Showing posts with label Parents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Parents. Show all posts

Make Education Safe Again

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

 

#SchoolStrike2021
#SafeEdForAll
@SafeEdForAll
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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.
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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.
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#MakeSchoolsSafeAgain #MESA
~ Update : 26/10/21 ~
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#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."
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The best leverage we have is collective solidarity.

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.

stopping the spread is spreading the love

https://twitter.com/SafeEdForAll_UK

The best tool for change we have is, and has always been, social solidarity, collective conjoined action, similar to a general strike. 

Possibilities include some kind of mass grass roots action such as a rent/mortgage/school strike or boycott, or early morning demonstration gatherings of parents, students and teachers outside Government buildings, or outside Churches, Broadcasters, News Paper offices or even local schools which we refuse to enter into under such unsafe conditions.

These could be justified by citing two legal frameworks for our action - the UN Convention on the Rights of The Child, and The Right to Health, to protect our children and citing Duty of Care, Malfeasance and Misconduct in Public Office to bring this English Government, that is causing so much avoidable harm, to heel. We could also cite safe workplace legislation.

To prevent a greater harm, a small harmless action is justified under duty of care legal principles.

To assert our civic responsibility as mature citizens, to uphold our shared duty of care to our children, and to confront this Governments failures to meet their duty of care to all of us.

No more appeals. We must direct Government. The issue must be forced through.


This is unbridled, optimistic wishful thinking on my part, because to be honest, I really do not know how we resolve this. 

I understand that this Government, this English Government has an 80 seat majority. I understand that  this English Government has no moral standing, that it is utterly unwilling to acknowledge any of it's errors, mistakes or its deliberately bad policy decisions and is behaving as if it is above the Law, beyond reproach, immune to any accountability. This English Government is the perfect expression of an elective dictatorship.

If there are any decent Conservative MPs, they remain silent and cowed. Starmer supports this Government, no ifs or buts.  His focus is not on the welfare of our children but on a purge of the Labour Party,

I am at a loss on how to prevent the next wave of death and disease that this English Government is about to inflict upon the English population via our children.

A new National Union?

I would urge the formation of a new national Union of Students, Parents and Teachers, as learners, as evidence gatherers, as people concerned with an accurate, clear and workable pathway towards an education that prepares for the work to confront Climate Change, Air Pollution, Plastic Pollution, Chronic Stress caused disease, Poverty, Environmental Damage and of course, right now, immediately best public health policy on COVID. Sick people do not make an economy stronger.

Elimination of Community Transmission is cited by the worlds foremost epidemiologists, virologists, public health professionals, economists and social scientists as the most effective set of strategies in dealing with this pandemic. 

Let's start in all our schools, let's harness the love, passion, care and concern of 11 million British Children, their parents, their teachers and push hard for what must be done.

Some concepts for parents, students and teachers to look at.

Here are some elements of Laws about protecting our children's rights, their health and safety, asserting the duty of care that all schools (and Governments) must uphold,  that I think every parent ought to become more familiar with


2. https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1794/rr-1 : defining what elimination of community transmission means

3. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00978-8/fulltext : evidence that elimination of community transmission strategy prevents the harms associated with 'slow spread' mitigation policy aka 'living with the virus' ideology.

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_care_in_English_law : Duty of Care English Tort Law.

5. https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/defences-duress-and-necessity : What rights, duties or protections do we have, under law, to prevent a greater harm or a greater crime?

6. https://www.lawtonslaw.co.uk/resources/misfeasance-in-public-office : Malfeasance in Public Office

7. https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/misconduct-public-office : Misconduct in Public Office

We must build a solidarity like none ever seen in English history. 

A general strike : it is not wishful thinking that we English citizens would really do what it takes to protect our children from harm.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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

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The Purpose of the Cummings Road Show - Engineering a Second Peak, Blame the People.

I have been watching the Dominic Cummings Road Show, and I have been wondering: why now, what is he trying to do, why is he so deliberately making himself a story in the public eye?

While we were overloaded with Cummings, this happened on Friday.

"People with cancer, liver disease or severe asthma have been dropped from the government’s coronavirus shielding list by text message before their doctors have been able to speak to them.
The decision to remove people with various health conditions from the shielding programme in England has caused upset. The text also informed people they would no longer qualify for government food parcels.
Many who received the messages last Friday believed they were fake. But the government has since confirmed the texts are correct and are official government communications".
Cummings is, by his own admission, a media strategist, among other things, and he is a master baiter. He studies the fish, works out their vulnerabilities, then he baits the hook, he dangles the hook, he watches them bite and then he pulls them in. Brexit was a grooming operation since the day Johnson started lobbing rocks over the wall at the Tory Party's glass house, taking delight in the power he felt as those rocks (lies in print) started arguments he could safely observe from afar. Both of these men are people who revel in distal disturbance, men who enjoy the feeling of power they gain as they observe the chaos they cause, from a safe, well paid, distance.

 Cummings grin, caught on camera, as he had that last drink of water, and walked away from the Downing Street Rose Garden Table spoke to me, and others, as 'Job done!'

Satisfied smirk.

Here, then is my review of some key aspects of the Corona Virus story that tries to join the dots, to see what Cummings intent really is. There are other aspects, to do with re-rigging economies and political power systems, opportunism and so forth that I will leave out of this analysis because that thread is not a public health thread, and it is the health of the people that I am most concerned with here.

I hope, sincerely, that I am wrong. I would - seriously - be delighted to be held in ridicule, to see the virus is eliminated from the UK population, by this Government, and to have my worries proven to be febrile fantasies of a feeble fool. I do have my doubts about these perceptions, about everything I write. That is why I question myself, and re-examine in the light of what evidence emerges. Opinion  and belief is never enough, never adequate for dealing with matters of the shared commons. That demands evidence based policy at every level.

I shall start at the beginning, with Johnson's UK Policy as he outlines it.

 3rd February - UK Corona Virus Policy Declared in Public

Hubris claims humility!


"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."

Johnson lays out the policy - "Protect the hoard, let the herd take it on the chin!"
Chess, political gaming. By January 31 the UK Government knew the virus and disease was in country.

Throughout February, as the global situation worsened, the  UK Government chose not to chase every case of known infection down. They chose not to pursue detailed contact trace, quarantine and provide treatment in isolation, of every case, in order to suppress the transmission of the virus. They asked people to self-isolate at home, rather than  provide isolation treatment facilities, which they knew were a critical part of the Chinese and Vietnamese responses. They chose not to test or quarantine incoming travellers. They chose not to alert the population, even as they were being alerted by epidemiologists nationally and internationally. All of these together would have been necessary in order to activate the non-shut down Korean style suppression of transmission, eradication of virus within the population - they chose a policy that was not medically rational; it was, as it turns out, medically irrational.

They chose this policy on a daily basis throughout February. Even as epidemics were developing at pace in Italy and Spain and elsewhere.

 5th March

Boris Johnson mentions herd immunity and dismisses the idea, or does he?

I suspect he was floating the idea, rather than dismissing it. A hint. Allowing room to manoeuvre in the future. To be able to draw back from such an idea, and present something that appears to address the situation, yet allows slow spread to continue.


13th March

Chief Scientific Advisor Sir Patrick Valance touts Herd Immunity. It's still on the books.



14th March

Professor john Edmund's, SAGE member : "Indeed, achieving Herd Immunity is the only way to stop this epidemic!"


14th March

UK Government suggests isolating elders in care homes, and shielding in place for people with chronic disease, everyone else carries on. Community transmission is in full flow, uncontrolled.

23rd March

UK Government orders shut down.  Does nothing to implement suppression of transmission beyond stay at home, work from home. No policy to stop the spread. Protect the NHS results in many elective hospital work cancelled. Instead of Fever Hospitals, they build intubation hospitals. The spread of the infection continues. Hospitals start to face surges, deaths start to rise rapidly.

We know what happened after that. It gets worse, and worse. The only action that is slowing the community transmission is the fact that the bulk of the British citizenry stay home, and they take the various pressures that staying at home has created, on their shoulders. They show considerable solidarity, compassion and kindness. Mutual aid groups spring up everywhere. They watch in horror and disbelief as the shortages of PPE become a defining narrative. They watch as the death toll mounts. They watch as the UK Government does nothing to stop the spread of infection and does everything to allow a slow spread, through bad policy, inadequate provision. They watch as Government ministers lie about the situation. They stay home. They are not fearful, they are concerned. Concerned citizens doing their bit, watch a their Government fail to do it's bit, recounted by a media that is inadequate to the task of holding Government to account.

The people are so much kinder, so much warmer, so much more concerned about each others welfare than the Government is about theirs.

The citizens hold the line. The are the ones who do most to slow the transmission. But they cannot do this on their own, indefinitely.

10th May

Johnson makes a televised speech to the nation, and issues vague instructions to ease the lock down, to 'restart the economy'. The Economy has not stopped, the stock exchange is still trading, furlough is providing income for 6 million workers to stay at home, and they are all buying food and other goods, on-line and in weekly shops. That money is going back into the economy, rents are being paid, bills are being paid. The transmission appears to be slowing down, but it is nowhere near suppressed.
Hospitalisations continue, deaths continue. The transmission is nowhere near being under control.
British citizens, in poll after poll, say 60% want to continue to stay at home until it is genuinely safe. The Government wants them to go to work. A power struggle ensues.

13th May
The government lifts the restriction on how far people can drive to reach the countryside and take exercise, but visits and overnight stays to second homes remain prohibited. This encourages reckless behaviour. That is the intent. A war of attrition against the 60%.

16th May

"Back to school! Protect the vulnerable children!"

I have written about Gavin Williamson's odious Education Briefing from 10 Downing Street, the day before Gove appears on Marr. Williamson uses deliberate tactics - conflating issues, emotional blackmailing and gaslighting to deliver a bullying speech, aimed at putting pressure on teachers, manipulating parents and workers, sotto voce. The pattern is clear, the intent is obvious. They are going to use every manipulative tactic they can to push the workers back to work.

17th May

Appearing on The Andrew Marr Show, Gove said: "The only way ever to ensure that you never catch coronavirus is to stay at home completely. There's always, always, always in any loosening of these restrictions a risk of people catching the coronavirus"
Here Gove is basically taking the piss, gas-lighting the genuine concerns of teachers, parents and children. He is bullying, brushing aside the risk, rather than governing in people's best interests.

 

May 26th

Democracy Now report on New Zealand explores what they did, and why they did what they did, and why it succeeded.

"New Zealand implemented one of the earliest lockdowns and has largely succeeded in eliminating the coronavirus under the leadership of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Some of the country’s success has been attributed to her leadership, trust in science, and clear communication during the crisis. We get an update from Michael Baker, professor of public health at the University of Otago in Wellington, New Zealand. He is an epidemiologist and a member of the New Zealand Ministry of Health’s Technical Advisory Group. Baker has been advising the government on its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.2 

 Their slogan is “Stay home, stay safe, and be kind.”

26th May

 New Zealand's leading epidemiology advisor to the New Zealand Government speaks on Democracy Now.

"And I think across the Western world, there was this strange idea of complacent exceptionalism, that somehow the virus might behave differently when it hit the Western world compared with how it was in Asia. But, in fact, we looked to Asia for examples of a good approach, and — for example, the way China contained the virus, and other Asian countries were managing it — we realized that elimination was possible, so we changed direction very quickly."


As I have written elsewhere, those countries that were willing to learn from China, Korea, Taiwan and other East Asian countries and apply the protocols for suppression of community transmission to stop the spread (rather than merely to slow it) with a view to eliminating the virus from within their population have done and are doing a very good job indeed, and those who chose not to learn from others experience have stumbled and lurched; making matters worse they have lied, manipulated data and evidence and gaslighted their populations and there are dead bodies all over the place.

Funerals and cremations with no-one present to mourn them. A terrible price has and is being paid by the people.

Peaks and Waves.

Furthermore,  these states are facing multiple peaks within this first wave  - only because they refuse to learn from the East Asian experience. Why would they be so foolish?

They refuse to draw from the experience of New Zealand, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Vietnam and others who have managed to suppress community transmission, and practically eliminate the virus from within their populations - their refusal to apply those lessons learned elsewhere is a deliberate choice, a political choice and an economic choice, not a public health choice.

It is important to understand that to prevent a second wave in the latter months of 2020 demands that the virus is eliminated from the local population in the first wave,  retaining an active and agile contact trace, quarantine and isolation treatment facility ready for new outbreaks within each jurisdiction. This is entirely reasonable since populations are organised across the Earth within defined jurisdictions, with structured borders that can be policed. That means that borders must become quarantined borders. This means that the security of all is the security of the most vulnerable.

And the choice being made, as outlined in Johnson's February 3rd speech is to choose allow movement through those borders, to prevent the closure of the borders by allowing herd immunity to achieve a kind of parity, the parity that a vaccine would create except for the fact that no such vaccine is available, and no such vaccine is on the horizon within meaningful time limit.

Herd immunity is this manner entails a soft form of mass murder - avoidable deaths are not avoided, they are simply slowed down, and that is a deliberate action, intentional.

Those involved must be held to account, and  we must understand that the lies and misleading narratives they used to protect themselves and their policy are damning evidence of intent.

The citizens of each of those countries have a stark choice in front of them.

We, the citizens of the UK, have a stark choice in front on us.

May 22nd - the Dominic Cummings Road Show is launched.

The Dominic Cummings road show was designed to break the 'stay at home to protect the vulnerable' dynamic of concerned citizens across the UK. It forms part of a general thrust since Boris Johnson's 10th May passive aggressive management instructions to the nation. That is the outcome of the road show. Behaviour, actions, outcomes, patterns speak the truth of history.

There has been a serious, concerted on-line campaign portraying the genuine concern of UK citizens who choose stay home stop the spread as an irrational fear, with the gas-lighting suggestion that this irrational fear is itself causing the damage to the economy. Their fear is the culprit.

If nurses are 'Heroes' walking to the 'front-line', what are those who dare not step out of their homes? If Doctors and Shop Assistants are 'Heroes' what are workers, furloughed in comfort, receiving tax payers money for doing nothing, who refuse to get out and get the economy up and running again. because they are frightened? That was a subtext that was allowed far too much space, that went unchallenged for far too long. Freedom of speech, and the right to hold an opinion trumping the evidence.

Whereas it was, and it remains Government policy on SARSVOC2 and COVID19 that is causing the most damage to the UK Economy.

Had they chosen the path New Zealand took, the economy would be looking so much better right now.

The patchy nature of furlough as it was rolled out, the inadequacy of self employment support, the inadequacy of rural and farming support, the blatant bail outs to corporations by comparison, and the inadequacy of PPE support across all care systems have caused immense difficulties, difficulties that could have been avoided with better thought out policies. There are other groups who are vulnerable such as hospitality staff, entertainment artists, technicians and workers, tourism operators and independent retail staff and others who are not afforded decent furlough, and this all adds to the pressure to get out there and be working - whereas if the Government funded them to stay home, and stop the spread, that pressure would be greatly reduced.

There are recent media campaigns to exploit domestic abuse, child abuse and other long standing social care issues as leverage points to get the economy going. The implication is that shut down has made all there problems exponentially worse - and there is some truth in this, yet the solution is to provide more support rather than get everyone back to work. Where were these concerns in the start of the lock down, where were they in April? They were not headlines. But as soon as get the economy going emerges, they become headline stories. This is not accident, this is no co-incidence.

 What if everyone gets back to work and there is no extra support for all these issues - support that is already lacking, even before the epidemic? What then? More spread. More pain, More abandonment.

The tune that has been playing in the background to the Cummings Road Show - "Get The Economy Moving, Get Back to Work!"

Cui Bono?

The Cummings Road Show in the media has created a groundswell of people who will not follow guidelines, as those were clearly abandoned by a senior Government figure, and "if it's one rule for them, and another for us, well stuff that!" which is both irrational and irresponsible. It amounts to "if they can be shits, I have the right to be a shit too!"

And what we hear and see is people in media nodding their heads, and going "Well, yes, totally get where you are coming from." Encouragement, rather than critique.

This all adds to the pressure to push teachers and others back to work, and it will intensify.

Gove maintains it is safe to return more children to school, the BMA and Teachers Unions point out that the evidence suggests quite clearly is that it is not.

This is insanity...

The transmission of the virus is not under any control within the UK. It is still largely invisible. We are still with more cases, and more hospitalisations and more deaths than when the lock down was called on 23rd of March.

The new NHS contact tracing program was launched 5 days earlier than planned,  and after one day it is already falling apart. The program is headed up by a Tory peer, Dido Harding, who was CEO of Talk Talk during a serious data hack, and who managed that situation quite dreadfully. She has no public health qualification or skills. They readily admit that it will not be properly functional until end of June. A month of enabling more community transmission without the resources to quell outbreaks, to quarantine contacts, to treat the symptomatic away from the community.

It will take three weeks to five to return to another climb towards a new peak; there is no policy to stop the spread, eliminate the virus from the the population.

A new surge is all but inevitable.

They have engineered a point of no return.

Herd immunity remains on the cards.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/herd-immunity-may-only-need-a-10-per-cent-infection-rate

"But today comes another challenge. A team led by Gabriela Gomes of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine argues that it is wrong to assume that herd immunity will only be achieved when 60 per cent of people have been infected. It is more likely, they argue, that the true figure lies between 10 and 20 per cent. The 60 per cent figure, they say, is based on the idea that we are all equally likely to contract the virus"

This article was 4th of May. It has not been debunked yet, it has not been dismissed. Everything that has happened since 10th of may suggests it is feeding into the decision making at 10 Downing Street.

https://judithcurry.com/2020/05/10/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought/


"Incorporating, in a reasonable manner, inhomogeneity in susceptibility and infectivity in a standard SEIR epidemiological model, rather than assuming a homogeneous population, causes a very major reduction in the herd immunity threshold, and also in the ultimate infection level if the epidemic thereafter follows an unconstrained path. Therefore, the number of fatalities involved in achieving herd immunity is much lower than it would otherwise be.
In my view, the true herd immunity threshold probably lies somewhere between the 7% and 24% implied by the cases illustrated in Figures 4 and 5. If it were around 17%, which evidence from Stockholm County suggests the resulting fatalities from infections prior to the HIT being reached should be a very low proportion of the population."

This article was published May 10th. - Same day as Johnson's speech. Sweden's situation is not as positive as many have been asserting.

Both of these are modelling exercises, removed from the social material realities.
Everything the Government is doing is going to guarantee the spread of the infection, coupled with inadequate provision for contact tracing, quarantine and importantly no provision at all for isolation treatment of symptomatic cases at the earliest possible moment, away from the community - that is to say nothing approaching the utility of Fever Hospitals. The evidence is that Government rejected the idea of Fever Hospitals when it was mooted as a way to stop the spread within care homes.

I have addressed the efficacy of fever hospitals in a previous blog piece.

The logic is very clear and simple: it makes sense to send people who are symptomatic at the earliest possible moment away from main hospitals, away from care settings, away from peoples homes and shared apartment complexes where if symptomatic people remain to self treat they will absolutely guarantee more spread of infection with a higher viral load within the community! That is best avoided. But no, Government policy is to enable that spread with a higher viral load within the community.
This is insanity.

Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson, The Cabinet, The Behavioural Insights Team are behaving appallingly. Remember that Government text message sent out to vulnerable people, without reference to their doctors? 

"No more support, not for you." 

Go forth and multiply (the virus).
I say, again, that they need to be removed from office, indicted for misconduct and misfeasance, and that we the citizens of the United Kingdom, in all four Nations, and indeed in the Republic of Ireland with whom we share a border,  need a new UK government, a unity government, where the Majority Party works with all other parties, guided by epidemiology and the experience of New Zealand, Vietnam, China and others who have suppressed the transmission of the virus within their populations to do the same - to stop the spread of the virus, and eradicate it from the population.

As I like to put it, Stop the Spread, Spread the Love!

Both the people and the economy will benefit in equal measure.

Herd immunity is neither practical nor safe.

It is not economically sound either.

It is murder.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

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Gavin Williamson's emotional manipulation, his grooming tactics in public view.

"The grooming (gaslighting) of human vulnerability is one of most vile things any human being can do to another."



Freedom of Speech, abused.

 Gavin Williamson's speech on Saturday 16 May, his Corona Virus Education briefing from 10 Downing Street, was an abuse of the rights of Freedom of Speech. It was a deeply manipulative speech. I want to put it into context in this blog piece.

Let me first lay out a necessary qualification about Freedom of Speech in the Public Domain.

Free Speech

Free Speech is a Responsibility - it is neither an absolute Right or a Privilege.

The Responsibility is to speak honestly, to be evidence based, to be as good a listener as a speaker and to acknowledge what is verified, reliable and true as such, and to also acknowledge beliefs as made up, as guess-work at the very best.

Freedom of Speech is not a right to promote beliefs over evidence in matters concerning the shared commons.

Freedom of Speech is not a right to groom, manipulate or exploit others through use of language and various logical fallacies...

Freedom of Speech abused.

The Freedom Movement protesters in Hyde Park and elsewhere were a 'welcome' media distraction from Gavin Williamson's 'briefing' against teachers, parents, children and health and safety common sense. Their case was a mistaken interpretation of the meaning of Freedom of Speech and both they and the Secretary for Education denied the social responsibility inherent in the right to free speech. The distraction was welcome from the point of view of the Government. A minor incident elevated to a mass media 'news' story.

A few 5G obsessed anti-vaxxers, freedom campaigners and assorted conTheory spreaders gathered in Hyde Park, near speakers corner, an historical location for Free Speech in Public, to spout nonsense in  public, and to bully , manipulate and groom others to their beleif system and at the same time they chose to deliberately breach social distancing guidelines and regulations whichare necessary to stop the spread of the virus.

The Freedom Movement UK protesters were speaking futile nonsense to power. And asking to be arrested, as a piece of political street theatre. They were in fact fufilling Johnsons policy objective - more spread towards mythical Herd Immunity.

A few of the 200 or so 'activists' were arrested for potentially spreading an infectious disease, after receiving two verbal warnings to disperse under the Corona Virus regulations. The police action was rough, because the protesters resisted and that made for great video evidence of 'state suppression'.

The protesters will claim that their rights to Free Speech were being trampled upon. They were not arrested for anything they said. No surpirse there - reality is hardly their logical foundation.

They are as narcissistic as those they claim to oppose. Fodder for the narrative that the lock down is an injustice.

Lock down injustice.

Which it is, yet not in the way these protesters claim. Reality is much more detailed than their futile and ill-informed caricature allows.

The injustice inherent in lock down as it is being played out in the UK is that it is not being deployed to stop the spread of infection, to lead towards eradicating the viral spread within the UK population in order to protect the significant population of vulnerable people. It is being deployed to guarantee a slow spread of the infection, which does not protect the vulnerable.

That is utterly repugnant, and it is a political and economic choice of policy that undermines the health and safety of at the 11.5 million UK citizens with chronic disease conditions, and in particular the elderly in care homes and those with multiple conditions.

Education and Work.

Teachers Unions have been speaking truth to power since March, and continuing through April, on into May  and  continuing this week, by asking direct and pertinent questions about health and safety of returning to school in the midst of an uncontrolled epidemic.

Whilst the lock down has slowed the community transmission rate in London, elsewhere it is rising.

The infection spread is still out of control.

 Under control means we know where the virus has been, we know where it is and we have suppressed transmission to the degree that there have been no new cases of infection for at least two days or more. None of these are in place as I write. The spread of infection is uncontrolled.

The teachers unions are asking the Government to present their scientific and public health evidence that proves that it is safe to return children to school by asking clearly worded questions, presenting the scientific evidence their questions are based on. The Government is failing to respond in kind.

The teachers concerns are laid out in the 5 tests they set for safe re-opening of schools.

They have also issued a substantial document laying out the detail of their questions, a document which is also a useful learning guide for anyone interested in the matter, as it poses the questions, outlines the back ground of their concerns, presents the scientific evidence and study papers that their concerns are based on.

The Government has not responded in kind.

The British Medical Association has come out in full support of the teachers unions. Their concerns are justified, they are medically rational, a phrase Boris Johnson might be familiar with in the negation of that same term, from his speech on February 3rd in Greenwich.

Instead the Government and their advisors are spinning the numbers, they are painting a false picture of the risk of infection emerging within schools. The details are laid out on this blog, Corona Maths.

"Dr Jenny Harries went even further in order to justify the opening of schools on 1st June by saying “There’s a lot of anxiety I think around this but people need to think through – in an average infant school with 100 children the likelihood of anybody having this disease is very small and diminishing with time.”
Let’s be clear about this.
That statement is absolutely 100% untrue statistically.  
The likelihood is not small and there is no evidence that that likelihood will diminish with time.  So let’s explore what the implications for schools really are.

The Implications for Schools


She is an epidemiologist who should have a grasp of statistics so I can only assume that she is toeing a political line and that what she has said is deliberate rather than accidental."



The risk in returning children to school is still very, very high.  The spread of infection, the  incidence of community transmission is not under control,not by any standard measurement, and  teachers are being bullied, workers are being bullied whilst many businesses are being stressed by lack of adequate economic support, bad policy decisions an d we are all subjected to misleading public narratives.

Emotional Blackmail and Gaslighting.

The Teachers Unions and the BMA were publicly gas-lighted by Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, in his briefing from 10 Downing Street, Saturday 16th May.

Williamson attempted to groom the general public, the students and the parents into enrolling in an attack on the teachers.

Here is the video of Gavin Williamson's odious speech.


He carried out a classic grooming exercise in full public view.

He intruded into circle of trust, he primed his audience, he then used emotional blackmail to bind them in to his agenda, and then launched a series of snide attacks where he deployed emotional triggers,  laid guilt trips aimed at teachers unions and the BMA, to undermine in the public view their evidence based concerns about health and safety of the teachers, the children, their parents and elder relatives. Machiavellian to the core.

Like he really cares about vulnerable children, or vulnerable adults, having voted for policies that are proven to have caused harm to vulnerable during the past few years, even when evidence was presented of those harms.

"School is the safest place for children from unhappy homes."  Emotional black mail.

"School re-opening is based on best scientific advice." Twaddle. They are unwilling to present that evidence. It does not exist.

Evil is as evil does.

Here is the transcript of that speech.

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/education-secretarys-statement-on-coronavirus-covid-19-16-may

On getting children into school as soon as possible.

Here I will examine some of his statements, and indicate the tactics.

"This is particularly important for vulnerable and disadvantaged young people. There are some who would like to delay the wider opening of schools."

*( speaking to the wider electorate, entering into the circle of trust, blatantly lying to do so - schools are already open for vulnerable children - here, and here . and *here *even though many are not turning up where provision has been made for them, presumably because their parents are concerned with the risks of transmission of infection which might be brought back into family homes where vulnerable unwell or elderly adults share homes, a reasonable concern..)

"But there is a consequence to this."

*(Guilt tripping the teachers, frightening the parents, gaslighting the wider public to think teachers are putting selfish concerns ahead of children's well being)

"The longer that schools are closed, the more children miss out. Teachers know this. Teachers know that there are children out there who have not spoken to or played with another child of their own age for the last two months."

 *(guilt tripping the teachers in front of workers, talking about the teachers in the third person to the workers)

"They know there are children from difficult or very unhappy homes for whom school is their happiest place in their week. It’s also the safest place for them to be and it’s thanks to their teachers and the support that their teachers give to them that they are safe and happy."

*(those who are keeping these children out of school by blocking a return are harming these children, - emotional black mail)

The poorest children, the most disadvantaged children, the children who do not always have support they need at home, will be the ones who will fall furthest behind if we keep school gates closed.

*(guilt tripping the teachers in front of the public)

"They are the ones who will miss out on the opportunities and chances in life that we want all children to benefit from what teachers and schools deliver for them."

* (the claim is false, and he implies it is the fault of teachers if these children are failed )

So we’re asking some children to come back from the 1 June. And we are asking schools to adopt a number of strict protective measures.

*( he is asking for children of workers to return  - and he knows the Government have not answered the Teachers Unions evidence based questions on Health and Safety, and that those questions will not be answered in his briefing).

Context.

So to place this into the fullest context,  we must take on board the meaning of the UK Policy of slow spread of the infection, and what it really means, and what motives might lie behind it.

The speech by Johnson last week (May 10th) was about getting workers back to work. 

Protect the economy! Be alert! Get back to work!

He used deliberate, tactically vague instructions to set workers up for a fall, either way - if they are too cautious, they will be blamed for hurting the economy, and their employers will have a leverage to dismiss them, or refuse to support them.  If they take too much risk, they will be blamed for the adverse outcomes.

In order to really push that back to work agenda, more school children must be 'encouraged' to return to school so that parents are free to go to work. If they did not push for this, then at least half of parents would stay home because we know that many families both parents go to work.

There are 4.526,000 families with both parents at work.

That is a substantial number of workers, just over 9 million.

At present furlough is covering  6.3 million workers.

Even if the Government can get half of the parents back to work, they are looking at saving billions every month,  and at the same time they are increasing the potential for more slow spread of the infection, all at the same time.

Why is slow spread so important to this British Government?

What does slow spread really mean and what benefits does it accrue, and to whom?

Why does the UK Government reject the stop the spread, eradicate the virus within the population approach?

It would be utterly foolish to ignore these questions.

Especially when the Education Secretary is prepared to publicly behave in such a profoundly manipulative manner.

I am not personally frightened, as much as I am concerned. I have been very ill, for three weeks in March with lingering sense of infection into mid April. I feel much better now. Nowhere as well as I did before March.

I have gone beyond fear now, I am mostly furious and I also understand anyone who is vulnerable being fearful, not so much of the bug as of the Government and it's reckless behaviour.
,
The media are portraying our concern as fear, as timidity, as way to gaslight us, to bully us into submission.

It's really ugly to look at and see.

What is going on here?


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

https://patreon.com/corneilius

https://www.reverbnation.com/corneilius

https://www.corneilius.net

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