Showing posts with label harm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label harm. Show all posts

A general strike : wishful thinking that we English would do what it takes to protect our children from harm.

This English Government failed to protect the the elders across the country who were living within care homes. There were over 530,000 tests carried out in the UK by 20 April 2020, yet this Government couldn’t test 25,000 people discharged from hospitals into care homes, after they had seen it spread rapidly through care homes in Italy, France and America.

“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

This was deliberate action taken, in spite of ample well evidenced warnings and advice. 

Now as we arrive at the end of summer, 2021, it's about all our children. 

School starts in a few days. This English Government has failed to make our primary and secondary schools Covid safe. Scotland's children are already in school, and Delta Variant Covid cases are rising rapidly. The same is guaranteed to happen here. Delta Variant is having a significant impact on children in America and in Israel, and elsewhere. Many parents are at their wits ends, really distressed by the current situation.


What will it take to get the adults of England to step up and protect the children of England from being forced into harms way?

Since February 2020 this English Government has refused to place effective quarantine restrictions on our borders, and knowingly allowed the virus to be seeded into and across the country on multiple occasions, citing 'free trade' rather than 'free movement' as the basis of their decision.

"Free trade is being choked and that is no fault of the people, that’s no fault of individual consumers, I am afraid it is the politicians who are failing to lead.

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."

There it is. We do not need, in this internet age, to travel during a pandemic. Tourism is lethal luxury. Business meetings can be conducted online, screen to screen. We can still buy and sell freely within and across tightly quarantined borders - goods can flow in spite of the global pandemic. Goods are not a vector of transmission - human beings are.

As it happens the primary block on the flow of goods within England is Brexit. Irony upon irony, as tourists carrying the virus travel freely and workers who could move goods are impeded.

This English Government refused to make resources available to enable find, test, trace, support and isolate as a local government and local Health Authority run system, designed to stop community transmission of the virus locally across England.

Instead this English Government deliberately outsourced the essential epidemic utilities of PPE supply, of testing and of contact tracing through private business contracts which were handed to crony's - to inexperienced people previously associated with the government, thus wasting precious time, wasting borrowed money and leading directly to avoidable fatalities, avoidable chronic disease and avoidable economic hardships as those losses of PPE impacted health care, the lack of test and trace lost track of viral transmission and as infected people continued to go to work, rather than isolate because there was no financial salary protection incentive in place for them to do so. All 100% predictable and avoidable. Deliberate action.

This English Government Failed to protect the UK Population. Deliberate action in spite of ample evidenced warnings and advice.

This English Government Failed to protect UK School Children. Deliberate action in spite of ample evidenced warnings and advice.

This English Government Failed to protect Afghani citizens who helped with the occupation and the utterly corrupt attempt at imposing Democratic Government upon Afghanistan. Deliberate action in spite of ample evidenced warnings and advice.

Defence minister Ben Wallace ignored a letter written three months ago by 45 retired senior officers requesting that urgent action be taken immediately to evacuate those Afghani who worked with the British Military and other staff over the past 20 years, before drawing down troop numbers.

Former Chief of the General Staff Lord Dannatt speaking on evacuation of Afghan interpreters: 

“Many of us have been pleading with the government in the last two or three years and more vociferously in the last month or two to get this aspect of it right, because our reputation will be trashed, our moral position compromised and in future conflicts people will be very wary about potentially coming to work with us.

When 45 senior military retired officers including many ex chief of defence staff write an open letter to the PM, Foreign Secretary, Home Sec, Defence Sec- [on interpreters] and it’s not really taken seriously then I think there’s a gap in who’s listening to whom in govt atm."

All deliberate actions - not incompetence, at least not the kind where they tried, honestly, and failed. And then took considered corrected action to address the failures. Nothing of the sort. Instead we are treated to gaslighting, scapegoating, blame avoidance, denial of responsibility - all deliberate action.

Keir Starmer has supported this Government all the way through. No ifs, no buts.
This English Government, the enfeebled Parliament, the supine opposition: the enemy within.

This English Government: the most consistent threat to the health and safety of the English people. Inaction on Climate Change, Environmental degradation, Air Pollution, Plastics, Processed Foods, COVID, Austerity and amongst all this, they are exporting weaponry for warfare in Yemen and elsewhere - all in pursuit of profits, as English billionaires increase their wealth and power and more and more English citizens come to rely upon 'uplifting' food banks. 

Treasury head Rishi Sunak installs luxuries in one of his homes during Parliament summer holidays, whilst planning to remove £20 'uplift' from Universal Credit payments to people in poverty. Foreign Secretary Raab on a £40,000 beach lounger as Afghanistan is allowed to fall into chaos. 

This English Government: a toxic, predatory network of institutionalised bullies, their institutions, their working class mercenaries and their middle class enablers.

Until we, the English people admit this, and for as long as we, the English people, deny this, it will continue. Nationalistic cant and flag waving in the face of this much harm causation is deeply, deeply anti-patriotic!

Rioting, appealing for change is all futile. Neither tactic has ever delivered the results the English people needed. Not once.

The best leverage we have is collective solidarity. 

The best tool we have is a general strike, specifically a rent/mortgage/school strike, citing two frameworks - the UN Convention on the Rights of The Child, and The Right to Health, to protect our children and citing Duty of Care, Malfeasance and Misconduct in Public Office to bring this English Government that is causing so much harm to heel.

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

A general strike : wishful thinking that we English would really do what it takes to protect our children from harm.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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What Climate and COVID19 tell us : we must work together, openly and honestly to prevent further harms.




To The Editor

What Climate Change, Air Pollution, Plastic Pollution and COVID19 tell us is this - they carry the same message - the only reliable way to protect our shared environment, all our people and our economies is to co-operate across all sectors, openly, honestly and transparently.

We must work with all the available reliably tested evidence before us to solve problems and develop healthier behaviours that repair the damage and prevent further harms.

The apparent short-term costs of taking corrective action fade into insignificance compared to the medium and long term costs of failing to do so, on every meaningful measure.

We must do what can be done, without fear or favour, for all our children's futures, and we must do it diligently, every day.

Yours Sincerely

Corneilius Crowley

London

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

Late Elizabethan Holocausts


How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political power to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.” ~ Aneurin Bevan
One way of understanding history is to seek out the stories of those most harmed by the attitudes, behaviour and actions of those who hold and exercise the most social material power. The lives of the most vulnerable are historically more meaningful in that they reveal so much about the attitudes of the powerful. It is often the case that those who exercise power in abusive ways seek to obscure, bury or otherwise silence the stories of those most harmed by that exercise. Judith Herman faced that in her work as a Trauma specialist, meeting men and women exposed to extreme violence in the 1960s onwards, ranging from domestic abuse to political terrorism. "
I argued then that the study of psychological trauma is an inherently political enterprise because it calls attention to the experience of oppressed people. 

I predicted that our field would continue to be beset by controversy, no matter how solid its empirical foundation, because the same historical forces that in the past have consigned major discoveries to oblivion continue to operate in the world. 

 I argued, finally, that only an ongoing connection with a global political movement for human rights could ultimately sustain our ability to speak about unspeakable things." ~ Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery
The narrative of historical celebrity is by definition and intent a serial hagiography.

Undue reverence to those who officiate the violent hierarchies rides roughshod over compassion, empathy and genuine concern for the lived experience - the lives of those who endure the worst outcomes of the decisions of the powerful who benefit most from the hierarchy systems are more footnote than headline.


Late Victorian Holocausts (follow the link)


Late Elizabethan Holocausts. (see below)


I want to make it very, very clear that I do not hold either of these Queens personally liable, culpable or responsible for any of the harms caused by the English Establishment during their tenures as Queen -as the Crown in person - they are persons trapped by birth and circumstance more than anything else. The accident of birth is as it is. This is in part about the Monarchy as a device exploited by the Establishment which dates back to The Restoration. 

Who are the culpable parties?

The Establishment are the Oligarchy. The descendants and inheritors of the Barons, The Merchants, the Colonists and the Industrialists. The Holders of the Assets of the Empire.

Since 1948, and the end of WWII, and the emergence of the Social Welfare State, the English Government has participated in a range of actions that have caused immense harm to entire populations, actions that were entirely avoidable and yet deliberately chosen. 

The Queen ascended to the Throne in the midst of all of this, on February 6th 1952.

Aden was abandoned in 1967. One could go back earlier in the historical record and include the Colonial abuses across Africa, India and elsewhere in the 19th Century. Apartheid in South Africa  from 1948 onwards was wholly supported by the English Establishment.  The brutal suppression of Mau Mau political activism in Kenya in the 1950s.

"Historian Mark Curtis, who estimates that the number of deaths in the post-war world for which Britain bears ‘significant responsibility’ is at around ten million (erring on the side of caution, as he stresses).

Taking into account such atrocities as the wars in Malaya (1948-1960) and Kenya (1952-1960),Indonesian atrocities (both during the 1965 coup and in East Timor from 1975), the Shah in Iran (1953-1979), the Falklands War (1982), support for US aggression in Central America (1980s),Apartheid in South Africa, other proxy wars in Africa, Military action in Sierra Leone, the bombing of Yugoslavia (1999) and Afghanistan (2001), and the invasion of Iraq (2003) not to mention the support for the Israeli conquest and occupation of Palestinian lands.

Of these ten million deaths, Britain has ‘direct responsibility’ for between four and six million:‘ Often, the policies responsible are unknown to the public and remain unresearched by journalists and academics’ (the friendly historian Dominic Sandbrook can still claim with a straight  face in 2010 that ‘Britain’s empire stands out as a beacon of tolerance, decency and the rule of law … Nor did Britain countenance anything like the dreadful tortures committed in French Algeria’).

Curtis adds in Unpeople that ‘humanitarian concerns do not figure at all in the rationale behind British foreign policy,’ and are occasionally evoked purely for ‘public-relations purposes.’"


source: https://www.academia.edu/11416901/Mau_Mau_The_Epic_Calm_of_State_Violence_in_Occupied_Kenya

Mark Curtis - Unpeople at the Authors website.

The Elizabethan Era - for whom the bells tolled.

Northern Ireland, 1968, where the oppression of civil rights marches degenerated into a faux Civil War in which the English State colluded with violent militia, that lasted for 30 years.

The destruction of the Trade Union movement, during the 1970s, and the offshoring of the bulk of English manufacturing jobs to gouge greater profits through production with cheap labour, which devastated communities in Wales, the midlands and the North, deliberately impoverishing millions of British citizens. Deprivation visited upon millions of English citizens by the English Establishment. 

The Thatcher Government provided ample support to Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War, 1980 - 1988. That support certainly prolonged that war. That support is implicated in the death toll of that war.

The Gulf War, in 1991 to repel the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (itself a miscalculation by the US Ally, Hussein) and the decade of bombing with Depleted Uranium munitions, in order to maintain a 'no fly zone', which when combined with the destruction of civil infrastructure and the embargo of foods and medicines imposed by the US and UK let to the early deaths of 500,000 children.

The Invasion of Afghanistan,  in 2002 and all that ensued - 157,000 violent deaths, more maimings, displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, more trauma and poverty.

The Invasion of Iraq, 2003 and all that followed as a consequence - 600,000 deaths, more maimings, displacement of millions of people, more trauma and poverty. This also increased terrorism across the Middle East, North Africa,  the EU and USA.

2006 was the year that the Labour Government introduced the Work Capability Assessment, presented as a way to 'help disabled people into work'. The assessment regime was imported from USA, where it had been designed by a Health Insurance Corporation to downgrade claims for Disability, in order to make more profits.  Disabled claimants subjected to that Corporation's regime had been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars by courts. Nonetheless, Labour proceeded to implement this atrocious system. 

"
The former DWP Chief Medical Officer, Mansel Aylward, moved from the DWP in 2005 to the then named UnumProvident Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research at Cardiff University, with funding by the American corporate giant who sponsored the new research centre with £1.6 million. 

Together with Gordon Waddell, Aylward produced discredited ‘policy based’ research4 in the 2005 DWP commissioned report: The Scientific and Conceptual Basis of Incapacity Benefits5 which supported the DWP’s planned course of action to demolish the welfare state.

DWP Ministers insisted that they were helping chronically sick and disabled people to take responsibility for their own financial future by searching for employment. In reality, various reforms to social welfare policies allowed preventable harm by the State to creep into disabled people’s lives. 

The flawed Waddell and Aylward biopsychosocial (BPS) model of assessment1 was used by the DWP to justify the use of the WCA, and the excessive use of sanctions against ESA claimants are known to cause identified preventable harm, including starvation, for those least able to protest."

This shift has caused untold harms ever since it was introduced. The UN made a series of reports that used UK data on how disabled people were being treated by UK Government, and called it a 'crime against humanity'.

Estimated excess deaths in the population of disabled people during 2010 - 2020 run to 150,000. During 2020/21 60% of all COVID related deaths were deaths of disabled people. The continuing harm of this policy is a stain upon the English democratic system of Government and is a holocaust of death, distress, fear and exploitation. still under way. The English Government shows no sign of changing course. The English population appear unwilling or unable to push against this, even as disability campaigners work over time. This is tragic.

Is it that the Queen, who we are told worked every day, right up to to her passing, is the example the Establishment sets out to mask this?

Support for illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine, where we know that 263,000 Palestinian people have been displaced has been a constant, in that support for the Israeli Government by the UK Government in social material terms and in the UN remains firm, and opposes almost every politician who draws attention to these criminal actions.

Support for Israeli War actions against Gaza, causing at least 6,000 deaths of civilians, men, women and children, where due to embargos and bombing of civil infrastructure, 1 million are forced to live abject poverty, a situation that the UN deems an act of collective punishment.

Austerity, 2010  which followed on from bailing out fraudulent mortgage selling and insurance practices which caused crashes in investment banking, for which no bankers were indicted. Austerity built on lies, which led to increased poverty across England, and the excess deaths of 150,000 disabled, vulnerable and low income people. The rich were given socialism, the poor were punished.

The destruction of Libya, 2011 - 2014, a functioning Civil state, reduced to rubble, which led to it being split and controlled by competing violent militia, where the rule of Law vanished and the rule of the wat lord still thrives.

The funding of violent militia in a proxy war against the Syrian State, 2011 - 2021 which has displaced millions, destroyed cities, towns and villages, caused immense trauma and poverty, where now food shortages exacerbated by trade sanctions are creating the possibility of famine, in the midst of a global pandemic.

The military and political support for the Saudi war against Yemen, 2015 - 2021, where 5 million people are facing famine, on top of all the associated harms of war. UK sells warplanes and munitions, and the ancillary staff to operate a fleet of aircraft to bomb peasants.

And in the last year: COVID19

The deliberate mismanagement of the covid19 epidemic locally,  200,000 deaths, 1,300,000 long covid cases, massive economic damage to working folks livelihoods, massive damage to small and medium businesses, tourism, live entertainment industries.

The policy that has exacerbated the pandemic globally, via the spread of variants that emerged within the UK and were spread due to keeping borders open, airports active, for non-essential travel and the rejection of early action by a prime minister, Boris Johnson, who styled himself as the Superman, the champion on Free Trade, in a speech given in Greenwich on February 3rd 2020.

These are all actions of the English Government that have caused millions of deaths, millions of people have been forced to flee, to be 'displaced', millions of people have been traumatised and these actions by the English Government have increased poverty and inequity across all nations afflicted.

At the same time, the English Establishment has increased it's global wealth and increased it's own power.

Late Elizabethan Holocausts.

I didn't mention Brexit, because, as of this moment it is not clear that it will cause death and mayhem at anything like the scale all these other actions have caused. But there is no doubt that it will. Brexit is, among other things, a move against collective effort and evidence based climate disruption policy to protect populations, build in resilience, shift from fossil fuel usage

People cry that the Conservatives are most foul. 

That is only partially true..  It's not just the Conservative and Unionist Party, the rot is much, much wider than that. Even within Labour there is a faction that opposes taking any meaningful action on the issues laid out above. Because they are culpable. Their war against Jeremy Corbyn laid bare the realities, and even still there are a sizable group of Labour voters who bought the lies, and are still, even as the Forde Report was released, holding firm to opposition to corrective action.

The English speaking global Oligarchy Establishment is dominant in all political parties in England, America, Australia and Canada - and they are a venal, brutish clan short on humanity, long on greed and focused always on fulfilling their desire for more power, and more wealth extraction and accumulation. 

Brexit was their operation to 'take back control' from a humanist Europe that is starting to regulate extractive industries, off shore banking, tax evasion, air and water pollution, environmental degradation and other abusive industrial practices that are the source of the wealth of the Global English speaking Establishment.

That is a large part of why Scotland is seeking independence.

Boris Johnson's veil slipped when he claimed yesterday that “The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed my friends.”

He is of course, totally wrong. The Vaccine success is entirely down to public funding, open and transparent sharing of information by research and academia, across borders, supported internationally as a medical necessity.

This resonates with his speech in Greenwich, February 3rd 2020 which I detail in a recent blog posting.

He posed himself as 'Superman' - he who will not flinch or panic, who will not undertake 'action that goes beyond what is medically rational' like others do, who will preserve open borders to facilitate trade. Except that was a deceit. Goods do not carry the virus, passenger travel carries the virus. He deliberately kept open borders without quarantine and therefore guaranteed spread of variants to and from the UK, even though experts warned of the dangers in this. He lied.

Crony Capitalism

The gaming of the epidemic as an exercise in profit gouging - £37 billion budget for a process to suppress transmission of the virus that is designed to fail at every turn, whilst pretending to help.  £57 billion wasted on contracts for PPE and other healthcare equipment, which ignored existing suppliers within the UK and handed contracts to small companies with no prior experience - creating hundreds of newly minted millionaires who raked off commissions at average 10%.   The filler accounting of the abuses of power are greater than the scope of this article.

This is Capitalism as a bullying dynamic, where the powerful exploit emerging vulnerabilities across a population and cause harm to that population whilst gaslighting that population through public briefing, news media co-ordination and online political conspiracy theory grooming dominance.

Taking Back Control

The English people need to seek independence from this Establishment, to save further lives and prevent further harms - indeed, the English people needed to do that back in 2003, when it was obvious that a War of Aggression was being initiated and prosecuted using tax payers funds. When the English grass roots failed to indict Tony Blair, a proven liar and War criminal,  they opened the flood gates to where we are today.

Queen Elizabeth is on the Throne, binding the nation. She is a person trapped by birth circumstances.  None of this is her fault. Her position is exploited by the English Establishment. Flags are waved, and people die.

Late Elizabethan Holocausts.

Now you know why.

God Save the Queen from this odious Establishment of NeoLiberal Robber Barons!

Arrest them all for malfeasance and corporate manslaughter.


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


Choice and Freedom: Wear a mask, be kind, stay safe, stop the spread, spread the Love.

Choice and Freedom

If I am free to choose, and if my choice causes harm to another person, a harm that they then cannot avoid, what then, of their freedom? My choice has removed their freedom to be free of harm.



What of mine?

You - yes... you, the person who might be reading this and might be thinking, "I will not wear a mask! My freedom to choose matters!"

I guarantee that you did not come up with the freedom of choice agenda about wearing/not wearing a mask, in this epidemic and global pandemic, all on your own - someone whispered it into your digital ear.

You did not originate that thought yourself. I know this. You know it too.

Thinking is more than having thoughts. It involves following those thoughts through, and examining them in depth, testing them against what you already know to be true.

Hierarchy, and Hitler was a Lefty!

Hitler was a violent Hierarch. The organisation he headed up had Socialist in it's name.  Everyone knows the Nazi ideology was anti-socialism. Stalin was not a socialist either, he was a military dictator. Churchill was also a military dictator, albeit guided by a military committee.

Perhaps within a hierarchy of violence system, everyone is a fascist, by default.

Not because they want to be, but because there are no truly egalitarian operations happening within this system. No place to be egalitarian.

We all pay rent to someone.

Perhaps that's really difficult to really look at.

Every Hierarchy of Power and Violence is just that, whether we call it Nazi, Communist, Democracy, Monarchy, Gang, Abuse Family, Religious State, Empire, Federation or Union.

It's all the same blood spattered room, just a different pattern of wallpaper.

Hierarchy systems have to condition the people to habituate to being exploited, to see the system as normal.

No child left behind.

Everyone must be educated! Self education is considered a threat, so much so that education is mandatory in many countries, truancy is a crime.

Perhaps everybody within a hierarchy system who seeks to reform the system with a better hierarchy is a deluded fascist, deluded in that hierarchies always produce people who want to topple the hierarchy, which creates an inevitable tension that causes those in charge to exercise violence to maintain their version of the status quo. For your own good, they say to the people at large.

Egalitarian cultures are healthy cultures, the biological default is trust..

“In other words, the default state is to trust, and what the amygdala does is learn vigilance and distrust.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

The context of this statement by Sapolsky is that we are sensitive, vulnerable babies who learn by experience, that our behaviour is mostly learned. Very little of our behaviour is predetermined. And the science suggests strongly that the default state, the base line of healthy behaviour resolves around trust.

“The brain is heavily influenced by genes. But from birth through young adulthood, the part of the human brain that most defines us (frontal cortex) is less a product of the genes with which you started life than of what life has thrown at you. 

Because it is the least constrained by genes and most sculpted by experience. This must be so, to be the supremely complex social species that we are. Ironically, it seems that the genetic program of human brain development has evolved to, as much as possible, free the frontal cortex from genes.”

 Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Cults and Clubs.

Hierarchy cultures are cults  - they have to dominate every child's mind and psyche, they have to habituate everyone to the 'normalcy' of hierarchy...

Left/right is just a set piece, a clever ploy, a distraction that is meaningless in that it does not lead to the kind of healthy change we need, it impedes learning and healing.

Marx's theories would still have led to workers destroying the planet.

NeoLiberalism is destroying the planet just as assuredly as Chinese Socialist Capitalism is.

Perhaps.

To me it does not make bio-logical sense to 'create' a species that is dysfunctional.

It makes more sense to say that a functional species placed under chronic stress will become dysfunctional.

Fact: an aboriginal body in a rain forest is as evolved for egalitarian relationships as my body in London.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways

"We citizens of a modern democracy claim to believe in equality, but our sense of equality is not even close to that of hunter-gatherers. 

The hunter-gatherer version of equality meant that each person was equally entitled to food, regardless of his or her ability to find or capture it; so food was shared. It meant that nobody had more wealth than anyone else; so all material goods were shared. 

It meant that nobody had the right to tell others what to do; so each person made his or her own decisions. 

It meant that even parents didn't have the right to order their children around; hence the non-directive childrearing methods that I have discussed in previous posts. It meant that group decisions had to be made by consensus; hence no boss, "big man," or chief."

The difference is the culture.

In terms of sensory capacity, in terms of the capability to be loving and of being loved, in terms of creativity and intelligence required to build shelter, to find food, the energy and effort to care for children and elders we are precisely and beautifully evolved,  and bio-logically adapted for healthy relationships.

The difference is the culture you grow up within, and what it tells you about how you 'should' behave and what to expect.

I live in London, the cultural center of a hierarchy of power and violence.

No such hierarchy persists in old growth rain forest.

Peter Gray, again, explains it another way:  https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201105/human-nature-teaching-ii-how-hunter-gatherers-taught

"As I explained in that earlier post, hunter-gatherers had faith that their children would, on their own initiatives, learn what they needed to know, and so they did not worry about their children's education or attempt to control it. 

Moreover, hunter-gatherers held strongly to the values of personal autonomy and equality. They believed that it is wrong for anyone to try to control another person's life, either in the short run or the long run, even if that other person is a child.  Hunter-gatherers believed that it is presumptuous for anyone to think that they know what is best for another person."

For most of us habituated to hierarchies of power systems thinking, this is all idealist and dangerous nonsense. But is it?

Obviously any transition from where we, in this Industrialised Hierarchy of Power and Violence culture, are towards a culture approaching that degree of mature kindness is going to be a rather large undertaking, yet that does not mean it is impossible, does it?

Wear a mask, be  kind, stay safe, stop the spread, spread the love.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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