“How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century.” Aneurin Bevan
Where we are right now, in the UK.. just the raw truth! Watch this, then read on.
🧵This is a very important video about the pandemic. Dr. Richard Horton is Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet , a United Kingdom–based medical journal. He's an honorary professor at the London School of Tropical Med, Univ. College London & University of Oslo pic.twitter.com/AClabFsAeP
— Cleavon MD 💉 (@Cleavon_MD) July 17, 2021
When they do comment, why do they appear to deliberately portray these strategies inaccurately and describe them as meaning eradication or Zero Covid, and thus dismiss what is already being done, what is proven to prevent the harms associated with mitigation and 'living with the virus' as 'impossible' or a 'fantasy'?
New Zealand is looking like it's suppressing and eliminating Delta - they are cautiously optimistic. They reveal the efficacy of a caring government, a caring population working together to stop community transmission even as Morrison of Australia, the Murdoch press beloved, tries to denigrate their efforts.
As Elimination Strategy functions to leap into action whenever a cluster emerges, usually due to an imported variant, invariably a variant that emerged in the reckless countries, the pundits of USUK et al are quick to crow about how ineffective elimination strategy is, falling silent when the clusters are controlled, and the community transmission is stopped.
1.8 billion people, c.23% of global population being protected by elimination of community transmission strategies across such a wide variety of economies and cultures is a huge evidence base.
Freedom and being realistic
Fatalism is understandable
IndependentSAGE is also on youtube, they broadcast a live briefing every Friday afternoon looking at the data, trends and issues, with a Q&A session for press and the public. They are a team of eminent and respected scientists in all the various fields that are affected by Covid, and they are firmly for elimination strategy, rather than 'living with the virus' or 'herd immunity'.
IndependentSAGE have produced an informative timeline comparison which lays out the Scientific, Epidemiological and Public Health advice offered to English Government and compares it to the actual policy carried out by the English Government.
The situation in England is now that there are close to 25k new PCR confirmed cases daily, going by Government statistics. ZOE records c. 55k new cases. Current estimates suggest that around 10% of positive cases are likely to contract Long Covid. We don't know how many asymptomatic cases that have not been tested are out and about in the community, people who are probably unaware of their status as potential vectors of infection. The existing test and trace systems are inadequate to the task assigned them.
Daily hospitalisations are currently running at around 750 in England.
Death by Covid is Horrific
Is there a substantive pay rise in recognition of the extra burden NHS staff are bearing? Is there funding for extra staff to ease the work load of burned out medical staffers? No way. Not with this English government populated by those wealthy enough to take £40,000 holidays, add swimming pools to luxury homes during the summer break, spend hundreds of thousands refurbishing the prime ministers flat as they withdraw £20 'uplift pandemic support' per week from people receiving Universal Credit, which supports as many low paid workers as unemployed people, a benefit employers take profitable delight in.
And what of our Schools, as they reopen this Friday, and are predicted to become super spreader events, with our children exploited as vectors of spread to attain herd immunity, intentionally so?
Must we accept that future for them?
As a culture, Climate Change, Environmental Degradation, War, Poverty are all Externalised Costs which our children must bear the brunt of, they will pay the price.
This then is the question of our era, in a dark metaphor.
"Have we spent our lives filling our children's shoes with shit, before telling them to go for a long walk?"
Corneilius
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."