we want reliable information, we do not want opinion.

We want fullest expression of duty of care, we want a free hands to be the ones who carry out the investigations, 100% transparently.

That is our legal right. Our moral right.

Put it another way, the current Government, being the Government in power during which the conditions preceding this disaster were altered, cannot be allowed to Govern the investigations 'at arms length' either....

The rest of Parliament has to stand up, and with all due care and attention, do it's duty to the people, who are their paymasters, above and beyond any party political assignations, and pursue the evidence, place responsibility, and be just. Be Just and Robust in carrying out their duty to us all.

No excuses. This is an adult conversation.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"

Thank you for reading this blog. All we need to do is be really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.

'Upstarts' in the Labour Party?



                       "we don't like honest people being honest about our behaviour"


'New upstarts'? was what one pundit Mefia commentator said of the Momentum group within the Labour Party.

People who he suggests are intent on taking over and destroying the Labour Party from within, a surge of insurgents, an anti-demcoratic horde of ranting idealists, who will NEVER gain power, and will condemn Labour to infinite futility. That's the general mainstream view, the 'public opinion' as manufactured by the Moguls of Mordor and Murdoch.

So let me tell you who I think some of those people are...

A generation of people who were 14 -16 or so when the adults, their parents, teachers, mentors, celebrities etc allowed the British Government to invade Iraq. And their parents, mentors and communities.

They are in their late 20s now, fully adult and effing furious with our generation, their parents and grand parents, who failed to stop that invasion, (largely because we were fixated on home ownership and wealth 'creation' which drove inequity ever deeper in the UK) when the evidence at the time was clear.

A general strike would have been enough to bring the British State involvement in Iraq to a halt. It was mooted at the time but dismissed without a rational debate.

We marched, and then went home....

No WMD, Regime Change 100% illegal, War of Aggression 100% Illegal, no association with 9/11 and a country that had been bombed for more than a decade vs the mightiest military on Earth..... all this info was easily available on line at the time. To those who made the effort.

Those ADULTS that did not seek out that information, but relied upon 'opinion' have by default enabled that War Crime and appear to be wholly unwilling to confront that and have left a mess that the children of 2003 and their contemporaries in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere are all too aware of - that is how these 'upstarts' see matters and they are correct.

They see the previous generations are too timid to call out the bullies, the bullying system.

It's also valid to point out that mere opinion is not the same as evidence or data.... and thus mere opinion is not sufficient when making decisions that affect other peoples lives so deeply, so harmfully.

Neither is religious belief, right wing or left wing ideological bias.

All of these are inadequate to the task of genuine democracy, which is the administration of our shared resource, taxation, for the equal benefit of all people in our society.

You would not accept a brain surgeon operating on the basis of 'opinion' - you would want data, evidence, precedence and insurance... and absolutely due diligence and duty of care....

Most of what is published as fact in mainstream media is mere opinion. Donald Trump's ascendancy is a direct result of submission to mere opinion. Likewise Hilary Clinton's nomination by the Democrats, who were proven to have acted amorally and possibly illegally in their fight back against the people who lifted Sanders...... Brexit was another victory of opinion over evidence.

It's immature to base decision making that affects peoples lives on mere opinion, and it is also careless, irresponsible and feeble.

If I was in my 20's or 30's now I'd be utterly, utterly disgusted at my parents generation. And terrified of the future they have bequeathed me and my contemporaries.

'New upstarts. - HOW DARE YOU!

Most people I know in their teens, 20's and 30's see clearly that the old system of Governance is corrupted, it is a bully system and they fear for their futures as people of good heart (above and beyond home ownership and jobs...) and they are furious, frustrated, appalled and deeply saddened by the way the previous generations of people with such privilege have failed to honour their children's futures....

And you ain't seen nothing yet. These are not young 'idealists' - they live with the reality in a way previous generations do not.... connected, international, global, tolerant, caring, compassionate and robust in their thinking, superbly well informed.

And active.

Get behind them adults, get behind them and support your future grand children's futures.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"

*If you like this post, if you found the themes resonant, if you agree in part, would you be kind enough to let others know about it? I would really appreciate that. You could drop a comment too, if you felt the urge. Or not. I will moderate contributions, and block any that are abusive. For obvious reasons. Thank you for reading.