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

Letter : Zero Community Transmission is a practical, pragmatic strategy that is protecting 1.8 billion people and their economies.



Dear Editor

There are Governments, lobbyists and others who are citing harms caused by bad management of the epidemic locally, and of the pandemic globally, to argue for opening up whilst community transmission is still very much active, which amounts to worse management, rather than arguing for best management that achieves zero community transmission.

Zero Community Transmission was dismissed as and 'not credible' by the English PM, and 'impractical' in the UK Parliament this week

This is untrue - Zero Community Transmission is protecting the health and welfare and the economies of 1.8 billion people across East Asia and Oceania. They are pragmatic States.

Zero Community Transmission is a series of practical, common sense measures that are not by any measure extreme, and which avoid repetitive cycles of open and shutdown, as well as reducing the possibility of variants emerging from within virus laden communities.

I, and many others, would appreciate it if you could publish this letter to correct this misinformation coming from the UK Government, and others.

Yours sincerely

Corneilius Crowley

Please withhold my address and phone number from publication.


Exploiting the Harms caused by bad management to argue for worse management, rather than for better management aka zerocovid

Some misanthropic governments, malign lobby groups and misinformed citizens are using the harms caused by deliberately bad management to argue for worse management rather than for better management  and this is lethal. It is venal avarice exhibited those who should behave better, given the duty of care inherent in the position of power they occupy. An old story, perhaps, corrupt Governments imposing malign policy upon entire peoples under the guise of help yet does it have to be this way?




#BodgJoh #BodgeJohnson

Associating the success (and by extension, failure) of a public health response with an appeal to an exceptional national character can be dangerous. It can make learning from others less likely, and make changing course, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, a painful – perhaps impossible – process.

source: 
https://theconversation.com/sweden-and-japan-are-paying-the-price-for-covid-exceptionalism-151974

Ordinary people who are using the harms caused by deliberately bad management to argue for worse management rather than better management are misinformed, some are mislead and there are others, a minority who are content to remain wilfully ignorant.

1.8 billion people and their economies are being protected by zero community transmission strategies, and have been for over a year.

The news media, the government and their sponsors and blinded supporters and the 'freedom' mob (who pretend to themselves they oppose the Governments bad policy) are all refusing to follow the Science,  and what they are doing is arguing for worse management, whilst deliberately ignoring the evidence, the science and the lived experience of 1.8 billion people?

1.8 billion people in China, Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Finland, Norway and a bunch of other countries following the science and the best public health practice is a huge evidence base.

Zero community transmission is a series of  mostly fairly straightforward policies, they are not extreme actions, they are common sense, science led actions that suppress a virus in a community and then maintain a situation where community transmission is not allowed to erupt.

The key elements of best public health outbreak management in no particular order include:

1. generalised mask wearing,
2. general attention to hand hygiene,
3. physical distancing where necessary,
4. localised person to person contact tracing,
5. fullest support to anyone who has been in contact with a known case to quarantine,
6. testing for presence of the virus and for antibodies on a community level around outbreaks,
7. fullest support for treatment of symptoms in isolation, away from the community,
8, Fever clinics to protect general hospital systems.
9. tightly quarantined borders,
10. full support for all workers if and when they need to isolate,
11. clear  timely information available on outbreak status to citizens in their locality,
12. clear and consistently science grounded communications from Government and Health Authorities 32. and an absence of profiteering - meaning the profit is the outcome for the whole community or population.

In essence chasing down the virus as a behavioural dynamic supported by national and local governance and health systems.

This is what Governments and 1.8 billion people are doing across East Asia and Oceania and it is working.

These actions are all being done without a vaccine - it's great that a number of vaccines have been developed and are helping, yet they are not the solution to a virus that mutates in order to over come barriers placed in it's way.

The solution is to stop the transmission of the virus. A virus that does not meet human host dies. Slowing transmission down is not that. Stopping transmission achieves that goal.

How could people I personally know ally with the UK Ruling Faction and ignore that evidence?

How could people I personally know appeal for opening up without the better management?

What kind of myopia is that?

New Zealand, Vietnam and Taiwan and UK had the same Science and Evidence on February 2020 - NZ, Vietnam and Taiwan chose to follow the science, closely.




UK decided to ignore the Science.

The different outcomes are VERY clear.

www.zerocovid.uk for more information on what zero community transmission science is.

I argued for zero community transmission back in March 2020 and again in April 2020, without understanding the role that slow spread and variants were going to play - now we know more about variants and the fact that they are part of the same problematic behavioural dynamic.

The longer the virus has to play within any given population the more likely it will generate variants that survive what ever we throw at it. Especially within countries that have medically advanced treatment for AIDS and other immune disease states, where the virus can live within a human body for months on end.

"These questions are especially important at a time when environmental pressures, such as expanding herd immunity, vaccine-induced immunity, antiviral therapies, and public health intervention strategies, may — through selective pressure — promote virus survival and escape."

Source : 
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMcibr2032888


Has any heard of the Vietnamese or New Zealand Variants?

Exactly!

Kindest regards 

Corneilius 

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

Letter to the Editor : Zero Community Transmission - a plea for logic, evidence and humanity

 

 

To the Editor

Everything we are seeing suggests, yet again, that the only viable strategy is zero community transmission. If the virus cannot meet a new host it cannot learn new tricks, and it dies out. Simple enough. 

Complex to organise, yes. But not complicated. Prevents death and long term chronic disease? Yes! Reduces variants? Yes!

Expensive? Yes. (ish) Cheaper than cycles of open/lockdown? Yes! Worth it? Yes! Safe? Yes!

Compare the outcomes for New Zealand, Vietnam, South Korea  with those of UK, USA, Brazil, France or Germany.

Stopping the Spread is Spreading the Love.

Can we please unite behind a workable zero community transmission strategy, now that the evidence is tragically and so shockingly clear?

Yours Sincerely,

Corneilius Crowley


Please withhold my address and phone number.

Published here

Ps. for my readers:

Survivors Bias is worth looking into, as a fundamental logical fallacy


"Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to some false conclusions in several different ways. It is a form of selection bias."

This is something I have suffered from throughout my life - it leads to assuming personal traits where the outcome was actually a matter of luck, and little else.

The survivorship bias is uttterly toxic to this situation, (SARSCOV2 spread and COVID19 Disease) and is the basis os most of the ConTheory narrative - it is also the basis for assesments of the British Empire as a 'good thing all things considered' aming other things. Discounting the lived experience of those who do not survive, (death by covid19 is terrifying, painful and often lonely) and those who survive and who are traumatised, or exposed to lives of chronic illness thereafter must be opposed at every turn. To mask or diminish the reality and meaning, the qualitative data of those lived experiences is simply unacceptable behaviour.

Re-opening whilst community transmission persists guarantees future lockdowns, more avoidable deaths, more variants, more harm


The question is simple - the economic costs of zero community transmission strategy and quarantine borders 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.


 a stark  and accurate depiction of the social material reality

Re-opening while we still have not fully suppressed community transmission of this virus guarantees that there will be more adverse lockdowns, more avoidable deaths,  more economic and psychological harm caused to the people - a harm that will not impact the comfortable middle class, the millionaires, multi-millionaires and billionaires as much as it will harm the people who live on low income, no income, the elderly, the disabled, the millions of people with long term chronic disease conditions and all those low paid workers who work providing 'essential services', who cannot be allowed to 'work from home'....

The push for 'exit strategy' and 'exit dates' is epidemiological nonsense, it is economically incoherent blather, it is socially and materially toxic.

Full suppression of community transmission, supported by intensely effective cluster control is the only viable option that meets the full duty of care of Government to the people. That is not set by date, but by results and results alone.

Here's three articles exploring this theme. 

https://bylinetimes.com/2021/01/25/how-uk-can-fix-pandemic-suppress-vaccinate-eliminate/

"The virus has few options for survival in the world. It cannot last long on surfaces or in the air, the vast majority of human hosts will successfully kill off the virus within two to three weeks of infection and a small minority will die with it.


The Pattern is clear - we must break it.

Either way, the virus has a very small window to reach a new host or perish. No new human hosts means no more virus. This is why elimination is not only biologically possible, but has already been achieved in many countries around the world.

We must suppress the virus as the population is immunised. As vaccination occurs, lockdown measures become more effective, and the rate of transmission (the ‘R’) falls further still. And as we come into the spring and summer, we gain the additional advantages of better weather, better ventilation and easier outdoor gatherings."

and

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/04/eradication-argument-for-eradication.html

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

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

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

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


and

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/04/eradicating-virus-protecting-herd-or.html

"By slowing down rather than stopping the spread of infection the UK government are guaranteeing that the bulk of the population will become infected and the mortality rate for vulnerable people will stay the same, it will just happen more slowly.

The 'shut-down' policy was sold as an attempt to ensure NHS and other health services do not collapse under a 'short term' burden.  They ordered the isolation of all elderly people and known cases of immune compromised chronic conditions, without any provision to protect them from the spread.

That theory was destroyed by the lack of PPE, shortages of trained staff, lack of other supplies, kit and logistical support which the Government was warned about, in detail, from Operation Cygnus in 2016 and throughout January 2020. All deliberate choices by this Government and it's predecessors.

The UK Government had time to prepare, they had the time to stop and check and quarantine the inflow of infected people from abroad,  via air travel and cruises, and land be they immigrants, returning holiday makers or business travellers.

Merely slowing down the spread of infection is exactly what the Chinese, Korean, Singaporean  and Taiwanese Governments did NOT contemplate - they went for eradication - find every case, quarantine all contacts, treat everyone who is symptomatic in isolation hospitals, maintain vigilance, deal with outbreaks rapidly until no new cases emerge after two months."


Whatever it takes, we must not allow a repeat of the re-open while community transmission is ongoing leading to inevitable exponential spread and further lockdowns to happen. Again.

Each lockdown is an admission of failure to act correctly to suppress the virus within the community.

http://zerocovid.uk/2021/01/13/uk-government-sinks-to-new-low-on-covid/ 

"Matt Hancock says that a Zero Covid strategy is not feasible for the UK.  Priti Patel, with the collusion of the mass media, blames the public recalcitrance for the unfolding catastrophe.  These are the twin strands of a state narrative that is preparing us for the next wave in its strategy, which will plumb new depths of callousness: fully opening up the economy once the most vulnerable are vaccinated, and allowing the virus to rip unimpeded through the rest of the population.

Dangerous

This strategy is highly dangerous for two reasons: allowing the virus to spread without hindrance increases the risk of further mutations, one of which might well be resistant to the vaccines, and it exposes tens of millions of people to potential long term health risks that are still not fully understood.

Hancock is wrong to dismiss the possibility of eliminating this virus.  New Zealand has now lifted all restrictions, having achieved zero transmission.  Vietnam, with a population of 90 million, and Taiwan, with a population density higher than that of the UK, have all successfully pursued elimination strategies.   If it can be done there, it can be done everywhere."

and

The government’s mantra on Covid-19 should be: “Get it down, keep it down, and keep it out”, writes Professor Gabriel Scally in The Guardian.

“There can be no such thing as a partial quarantine. Either it is comprehensive and effective, or it will fail. A differential approach based on country of origin is undermined by the difficulty of accurately ascertaining where arrivals have come from.”

Every country has a duty of care to every other country during a pandemic to neither export or import the infectious virus. UK Government, specifically the Westminster Ruling Faction,  has deliberately failed that duty of care. Deliberately. Not an accident, not incompetence.

Vaccines and Variants and the costs of deliberate slow spread policy..

Vaccines have been oversold as the pandemic exit strategy. This is a point I have made a number of times. The rush to Vaccine is in part an admission of the failure to adopt a zero community transmission strategy. It offers hope where ZCT offers a degree of certainty. Hope, in this case, kills.

The Financial Times published this piece, and it is a relief to see it.

https://www.ft.com/content/17c44c96-39f2-4ada-badd-d65815b0a521

"If regions with raging transmission do act as breeding grounds for resistant variants, then failing to control spread will prolong the pandemic. Prof de Oliveira stresses that Taiwan, China, Australia and New Zealand, which have chased elimination, are the role models to follow. “This should be a wake-up call for all of us to control transmission, not just in our own regions but globally. This virus will keep outsmarting us if we don’t take it very seriously,” he says.

That means not just vaccinating but fast testing, accurate and quick contact tracing, quarantine and isolation. In short, vaccination must go hand-in-hand with virus suppression, not become a substitute for it. A successful vaccine rollout will count for little if the country then becomes a crucible for resistant variants"

The Kent Variant tells us something about tourism, international travel the need for effective, tight quarantine and the need to reduce the amount of people who become exposed to the virus - every new case is a possibility of the virus making new adaptations that we really do not need to be seeing.

Update February 13th - a very useful twitter thread written by Deepti Gurdasani, 
Senior Lecturer, Queen Mary University London in epidemiology, statistical genetics, machine learning, where she speaks about being invited undertake interviews and panel discussions with the BBC, LBC and others and finds that not only is she effectively censored, the subject of zero community transmission is being deliberately omitted from all discussions on the COVID19 crisis (catastrophe). In the thread she works through the full scope of the meaning of zero community transmission vs slow spread towards 'herd immunity' and outlines the evidence on either side of this 'debate'. It is worth reading it through. The question is simple - the economic costs of zero community transmission strategy and quarantine borders 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.





Kindest regards

Corneilius

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




Zero Community Transmission - a better way forwards.

I have been promoting the Zero Community Transmission strategy since I caught ill in early March 2020. From the very start. 

Why?

Because it works.

Because it was clear, from my extensive reading, listening to proven expertise, that New Zealand looked at what had happened in China and the East Asian States, and took that lived experience, clinical experience and social experience and they learned from the errors the Chinese made, in Wuhan during the first month, and they learned from the successes of the Chinese. Humility and kindness.

The USUK on the other hand did not do that.

The results thus far are more than clear, unfortunately for all those harmed by the disease itself, and  for all those whose work and incomes have been undermined, and for the failures of bad policy that cannot be undone, yet which deserve redress. Hubris and arrogance.

Zero Community Transmission

So this is www.zerocovid.uk :




Instead of living alongside this deadly virus with repeated on-off lockdowns, there is an alternative: scientists call it the Zero Covid Strategy.

Many other countries have adopted the Zero Covid approach. Britain could too.

If we’d done this in the spring, by now we’d be living without the virus – visiting family and friends, travelling without fear, drinking and eating out, going to live events, just like people in New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and China.

The Independent SAGE committee of scientists has been arguing for a Zero Covid UK since the summer. This approach is also supported by the Hazards Campaign for workplace safety.

What is the Zero Covid Strategy? 

It means eliminating the spread of infection between people in the UK and putting in place measures to prevent or quickly staunch any further imported cases. Today that means four key steps:

  • A full UK-wide lockdown until new cases in the community have been reduced close to zero
  • An effective find, test, trace, isolate and support (FTTIS) system, run locally in the public sector, to quickly squash any further outbreaks
  • Covid screening, and where necessary quarantine, at all ports of entry to the UK
  • Guarantee the livelihood of everyone who loses money because of the pandemic

Independent SAGE and Zero Covid Strategy.

A better way to go - towards zero community transmission.

  • The prospect of many thousands of further deaths from COVID-19 over the next nine months is unacceptable
  • The UK government must propose and share with the public a strategic plan on how the pandemic is going to be managed in the next 12 months and of how the various measures against the pandemic fit together in an integrated plan.
  • Independent SAGE believes that this strategy should have as its prime objective the achievement of a Zero COVID Britain and Ireland
  • It will require the government in Whitehall to replace their failing NHS Test and Trace System with a fully-fledged and locally controlled system of Find, Test, Trace, Isolate, Support (FTTIS)
  • The Republic of Ireland, Scotland and Northern Ireland already have very few deaths and very small numbers of new positive cases. They have the virus under control and are well placed to achieve elimination of the virus
  • England and Wales will need to make the necessary efforts as soon as possible to achieve the same position
  • Achieving elimination would allow all social distancing measures to be lifted, schools to be fully open, the hospitality and entertainment industries to reopen fully, revitalisation of the economy and a sense of much needed normality for the population.
Following The Science - this links to their full report, a .pdf file

I have been writing about ZCT since the start. 

It IS the correct approach. We must start as soon as possible. It can be done.

Kindest regards 

Corneilius 

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

Belief vs Evidence, Nurture and Zero Community Transmission

I stopped writing about the USUK Governments approach to SARSCOV-2, and the disease COVID19, and I stopped writing about reaching for a zero transmission status as the basis of correct strategic approach, back in June. 

I felt had written everything that I felt that needed to said about the issue. The scale of dishonesty in Government, in Parliament, in News Media mirrors that found in ConTheory's funded by billionaires and others, and is a narrative so deeply embedded that it cannot be spoken too clearly in any area where ordinary people can regulate political and legislative and economic power.

"Shhhhh...! We're trying our best, in difficult circumstances!"

What? A series of contracts rushed out to 'friendly' private contractors, without an open bid process, quite often cutting out the pre-existing suppliers of what ever was being contracted, from PPE to Contact Tracing, from full body bag storage to Ventilator Machines (which are not as efficacious as CPAP) being reinvented by a Hoover Company. The PR folly of Nightingale Hospitals which were designed to house serious cases, with ventilators for every bed, a deliberate choice, instead of Fever Hospitals to feed symptomatic cases at the earliest stage, where they can be treated and monitored away from the community and away from General Hospitals.

"Fancang shelter hospitals were developed and used for the first time in China to tackle the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak. The term Fangang, which sounds similar to Noah's Ark in Chinese, was borrowed from military field hospitals,  but it refers to a novel concept: large, temporary hospitals built by converting public venues, such as stadiums and exhibition centres, into health-care facilities to isolate patients with mild to moderate symptoms of an infectious disease from their families and communities, while providing medical care, disease monitoring, food, shelter, and social activities."

Source : https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30744-3/fulltext?from=singlemessage

That choice coincided with the choice to return elderly patients from Hospitals where the virus was know to be present, without testing them, back to their care homes, to make space in Hospitals for what was expected to happen. Both choices increased likelihood of spread of the infection. I have written about this previously.

Many people were making big fees in all of this, others banking huge profits, for what appears to me to be getting in the way of the proven and known efficacious responses that were  need. 

New Zealand's government acted on the data, the evidence and the lived experience and lessons learned by the East Asian countries.

The UK Government had the same data, the same evidence, and outside of advisors who are in reality political appointments, Epidemiologists and Public Health expertise were shouting the alarm. The experts were  ignored, some Government appointed experts in SAGE touting 'Herd Immunity' as the final solution.

"The only way to stop this epidemic is indeed through achieving Herd Immunity." Professor John Edmunds.

source : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcmHsxz6y00

I could go on. We all need to log all of this, to know what is being done, and to find ways to reduce harms across the board, and not accept the false narrative set up of The Economy vs The Welfare of the People, as a dichotomy/

I don't like to think in terms of 'masses', demographics, nationalities or large group labels.

People are persons, human beings, each and every one is precious, unique, important.

I don't subscribe to terms of superior or inferior, primitive or civilised, or to terms that caricature whole groups of people. 

"All Women are......", or "Men are all alike..." are caricatures and they obliviate important meaningful detail. Indeed avoiding those human details is the curse of national policy protocols designed by ideologues. They assume an aggregate, and design policy on that basis, quite often with thought to the detail variations of each persons life and experience.

Life is way too detailed and personal for each of us, only to be blotted out by averaging, finding a mean, creating a label, imposing a caricature.

Detail matters,

Thus the Good Law Project looks at specifics, the detail. News Media tends to headline and sub-edit much of the available information.  One needs to check it oneself....

I had been quite feverish in my interest, having spent 5 weeks in bed, more or less, going through this strange 'flu'. I have not yet been tested so I cannot say 100% that those 5 weeks were due to COVID-19. It was certainly worse than any previous viral infection I have had. Being feverishly ill at that time focused my mind a bit,

Me, and COVID19, maybe.

I have to say that I was very worried, and that I was frightened when symptoms started taking hold. I knew very little about this. I had not been paying attention to what had been happening in China, East Asia etc, largely because I do not watch News.

I was also unaware of the 2001 SARS outbreak and containment. I think 9/11 pushed that off the front pages. Just as the Invasion of Iraq pushed awareness of MERS in 2003. Two previous outbreaks, which were successfully contained,  by breaking community transmission, using contact tracing, quarantine, isolation treatment, social support. A fact that most East Asians were well aware of.

Nobody I know  in London or anywhere else knew anything about either at the time I was falling ill.  It was my daughter who alerted me to the situation, in that I demonstrated the arrogance of my ignorance enough for her to comment on it. I realised I knew nothing about this SARSCOV2/COVID19

That there was already a history to this story became clearer over the next few weeks, as I learned more.

Give  me Fever!

Fever is part of the bodies natural anti-viral response, and I learned this from Dr. John Campbell, whose videos I found in late March. Vitamin C and D, fluids, rest, keeping warm, enduring headaches, aches, (avoiding Ibuprofen and others like it) confusion, weakened breathing, sweats in waves of intensity and hoping everything I was doing was helping my body deal with the infection. 

One of his videos suggested that learning from the experience, the errors and corrections of the  East Asian approach to the epidemic might be a good move. There's so much valuable detail in those errors and learnings that ought to be informing USUK collective action on this epidemic nationally and globally the pandemic.

All the while I was reading, sweating, coughing, studying, watching news reports, reading specialist blogs, looking to see what I could find out that was reliable evidenced nuanced descriptions of what was really happening. 

In mid March I read the WHO final report on Wuhan from February 23rd.

I read a lot more.

I even looked for and found a CoViD-19 anti-gen testing kit that one could buy online - the East Asians already had them before the European stage of Pandemic - and found one that could deliver a reading within 30 minutes, based on a pin prick blood sample. As to it's efficacy,  it is still available on the market. 

Learning refused. 

And yet the Western States decided to create their own new tools, from scratch, as local and national epidemics were emerging. Rather than hit the track running, they hit the track of infection control stumbling, and have continued to refuse to learn how to run in this particular challenge. That said, they have disbursed a lot of cash, tax payers cash, in failing to learn - or perhaps it is intentional, and Herd Immunity is the price of Hoard Immunity in the eyes of the Establishment,

This was mostly via private sector contracts with political supporters rather than National Health and University systems. I watched in horror as USUK ignored the experience of the East Asians in order.  It just did not make any sense. I could see what New Zealand and Vietnam, Taiwan and Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore and many others had done and were doing, and it was working.

My mind boggled when it was explained away by 'well they are compliant populations in authoritarian states'.... what? There's no way to reach that level of stupid, that internalised caricatured delusion. 

Then in April I was shown Johnson's February 3rd Speech in Greenwich where he says : 

""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.".

Really?

worried that others "go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage."

https://youtu.be/baWbWpOtJnc?t=536 - watch Johnson take off his suit, and his spectacles to emerge as Economic Superman!

On February 3rd?

And the result?

Medically irrational policies, one after the other. 

Policies that make no Epidemiological or Public Health sense at all.

"Empty the pubs at 10pm? "

Ludicrous! 

There is no scientific evidence to support that policy.

"Groups limited to 6 people at 6 feet distance, 1 metre if wearing masks."

"Masks are ineffective."

Masks slow down spread, reduce viral loads.

"Masks are an imposition upon our God given freedoms."

Lunacy on all sides.

Contact Tracing is is a core capability needed to track where the virus is, and to identify cases to be treated, contacts to be alerted, quarantined and underpinned with economic or financial support for people to stay indoors, until the community transmission drops to zero. It is not test dependent.

Testing enhances the precision of contact tracing, yet testing does not replace that basic task - with every identified case of illness, that cases contacts are reached and supported fully to enter a two week quarantine.

If, during that time, they develop symptoms, they are moved to a Fever Hospital for immediate treatments support, designed to prevent escalation of the disease, to provide support to all mild cases to recover, and then return to the community, more or less immune, feeling looked after. If they do not develop symptoms they return to the community, and the community adopts zero community transmission as their collective strategic approach, supported by the State. It's not complicated, it is complex, and it is a person to person job at the point where contacts are being met and supported....

China's Central State Government, Universities, Corporations and Military collectively ramped such a system system up within weeks, deploying 18,000 contact tracers,  in the middle of an uncontrolled infection transmission in a city of 11 million people. And it worked, even before testing was widely available.

We in the UK after 8 months have a bunch of privatised provisions with none of that efficacy, with a Tax Payer bill for £12 billion for the basic tools, which are not functional.

£12 billion of which a substantial portion has been gouged out as profit, fees, commissions and so forth, all of which add no social material value or efficiency to the privatised test and trace system.  Quite a few new millionaires have been created. Small, inactive companies with no previous experience are  afforded multi million pound PPE supply contracts. If a paper company with £130,000 assets gets a no bid contract for £108 million, someone has made a 10% cut on that deal. 

Other examples of grift abound  - Contact Trace Staff are paid basic wage, yet the company charges the government more than twice that amount. Meanwhile the workers are not so busy, and their systems are inefficient.

If those workers were integrated into local NHS and Council provision, with the funding to go with it.... that's more effective systems, more integrated systems, local knowledge and understanding, community cohesion, and thus better roll out, better outcomes for the community and no one needs to be making a vast profit..

Seeking power to make more profit makes everything complicated.

We are where we are.

As I have already told you, I starting back in end of March I read a lot, thought some more and wrote about this experience as it seemed to me then. My blog went from average 800 hits a month to 14,000 hits per month. And nothing changed. The irresponsible insanity continued. I realised that I am such a small teenie little being in all of this. Barely a ripple in the water, and with water this choppy what's a ripple worth - the ripple of an empty life jacket floating on the surface whilst the person who wore it sinks and drowns? My trade has disappeared. No more sound engineering, no more event hosting, no more live gigs, and when the 'economy was reopened' we had to host small events that never even broke even. The Music Industry is quiet on Zero Community Transmission. Who will help us?

Impotence 

I gave up on the writing about it all for a while. I decided to stop, to watch and to be - to protect myself, my state of mind, to avoid burn out or worse, I chose to relax as much as possible throughout the summer, outdoors as much as I could be, getting the sun shine, feeling the nurture of a fertile spring and summer in the vegetation. I let go in the hope that something would change, and in order to give me time to assimilate my newly re-discovered impotence.  I am tiny. Really feeling that right now. I have always been well aware of it.

We are, as individuals, impotent by comparison to the institutions of State. That is why collective organisation and action is so important. The emergence of workers organisations in the 19th Century is meaningful.

When the institutions of State fail to address the needs of the people, unless the people are united we cannot act in ways to correct the problem. 

It can be done.

It has been done

It is a process, an incomplete and imperfect work, that will require constant attention over generations.

https://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/01/how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-the-power-of-the-1-percent/

"....countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. 

They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.

Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. 

When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. 

Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. 

Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living."

It was not easy.

Strikes, deeper poverty, state violence, an economic depression, mortgage failures, unemployment.... over two decades of effort by the lower income sector until economics undermined the middle class too, and they participated in the shift, consciously.

Consciously. 

The Norwegian grass roots had the evidence, the lived experience and thus a fuller collective understanding of the specific issues confronting them. 

The material truth will set us free, always, whereas 'The Truth' as an ideological stance or religious belief is always a prison.

Belief as a weapon system.

Belief and custom are relative, what is true is universal. A table is a table, yet some make tables for sitting on the floor with, others for sitting at the table with chairs.

Invoking 'The Truth' is usually an attempt to avoid or negate the universally experienced by claiming an idealised specific is universal, and the lived experience ought then to conform to that, and where it does not, it must be corrected.

Belief in a God of Wrath, a Loving Bully, reflects a belief about the righteousness of Hierarchy and the justification of violence utilised to protect Hierarchy. Both God and Natural Hierarchy of Power are belief system concepts, and are made materially real by institutionalisation and by the people operating within those institutions who tend to assume the power of the institution is theirs, personally.

Internalised values, those values absorbed by being inducted into an institution - military training internalises the Military ethic into the infantry fighter and the officer alike. Obey orders, with commitment, protect your team mates, conquer the enemy.

Passive aggressive management and behavioural nudge non-science.

The deliberate mismanagement of their local epidemics by USUK Governments (their scapegoating, their misinformation and the public narrative gas lighting are all deeply, profoundly dishonest and they are using confusion as a shield, and that much at least is deliberate, as in deliberate avoidance of duty of care and responsibility)  and the scope and spread of viral ConTheory has  ensured that there are enough people who are misled, misinformed and vocal about it as to be able to 'report' and thus market the confusion of conTheory to make it look bigger than it really is, big enough to mask the deliberate mismanagement.

Passive aggressive management techniques include giving targets vague sets of instructions, which require them to take decisions the manager ought take responsibility for.

The passive aggressive manager neglects to provide full support to the targets, and thus sets the target up for taking the fall. If things go wrong, blame the actions of the target.

The passive aggressive manager is a politician seeking power.

Making mountains of mole hills.

In populations of many tens of millions a one day protest of 30,000 people is a minute event.   A small football stadium. Everyone there thought it was huge. It was not huge.

Put it on the News, and it's hit!

Even getting a million hits on an online video is no longer truly huge. A politician speaking at a conference is a small event. Put it on the news, it becomes something else. Reality and myth making. 

Put the conTheory protesters on the News to castigate or 'censor' them, and they look much, much bigger than they really are. Justin Beiber. Madonna. Fame mechanics. Making conTheory Famous Already. 

Cult Bands

A band with a following of 30,000 is a small cult band. But if I am one of the cult, I think we are bigger than we really are, and more special than we really are.

That is a key to the manipulative 'magic' of marketing, the Oz factor - magnifying any given subject by repetitive exposure and suitable props. Theatre.

I might occasionally read of a terrible crime, and then in a sudden news surge I hear of five such incidents in a day, for a week throughout the News cycle and even though I have no direct experience, nothing in my life or community that reflects that kind of criminality I am worried. 

My emotional state has been affected. Worry hormone cascades occur. If that surge persists, then what it triggers becomes my habituated state. It is also possible that I have unresolved trauma, and that some of my reactivity is embedded in that experience, my woundedness, my protectiveness.

And I don't really notice this is actually happening. I notice what the News media train me to notice, and I internalise it. Daily habituation. What I might not know is that there are hundreds of such crimes daily across a population as the average, and that average has dropped over the decades, and that the real risk of contact with such crimes is growing less and less with each passing day, that I am in real terms pretty safe. The Cult of Law and Order that Right Wing politicians deploy is rooted in the narrative that this is not so.

Fear of The Immigrant is a Xenophobic Cult Belief.

You do know that Capitalism is a cult, right?

Idealised beliefs opposing or denying any part of the whole of the evidence held by any group of people, that also includes othering those who do not subscribe to the same sets of idealised beliefs.

I was born into a cults and went through a number of cults throughout my childhood, teens and into my thirties. You were too, most likely. Cults are everywhere.

What I was doing was swapping one set of beliefs for another, like a download, without any integration or real understanding, and sad to say, it was only because that was going nowhere for me, I was not feeling any better about myself or my life that I asked myself "what was the point? "

Why swap one set of beliefs for another? Why belief?

On the positive side - and this is just a personal assessment, and in no way condones the practice - the variety of cults exposed me to many different ideas, practices, pragmatics, ways of seeing and thinking, ways of cooking and composting poop. On the negative side was the insistence on attaching to The Belief and The Mission - the two operate together. A sense of purpose. and yet the same psychological and emotional issues emerging, time and time again. No real growth. No wisdom. Nothing gets dome.

The Mission.

The Mission is to spread The Belief.

Believers know the value of their belief for everyone else! lol. The Believer feels more secure when more people share The Belief and when they can gather together, the social bond of The Shared Belief deepens. Thus they always want more people to join in The Belief.

Maintaining The Belief becomes a central activity - exposure to any evidence that undermines The Belief initiates fight or flight reactions because The Belief is internalised. Thus the mission becomes a personal matter, a question of identity. I am The Mission, I am The Belief. And therein lies the hook. As long as I remain on The Mission I must maintain The Belief. I must never look for and the real me.

If I maintain The Belief I must carry out The Mission. Even if I only convert one person over a life time, that would be considered a victory. If I question The Belief, then The Mission fails. If I question the tactics of The Mission, then The Belief is brought into question. And so forth. A bit like co-dependent 'intimate' relationships. 

These are all lessons I learned in the slow process of becoming consciously observant of myself....

The Mission is a fake. The Belief is a fake. The Work is a Fake. Civilisation as we know it is a fake. The Space Mission to fly to the stars is a fake. War is a fake.

Any policy other than Zero Community Transmission is fake.

The purpose of being alive, as far as I can tell, in biologically meaningful terms is to live well,

To live well is to behave in ways that nurture the habitat and the community.

It is to live with much loving attention across one's entire community, to care for the young and watch over them as they learn how to live, knowing they will learn everything they need, in good time. a healthy community understands that the children are to be trusted in this, and never forced. 


That is it. Thrive, and do not harm the children, your own or any others. In terms of physical fitness, emotional balance, psychological groundedness and general sociability, these are biological health benchmarks of the egalitarian human being.

With that in place, then the natural creativity of us humans expresses itself in a myriad of languages and cultures, practices and ways of living with very specific habitats, from Ice and Ocean, to Land and Forest. Diversity is our natural state, homogeneity is not our natural state - we vary because we are sensitive to the habitat and to one another. 
Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

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