The Psychology of a culture is revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat their children and in how they relate to and treat the most vulnerable people within their society. Heal that and we can heal everything.
Long read, this is a review of sorts, and here's the basic points : Vaccines are not the way to end the epidemic nationally nor the pandemic globally. Our Government policy is causing harm. Misinformation is now on public domain News Media standing as 'opinion' and being held equal to scientific, epidemiological and public health best practice, and trying to undermine trust in the evidence. Help!
More good advice.
WHO , The World Health Organisation have been advising Governments since last year, 2020, that reliance on the Vaccines is a massive epidemiological error - the need to stop the spread among the community remains the obvious priority for a few good reasons. We need both working at peak efficiency. Everywhere. Now. Global co-operation that must be transparent.
There are multiple announcements, press and media briefings, papers and presentations where Mike Ryan and Jane Ellis and others have said repeatedly. "The Vaccines are not the way out of this Pandemic." Countries and areas must must suppress transmission from person to person in the community to quell exponential growth of the infection, beyond populations capability to treat, which leads to shutdowns.
People like Mike Ryan are serious people. He's not a corporate shill. He's not a conspiracy maker. He's public diplomat, for the worlds health organisations.
A very good blog on the way 'Vaccine/live with the virus' compares to 'eliminate community transmission' as strategies in terms of health, economy, civil liberties and societal cohesion.
"All countries examined here have seen the number of deaths per million increase over the same period last year, despite Fauci’s promised arrival of the vaccine cavalry. (China and New Zealand, are exceptions. Deaths per million in these two countries have remained at zero.)
Of the eight countries, the United States has the highest number of deaths per million, up 19 percent over this time last year, though half the population is fully vaccinated. The calvary has arrived, and more people are dying.
New Zealand, South Korea, and Australia, which have pursued a Covid elimination strategy based on public health and social measures, have comparatively low numbers of deaths per million, and at the same time, comparatively low levels of vaccination—half that or less of the US rate, and many times less than the rates for Canada, the UK, and Israel. Even so, their deaths per million are much lower than those of the highly vaccinated countries.
China, which is peerless in pandemic control, has pursued a zero-Covid strategy along with a robust vaccination campaign."
The Elimination countries do better, on every measure.
I have been writing about this through out, arguing the case - I understood from the beginning that elimination of community transmission, from person to person, depriving the virus of it's natural habitat is both simple and complex. I understood that 'living with the virus' means a cycle of opening and shutting down society.
Simple is the basic fact that when the virus cannot find a new host, it dies out.
The complex is that to do this a Government and population have to work together.
That means they must understand the situation, accurately. NO misinformation.
That means they must trust in each other. Can you imagine? A metric for Healthy Government?
Complex means meeting the many different needs presenting, as effectively as possible, in order to support a population taking the steps to stop the spread.
We know a lot now on how to stop the spread in the community, after 19 months of practice and we have seen two strategic variations.
How did we end up here, again?
The two approaches
a) rely on vaccine to limit damage, allow some spread, surfing surges, people take it on the chin, economy is 'protected', wait a while, infections start to surge, ooops!, here we are again, leads to shutdowns.
b) reduce transmission to the minimum, remain vigilant, devote required resources to the mission, stablise the economy, prevent out of control surges leading to Lockdowns.
Now look around the world and see who is doing what, and how is that going?
Even the BBC put out an article reflecting the WHO advice.
BBC July 2021 report lays out the basics. Vaccines are not the way out of this epidemic and this is a 'here is why' kind of article, citing numerous scientists and studies. It's reasonably accurate.
So what!?
Today, 25th October, 2021, that is all forgotten, as the BBC announces continuing policy of no policy change on behalf of the English misGovernment. No-one in BBC News Journalism would be so brave as to point out the obvious. Plan B is waved like a flag of hope, which the government and anti-lockdowners see and present as a surrendering flag. Some are equating another lock down with a tyranny of removed civil liberties, a citation that stirs emotional reactionary sentiment.
The current practice across the G20 is this insane attempt to continue 'living with the virus'.
In effect this amounts to leaving the virus alone, allowing it to spread, which it will do, and it will keep spreading until a lockdown has to be imposed by Law, because the impacts of the uncontrolled spread are noticeable. That line of behaviour is a dead end. It has not worked and it cannot work.
One cannot hide people queueing outside ICU units to find a place to receive treatment.
The Government metric is so keep the dying at under that threshold, and stay quiet about long term complications for many hundreds of thousands of people, and pretend it's all groovy.
Health, Economy, Civil Liberties of the population all suffer intense distortions, mostly avoidable. Competing powers jockeying for position, profiteering, ideology and psychological recklessness are exacerbating the situation, in spite of the best efforts of a majority of the population and the medical science community.
So how did we end up here? Oh yeah -
Meanwhile back at the office. Cabinet Office.
"Who could we not save? "
Who makes that choice? How many people drive that choice, to not save - to not avoid the avoidable harms?
It's not just the matter of doing nothing, it is the choice not do what it would take to prevent harm, when it is largely preventable. Who are these people?
To not do what could be done.
This is a close-up of a picture Dominic Cummings posted on his Twitter feed 2020, annotated as follows: A white board display from within the Cabinet Office deliberations in March 2020.
“65/ First sketch of Plan B, PM study, Fri 13/3 eve - shown PM Sat 14/4: NB. Plan A 'our plan' breaks NHS,>4k p/day dead min. Plan B: lockdown, suppress, crash programs (tests/treatments/vaccines etc), escape 1st AND 2nd wave (squiggly line instead of 1 or 2 peaks)... details later”
Looking at the board you can tell there are no epidemiologists, public health or social care officials involved in the discussion.
Think about that.
"WHO COULD WE NOT SAVE"
They knew they could save people, and they chose not to.
Obviously not a Public Health and Welfare motivated decision. Britain had the resources.
For a clue to the origins of the strategic diktat we need to refer back to a victory speech given by Johnson, in Greenwich, on February 3rd, 2020.
An elective dictatorship in action. The Exceptional English Way.
"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."
Bad Science.
Here, in March 5 weeks later, Professor John Edmunds, on the inevitable policy metric of 'achieving Herd Immunity'. John is a member of SAGE, the State body that advises Government on such matters as handling an epidemic or any other mass disaster, with Science, Advice and Emergencies in mind.
Protect the hoard, let the herd take it on the chin. Policy is decided. This was the announcement of that strategic stance, and it did not originate in Boris Johnson's mind. This speech was meant to be victorious Brexit speech. Coronavirus was a topical addition.
Johnson in his February 3rd 2020 Greenwich speech brazenly accused other countries and their governments of panicking, most of whom have had much less serious outcomes precisely because they did not panic.
He deliberately misrepresented the stance of those other countries that were taking elimination strategies and making them work, thus avoiding avoidable harm.
There was no call for market segregation at that time, or any since, related to the pandemic. His Government policy on COVID has been wholly medically irrational. This Governments policy has caused real and un-necessary economic damage, and vast human harm.
We witnessed where that led to. All of us. Many waves.
Johnson has failed his own commitments, disastrously.
Many waves later, Matt Hancock was eased out with a snog, and Sajid Javid left his part time job at JP Morgan Chase, and was appointed Health Secretary for the English Government.
The CDO Salesmen Calls!
Sajid Javid "We will be healthier when we open!" blagging it in the Mail on Sunday back in July.
A CDO Salesman, repackaged as a Health Secretary, with political responsibility for the entire Health system that serves 75 million people, was himself repackaging an epidemic within a pandemic as a seasonal flu, nothing to be concerned much by. Don't 'cower' from the virus, he said. The emotional gaslighting of fear and courage.
'"Buy my goods, Gov. Great investment!"
"Since Sajid Javid’s appointment as health secretary on 26 June, the UK has confirmed a further 188,538 coronavirus cases, with approximately 25,000 extra people testing positive each day. On Sunday, Javid said that the best way to protect the nation’s health was by lifting the main Covid-19 restrictions, even though this would result in a further significant increase in cases. “We are going to have to learn to accept the existence of Covid and find ways to cope with it – just as we already do with flu,” he said."
Sajid Javid claimed at the time that the case fatality rate of Covid is, with the vaccine, equivalent to influenza. It's not. Nowhere near it, and there's a whole bunch of other adverse health outcomes that his glib throwaway thought ignores. That he, in his position, could speak that way, reveals wilful ignorance at best.
As it happens, Medical best practice says we ought to treat COVID like we treat Noroviurs.
"Of course, SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – does share some characteristics with influenza viruses, which makes comparisons tempting.Around20%of people have no symptoms at all when infected with SARS-CoV-2, andmany peopleinfected with a flu virus also don’t get sick. Both viruses are prone to a lot of mutation. And with both diseases, older people and people with weakened immune systems are at a higher risk of severe illness than healthy young adults, with infections spreading rapidly in care homes, hospital wards and schools
But a lot of these traits are also shared by another germ: the norovirus. It too can be asymptomatic in some people, and mutates rapidly – different strains of norovirus have been found circulating around the same hospital during one season. In fact, as it spreads around, norovirus sometimes changes so much that standard testing kits can’t recognise versions of it that have evolved."
"Knowing what we know about these viruses, these plans should consider controlling SARS-CoV-2 more like we would norovirus than flu. With norovirus, we keep people with the infection away from others. We ask parents whose children have symptoms to keep them off school. And in hospitals and care homes, patients with norovirus are nursed separately from others, staff use PPE for protection, and surfaces are deep cleaned. Handling COVID-19 in the future should be more interventionist like this. It should be more akin to living with norovirus than the flu."
In other words, the way to live with the SARSCOV2 virus is to minimise transmission of the virus, take the steps to stop the spread of infection and disease with all available resources, creativity and kindness with adequate logistical support for the population to achieve this logical public health goal.
Remember this: The World Health Authority. WHO, have been advising all national governments that vaccines are not the way out of this pandemic, that we need elimination of community transmission.
They ignored what was known.
It's not like Matt Hancock or Javid's Office and Department has not seen the WHO advice, at least Whitty, Valence, Harries and Van Tam must have read it through - that is the job of the Health Department, and the Departments of Social Care, Finance and Industry. Every department needs to be on this. But they are not. The British News Media are blanking the WHO, so that the population are none the wiser. Appalling.
COVID is not the flu.
A detailed look at what similar, what is different, and what is new in how COVID impacts people and populations, based on current evidence and observed reality.
"In The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, Piroth and colleagues report results of a retrospective study using data from the French national administrative database (PMSI), which includes discharge summaries for all public and private hospital admissions in France. The study compared 89 530 patients with COVID-19 admitted to hospital in March or April, 2020, with 45 819 patients with influenza admitted during the seasonal influenza outbreak between December, 2018, and February, 2019. "
Big study, major differences in the two diseases on almost every measure.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The arrogance of the Parliamentary lounge lizard Mr. Right Honourable Rees-Mogg on Masks, and a government minister defending his stance, and flailing - source
Here he waxes lyrical about Socialist Mask Hypocrisy, and the fraternal immunity to transmission of the virus among the sitting MPs of The Conservative and Unionist Party. Arrogance, relaxed arrogance.
Here's a tweet showing a Government Care Minister defending Rees-Mogg's dismissal of masks.
"Adil Ray - Jacob Rees-Mogg said if you know someone you can't catch Covid from them.. is that the new advice?
Gillian Keegan(care minister) - That's not technically right
On Saturday and Sunday October 23 and 24, Majid Nawaz on LBC was promoting misinformation in a diatribe against lockdowns, masks, vaccine passports. Full on. He was citing papers, studies, claims and presenting long twitter threads with all the misinformation, as the definitive science on each and every matter. CRG Radio.
It was shocking.
I recall one caller, who claimed she believed she would be discriminated against because she could not take a vaccine, for medical reasons, and therefore she felt the passport would discriminate against her. Nawaz didn't stop to think that there would be exceptions built into any legislation to work around those who, for medical reasons cannot be vaccinated.
He just piled in : "Yes, it's being in a oppressed minority, hmmm..." or words to that effect.
I spat my coffee out, for real. Then I laughed a full belly laugh. He can't doing that, can he?
He was. That was just awful, reckless public radio - exacerbating misinformed opinion in order to enrage the audience.
Lockdowns do not cause more harms than they prevent - what causes lockdown is uncontrolled spread of the virus in the community - more precisely is that allowing spread to get out of control is what causes more harm, not least because it generates repetitive, cyclical harm and is avoidable. Lockdowns are a last resort to halt exponential increase in infection.
To allow the virus to spread entirely out of control , until everyone is infected is inhumane.
Elimination of community transmission avoids lockdowns.
Different Bias News 23 October 2021 : Superbly clear presentation, on the danger of no Plan B, C or anything else as things stand in England. Roasts Johnson and Javid. Chilling.
The Tactic
Citing the harms caused by previous ill-advised policy to argue for worse policy is the emotional blackmail tactic the Right Wing Media are now fully, openly moving from on line micro targeting into the News Media public domain. This is insane. It is also nasty, Very, vert nasty indeed.
Remember what the WHO advice has been? Vaccines are not the way out of the pandemic stage.
As I have written above, the solution is simple, the delivery will be complex and there's really no need to make it more complicated by twisting the situation for power or economic dominance agendas.
At the very least the powerful, the Ruling Class, they could sort the situation with the Virus, and return to business as normal destroying the Earths living biome. It's too much to ask? I don't think so.
I don't actually accept that - there's no call to return to business as normal, when that normal led directly to the serious problems we are currently not dealing with very well.
In other news:
A few days ago, 291 Conservative and Unionist MPs voted to pollute our rivers, sea & land, 172 voted against it! Almost 1/3 of all MPs - 187 MPs didn't vote at all. 187 people who did not bother allowed the bill to pass. Relaxing the sphincter of regulation on behalf of the sewage treatment industry. How power flows.
This map shows the areas where untreated sewage is being dumped into rivers and our coastlines because the costs of preventing this would eat shareholders profits, and that is 'impractical' we are told.
It is clear that allowing disease to spread is now Government policy.
~ Compost loos! ~ My song "wear a mucking fask, stop the spread, spread the love!"
#COP26 - Stay Safe, Mask Up, and co-operate with one another
MP3 Download of the song. Enjoy.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
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