Callous Reckless Behaviour - Endangering a Nation for Profit.

Cycles of this English Epidemic, this Global Pandemic

Avoidable harms deliberately not avoided.

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March 17 2021 - Mike Ryan at WHO
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1. Callous reckless behaviour. From a teacher, who is probably exhausted, at the end of a tether of chronic stress, and who had Covid, tested positive, and was aware he or she was bringing it into the school. A teacher has a duty of care to the health of those in his or her care, above and beyond any other duty. Teaching is the lessor responsibility in this situation. A teacher should be evidence led in this regard.
"So, my 12 year old's maths teacher decided to come into work and teach maths today, despite having tested positive for Covid, "because I'm vaccinated". Fuming."
https://twitter.com/biscuitsgod/status/1460288748948762624?s=20
2. Head teacher  sends letter to a parent.
"My son's Headteacher has just sent a letter saying we must "build up our #Immunity by having the children in school during an outbreak to become infected with #Covid19. 
I thought that the #herdimmunity theory was debunked? 9 of 30 are testing positive."
https://twitter.com/HelenOLeslie/status/1460272268127490054?s=20
And here's why - Government Policy is to infect 8 million children to confer 'enhanced immunity' onto the adult vaccinated populations - using the children as 'immune boosters'. For profit.

3. New Statesman report on this policy with utterly shocking citations from Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
"How The UK Sleepwalked into another Covid Disaster."
https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2021/11/how-the-uk-sleepwalked-into-another-covid-disaster
The headline is inaccurate.
This was not sleep walking. Not by any stretch of the imagination.  Government was fully awake, JCVI was fully awake, but definitely not 'woke'.
They chose deliberately to expose millions of people children, parents, relatives and others to the virus.
4. An article from this time last year examining the English Government approach to Covid, from a perspective of The Right to Health of the population.
https://hhrjournal.org/2020/11/the-right-to-health-in-times-of-pandemic-what-can-we-learn-from-the-uks-response-to-the-covid-19-outbreak/

"Experience in the UK also shows the need for a clear national strategy from the outset, as soon as a risk is reasonably identified through scientific evidence. Political action must be prompt, based on scientific evidence, transparent, and communicated clearly to the population. A soft approach like the one adopted by the UK in the weeks preceding the lockdown, where private actors with economic power remained in charge of deciding whether people should travel to work and whether events would be maintained, should be avoided."

5. There are no words to adequately describe this callous, reckless, misinformed and frankly lethal policy.
More than 1000 people a week are dying awful, horrific deaths.
11% of school children have been infected.
We're averaging around 80-100k child cases a week.
Around 250 hospital admissions of children every week.
Close to 3000 children with Long Covid every week.
And between 3-7 child covid deaths a week
NHS is close to a critical state, with 1/3rd of ICU capacity occupied with COVID.
6. This makes the corruption story look like walk in the park.
7. The long term health implications of this virus are unknown, but there are solid indicators of serious sequelae that could last for the life of those infected. An interview with a respected immunologist, Immunologist Dr. Anthony Leonardi,  outlining some of the risks he sees now and foresees into the future, with so much unknown.
https://wsws.org/en/articles/2021/11/11/leon-n11.htm
"BM: You recently wrote a letter to California school boards which was very powerful. You raised some very important issues. What are your concerns about COVID infections in children?
AL: Well, it does really worry me. We are just assuming that infection won’t have long-term consequences in people, and especially in children. And there’s almost a systematic exposure of people and children to the virus before they’re vaccinated. I know from what I’ve read in the studies that have come out that some people are going to definitely be genetically susceptible to very bad outcomes and death. And I think it’s not right for kids to be just exposed to this without a fighting chance, without vaccination.
It’s very disturbing when I think that we’re running the risk for everybody to get something like any Lewy body disease or neurodegeneration and we’re systematically exposing generations to this. I was trying to help. My hope is that we take it seriously and we give people protection. If these children have genetic susceptibility or health concerns, or if their family has health concerns, they’re given remote options. I was thinking if I were in their position, would I want to be consigned to definite exposure to SARS-CoV-2? No, I wouldn’t! And I would want to be protected, with acknowledging that the virus is airborne. So, better ventilation in classrooms, mask wearing and vaccination of children.
There’s a terrible assumption that kids are okay with SARS-CoV-2 infection when there’s data coming out that they have lost out on a greater number of healthy years than adults. Kids have better immunological response to vaccination than adults as well. And kids are more likely to be infected than adults and kids are more likely to be reinfected than adults.
We’re messing up! We’re doing this completely wrong only because probably, my assumption is, kids have less agency. Kids don’t have the agency adults do. That’s fine that they are not like grandma or grandpa when it comes to being infected, it isn’t as dangerous. But it’s unjust to not protect them and vaccinate them. Infection in children should not be written off.
A lot of people are saying it’s endemic and everyone is going to get it. So, they relinquish responsibility of controlling its spread and making these areas safe and just consigning kids to definite inflammation and infection where they’re less likely to make immune-competent memory."
8. In May 2020, after the Cummings Road Show, I wrote a a blog piece suggesting we needed to take drastic action to prevent further harm to the population. I suggested arresting Johnson, Cummings, Whitty, Valance and the entire Cabinet, removing them from office, placing them on remand and instituting a national unity government with a directive to manage the epidemic using elimination/suppression of the virus strategy, which was proven to work much, much better than 'herd immunity' aka 'living with the virus'.
https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/05/cummings-need-not-resign-they-should.html
I argued the case for Malfeasance and I, and many others even in those early days predicted a series of waves of infection, fatality, chronic disease and economic hardship, into the future, with no end in sight.  Given the way the virus generates variations through travelling through a population, meeting new evolutionary pressures and beating them, that was an obvious call. 
That was when deaths were at about 25,000 people and long Covid was showing it's first signs of being a real and last impact.
9. My argument stands. Everything we are learning about this Government, the news media and various misinformed lobby groups reveals a callous, reckless and utterly inhumane attitude, an avarice so deep and so corrosive that it places the entire population a risk, a risk that can be avoided, for what?

For Corporate profits, that's what.


10. Earlier in April 2020 I detected a pattern that has historical roots, notably the attitude and actions of the British Government in relation to the Irish and Bengali Famines of the mid 1800s. Late Victorian Holocausts. 
https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/04/uk-take-it-on-chin-historical.html
11. Today we are living a late Elizabethan Holocaust.  I wrote this in March 2021, as the winter 20/21 surge was underway, and showing signs of abating, as the nation was in lockdown.
https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2021/03/late-elizabethan-holocausts.html
12. Was it Her Majesty's back or was it her awareness of the holocaust underway and a desire to not stand with Johnson as the nation commemorates the grief, horror and immense human tragedy of WWI? Who knows? I don't.  But, if I was in her position, I would not stand besides Johnson or give him my stature to lean upon.

13. It has to be said that Labour, under Starmer, has not been the advocate for elimination strategy that the English people so badly needed and deserved from an 'Opposition'. The whole of Parliament bears responsibility in all of this. 'No ifs, no buts'.

He fired Rebecca Long-Bailey and abandoned the National Education Union at a critical time, in mid 2020. He excluded Corbyn from the Parliamentary Party. He is not in position for the people of this nation. Marcus Rashford did some of the work he neglected to do.
14. I am at a loss for more words. The trauma visited upon the English people is too great. 
Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Make Education Safe Again

Make Education Safe Again - where we really are right now.

🧵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

 

#SchoolStrike2021

#SafeEdForAll

@SafeEdForAll

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The best leverage we have is collective solidarity. Acting together, we have each others back. Because the Government do not have our backs. They are exposing us, and our children, to avoidable harm.

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Proposal : UK and Global School Strike every Friday to confront this insanity of deliberately, recklessly exposing our children to a known pathogen when we know it does have adverse impacts, including fatalities, long term disease and associated psychological trauma for bystanders and afflicted alike.

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#MakeSchoolsSafeAgain #MESA

~ Update : 26/10/21 ~

Lots of talk of new modelling showing cases falling in November onwards

This largely relies on allowing children to become infected with Covid, a dangerous and unpredictable route to take

I spoke on this on GMB today@dgurdasani1 pic.twitter.com/4xpH8XTNtP

— Dr Amir Khan GP (@DrAmirKhanGP) October 25, 2021

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https:/www./safeedforall.com

#SafeEdForAll

#MESA
#MakeEducationSafeAgain

IndependentSAGE have issued detailed guidelines on how to make schools safe for children, teachers and parents and ultimately for the wider community, to reduce to a minimum the spread of the COVID virus within schools, if not to stop transmission entirely.  Prepared by a collective of experts in epidemiology, virology, public health, education, data modelling, social care, human behaviour and other areas pertinent to handing an epidemic/pandemic. It is not rocket science.

IndependentSAGE issued similar guidelines at the end of Summer 2020, guidelines which the English Government dismissed. We saw what happened as a result. Then we did not have vaccines, now we do. Then we did not have Delta, now we do. Everything has changed, and yet the English Government's policy is, if anything, more reckless than before. Schools are still unsafe for everyone involved, and for the wider community.

The effects on some children of SARS-COV2 infection leading to COVID19 disease and long Covid  include toxic shock syndrome and other unpredictable adverse outcomes which are related to 'super-antigens' found within the virus. There is still so much that is unknown, and in American and Israel where they 'opened up' after vaccination programs for adults were rolled out, outcomes for children exposed to Delta appear to be more intense than with previous variants.

More children were presenting with adverse health outcomes than previously.

While the overall or global percentage rates appear to be small, it is when the are applied to populations of millions of children meeting limited available space in health care systems, the numbers become a serious problem, logistically, and threaten the Governments status.

But for the children and parents involved no amount of minimising the population level impact as a small percentage offers any comfort.

Not least when uncontrolled spread of the virus in the community is avoidable.

Independent SAGE

In recent months IndependentSAGE has issued detailed advice on making schools as safe as they can be to prevent uncontrolled spread of the virus, and the harms to children that will entail, all avoidable harms.

September : https://www.independentsage.org/september-2021-an-urgent-plan-for-safer-schools/

Urging caution, requesting mitigations be re-established in schools to prevent surge of infections, and the harms associated with all of that.

October : https://www.independentsage.org/independent-sage-response-to-the-20th-october-press-conference-by-health-secretary-sajid-javid-we-need-a-winter-plan-now/

Urging extreme caution, requesting mitigations be re-established in nationally to prevent surge of infections, and the harms associated with all of that.

SARS-CoV-2 suppression, rather than attempting to live with the virus, creates best outcomes for health, the economy, and civil liberties. By every measure living with the virus causes more harms. Three studies confirm this.

1, Elimination aka suppression of community transmission reduces incidence, prevents uncontrolled spread, avoids the need for lockdowns, protects people's health, civil liberties and economies.

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

2 . The Westminster Government has failed to protect the right to health of the English people.

https://www.hhrjournal.org/2020/11/the-right-to-health-in-times-of-pandemic-what-can-we-learn-from-the-uks-response-to-the-covid-19-outbreak/

3. Human Rights study of UK Governance during 2020/21 with regards to Corona Virus, and upholding the populations Right to Health. 

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.646285/full

This is an Italian academic study of the way Government and Science were set within the ongoing epidemic. The Government failed on multiple counts to accept proven epidemiological scientific and public health advice, and this, combined with a News Media that allowed, and continues to allow that neglect free passage, created an environment of zero accountability. 

What kind of culture allows this to happen?

What is going on here? Whose needs are being met, and whose needs being neglected?

What are schools for, and why should they be safe for children, teachers, parents and the wider community?

What is Education for?

We all accept that Education is a necessary institution, We are a learning species. It's something we do really, really well, often independent of formal instruction.

John Taylor Gatto, a teacher who won many, many awards for his work with children, educating in urban and rural areas of deprivation in New York. He won those awards for the results of his advocacy as a teacher, in deprived areas, beyond delivering the curriculum, teaching and advocating for better support, as an activist teacher, by being a superb, kind, empathic friend and advocate for all the children - being real, congruent, honest and creative in terms of helping the children resolving social educational problems in real time. His efforts changed many, many lives for the better, and he influenced the Education system in New York, and beyond, to good effect. 

Mr. Gatto,  upon being awarded Best Teacher in New York for a third time, decided to use the opportunity of the award ceremony to quit, publicly. Here are  the first few lines of his award speech, where he accepted the award and rejected the system that gave it to him. A very brave thing to do.

"I’ve taught public school for 26 years but I just can’t do it anymore. For years I asked the local school board and superintendent to let me teach a curriculum that doesn’t hurt kids, but they had other fish to fry. So I’m going to quit, I think."

The Westminster Government are forcing parents of the nation to send their children into unsafe schools.

Mr. Gatto quit close to the end of a long and distinguished career, because he did not want to harm any children. His quitting was symbolic, piece of public theatre, on behalf of all children, everywhere. An appeal to the power, into their faces, so that there could be no confusing it with a roast. 

I'd not ask working teachers to do  that, go that far.  I know teaching is a complex activity, with many demands and needs to be met, equally well. Being responsible for a class or a year or a school is intense.

I would say instead, "give his words some thought".

How do we stand and advocate for the children, beyond the teaching role itself?

How do we and how do students explore and learn together, to meet this situation?

Mr. Gatto's speech : source : https://www.educationrevolution.org/blog/i-quit-i-think/

Another great educator, Paolo Friere had this to say about teaching:

"Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."

What we are witnessing today in England is a massive failure by Government, by the Department of Education and to a lessor degree head teachers, teachers and parents to do the latter - to deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world for the best possible outcomes for all concerned. Collectively England's adults are failing to avoid avoidable harms to their own and each others children.

England's primary and secondary schools are not COVID safe, and neither are it's universities and yet Government has ordered that all students return to full time study without the necessary protections in place, without the non pharmaceutical interventions that ought to be mandated and supported by Government that would make schools safe for all involved. Does it have to be this way?.

This failure is not the fault of the parents or of the teachers of the children those parents have entrusted into their care. 

The English Government's communications, advice and regulation on COVID have been an unmitigated disaster by every available measure. COVID is not over. Blatantly. Gavin Williamson has been more whip than carrot.

Given the political grooming inherent in England's public discourse, where a news media industry that is mostly owned by Oligarchs jealous of their power and wealth is deployed  not to inform, but to protect the interests of Power and Wealth above all others, including in this instance the best interests of all our children, and a Government that lies as it breathes, it is no wonder that many, many people are confused, disoriented, mislead and misinformed. 

To mask or not, to take up the vaccine or not, to isolate or not, to travel or to shelter, HEPA air filters or open windows, class sizes reduced or maintained at pre COVID levels, LFT or PCR testing, is it a flu or a cold or something more serious, does it afflict children, are CEV children safe, are they truants, will their parents be prosecuted, what is 'herd immunity', what do variants imply for future behaviour, what is the precautionary principle - where is the clarity and logistical support that clarifies these and many other questions? £

37 billion budget for two years of an inadequate test, trace system without funded isolation against £68 billion on furlough and even still community transmission is now at higher levels than it was this time last year. This is what lack of clarity, lack of due diligence in Government applying itself to the science delivers.

That much needed clarity is not coming from the English Government, that much is clear. This timeline of scientific advice compared to Government policy choices, which I mentioned above, prepared by IndependentSAGE, a collective of experts in the full range of issues related to COVID, illustrates that with absolute accuracy. The English government's claim to be 'following the science' is untrue. It is a lie.

England's Government is not providing the support England's teaching staff and students need to be able to teach and learn safely. How many times must it be said before the people demand the most basic of tenets of a democratic state be upheld?

Education must never harm the learner, nor enrol the teacher in any harmful practice. 

And here we are. Education is now a place of harm causation. This difficult situation does however present an opportunity. 

Making Education Safe Again!

The current situation of un-safe schools and orders to send children into them is a challenge parents and teaching staff must meet - they must confront this recklessness in order to best serve the children's needs. They do not need to do this on their own. They need all of us to work with them, and to that end they must become educators of the nation, the whole population.

I think there is no other option worthy of our collective duty of care to the children.

As Paolo Friere wrote : "Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."

Solidarity in protecting our children's best interests in this situation is the pathway to work the changes we need to bring about to make education safe again. And when the pandemic is over, can we do something about bullying in our schools where 1 in 5 students report being bullied whilst on school premises? Actually, no - we need to deal with that at the same time. We cannot let bullying slide, in any sphere of our lives. We can chew gum and walk.

I wrote a blog a few weeks back about solidarity, the need for a union of students, parents and teachers working from an evidence base. The best practice covid principles are outlined in the IndependentSAGE report on schools listed above. This blog on solidarity lists the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, a study on Right to Health in terms of the English Government's response to COVID and other pertinent pieces of Law and legislation. 

The Good Law Project are also engaged in helping parents present a legal position on this, and they are experts. 

I'm just a shouty auld git with a guitar and a laptop. This matter needs the majority of citizens on the case. Please get on the case.

Then this on October 1st. Johnson's most important metric. And he's lying, of course.

Boris Johnson tonight on the BBC "I've given you the most important metric which is, never mind life expectancy, never mind cancer outcomes, look at wage growth."

 Ghastly appalling disregard for our people. pic.twitter.com/TmOLV3k2Wh

— Ian Lavery MP (@IanLaveryMP) October 1, 2021

https:/www./safeedforall.com

#SafeEdForAll

#MESA
#MakeEducationSafeAgain
#SchoolStrike2021

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

The best leverage we have is collective solidarity.

The best leverage we have is collective solidarity. 

Acting together, we have each others back.

Because the Government do not have our backs.
They are exposing us, and our children, to avoidable harm.

stopping the spread is spreading the love

For media enquiries please contact SafeEdForAll_UK@outlook.com #SafeEdForAll benefits everyone, teachers, school staff, pupils, their families and the wider communities they live in.

We need a long-term safe, sustainable and fair to all strategy for education provision NOW pic.twitter.com/Djh1aI1joG

— SafeEdForAll #Swarm🐝 #hivetosurvive (@SafeEdForAll_UK) January 16, 2021

https://twitter.com/SafeEdForAll_UK

The best tool for change we have is, and has always been, social solidarity, collective conjoined action, similar to a general strike. 

Possibilities include some kind of mass grass roots action such as a rent/mortgage/school strike or boycott, or early morning demonstration gatherings of parents, students and teachers outside Government buildings, or outside Churches, Broadcasters, News Paper offices or even local schools which we refuse to enter into under such unsafe conditions.

These could be justified by citing two legal frameworks for our action - 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 avoidable harm, to heel. We could also cite safe workplace legislation.

To prevent a greater harm, a small harmless action is justified under duty of care legal principles.

To assert our civic responsibility as mature citizens, to uphold our shared duty of care to our children, and to confront this Governments failures to meet their duty of care to all of us.

No more appeals. We must direct Government. The issue must be forced through.

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

I understand that this Government, this English Government has an 80 seat majority. I understand that  this English Government has no moral standing, that it is utterly unwilling to acknowledge any of it's errors, mistakes or its deliberately bad policy decisions and is behaving as if it is above the Law, beyond reproach, immune to any accountability. This English Government is the perfect expression of an elective dictatorship.

If there are any decent Conservative MPs, they remain silent and cowed. Starmer supports this Government, no ifs or buts.  His focus is not on the welfare of our children but on a purge of the Labour Party,

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.

A new National Union?

I would urge the formation of a new national Union of Students, Parents and Teachers, as learners, as evidence gatherers, as people concerned with an accurate, clear and workable pathway towards an education that prepares for the work to confront Climate Change, Air Pollution, Plastic Pollution, Chronic Stress caused disease, Poverty, Environmental Damage and of course, right now, immediately best public health policy on COVID. Sick people do not make an economy stronger.

Elimination of Community Transmission is cited by the worlds foremost epidemiologists, virologists, public health professionals, economists and social scientists as the most effective set of strategies in dealing with this pandemic. 

Let's start in all our schools, let's harness the love, passion, care and concern of 11 million British Children, their parents, their teachers and push hard for what must be done.

Some concepts for parents, students and teachers to look at.

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

1. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child : Defining the Rights of the Child

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.

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_care_in_English_law : Duty of Care English Tort Law.

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 : it is not wishful thinking that we English citizens would really do what it takes to protect our children from harm.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

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

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

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

image source :

 

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/nov/21/is-gavin-williamson-the-worst-education-secretary-ever

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We also know that teaching staff are working flat out to provide remote tuition, and the vast majority of children and parents at home are succeeding in meeting the curriculum time tables. 

We know that teaching staff in schools are feeding, counselling, clothing and nurturing vulnerable children at every turn and doing a very fine job under very difficult circumstances not of their own making, when all other social services are hampered by the repeated shut down cycles. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

The Purpose of the Cummings Road Show - Engineering a Second Peak, Blame the People.

I have been watching the Dominic Cummings Road Show, and I have been wondering: why now, what is he trying to do, why is he so deliberately making himself a story in the public eye?

While we were overloaded with Cummings, this happened on Friday.

"People with cancer, liver disease or severe asthma have been dropped from the government’s coronavirus shielding list by text message before their doctors have been able to speak to them.

The decision to remove people with various health conditions from the shielding programme in England has caused upset. The text also informed people they would no longer qualify for government food parcels.

Many who received the messages last Friday believed they were fake. But the government has since confirmed the texts are correct and are official government communications".

Cummings is, by his own admission, a media strategist, among other things, and he is a master baiter. He studies the fish, works out their vulnerabilities, then he baits the hook, he dangles the hook, he watches them bite and then he pulls them in. Brexit was a grooming operation since the day Johnson started lobbing rocks over the wall at the Tory Party's glass house, taking delight in the power he felt as those rocks (lies in print) started arguments he could safely observe from afar. Both of these men are people who revel in distal disturbance, men who enjoy the feeling of power they gain as they observe the chaos they cause, from a safe, well paid, distance.

 Cummings grin, caught on camera, as he had that last drink of water, and walked away from the Downing Street Rose Garden Table spoke to me, and others, as 'Job done!'
Satisfied smirk.

Here, then is my review of some key aspects of the Corona Virus story that tries to join the dots, to see what Cummings intent really is. There are other aspects, to do with re-rigging economies and political power systems, opportunism and so forth that I will leave out of this analysis because that thread is not a public health thread, and it is the health of the people that I am most concerned with here.

I hope, sincerely, that I am wrong. I would - seriously - be delighted to be held in ridicule, to see the virus is eliminated from the UK population, by this Government, and to have my worries proven to be febrile fantasies of a feeble fool. I do have my doubts about these perceptions, about everything I write. That is why I question myself, and re-examine in the light of what evidence emerges. Opinion  and belief is never enough, never adequate for dealing with matters of the shared commons. That demands evidence based policy at every level.

I shall start at the beginning, with Johnson's UK Policy as he outlines it.

 3rd February - UK Corona Virus Policy Declared in Public

Hubris claims humility!

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-in-greenwich-3-february-2020

"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."

Johnson lays out the policy - "Protect the hoard, let the herd take it on the chin!" Chess, political gaming. By January 31 the UK Government knew the virus and disease was in country.
Throughout February, as the global situation worsened, the  UK Government chose not to chase every case of known infection down. They chose not to pursue detailed contact trace, quarantine and provide treatment in isolation, of every case, in order to suppress the transmission of the virus. They asked people to self-isolate at home, rather than  provide isolation treatment facilities, which they knew were a critical part of the Chinese and Vietnamese responses. They chose not to test or quarantine incoming travellers. They chose not to alert the population, even as they were being alerted by epidemiologists nationally and internationally. All of these together would have been necessary in order to activate the non-shut down Korean style suppression of transmission, eradication of virus within the population - they chose a policy that was not medically rational; it was, as it turns out, medically irrational.

They chose this policy on a daily basis throughout February. Even as epidemics were developing at pace in Italy and Spain and elsewhere.

 5th March

Boris Johnson mentions herd immunity and dismisses the idea, or does he?

I suspect he was floating the idea, rather than dismissing it. A hint. Allowing room to manoeuvre in the future. To be able to draw back from such an idea, and present something that appears to address the situation, yet allows slow spread to continue.

13th March

Chief Scientific Advisor Sir Patrick Valance touts Herd Immunity. It's still on the books.


14th March

Professor john Edmund's, SAGE member : "Indeed, achieving Herd Immunity is the only way to stop this epidemic!"


14th March

UK Government suggests isolating elders in care homes, and shielding in place for people with chronic disease, everyone else carries on. Community transmission is in full flow, uncontrolled.

23rd March

UK Government orders shut down.  Does nothing to implement suppression of transmission beyond stay at home, work from home. No policy to stop the spread. Protect the NHS results in many elective hospital work cancelled. Instead of Fever Hospitals, they build intubation hospitals. The spread of the infection continues. Hospitals start to face surges, deaths start to rise rapidly.

We know what happened after that. It gets worse, and worse. The only action that is slowing the community transmission is the fact that the bulk of the British citizenry stay home, and they take the various pressures that staying at home has created, on their shoulders. They show considerable solidarity, compassion and kindness. Mutual aid groups spring up everywhere. They watch in horror and disbelief as the shortages of PPE become a defining narrative. They watch as the death toll mounts. They watch as the UK Government does nothing to stop the spread of infection and does everything to allow a slow spread, through bad policy, inadequate provision. They watch as Government ministers lie about the situation. They stay home. They are not fearful, they are concerned. Concerned citizens doing their bit, watch a their Government fail to do it's bit, recounted by a media that is inadequate to the task of holding Government to account.

The people are so much kinder, so much warmer, so much more concerned about each others welfare than the Government is about theirs.

The citizens hold the line. The are the ones who do most to slow the transmission. But they cannot do this on their own, indefinitely.

10th May

Johnson makes a televised speech to the nation, and issues vague instructions to ease the lock down, to 'restart the economy'. The Economy has not stopped, the stock exchange is still trading, furlough is providing income for 6 million workers to stay at home, and they are all buying food and other goods, on-line and in weekly shops. That money is going back into the economy, rents are being paid, bills are being paid. The transmission appears to be slowing down, but it is nowhere near suppressed.
Hospitalisations continue, deaths continue. The transmission is nowhere near being under control.
British citizens, in poll after poll, say 60% want to continue to stay at home until it is genuinely safe. The Government wants them to go to work. A power struggle ensues.

13th May

The government lifts the restriction on how far people can drive to reach the countryside and take exercise, but visits and overnight stays to second homes remain prohibited. This encourages reckless behaviour. That is the intent. A war of attrition against the 60%.

16th May

"Back to school! Protect the vulnerable children!"

I have written about Gavin Williamson's odious Education Briefing from 10 Downing Street, the day before Gove appears on Marr. Williamson uses deliberate tactics - conflating issues, emotional blackmailing and gaslighting to deliver a bullying speech, aimed at putting pressure on teachers, manipulating parents and workers, sotto voce. The pattern is clear, the intent is obvious. They are going to use every manipulative tactic they can to push the workers back to work.

17th May

Appearing on The Andrew Marr Show, Gove said: "The only way ever to ensure that you never catch coronavirus is to stay at home completely. There's always, always, always in any loosening of these restrictions a risk of people catching the coronavirus"
Here Gove is basically taking the piss, gas-lighting the genuine concerns of teachers, parents and children. He is bullying, brushing aside the risk, rather than governing in people's best interests.

 

May 26th

Democracy Now report on New Zealand explores what they did, and why they did what they did, and why it succeeded.

"New Zealand implemented one of the earliest lockdowns and has largely succeeded in eliminating the coronavirus under the leadership of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Some of the country’s success has been attributed to her leadership, trust in science, and clear communication during the crisis. We get an update from Michael Baker, professor of public health at the University of Otago in Wellington, New Zealand. He is an epidemiologist and a member of the New Zealand Ministry of Health’s Technical Advisory Group. Baker has been advising the government on its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.2 

Their slogan is “Stay home, stay safe, and be kind.”

26th May

New Zealand's leading epidemiology advisor to the New Zealand Government speaks on Democracy Now.

"And I think across the Western world, there was this strange idea of complacent exceptionalism, that somehow the virus might behave differently when it hit the Western world compared with how it was in Asia. But, in fact, we looked to Asia for examples of a good approach, and — for example, the way China contained the virus, and other Asian countries were managing it — we realized that elimination was possible, so we changed direction very quickly."

As I have written elsewhere, those countries that were willing to learn from China, Korea, Taiwan and other East Asian countries and apply the protocols for suppression of community transmission to stop the spread (rather than merely to slow it) with a view to eliminating the virus from within their population have done and are doing a very good job indeed, and those who chose not to learn from others experience have stumbled and lurched; making matters worse they have lied, manipulated data and evidence and gaslighted their populations and there are dead bodies all over the place.

Funerals and cremations with no-one present to mourn them. A terrible price has and is being paid by the people.

Peaks and Waves.

Furthermore,  these states are facing multiple peaks within this first wave  - only because they refuse to learn from the East Asian experience. Why would they be so foolish?

They refuse to draw from the experience of New Zealand, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Vietnam and others who have managed to suppress community transmission, and practically eliminate the virus from within their populations - their refusal to apply those lessons learned elsewhere is a deliberate choice, a political choice and an economic choice, not a public health choice.

It is important to understand that to prevent a second wave in the latter months of 2020 demands that the virus is eliminated from the local population in the first wave,  retaining an active and agile contact trace, quarantine and isolation treatment facility ready for new outbreaks within each jurisdiction. This is entirely reasonable since populations are organised across the Earth within defined jurisdictions, with structured borders that can be policed. That means that borders must become quarantined borders. This means that the security of all is the security of the most vulnerable.

And the choice being made, as outlined in Johnson's February 3rd speech is to choose allow movement through those borders, to prevent the closure of the borders by allowing herd immunity to achieve a kind of parity, the parity that a vaccine would create except for the fact that no such vaccine is available, and no such vaccine is on the horizon within meaningful time limit.

Herd immunity is this manner entails a soft form of mass murder - avoidable deaths are not avoided, they are simply slowed down, and that is a deliberate action, intentional.

Those involved must be held to account, and  we must understand that the lies and misleading narratives they used to protect themselves and their policy are damning evidence of intent.

The citizens of each of those countries have a stark choice in front of them.

We, the citizens of the UK, have a stark choice in front on us.

May 22nd - the Dominic Cummings Road Show is launched.

The Dominic Cummings road show was designed to break the 'stay at home to protect the vulnerable' dynamic of concerned citizens across the UK. It forms part of a general thrust since Boris Johnson's 10th May passive aggressive management instructions to the nation. That is the outcome of the road show. Behaviour, actions, outcomes, patterns speak the truth of history.

There has been a serious, concerted on-line campaign portraying the genuine concern of UK citizens who choose stay home stop the spread as an irrational fear, with the gas-lighting suggestion that this irrational fear is itself causing the damage to the economy. Their fear is the culprit.

If nurses are 'Heroes' walking to the 'front-line', what are those who dare not step out of their homes? If Doctors and Shop Assistants are 'Heroes' what are workers, furloughed in comfort, receiving tax payers money for doing nothing, who refuse to get out and get the economy up and running again. because they are frightened? That was a subtext that was allowed far too much space, that went unchallenged for far too long. Freedom of speech, and the right to hold an opinion trumping the evidence.

Whereas it was, and it remains Government policy on SARSVOC2 and COVID19 that is causing the most damage to the UK Economy.

Had they chosen the path New Zealand took, the economy would be looking so much better right now.

The patchy nature of furlough as it was rolled out, the inadequacy of self employment support, the inadequacy of rural and farming support, the blatant bail outs to corporations by comparison, and the inadequacy of PPE support across all care systems have caused immense difficulties, difficulties that could have been avoided with better thought out policies. There are other groups who are vulnerable such as hospitality staff, entertainment artists, technicians and workers, tourism operators and independent retail staff and others who are not afforded decent furlough, and this all adds to the pressure to get out there and be working - whereas if the Government funded them to stay home, and stop the spread, that pressure would be greatly reduced.

There are recent media campaigns to exploit domestic abuse, child abuse and other long standing social care issues as leverage points to get the economy going. The implication is that shut down has made all there problems exponentially worse - and there is some truth in this, yet the solution is to provide more support rather than get everyone back to work. Where were these concerns in the start of the lock down, where were they in April? They were not headlines. But as soon as get the economy going emerges, they become headline stories. This is not accident, this is no co-incidence.

 What if everyone gets back to work and there is no extra support for all these issues - support that is already lacking, even before the epidemic? What then? More spread. More pain, More abandonment.

The tune that has been playing in the background to the Cummings Road Show - "Get The Economy Moving, Get Back to Work!"

Cui Bono?

The Cummings Road Show in the media has created a groundswell of people who will not follow guidelines, as those were clearly abandoned by a senior Government figure, and "if it's one rule for them, and another for us, well stuff that!" which is both irrational and irresponsible. It amounts to "if they can be shits, I have the right to be a shit too!"

And what we hear and see is people in media nodding their heads, and going "Well, yes, totally get where you are coming from." Encouragement, rather than critique.

This all adds to the pressure to push teachers and others back to work, and it will intensify.

Gove maintains it is safe to return more children to school, the BMA and Teachers Unions point out that the evidence suggests quite clearly is that it is not.

This is insanity...

The transmission of the virus is not under any control within the UK. It is still largely invisible. We are still with more cases, and more hospitalisations and more deaths than when the lock down was called on 23rd of March.

The new NHS contact tracing program was launched 5 days earlier than planned,  and after one day it is already falling apart. The program is headed up by a Tory peer, Dido Harding, who was CEO of Talk Talk during a serious data hack, and who managed that situation quite dreadfully. She has no public health qualification or skills. They readily admit that it will not be properly functional until end of June. A month of enabling more community transmission without the resources to quell outbreaks, to quarantine contacts, to treat the symptomatic away from the community.

It will take three weeks to five to return to another climb towards a new peak; there is no policy to stop the spread, eliminate the virus from the the population.

A new surge is all but inevitable.

They have engineered a point of no return.

Herd immunity remains on the cards.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/herd-immunity-may-only-need-a-10-per-cent-infection-rate

"But today comes another challenge. A team led by Gabriela Gomes of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine argues that it is wrong to assume that herd immunity will only be achieved when 60 per cent of people have been infected. It is more likely, they argue, that the true figure lies between 10 and 20 per cent. The 60 per cent figure, they say, is based on the idea that we are all equally likely to contract the virus"

This article was 4th of May. It has not been debunked yet, it has not been dismissed. Everything that has happened since 10th of may suggests it is feeding into the decision making at 10 Downing Street.

https://judithcurry.com/2020/05/10/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought/

"Incorporating, in a reasonable manner, inhomogeneity in susceptibility and infectivity in a standard SEIR epidemiological model, rather than assuming a homogeneous population, causes a very major reduction in the herd immunity threshold, and also in the ultimate infection level if the epidemic thereafter follows an unconstrained path. Therefore, the number of fatalities involved in achieving herd immunity is much lower than it would otherwise be.

In my view, the true herd immunity threshold probably lies somewhere between the 7% and 24% implied by the cases illustrated in Figures 4 and 5. If it were around 17%, which evidence from Stockholm County suggests the resulting fatalities from infections prior to the HIT being reached should be a very low proportion of the population."

This article was published May 10th. - Same day as Johnson's speech. Sweden's situation is not as positive as many have been asserting.

Both of these are modelling exercises, removed from the social material realities.

Everything the Government is doing is going to guarantee the spread of the infection, coupled with inadequate provision for contact tracing, quarantine and importantly no provision at all for isolation treatment of symptomatic cases at the earliest possible moment, away from the community - that is to say nothing approaching the utility of Fever Hospitals. The evidence is that Government rejected the idea of Fever Hospitals when it was mooted as a way to stop the spread within care homes.

I have addressed the efficacy of fever hospitals in a previous blog piece.

The logic is very clear and simple: it makes sense to send people who are symptomatic at the earliest possible moment away from main hospitals, away from care settings, away from peoples homes and shared apartment complexes where if symptomatic people remain to self treat they will absolutely guarantee more spread of infection with a higher viral load within the community! That is best avoided. But no, Government policy is to enable that spread with a higher viral load within the community.

This is insanity.

Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson, The Cabinet, The Behavioural Insights Team are behaving appallingly. Remember that Government text message sent out to vulnerable people, without reference to their doctors? 

"No more support, not for you." 

Go forth and multiply (the virus).
I say, again, that they need to be removed from office, indicted for misconduct and misfeasance, and that we the citizens of the United Kingdom, in all four Nations, and indeed in the Republic of Ireland with whom we share a border,  need a new UK government, a unity government, where the Majority Party works with all other parties, guided by epidemiology and the experience of New Zealand, Vietnam, China and others who have suppressed the transmission of the virus within their populations to do the same - to stop the spread of the virus, and eradicate it from the population.

As I like to put it, Stop the Spread, Spread the Love!

Both the people and the economy will benefit in equal measure.

Herd immunity is neither practical nor safe.

It is not economically sound either.

It is murder.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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