Showing posts with label Zero Community Transmission. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zero Community Transmission. Show all posts

Apologia: Distal Power does not Apologise as we know it - we the ordinary folk pay the price, bear the costs, the Rulers retain their Power.

The Dominic Cummings road show is back in town. Cummings is spilling the beans on some of the inside stories around this English Government. Cummings is as culpable for the avoidable harms not avoided as any in office today. He remains unrepentant. His apology rings hollow, even as he eviscerates his colleagues in public.

He should be prostrate on the floor, tears streaming from his eyes, wailing his sorrow for what he has occasioned since 2016, on so many matters of critical national political behaviour, action and outcomes. He should be begging for forgiveness, for his part in rejecting Elimination of Community Transmission strategy. 

Cummings should be opening up to tell the fullest truth telling possible, in order to bring to an end the non-avoidance of avoidable harms, in order to cease this headlong rush towards a health disaster for the English population, in order to make the case for elimination strategy that expert epidemiologists, public health professionals, nurses, doctors, teachers, parents up and down the country know we need to implement and resource, fully and at pace.

He's none of that. He is still playing everyone. His outing is not altruism or genuine honesty.

One of the threads that I have been following for some time is the resonance down through history of what appear to be repeating patterns. It is not that history repeats itself, so much as bullies behaviour does not change much. Including publicly made apologies for long denied historical harms caused to masses of people by callous Governments, the purpose of which is to retain power, status and position rather than address the harms caused as they ought to.


I have written about the similarities in English Government attitudes, behaviour, policy and outcomes when mass trauma events 'occur' at different times in History. Some situations were genuinely events that could not have been avoided, others were events entirely man made or natural events made much, much worse than they needed to be. The difference between a Volcano erupting and a war breaking out. The difference between a crop failure and a famine.

An honest study of the Irish and Bengali Famines of the Late Victorian era will reveal similarities in English Governance attitudes towards the adverse outcomes for ordinary people vis a vis the Iraq War, the COVID19 epidemic and pandemic, Hillsborough, Grenfell, Orgreaves, collusion in Northern Ireland, arming, training and maintenance of Saudi War Planes in Yemen, and the years of support for anti-Syrian violent militia who literally destroyed most of that country.

What is seen is a callous disregard, born in part by distance and class consciousness and in part by venal greed, a dismissal of the value, the human meaning of the lived experience of the most vulnerable people,  harmed by the policy decisions made by the most powerful. The men and women who occupy positions of executive authority and who control a distal, leveraged institutional power are not vulnerable in the same way those who live where the policy has its greatest impact. Asymmetric has meaning in this context. An insensitive jackboot and a vulnerable ant. 

"Many more loved ones will die!"


I have written about the way the people in power use apologia to defend their position and status, without changing their behaviour. They make public apologies, yet they never suffer indictments, trials, convictions or incarceration. The people who occupy distal power are immune to social material civil and criminal justice. They apologise, and reparations are not made or if they are made they are piecemeal and delivered late, after many years, to exhausted survivors who are largely forgotten, obscured by the passage of time.

Apologia - a defence of one's assumed power.

And so we read in today's Guardian News Paper the story of the Apology by the English Government of Tony Blair, issued in 1997, for the behaviour of the English Government during the Irish Famine. Blair did not write it, he did not sign off on it and he did not speak it, he did not mean it and neither did the English Establishment. It was the usual publicity promotional event, nothing more. Apologia. Sorry, not sorry.


“The key sentence in your message is the acknowledgment that the British government at the time could have done more to prevent the tragedy. This is no more than a statement of fact, and falls well short of an apology, but the British government have been reluctant to say much about this in the past,” added Holmes, who said he had checked with “all and sundry” including press secretary Alastair Campbell that it was right to make such a reference.

“I hope this does not cause you any problems. It should go down well with the Irish, and I cannot see anyone here or in Northern Ireland seriously objecting.”

The text was honed by No 10 aides from a draft by the Foreign Office. An implicit apology was exactly how it was interpreted by the welcoming Irish press who saw it as an attempt to inject fresh goodwill into Anglo-Irish relations and encourage the peace process.

That the Irish Establishment were so ready to accept it as such speaks to their submission to desired myth rather than their ability and willingness to face reality, honestly. But of course, faced with a neighbour far more powerful than they and understood to be more than capable of inflicting harm (collusion in Northern Ireland, false convictions of innocent Irish citizens jailed for decades in English jails, the financial power of the City of London were all well known to the Irish Establishment) upon anyone who challenged them, their readiness to accept the apology at face value contained some wisdom. It's not a good idea to confront a more powerful bully with the truth, in International politics. And when both leaderships are steeped in NeoLiberalism, it's even less likely that a confrontation with the truth will happen.

That said, the truth about the Famine and how it was 'managed' remains. Some harms are so great that they can never be forgotten, not least if those who caused the harm remain unapologetic. The Irish establishment tries its best to  say something of the truth, without going the full hog, as this RTE article outlines.


First and foremost, Trevelyan saw his role as essentially limiting the financial exposure of the British exchequer to funding relief for the Irish poor whose lives were devastated by the failure of the potato crop over successive years after 1846.

What he shared with the politicians and indeed the British Establishment as a whole was an ideological outlook that saw the Great Famine as an opportunity to bring about far-reaching reform of Irish society, clearing the land of the poor, developing commercialised agriculture, and making the Irish economy more ostensibly modern.

Sir Charles Edward F. Trevelyan, K.C.B. Engraved by D.J. Pound from a photograph by John Watkins, Parliament Street. Image: Getty Images

Sir Charles Edward F. Trevelyan, K.C.B. Engraved by D.J. Pound from a photograph by John Watkins, Parliament Street. Image: Getty Images

Let the Herd take it on the chin, protect the Hoard. The past 18 months described in one sentence in the 'United' Kingdom.

Others tell it like it was. 

Ireland 1845-1850: the Perfect Holocaust, and Who Kept it "Perfect."


"This book, alone, provides the covered-up facts of 1845-1850 Ireland. There was no famine in the ordinary sense of that word. It was genocide perpetrated by more than half of Britain's army (67 regiments of its 130 regiments total). They removed, at gunpoint, Ireland's abundant meats, livestock, and food crops to the ports for export; thus starving the people. The book's colored map shows the locations of lengthy deployments of each of the sixty-seven regiments while they removed livestock, meats, flour, oatmeal, and other food crops to the ports for export. The same map names the locations of some 180 of the resultant mass graves."

The impoverished Irish native Catholic population, subsiding on potatoes, working for their Anglo landlords, were left to rot as their crop rotted. There was plenty of food, readily available, within spitting distance. It went to market, under armed guard. The Irish workers were deliberately impoverished by centuries of 'Austerity' policies designed to impoverish them, render them submissive and weak.

'Toraidh' is an Irish Gaelic word for a certain kind of egregious thief. It is also the roots of the English word 'Tory'.

Credit where credit is due?

Blair did not initiate the Northern Ireland peace process. It was initiated by Catholic and Protestant women finding solidarity in each other, building a peace movement, confronting the men of violence in their communities, building bridges across the divides, even as the British Security State was waging covert warfare from within both groups of paramilitaries and their communities. These women persisted with their humane struggle to bring the violence to an end. Mo Mowlem, Jeremy Corbyn and others followed pathways worn in by the ordinary women, the mothers, aunts and sisters of Northern Ireland.

Blair took the credit that others built up over decades. 

The English Government of 2020/21 is no different.

They and those they truly represent are not bothered by the costs they have imposed upon the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish peoples by their rejection of Elimination Strategy. They have no plans to ameliorate the situation going forwards. Herd Immunity is now the obvious strategic position, and by mass infection. 

Even as they claim kudos for the 'world beating' vaccination, developed by a pan European collective effort, administered largely by the NHS and volunteers, of which the best that can be said is the Johnson administration did not impede it  in the same that the way they have impeded effective find, test, trace, quarantine and isolate systems that could suppress community transmission of the virus.

We have ample evidence of this Government exploiting the epidemic to enhance their own power, to enrich themselves and their crony associates, to bring in profound and damaging changes across social and health care provision, to avoid dealing with climate, environmental and other pressing problems.

Their latest wheeze is to recruit the youth in this task.

Disco of Malign Intent.

Saying to young people, whose development of their frontal cortex is yet to complete, and in the middle of an intense national level surge of infection via a new more transmissible variant that has vaccine escape, that they can and indeed should (to save the night time economy, do your patriotic duty) attend night clubs, knowing the frustration and intense desire of that cohort to socialise, to 'party like it's 2019' again, given the pressures they have had to endure these past 16 months of daily mismanagement, misinformation and blatant grift, suggesting that they 'take personal responsibility' rather than the government delaying opening up, maintaining legal provision (so called legal 'restrictions') to prevent spread of the virus and then say that in one and a half months time, for Health and Safety of the whole community, they would need proof of double dose of a vaccination to attend club nights (as a 'nudge' to increase vaccine take up) shows that they really do not care about the adverse effects of their policy on people - they want people to endure mass infection in the hope or gamble that this latest scheme will work.

That is the real meaning of Freedom Day!

It really doesn't have to be this way.

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-virus-will-eventually-force.html

The question is simple - the economic costs of zero community transmission strategy and quarantine borders with known benign outcomes vs the human and economic costs of slow spread towards herd immunity, with repeated cycles of re-opening and shut down as the viral infection spreads in waves, wave after wave into an indefinite future of unknowable adverse outcomes.

The Virus will eventually force governments to adopt Elimination Strategy. Duty of Care applies universally.

The Virus will eventually force governments to adopt Elimination Strategy. 


Breaking  community transmission is the go to evidence led, grounded, proven strategy. It works. 

Here's a solid report, with references, on the evidence that Elimination Strategy prevents the harms associated with Mitigation policy.

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

Study it, share it. Stopping the spread of the virus is spreading the love



Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
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Pile Them High, Sell Them Short, Contracts for Cronies and Let The Market Rule!

English News Mefia, and the English Parliament are this week exercised by reports of callous language by Johnson that remain unverified - no witness has come forwards to say that he or she heard Johnson make those comments - and yet no attention has been paid to the proven statement made by Johnson back in February 2020 where he basically said it already - well not exactly... but almost..



Do you recall how Behavioural Science and Data Modelling were cited as the drivers of UK Government policy in March 2020? They did not cite epidemiology. they did not refer to virology and public health best practice was not mentioned.

Boris Johnson delivered a speech in Greenwich on February 3rd 2020, a month before those briefings. The policy direction had been adopted already.

Here's the full transcript of that speech.


And here is the most relevant section.

"And in that context, we are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a

1. **** risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic ****

2. ****and a desire for market segregation that  ****

3. **** go beyond what is medically rational ****

4. **** 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 

5. ****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.

6. ***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."

My comments on this speech, what I think it reveals, starting with my comments on Johnson's choice of words

1. The panic stage was long over, by February 3rd - the WHO and all well run Governments were preparing for local epidemics and a global pandemic, and doing so with diligence and a calm serious focus. Johnson knew Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand were already putting zero community transmission strategies in place. He was disparaging those efforts. WHO had by this stage issued warnings just short of declaring a global pandemic. Italy was experiencing the initial surges into their hospitals, with exponential spread of the virus already evident and tens of thousands of British ski tourists in the area, unprotected.

2. The only proposed barriers were to human traffic, there was no blocks on trade or goods or finance being proposed anywhere. He lied, blatantly.

3. What was medically rational was adopting a zero community transmission strategy and resourcing it fully. Every other approach was irrational, in that it ignored the proven epidemiology. The approach of the UK Government was wholly irrational. It was a deliberate choice to allow harm rather than prevent harm. He gaslighted the audience.

4. The policy choice to allow slow spread is precisely what caused the need for multiple lockdowns, which caused more harm to people and more harm to the economy than would have happened had the UK adopted a zero community transmission strategy,  by a long  and wide margin. It is impossible to prevent surges if one allows slow spread within the community and has no suppression systems in place. That was already well understood by the epidemiology community, SAGE and WHO.

5. The human right to proper health care for the entire population was abrogated, it was denied, it was effectively removed by the decision which had clearly been already made by February 3rd 2020 - the subsequent decisions perpetrated a slow spread tactical battle that was bound to become a war of attrition that the vulnerable lost. 130,000+ horrific deaths, 320,00 cases of long covid, 3,000,000 small business owners excluded from financial support, delays in providing day to day health care as hospitals were swamped by covid cases. All of this was avoidable.

15 months later, the policy of UK Government remains opposed to zero community transmission and amounts to total population infection, aka 'Herd Immunity' - this leads directly into the potential for vaccine escape variants, which puts everyone at risk of back to square one again. 

Johnson's words then, and every policy since then are congruent with the charge of malfeasance in public office, leading to corporate manslaughter and wilful economic harm, with cronyism thrown in as a bitter condiment.

India is now, sadly, going through a horror of a second wave because their politicians have taken the same attitude and approach as those in the UK. 

6. The British Empire and the wannabe Hindu Empire, Johnson and Modi - sacrificing citizens as pawns in their great game of chess. 

To recap.

I am paraphrasing his words and suggesting the intent here :

 'we intend to let the bodies pile up, because we believe we can make vast profits from this situation by not doing the epidemiologically correct strategy that others are doing - we are different, better, superior super men of profit!'

How muscular!  How Brexit.

I predicted in a number of blog posts this time last year that the policy direction of the UK Government was going to cause more harm, harm to people and to the people's economy. I hated making that prediction, I detest that I was correct, I would gladly be wrong, be made a fool of, be a boy who cried wolf needlessly. I would endure all that, and more, happily had it been that the 127,000 + deaths and 350,000 long covid cases had not been brought about by UK Government policy.

It was the gaslighting and lies, the cronyism which contrasted with the forthright communications of Jacinda Ardern and others in the Zero Community Transmission states that really alerted me to the situation.

The Gamble of the Privateers.

The economic futures that the likes of William and Jacob Rees-Mogg of the Sovereign Individual ideology are promoting is that of Free Ports, Enterprise Cities and Private Cities that operate free of regulation by democratic state legislatures. Easier  then for these new entities to avoid regulation that is needed to deal with climate change, air pollution, water pollution and the many other externalised costs that underpin the wealth of extractive industry billionaires but put the whole of humanity at serious risk of long term harm.

Cities run as Corporate States, with citizens as captive customers. Dubai, a dubious set up with ultra wealthy management for ultra wealthy clients, underpinned with low paid immigrant labour deprived of the most basic standard of workers rights, is cited as an exemplar. This is part of the underlay of Brexit, that no English News Mefia will acknowledge. The Sovereign Individual. Privateers. Buccaneers.

The Game of Chess.

Meanwhile the British Press are falling over themselves to avoid the truth, to maintain the taboo this blog article is breaking. 

Labour's leader, Sir Keir Starmer and his personal choice of front bench are largely enfeebled in Parliament, they are almost totally futile, in that they support this government and whilst trying to make it look like they are being critical, they offer no solutions, the make no assertive challenge to the policy of slow spread and are in their subservience a walking, talking health and safety violation. 

Grooming gangsters operate with impunity to spread the lies that the covid19 is a hoax, that lockdowns are causing more deaths than they prevent, that we need to learn to live with the virus and keep calm and get on with it.

By not specifying schools as places where mask wearing is mandatory, schools are being indirectly pressured to stop students wearing masks, in effect to become super spreaders - the only possible reason must be that to complete Government policy total infection must be achieved sooner rather than later, rather than not at all. That is in line with the 'let the herd take it on the chin' dynamic. Right wing media are touting mask wearing as an infringement rather than a safety measure.

English Football fans are willing to take on the Oligarchs they are funding, yet unwilling to take on the Government that is killing their relatives, harming their economy, paying their furlough. What is that?

It's a mess. an awful, horrible mess and  many, many innocents are suffering as a result.

Pile those bodies high, and sell them cheap! 

Harm causation on an industrial scale, callous avarice disguised as Nationalism. Lies, gaslighting, cronyism. Intent.

Malfeasance in Public Office :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malfeasance_in_office#England_and_Wales

Under English law, misconduct in public office is a criminal offence at common law which dates back to the 13th century.[2][3]

The offence carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. It is confined to those who are public office holders, and is committed when the office holder acts (or neglects to act) in a way that constitutes a breach of the duties of that office.[4]

The Crown Prosecution Service guidelines on this offence[2] say that the elements of the offence are when:

  1. A public officer acting as such.
  2. Wilfully neglects to perform one's duty and/or wilfully misconducts oneself.
  3. To such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public's trust in the office holder.[5]
  4. Without reasonable excuse or justification.

The similarly-named misfeasance in public office is a tort. In the House of Lords judgement on the BCCI case, it was held that this had three essential elements:[6]

  1. The defendant must be a public officer
  2. The defendant must have been exercising his power as a public officer
  3. The defendant is either exercising targeted malice or exceeding his powers


"Misconduct in public office" is often but inaccurately rendered as "misconduct in a public office", which has a different meaning. 

Something needs to shift, or there will be more harms caused that could have been avoided.

The place where the shift needs to come from is both within the Houses of Parliament and among the electorate.

Who will protect the most vulnerable?

Who will indict the culpable?

I sincerely hope the vaccines will help ameliorate the situation, yet I fear they will not. I would not want to bet on them, given the nature of this government.



Kindest regards 
Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
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Rejecting Zero Community Transmission Strategy is causing Irrational Economic and Health Harms

"In non zero community transmission strategy States the COVID19 policy choice is a false position between the health of the people and health of the economy. They do not say this, yet that is what it means to not pursue ZCT. It is, of course, a false dichotomy. A good policy protects both. 23% of global population and their economies are currently being protected by ZCT. Bad policy harms both. Just look at the deaths and economic harms in the differing countries. Go on. Compare Vietnam or New Zealand's outcomes with USA or England's outcomes. Use yer google and compare the outcomes."




A global pandemic demands a global coherent response to minimise harms, no question.


Compare New Zealand's Zero Community Transmission strategy with UK Herd Immunity slow spread tactical approach that has become a war of attrition that the most vulnerable lose.

1. 1.8 billion people (23% of global population) and their economies being protected by Governments and populations deploying proven Zero Community Transmission strategies right now across East Asia and Oceania, Europe, South America and elsewhere. Stopping the spread of the virus is possible and it works. It could be a global strategy to avoid causing vast harms.  It should be the global strategy. Stopping the Spread is spreading the Love.

2. The English Government have rejected Zero Community Transmission strategy from the outset. They have rejected Science and Epidemiology best practice out of hand. They cited 'data modelling' and 'behavioural science' as the basis for their policy choice. The never cite epidemiology or virology as the basis of their policy choices.

3. The English Government deliberately allowed the virus to be imported and to be  spread in January, February and March and beyond in 2020. They refused to quarantine the borders. They had chosen a policy of allowing 'natural herd immunity' to take it's course. They denied this, even as on multiple occasions they and their chosen advisors urged Herd Immunity as the only resolution to the epidemic. Of course publicly they disavowed that policy, but the effects of policy choice has led to spread of the virus, time and time again. Slowing the spread is a herd immunity strategy. Stopping the spread would be an non-herd immunity policy.

4. The English Government scaled down NHS contact trace in February, March 2020 rather than scale it up. They deliberately allowed transmission of the virus to run out of control by claiming it was too late to stop the spread.

5. The English Government ignored WHO guidance and East Asian experience. 

6. The English Government bragged about this position. British  Exceptionalism.

7. Here is Johnson bragging about this position February 3rd 2020 

https://youtu.be/baWbWpOtJnc?t=536


Here are his words, read them, understand them.

"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

8. and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage..."

9. Here is the real and unnecessary economic damage the government's deliberate policy have caused

a. 130,000 and more HORRIFIC painful frightening deaths.
b. 300,000 and more Long Covid cases. 
c. Hundreds of thousands of of acute health care issues set aside as hospitals are repeatedly swamped by COVID19.
d. 75,000 pub jobs lost.
e. Live Entertainment Industry crushed, 170,000 jobs lost
f. Tourism crushed.
g. Hundreds of thousands of people in rent arrears, at risk of losing their homes.
h. 3 million self employed small business people excluded from support. 
i. Immense psychological stress.
j. Immense economic damage. 
k. GDP way down,

10. "beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage"

All of this is absolutely irrational damage to the health of population, it is irrational damage to the people's economy and all of it was 100% avoidable. No question. and so let us look at the bragging - 

11. "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 "

Johnson claims Humanity, the Global Population, needs a brave government like the UK Government! Blatantly not the case then, and certainty on that now.

12.  "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."

Humility is something alien to Boris Johnson and indeed alien to the English Government as an international State.
 
13. "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."

The Game of Chess - an institutional anti-human attribution that speaks of people as pawns, that speaks to Power rather than Humanity.

14. "Limbering up" : contact tracing FAIL, PPE procurement FAIL, Testing FAIL, Quarantine FAIL, Isolation Treatment FAIL, Care Homes FAIL


15. "Use Nerves" : blustering, hand shaking, pretending to care, clapping for heroes, eat out to spread it about, bullying teachers, offering to support school students with laptops and broadband and not delivering, bullying parents, making public claims they will 'beat' the virus. 

16. "And muscles" : gaslighting, misleading, lying, bullying and ignoring the evidence. co-ordinated misinformation and slander campaigns with News Media and on line political grooming operations. 

17. "And Instincts" : cronyism, blanking English suppliers of PPE and other equipment out to pass contracts (and cash) to friends who had no prior experience in such supply business, £250,000 on personal flat redecoration using crowdfunding to mask irregular donations, whilst prevaricating on school meals, refusing to offer immediate support for quarantine and isolation treatment.

Owen Jones TV : who is making a lot of money and profit out of the pandemic?

18. And there was no need for any of this. And Johnson claimed that Humanity needed his policy stance!

Well when it comes to the realities right now 23% of global population are protected by zero community transmission strategy and we in the UK could be getting that protection too. Humanity needs a global zero community transmission strategy.

http://Zerocovid.uk - UK web portal for zero community transmission support - check it out, get informed.

1.8 billion people and their economies being protected by zero community transmission strategy right now across East Asia and Oceania.

THAT IS EVIDENCE THAT CANNOT BE DENIED

19.  Thus Johnson lied in Parliament, when he said 'there is, therefore no credible route to a Zerocovid Britain, or indeed a Zerocovid World'.



20. Parliamentary privilege allows Johnson to pass that lie, and the co-ordination with Oligarchy owned News Mefia enables that lie, and so Johnson and the UK Government dismissed Zero Community Transmission strategy as 'impossible' and 'impractical' without ANY rational discussion of the strategy.

Then Johnson brazenly cites the harms caused by his policy when he says "we cannot persist indefinitely with restrictions that debilitate our economy, our physical and mental well being and the life chances of our children and that is why it is so crucial that this roadmap should be cautious but also irreversible." to push for worsening policy options of re-opening schools before they are safe, which is guaranteed to initiate a surge in community transmission. The first indications of that surge is the plateau of new cases of disease and deaths, and the rise in infections recorded by testing.

21. Johnson therefore dismissed the evidence out of hand without discussing any of it. Because he knows that if he opened that discussion, the position he and the Government have taken would collapse. That he uses his Parliamentary privilege to do so is bullying.

22. The harms I have cited were all avoidable. The position of the UK Gpvernment and various groups and lobbies and other agencies who are citing the harms caused by deliberate bad management to argue for worse management rather than better management is untenable.

23. Here's a short interview with an Australian doctor recounting their recent two cases, how they traced all contacts, quarantined each and every one of them and have suppressed the spread, with  some insight as to why they jump on every case - how one person can spread to 30, then to 150 and beyond really quite rapidly.



24. Australia's federal Government, ruled by The Liberal Party, wanted to reject zero community transmission strategy at the outset, back in 2020 and all the Australian State Governments said no. They all met up and agreed to follow zero community transmission strategies and to work together, using different strategies as they needed,  and they told the Federal Government which is ruled by The Liberal Party that they were implementing zero community spread strategy and they suggested very strongly that the Federal Government toe the line or else. The Murdoch press and broadcast tried to support the Liberal Party and keep the economy open, and they failed. The State Governments duty of care to the people prevailed.

25. Recent elections in Western Australia have decimated the ruling Liberal Parties candidates, as the population supported the ZCT promoting parties. It is likely to repeat across Australia in future elections. ZCT works. As it should.

26. In England there is a Government and News Mefia Taboo. Do not discuss the evidence that zero covid can work if and when it is correctly implemented. Dismiss it. Use all means, including psychological operations to undermine awareness of zero community transmission.

Authoritarianism. Lethal Authoritarianism.

27.  Evidence of malfeasance in public office is abundant. I wrote this blog article last May. Since then more evidence of malfeasance has emerged.


28. An 80 seat majority should not allow such anti Democratic inhumane harm causation by Government policy to persist.

That is an abuse of Power beyond reason, beyond bearing, beyond any claims of representation of constituents.

29. Johnson is inflicting upon the English people a similar degree of harm as Blair inflicted on the Afghani and Iraqi people 18 years ago, in 2002 and 2003 onwards, which is a continuation of the harms inflicted by Austerity in 2008 onwards, the support of violent overthrow of a legitimate Government in Libya in 2009, and an attempted overthrow of the legitimate government of Syria in 2011 and the continued Saudi war against Yemen.  All actions supported by the English Government. Abroad and at home,. they are causing harm to vulnerable citizens.

30. These are in effect Late Elizabethan Holocausts - where millions of lives have been shattered or adversely affected by wholly avoidable actions and policy choices made by UK Government policy. 

This cannot stand.

This cannot be allowed to continue.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Gavin Williamson, Teachers, Parents, Sanctions, Evidence, the WHO and Zero Community Transmission Strategy - Saving Lives Matters.


Education Secretary Gavin Williamson cites 'harms' for which he does present any reliable evidence, in order to argue for reopening schools before Easter, even as community transmission levels are above the levels they were on March 23rd 2020. 

The reason for this is simple enough. He knows exactly what harms his atrocious governance and policy has caused, and he cannot cite those harms without incriminating himself, as outlined in a recent National Audit Report. Once again we see the tactic of citing the harms caused by bad management of the epidemic to argue the case for worse management rather than best management - zerocovid.uk
Bylinetimes described it well :

“This report confirms what parents and teachers have known for a year: that a whole generation of children and young people have been let down by an Education Secretary who lurched from one crisis to the next, wreaking havoc on their lives,” Daisy Cooper, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Education, said.

“From the free school meal U-turns, the ‘A’ Level grading fiasco, the shamefully slow roll-out of laptops, the botched schools re-opening plans, and the failure to take decisive action on this year’s exams, Gavin Williamson is the worst Education Secretary in England in a generation. He’s made such a hash of it, it is quite frankly beyond comprehension that he’s still in post.”

Meanwhile, Meg Hillier, Labour chair of the Commons Public accounts Committee, said that, with no contingency plan, the Department for Education’s reaction was slower and less effective than it could have been.

“DfE’s failure to do its homework has come at the expense of children – and has hit those who were already disadvantaged the hardest,” she said. “DfE must now ensure its support is properly targeted to prevent the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers from widening even further.”

 Mr. Williamson claims that 'children are falling behind due to being out of school' even though we know that remote learning has been operating efficiently and for many, many primary schools and secondary schools it has been effective, given the circumstances.  he cites no numbers, no qualitative or quantitative survey data to prop up his case. 

"Although based on self-reported views, the findings from our YouGov survey show that three-fifths of the teachers responding were quite confident that they were providing a high-quality education through their school’s remote education solution when this was needed.


 In addition, just over half were confident their solution was sustainable for the future. On this basis, it is likely that a large proportion of schools in England providing a remote solution are doing well at mitigating the amount of learning loss that children experience"

source : https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/remote-education-research/remote-education-research

What we do know is that where there are difficulties it is most often due to a lack of resources and funding, localised poverty and deprivation. The Government promise to provide laptops to all families experiencing poverty never materialised,  as did the promise to provide free broadband to the poorest families to assist with remote learning.  The fact that £22 billion can be set aside as a budget for an inadequate contact tracing system and a testing system equally inadequate suggests Government inertia and disdain rather than technical difficulty as the underlying reasons for these failures to provide for remote learning.

The reason families in poverty are having difficulty with remote learning then is beyond mere attendance at school and this speaks to the Conservative Governments historical and generalised approach to the children of poorer families - they can do with minimal support, they can endure using foodbanks, they don't 'deserve' free school meals and as a demographic their parents are to be dehumanised in media as work-shy scroungers, and a burden on the tax payer - thus Williamson cites harms caused by Conservative policy which the Government has refused to address. Gaslighting again, Mr. Williamson!

We know most schools are open for vulnerable and at-risk children and for the children of key workers, all of whom are benefiting from smaller class sizes and the extra attention they gain as a result. Teachers are doing superb work in this regard. 

We also know that teaching staff are working flat out to provide remote tuition, and the vast majority of children and parents at home are succeeding in meeting the curriculum time tables. 
We know that teaching staff in schools are feeding, counselling, clothing and nurturing vulnerable children at every turn and doing a very fine job under very difficult circumstances not of their own making, when all other social services are hampered by the repeated shut down cycles. 

Parents are doing superbly, for the most part. For everyone these are indeed trying times, made more trying be the deliberate inadequacies of this Conservative and Unionist Government, behaving as an elective dictatorship.

It bears repeating - the evidenced harms the Education Minister does not cite in his gaslighting approach to the welfare of students, teachers and parents are many. These unmentioned harms are indeed caused by the proven bad management of the epidemic for which he and his Cabinet colleagues are wholly responsible and thus his current proposition is to argue for worse management rather than argue for better management of the epidemic.

He is not arguing for approaching a zero community transmission status. In fact he and his colleagues have dismissed any discussion of attempting to approach a zero community transmission status, in spite of advice and expertise from the global science, virology, epidemiology and public health community and World Health Organisation and partners. They dismissed zero covid in parliament because to discuss it is to reveal the central weakness in their stance since January 2020. They are not following science or evidence at all. Their position is ideological, seeking political gains, enhancing their powers over duty of care for the lives and well being of the citizens.

1. Gavin Williamson is demanding that all children return to schools, and that schools be run fully open. He is demanding that all remote tuition be ceased in order to coerce this move. He is demanding that Schools fine and penalise parents who refuse to bring their children to schools that we all know are unsafe. That is bullying. 

He is using the institutional power of the Office of Education Secretary to impose these conditions.

He claims the power to enforce attendance lies with Local Authorities and Heads, not with the Government, exploiting the sanction based legislation governing school rolls and attendance which government has imposed - which the government set aside during the shutdowns. Cake and eat it, he likes.

2. He is demanding they do this when community transmission is above the levels recorded in March 23rd 2020 when the first Lock-down was imposed, a lock down that was made necessary by the Governments failure to limit community transmission of the virus. That guarantees future spread. That is profoundly irresponsible and dangerous.

3. He is demanding that children, who are proven spreaders of the virus, (through no fault of their own) be exposed to the virus, which will carry the virus to their families, to teachers and to other students, some of whom will develop symptoms, 20% of whom will be asymptomatic and thus unaware of their status as transmitters of the virus. This is assured to lead to surges within 4 to six weeks, with the attendant illnesses, fatalities and another shut down to prevent uncontrolled transmission surging through the affected communities..

4. He is claiming a majority of children are falling behind, but he cannot cite the evidence to support that claim as it incriminates him and his policies this past year. Thus he is misleading in public to push a bad policy.

5. Mike Ryan in the WHO Live Q&A broadcast on March 3rd was unequivocal that we must look to countries where the levels of community transmission are low, where they are on top of the virus, where deaths and illness are kept very low as exemplars of the correct strategy in managing and suppressing the virus and bringing local epidemics and the global pandemic under control.

6. Boris Johnson  and his entire Cabinet are deliberately ignoring the evidence. They are individually and collectively responsible for the excess fatalities and all other costs that their policy choices have caused.

7. Is it not the case that in order to protect children, adults, elders and the vulnerable, the NHS frontline workers and ancillary staff and shop staff and all others that we therefore need to stop this government from implementing it's current inhumane policy which is causing so much harm?

8. Is it not the case that we need to bring in a government of national unity to implement an efficient, humane zero community transmission policy so that we can end these cycles of shutdown, open up, shutdown, open up and bring our economy and social system back to a more balance state as Vietnam and New Zealand and the Governments of 1.8 billion people across East Asia have ably demonstrated this past 12 months?

9. The coercion being deployed against parents, students is carefully laid out by a barrister, Mark McDonald. This is a hugely important matter. The stress imposed upon hundreds of thousands of parents is one thing. The combination of existing legislated school registration sanction regimes with Government intransigence is really unjust. Using those sanction regimes to coerce parents whose genuine wish is to protect their children and relatives, especially CV and CEV cases is inhumane.

There are examples of clear cut cases of bullying tactics being deployed against genuinely concerned parents.






Kindest regards

Corneilius

 "Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
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COVID-19 : Opinion is lethal, Evidence saves lives.



The World Health Organisation and many other eminent expert bodies are saying that the COVID19 Pandemic is still a long way from being dealt with, 15 months on from the first proven cases of the disease.

Estimates vary depending on who is presenting a narrative and where they are presenting from.

People in New Zealand and Australia are more confident of an end to the pandemic than people in USA, Germany or UK. People across East Asia are confident they will remain with low fatalities, yet are not so confident the pandemic will cease in the West and other places where zero community transmission is not chosen as a strategy, anytime soon. This chart lays out in bleak lines the background to the variance of opinion. It is of course incomplete, and does not reflect the full scope of the situation. It is indicative. 

More cases is always the result of increased transmission, lower cases is always the result of lowered transmission. It is that simple.


source for this graphic : zerocovid.uk

Right now, as I am typing, zero community transmission strategies are protecting the lives and economies of 1.8 billion people across East Asia and Oceania. In these countries deaths from COVID-19 have been kept to a minimum. In these countries they have not been subjected to repeated National level shutdowns.  In these countries the people's economies are robust and thriving, given the global circumstances. These are the effects of zero community transmission strategies.

Granted international tourism is shut down. International passenger travel is shut down.  Some people's livelihoods in  tourism are adversely impacted, and they are mostly getting support from their governments to get through the pandemic.

Across East Asia and Oceania children are attending school, young adults are attending universities,  the bars and restaurants are open,  local tourism is open,  shopping malls are open. Weddings, funerals and wakes are happening. Life goes on, pretty much as 'normal'.

1.8 billion people.

Protected by an evidence led set of strategies, without the utility of a vaccine.

People still wear masks. People living in East Asia and New Zealand are aware that any outbreak that occurs must be suppressed, and they are well are informed and fully engaged thus when outbreaks do emerge, they and their Governments, local and national, take the appropriate action and suppress the transmission until all cases are traced, all contacts quarantined, the ill are given best possible treatment and all of this is carried out until the virus dies out due to finding no new hosts.

Zero Community Transmission not complicated, it is complex, it is expensive yet cheaper than high fatalities, high long covid rates and repeated economic shocks - it is epidemiology and public health practice at its best, and it is not an extreme set of actions and behaviours, it is mostly a matter of common and collective caring. 

It is not rocket science.

Right now, in the USA and UK and EU and Brazil, a different set of strategies are being deployed and these strategies and policies have caused millions of avoidable horrific deaths, millions of avoidable long term chronic disease cases (1 in 10 of all disease level infections), vast economic harms all of which have disproportionally impacted and afflicted the low income, the poor, the destitute, the chronically unwell and the vulnerable and disabled cohorts of their populations.

Evidence ignored, opinion and belief promoted, every single wheel re-invented turned out to be square, appalling death tolls, long term sequalae for hundreds of thousands of people, vast economic harms.

These slow spread herd immunity strategies are causing immense psychological and emotional harm to hundreds of millions of people through badly managed lockdowns, followed by openings, surges of transmission  and yet more lockdowns, with no end in sight and barely 20% of the UK population  (where I live) exposed to the virus, as these governments push their populations towards a mythical herd immunity in order to 'protect the economy'. It's utter nonsense to claim they are protecting their economies with these strategies.

These strategies have cause wholly avoidable economic damage - from small businesses to self employed, from the live entertainment industry to international tourism we see millions of job losses, businesses going to the wall, entire industries failing.

Here, in the UK where I live, rocket science is nowhere to be seen, and neither is common sense epidemiology. 

There is a pattern where those in power and others online cite the harms caused by bad management to argue for worse management rather than better management as in epidemiologically sound, proven and reliable zero community transmission strategies.

Behavioural Science, Data Modelling and Economics.

Government Scientists and Advisor cite behavioural science and data modelling as the source of their policy strategies. They do not cite epidemiology, they do not cite virology and they do not cite best practice public health.  The UK Government have claimed all along that they are protecting the British Economy, that "having a strong economy is the best way to ensure a strong National Health Service".

They are failing even in that simplistic task.

Here where I live we have seen multiple waves, shutdowns followed by opening up while community is active, followed by shutdowns as hospitals are over whelmed, and the death toll rises. Cycles of death and harm, all totally avoidable. Yes, the NHS has managed to deal with being pushed to it's limits again, but at the cost of the general service that it provides. Meanwhile American insurance firms buy up local health providers paving the road of insurance schemers 'good intentions'.

Each and every death by covid19 is a horrific, tortured death. 140,000 and rising horrible, painful and very stressed lonely deaths. 

Long Covid is estimated to affect 1 in ten of disease level cases. 

Asymptomatic cases account for 20% of infections, and these people spread the infection without knowing they are doing so. 

There is, within the UK, no effective localised contact trace system.

There is, within the UK,  no effective, localised quarantine support system.

There is, within the UK,  no effective, localised isolation treatment system.

Some people are being paid to not go to work, others must work and be exposed to risks because they are 'key workers' - shop staff, services staff, police, fire brigade, ambulance, sanitation staff, meat processing staff, Amazon staff, factory workers and builders, and many others.

And there are others who are forced to work because the economic support systems are inadequate for low wage earners - people who are low earners who become symptomatic choose to work because the support for quarantine is inadequate, slow and cumbersome. Food banks are feeding hundreds of thousands of families. The charities and their workers are forced to take risks.

This week, 8th March, 2021, we see the UK Government coercing students, parents and teachers to return to fully open schools whilst community transmission is at levels above 23rd March 2020 when the first shutdown was imposed. 

A year later we see no shift to an evidence based epidemiologically sound strategy. A year  later we see the continuation of policy options that are causing avoidable fatalities and long term harms to the people of the UK and to our economies.

The evidence of the lived experience in the UK is that the policies of the UK Government are causing vast harms, and when compared to countries following zero community transmission strategies, the variation in policy and outcome is clear.

In simple terms the difference is between opinion and evidence.

Opinion is lethal, evidence saves lives. 

Opinion, belief and ideology is lethal, honesty and evidence saves lives.

Gavin Williamsons opinion is that schools are safe for full attendance re-opening. Williamson cites a .002% case rate among students during the September re-opening period. Sounds like a small figure. .002% of 8.9 million students is 17,800+ cases. That is not a small number. Factor in the inadequacies of a centralised contact tracing system that has failed on almost every metric then we have a situation where were do not know how many infections are linked to those cases, what their index cases were, where the virus was transmitted... Gavin Williamson is playing tricks with numbers to push a deliberately egregious policy. 

A recent study on school safety makes this clear. 

"On Feb 22, 2021, the UK Government announced that schools in England would fully reopen on March 8, 2021. 

While returning to school as soon as possible is imperative for the education, social development, and mental and physical welfare of children, not enough has been done to make schools safer for students and staff.
 

Without additional mitigations, increases in transmission are likely, this time with more infectious and possibly more virulent variants, resulting in further lockdowns, school closures, and absenteeism. Even when schools were supposed to be fully open, at points of high community transmission, 22% of secondary school children were not attending due to self-isolation.
 

In some areas, attendance was as low as 61%.
Arguments that schools do not contribute to community transmission and that the overall risk to children from COVID-19 is very small have meant that mitigations in schools have received low priority. Yet the evidence cited for these arguments has serious limitations.
,  
 
Primary and secondary school closures have been associated with substantial reductions over time in the effective reproduction number (Rt) across many countries (including England) and time periods.
,  
 
In contrast, data from the Office for National Statistics' (ONS) 2020 COVID-19 Infection Survey show that the prevalence of infection among children aged 2–10 years (2%) and 11–16 years (3%) rose above the prevalence for all other age groups before the 2020 Christmas break (appendix p 4). 
Both modelling and real-world data in preprint showing rising cases in regions where the SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 variant was prevalent during the lockdown in November, 2020 (when schools were open),
,  
 suggest that opening all schools now without robust mitigatory measures in place will probably lead to Rt rising above 1 in almost all scenarios. Modelling data by the University of Warwick and Imperial College London
 suggest that at least 30 000 more deaths from COVID-19 are estimated under the proposed reopening scenarios. 
Throughout February, 2021,
 despite fewer students being in school at this time, teaching staff were at higher risk of infection. Recent school outbreaks in northern Italy, where the B.1.1.7 variant is prevalent, are also concerning."

The study goes on to outline a series of mitigation steps to suppress transmission within the school community.

None of which is currently provided as logistical support or funded by central government at this time. 

A former OSTED chief urged teachers to put their lives on the line, for the future of the children they are teaching.

I saw the interview and to my mind he was impatient and dismissive rather than attentive to the needs of the teachers and the students. He was not calmly presenting evidence. 



Mary Bousted, of the NEU, corrected his assertion that schools were not functioning, which was a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts - she pointed out that teachers are in already in schools teaching key workers children and vulnerable children, and are helping children in a variety of ways to make up for the fall off in social services provision, as well as running remote online tuition.

Ideology, belief and opinion are lethal, honesty and evidence saves lives.

More from the study...

"Although COVID-19 is unlikely to cause severe disease in children, estimates of the prevalence of long COVID symptoms based on the ONS Infection Survey suggest that 13% of children aged 2–10 year and 15% of those aged 12–16 years have at least one persistent symptom 5 weeks after testing positive.

Given uncertainty around the long-term health effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection, it would be unwise to let the virus circulate in children, with consequent risk to their families. Reopening fully in the setting of high community transmission without appropriate safeguards risks depriving many children of education and social interaction again, worsening existing inequalities.

By contributing to high community transmission, it also provides fertile ground for virus evolution and new variants."

What kind of person demands that children take these risks? The same kind who launched a war against a country based on a careful set of obvious lies, claiming that they are bringing Democracy to an oppressed people? That went well.... not!

Ideology, belief and opinion are lethal, honesty and evidence saves lives

This country really needs a Union of Teachers, Parents and Students who are studying the evidence, who are learning about the evidence base for zero community transmission strategies, because it directly affects their lives now and into the future to confront this situation and to support the NHS by confronting MPs, local councils, local media, national media and any other arena's of influence with the evidence.
We cannot leave that study to the News Media or The Government. They are deliberate in their failure to present accurate and timely evidence since last December 2019.

We need the 8.9 million school children, the 2.38 million university students to be studying the evidence that exists on zero community transmission strategies. We need their parents to be on board, as learners in this.

We cannot trust the UK Government to be honest, so we must be the voices of honesty within the UK.

We need this cohort to engage with NHS staff and with other representing organisations to co-ordinate a push back at every level of society, aware that the Government and Media will not support this push back and will actively resist the most honest, evidence based analysis.

If I have repeated myself, and I have, it is only because the frustration of seeing what is possible being deliberately ignored by so many for such little purpose with so much harm attendant that I persist.

Not yet blue in the face, not yet breathless, I will continue to posit zero community transmission strategy until it is in place. It is the only strategy that makes humane sense.


Kindest regards

Corneilius


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