COVID is Over, Give Greed a Chance!
I was in my local chip shop, yesterday late afternoon, it's been a while since I splashed out on a bag of chips.
A bag of chips costs me £2.40, which is the same price as 2kg of Organic Potatoes, and so for me to buy chips - eating out - is a rare luxury. Some will say buying Organic is also a luxury. I have eaten Organic food all my adult life, and I deem it an essential element of my approach to food as the first medicine. I do not remember the last time I ate at a restaurant. I cook for myself everyday, using whole foods. Thus far I have fared well enough, I think.
It's mostly good luck. Health is. Most of us do not understand exactly how much good health is a matter of luck and circumstance. Ascribing personal responsibility for good luck is also a common error. Survivorship bias is among one of the most common biases.
I know because all of these are errors I make almost every day.
At 63, I can run 2 km without collapsing, I sleep 6 hours most nights, my cholesterol is 5.1, (recent blood test) and apart from genetic gum disease and loss of teeth exacerbated by 40 years of smoking (I have stopped smoking this past year, and feel so much the better for it) and neglect due to an irrational terror of dentistry, and the teeth grinding, a symptom of cPTSD from childhood and adult trauma, I appear to be in robust health. 'Appear' being the descriptive word.
I have not been to a doctor in 40 years, for any kind of detailed check up. I do not know what lurks within this battered body and mind in terms of chronic disease.
I feel the aging process, and I think am comfortable with it, (that said, I am thinking of getting rid of all mirrors in my home... lol!) and I can see into a future with more frailty. That's the nature of life. We grow, and we grow older, if we live long enough, we become decrepit. I'm well aware that I am very, very lucky. So far.
Health, Luck and Circumstance
There are millions of people who are not so lucky, who live with chronic disease, which they suffer through no fault of their own. Millions of people, active, working people, live with a vulnerability and an endurance and grace the fit are largely unaware of. Ableism is the conceit that anyone with a disability is somehow inferior, that they are lessor human beings, rather than simply unlucky in health. Ableism is also the un-realisation that some chronic disease states are almost invisible. There are a myriad of factors that determine a persons life health chances, many of which are determined even before that person is born.
So like I say, I know I am very lucky indeed. The fit are more lucky than actively fit.
Johnson and his sponsors are about to change all that. Again.
So there I was, buying a good sized paper cone of chips, (my chippie is generous with his portions) splashing out on a luxury, and whilst exchanging pleasantries, my Chippie Man was explaining his plan to move the business to a site opposite the local train station, a process that had been delayed by successive COVID surges.
He told me he hopes he will gain more passing trade. I have been buying chips from his shop, and from the previous owner, for 19 years. Their chips have remained the best standard throughout. I love those chips. He deserves more trade. He's also a really nice person.
He told me "COVID is over now, it's all going back to normal! I'm really happy about that."
"Hmmm..." I said as I handed over my payment, in change, in 5p coins. I am digging into my reserves for this luxury.
I suggested he might want to rethink that. "The Pandemic is not over." I said. "The virus is still circulating."
He was having none of it. He rejected my assertion. "It's in the papers! Covid is over. They are lifting all the restrictions."
I responded by asserting that Johnson was a liar, and a real danger to all of us, and that he could not be trusted. He accepted the liar allegation, (everybody does now, apart from other liars) but he did not my Covid risk assessment.
Arrogant Repetitive Reckless Serial Endangerment .
He was not angry, nor was I. He smiled, I smiled.
I said to him "I look to the epidemiologists and virologists, rather than the politicians or news papers."
He smiled back at, me, shook his head and repeated "It's over. We'll be fine."
Hope springs eternal, and flows more easily through knowledge gaps exploited by News Media and Politicians working for Oligarchs whose Wealth Extraction Cult dominates our lives.
Of course, I said none of this. Indeed that through did not occur to me until I was down the street a bit, munching on the slightly cooled, salted chips on top. That's when I started thinking about writing this piece.
My chippie is a hard working guy, looking after his small business, his family and he's not greedy. He's a good person. One of many, many millions. The vast majority of people are indeed good people.
Johnson is not a good person.
The UK Government - The Johnson Regime - is going to end the legal requirement for Covid positive tested citizens to self isolate, and that will also allow them to end payments for those who test positive, payments designed to support them self-isolating, as a way to reduce transmission of the virus.
Savige Javid, a CDO salesman at the heart of the fraud of the 2008 crash, is criminally insane, and he's working for JP Morgan, and their agenda.
It's not about saving money, it's about their hatred of giving ordinary people 'money for nothing'. That game is for the wealthy and their cronies. Well, it's money for connections, rather than nothing. Those connections are part of their currency of power and influence.
Someone asked, if we were back in 2020, and knowing what we know now what we have done differently?
I replied we would have removed the governments that ignored the epidemiologists, virologists, immunologists, public health experts as soon as they showed any signs of ignoring the science and gaslighting the population or enabling profiteering.
We would have chased down misinformation generators, and imprisoned them for attempted manslaughter
All of which still needs to be done.
The Johnson Regime, with Health Secretary Savige Javid (lately of JP Morgan) in political control of our NHS, and our National Health Policy, are going to end free test availability, be they Lateral Flow or PCR tests. Austerity was always a punishment strategy. Universal Credit : Sanctions, removing funding. Making the claimants scream! Making low paid work seem more attractive by maintaining or escalating poverty levels.
Circumstance
This new strategy of ignoring COVID, of removing support for self isolation, ceasing free availability of tests, and mandating full return to offices etc, is something that will impact most heavily upon those on the lowest incomes, the minimum wage and just above it - hospitality staff, shop assistants, care workers, prison officers, teaching assistants and many others whose work brings them face to face with lots of people, many of them clinically vulnerable, on a daily basis.
Low income workers who will be forced to pay out of their already meagre and shrinking budgets to assess their own risk in order to act as responsible citizens. Some may well decide to take the risk. We know that lack of economic support - lowest sick pay rates in Europe - has undermined suppression of the community transmission of the virus.
One cannot see what one does not measure.
The reduction in testing will of course lead to a reduction in the numbers of confirmed cases, but it will not reduce the numbers of cases. As noted by Trump and John Hopkins University, albeit it different contexts, less testing means less numbers of confirmed cases - but it does not mean less cases.
The reduction in PCR testing will diminish the UK's world beating genome sequencing, and we will begin to go blind to the virus and it's variants. What we don't know could well kill us, harm us, expose us to life long chronic disease.
And with regards SARSCOV2, what doesn't kill us quite evidently does not make us stronger.
This Johnson Regime policy is head in the sand, arse in the air: see no virus, hear no virus, virus is not happening. Pretend it is not happening. World beating denial. There were no parties. Well there were parties, but I was not there. OK, I was there but all guidelines were followed. Russia is on the cusp of an invasion. Brexit is working.
This is called living with the lying bastards. This is a world beating strategy. Tony Blair, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell. Liars that rule the world. Giving the world a beating.
In the most simple terms, the Johnson Regime is intent on ignoring the virus, letting the little people take it on the chin. We, the impotent plebs - oh my, how we are understanding our impotence in ways we never expected to or wanted to know - you and I and our elderly relatives, our vulnerable neighbours, everyone in our communities, we must take it on the chin.
Protect the Hoard, let the Herd take it on the chin.
The last two years has shown quite clearly that the poorer members of 'the herd' which includes people who are disabled, people from ethnic minorities, low income citizens and the clinically vulnerable have taken the most on our chins, with devastating harms inflicted upon these more vulnerable parts of our population.
This report is just one of a number detailing how ethnic minorities have fared worse than others throughout this pandemic.
https://www.keele.ac.uk/about/news/2022/february/keele-comment/covid-poverty-ethnic-minorities.php
"Ethnic minority groups have suffered the highest risk of COVID mortality in the UK, according to the latest official figures. In the first wave (before the vaccine roll-out), the risk of death was highest for those with a black African background. During the second and third waves, it was consistently highest among those with Bangladeshi origins.
Those high levels of risk are partly to do with where people live and how they earn a living. Members of ethnic minorities tend to work in sectors which require face-to-face contact such as social care, retail and transport. They are also more likely to live in places where it is difficult to practice social distancing."
"Our research into rates of ethnic poverty (systemic poverty within an ethnic group) found levels before COVID of 50% for Bangladeshis, 47% for Pakistanis and 40% for black people, compared with 19% for white British people. Our work also supports fears that the pandemic risks making things even worse if action isn’t taken to reverse its effects.
For example, reports suggest that while ethnic minorities had higher unemployment rates before the pandemic, they then suffered a higher proportion of job loses during it. Rates of ethnic unemployment in the period from October to December 2019 were 4.5% for Bangladeshis, 7.7% for Pakistanis and 8.7% for black people, compared with 3.4% for white British. A year later, after almost a year of COVID, those rates went up respectively to 6.4%, 9.8%, 14% and 4.5%."
It is important to note that while the impacts of pandemic mismanagement and poverty impact ethnic minorities are as described, the mismanagement has caused immense harm to the ethnic majority as well. Nobody is safe under the Johnson Regime.
This article from December 2020 by a human rights advocacy group looks at the failures of the Johnson Regime in terms of protecting the populations right to health which, as it happens, is the legal duty of the Government.
"The UK’s response to COVID-19 has been widely criticized by scientists and the public. According to EuroMOMO, a European mortality monitoring initiative, the excess mortality that may be attributable to COVID-19 in England is one of the highest in Europe, second only to Spain.
"In this article, we observe the UK’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and identify some issues that have emerged in such exceptional times. We argue that the right to health as enacted today is not sufficient to address these issues. The current international human rights framework is robust, but states’ obligations should be clarified so they can be adapted to public health measures in times of pandemic. At the same time, international public health documents to prepare for pandemics are not sufficient on their own to protect the right to health of everyone. We offer some recommendations to that effect.
Writing about issues as we witness them allows us to construct reliable historic memory. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many deaths that could have been avoided had we been better prepared with strong rights-based provisions. These are essential lessons to be learned, and the human rights community has a crucial role to play to ensure that future responses to pandemics are grounded in human rights law."
The People's Covid Inquiry laid out in greater detail the legislation on protecting the populations right to health, and how this Government has failed to uphold the law, and in some cases transgressed laws, including committing the offence of Misconduct in Public Office in relation to protecting the populations right to health.
Risk and Vulnerability.
Poverty aside, there are 11 million people in the UK living with chronic disease, 6 million of whom have two or more conditions - these people are clinically vulnerable. Many of these people are part of the working population.
There are are 1.3 million clinically vulnerable children.
A similar number of adults are now enduring Long Covid. We do not yet know or understand the long term implications of their condition.
Is this Government embarking on a strategy towards total population infection?
Are they assuming that the vaccines will keep the harms below the radar of public awareness?
Are they anticipating that the deaths of the vulnerable will reduce pension costs? Is that potential saving of any real economic significance? Or is it just spite?
Are they hoping that the apparently healthy survivors will retain some kind of immunity?
Are they planning that the cases of Long Covid will be excluded from Insurance under pre-existing condition clauses?
Is the strategy of failing to control transmission of the virus congruent with the plan to proceed with privatisation of the NHS and steady withdrawal of state funded and operated social care as laid out by various Free Market think tanks and writers?
As things stand all state funded and operated services are being unreasonably stressed, staff are facing burn-out, staff retention is at record low levels - ripe for take over by private capital to 'solve the problems of socialistic state inefficiency'.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
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