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.
I propose a discussion about establishing a legal definition of a behaviour that we are all too familiar with.
“Organised operations that target peoples cognitive biases, their social wounded-nesses, their insecurities, prejudices and worries, their misunderstandings, cultural conditioning and fears, and do that through public and social media, through marketing, propaganda and media campaigns operating as cottage industries or at an industrial scale, intentionally targeting and manipulating vulnerable people for ideological, religious, political or economic advantage.”
This behaviour is grooming.
If we had legislation defining this, and then criminalising it because it is intentional exploitation of human vulnerability and thus it is a profound abuse, then media platforms would be unable to permit any publishing of such content on their platforms, and it would be impossible then to exploit as a revenue stream.”
The question is simple - the economic costs of zero community transmission strategy and quarantine borders vs the human and economic costs of slow spread towards herd immunity, with repeated cycles of re-opening and shut down as the viral infection spreads in waves.
a stark and accurate depiction of the social material reality
Re-opening while we still have not fully suppressed community transmission of this virus guarantees that there will be more adverse lockdowns, more avoidable deaths, more economic and psychological harm caused to the people - a harm that will not impact the comfortable middle class, the millionaires, multi-millionaires and billionaires as much as it will harm the people who live on low income, no income, the elderly, the disabled, the millions of people with long term chronic disease conditions and all those low paid workers who work providing 'essential services', who cannot be allowed to 'work from home'....
The push for 'exit strategy' and 'exit dates' is epidemiological nonsense, it is economically incoherent blather, it is socially and materially toxic.
Full suppression of community transmission, supported by intensely effective cluster control is the only viable option that meets the full duty of care of Government to the people. That is not set by date, but by results and results alone.
"The virus has few options for survival in the world. It cannot last long on surfaces or in the air, the vast majority of human hosts will successfully kill off the virus within two to three weeks of infection and a small minority will die with it.
The Pattern is clear - we must break it.
Either way, the virus has a very small window to reach a new host or perish. No new human hosts means no more virus. This is why elimination is not only biologically possible, but has already been achieved in many countries around the world.
We must suppress the virus as the population is immunised. As vaccination occurs, lockdown measures become more effective, and the rate of transmission (the ‘R’) falls further still. And as we come into the spring and summer, we gain the additional advantages of better weather, better ventilation and easier outdoor gatherings."
We have the resources, we have the people, we have the desire - but do the Government share this vision?
The aim is to find all infection routes and to chase them down to where everyone infected is known and observed, and no new infections are starting - when the virus runs out of new hosts, it vanishes in that population. Quarantine must be fully implemented upon all incoming and returning domestic and international air, sea and land travel. Even from Northern Ireland."
"By slowing down rather than stopping the spread of infection the UK government are guaranteeing that the bulk of the population will become infected and the mortality rate for vulnerable people will stay the same, it will just happen more slowly.
The 'shut-down' policy was sold as an attempt to ensure NHS and other health services do not collapse under a 'short term' burden. They ordered the isolation of all elderly people and known cases of immune compromised chronic conditions, without any provision to protect them from the spread.
That theory was destroyed by the lack of PPE, shortages of trained staff, lack of other supplies, kit and logistical support which the Government was warned about, in detail, from Operation Cygnus in 2016 and throughout January 2020. All deliberate choices by this Government and it's predecessors.
The UK Government had time to prepare, they had the time to stop and check and quarantine the inflow of infected people from abroad, via air travel and cruises, and land be they immigrants, returning holiday makers or business travellers.
Merely slowing down the spread of infection is exactly what the Chinese, Korean, Singaporean and Taiwanese Governments did NOT contemplate - they went for eradication - find every case, quarantine all contacts, treat everyone who is symptomatic in isolation hospitals, maintain vigilance, deal with outbreaks rapidly until no new cases emerge after two months."
Whatever it takes, we must not allow a repeat of the re-open while community transmission is ongoing leading to inevitable exponential spread and further lockdowns to happen. Again.
Each lockdown is an admission of failure to act correctly to suppress the virus within the community.
"Matt Hancock says that a Zero Covid strategy is not feasible for the UK. Priti Patel, with the collusion of the mass media, blames the public recalcitrance for the unfolding catastrophe. These are the twin strands of a state narrative that is preparing us for the next wave in its strategy, which will plumb new depths of callousness: fully opening up the economy once the most vulnerable are vaccinated, and allowing the virus to rip unimpeded through the rest of the population.
Dangerous
This strategy is highly dangerous for two reasons: allowing the virus to spread without hindrance increases the risk of further mutations, one of which might well be resistant to the vaccines, and it exposes tens of millions of people to potential long term health risks that are still not fully understood.
Hancock is wrong to dismiss the possibility of eliminating this virus. New Zealand has now lifted all restrictions, having achieved zero transmission. Vietnam, with a population of 90 million, and Taiwan, with a population density higher than that of the UK, have all successfully pursued elimination strategies. If it can be done there, it can be done everywhere."
“There can be no such thing as a partial quarantine. Either it is comprehensive and effective, or it will fail. A differential approach based on country of origin is undermined by the difficulty of accurately ascertaining where arrivals have come from.”
Every country has a duty of care to every other country during a pandemic to neither export or import the infectious virus. UK Government, specifically the Westminster Ruling Faction, has deliberately failed that duty of care. Deliberately. Not an accident, not incompetence.
Vaccines and Variants and the costs of deliberate slow spread policy..
Vaccines have been oversold as the pandemic exit strategy. This is a point I have made a number of times. The rush to Vaccine is in part an admission of the failure to adopt a zero community transmission strategy. It offers hope where ZCT offers a degree of certainty. Hope, in this case, kills.
The Financial Times published this piece, and it is a relief to see it.
"If regions with raging transmission do act as breeding grounds for resistant variants, then failing to control spread will prolong the pandemic. Prof de Oliveira stresses that Taiwan, China, Australia and New Zealand, which have chased elimination, are the role models to follow. “This should be a wake-up call for all of us to control transmission, not just in our own regions but globally. This virus will keep outsmarting us if we don’t take it very seriously,” he says.
That means not just vaccinating but fast testing, accurate and quick contact tracing, quarantine and isolation. In short, vaccination must go hand-in-hand with virus suppression, not become a substitute for it. A successful vaccine rollout will count for little if the country then becomes a crucible for resistant variants"
The Kent Variant tells us something about tourism, international travel the need for effective, tight quarantine and the need to reduce the amount of people who become exposed to the virus - every new case is a possibility of the virus making new adaptations that we really do not need to be seeing.
Update February 13th - a very useful twitter thread written by Deepti Gurdasani,Senior Lecturer, Queen Mary University London in epidemiology, statistical genetics, machine learning, where she speaks about being invited undertake interviews and panel discussions with the BBC, LBC and others and finds that not only is she effectively censored, the subject of zero community transmission is being deliberately omitted from all discussions on the COVID19 crisis (catastrophe).
In the thread she works through the full scope of the meaning of zero community transmission vs slow spread towards 'herd immunity' and outlines the evidence on either side of this 'debate'.
It is worth reading it through.
The question is simple - the economic costs of zero community transmission strategy and quarantine borders vs the human and economic costs of slow spread towards herd immunity, with repeated cycles of re-opening and shut down as the viral infection spreads in waves.
Johnson, his advisors and the Cabinet, and indeed the Labour Party led by Keir Starmer and Parliament have never 'taken responsibility'.
Johnson is the self styled economic Superman, who publicly rejected all 'medically irrational' response to the Corona Virus, on February 3rd,
"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."
His own words, his own speech.
And a month later, on the morning of March 5th he suggested, with a smirk on his face that revealed the lie, that he had dropped the idea of Herd Immunity, one of the 'theories' which 'had been debated'. Then he says 'I think we need to strike a balance' which does not imply stopping the spread, which is what all the East Asian states had chosen, what New Zealand had chosen, and what others were choosing. What then is the balance between stopping the spread and allowing it to rip through the population - it is trying to manage a slow spread (which was known then to be impossible, and has since been proven three times to be the case, and we are at c.20% of population infected with 80% still at risk.)
transcript :
"Philip Schofield: Is the delay essentially trying to spread this out so it doesn’t all happen at once and overwhelm the NHS, and that you can actually delay it into perhaps the summer when it’s a little bit quieter and the ordinary flu might have died down a wee bit, is that what you’re doing?
Boris Johnson: Well it’s a very, very important question, and that’s where a lot of the debate has been and one of the theories is, that perhaps you could take it on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population, without taking as many draconian measures. I think we need to strike a balance, I think it is very important, we’ve got a fantastic NHS, we will give them all the support that they need, we will make sure that they have all preparations, all the kit that they need for us to get through it. But I think it would be better if we take all the measures that we can now to stop the peak of the disease being as difficult for the NHS as it might be, I think there are things that we may be able to do."
Following that appearance on morning TV, all his main advisors spoke in the following days about reaching herd immunity - all of them knowing there was no viable vaccine available in any reasonable time horizon, and that Herd Immunity as a concept only applied to a vaccination program, it has no Public Health meaning outside that context- as if it were possible and a in the long term a good thing.
23rd of March Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Valence cite 'Mathematical Studies' and 'Behavioural Science' as informing Government Policy, with no mention of a Zero Community Transmission Strategy that had been proven in Wuhan, South Korea, Taiwan, SIngapore, Hong Kong and was being proven in New Zealand....
So whilst they claim to have rejected a Herd Immunity strategy, the social material reality is that every single policy position that have taken has been designed to allow slow spread - which is a tacit acceptance of Herd Immunity as a target.
It is impossible to control a slow spread of an infectious aerosol carried disease, and they all knew this all along. any attempt to do so guarantees that there will be surges that demand shutdowns. Opening after shutting down without eliminating community transmission absolutely guarantees that there will be another surge.
The only way to control it is to stop it, to suppress the virus and eliminate community transmission. Then keep in place rapid, efficient locally driven cluster control systems to ensure any new outbreaks are dealt with. it also requires tightly controlled quarantine borders.
These are all relatively simple mechanisms. They make demands of Government to ensure all the people are well informed, never misinformed. They make demands on Government to support all the people through the process, including lockdowns when they have lost control of community transmission.
Evidence of intentionality
The UK Government, the Ruling Faction (that includes all the media, news broadcasters and pundits, the anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, the right wing grooming operations) have never adopted a zero community transmission strategy
The Great Barrington Declaration promoters in the UK had a meeting with Johnson in September, which resulted in delays to closing schools, which led to more spread of the virus. Teachers infections rates were +300% more than their local areas.
The Spectator publishes a lie - claiming there is no Scientific Consensus, claiming that the scientists behind the Great Barrington Declaration represent a split in the virology, epidemiology and public health science communities.
An astroturf campaign - USforTHEM funded by US NeoLiberal think tanks, co-ordinated by Conservative party back benchers, promoting herd immunity and opposing school closures, smaller class sizes and other mitigations of spread whose efforts have fed into Johnsons policy positions.
This is ALL deliberate action - at this level it cannot be described as incompetence.
Billionaires in the UK have made an extra £25 billion in the past year.
The Crony Contracts have created many, many newly minted multi millionaires.
Ask your self now - what must be done to resolve this situation?
another deliberate play
one of these politicians is honest, the other is a political grooming gangster - the different outcomes speak volumes.
a repeated behavioural pattern indicates intentionality
Whose Immunity?
"deliberate action
by the Ruling Faction -
a harmful infraction
of a States duty of care
to the citizen,
and to other states.
They spread the virus,
they spread the cash,
These venal people
are a lethal rash,
one we cannot even scratch.
they have an 80 seat
immunity."
More than 9 months ago, New Zealand reported their first death caused by COVID19, on February 29th, 2020.
The first UK death from COVID19 was recorded a month earlier in England, the death occurred on January 21m and was reported January 29th.
On the 3rd of February, the UK Prime Minister in a speech in Greenwich, publicly rejected taking the known, proven steps to prevent an epidemic escalating within the UK.
His words:
"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."
Throughout that month, the UK was importing the virus via 80,000 English Ski tourists travelling to and returning from Northern Italy and Austria, where an epidemic was known to be taking place. The UK abandoned existing contact tracing and isolation systems that had been operating. They lost control of the virus, and made no effort to suppress and control it, and stop community transmission - at best their policy choice has always been to somehow control it and manage a slow spread, in order to 'protect the economy'.
Both countries had the same information available at the same time.
Both Governments and their expert advisors and external independent expertise knew about this new infectious respiratory disease, how it spread, what the implications were in terms of case fatality rates, asymptomatic spread etc.
All of this was known at the time, and the need to prevent community transmission was very well understood.
The experts all understood that no matter how slowed down the spread of the virus might be by obviously inadequate measures, it always contains the potential to rapidly move beyond control causing widespread and deep harm, and thus necessitating a series of full lockdowns. Waves upon waves of disaster.
Here, Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand's Prime Minister, speaks to a news anchor on the first New Zealand fatality..
One of the items they discuss is managing borders.
I urge all my readers to watch it. Pay close attention to Ardern's logic, and compare that with what we know about the English Ruling Faction's apparent 'logic'.
In this global pandemic, every state has a duty of care to not export the virus, to achieve zero community transmission within it's own borders, every state has a duty of care in this to all other states.
Just as you and I, as people sharing the same streets and areas, we too have that same duty of care -to not spread the infection - it has to be said that those who wilfully risk spreading the disease are harming the entire community, and cannot be said to be acting on the available evidence.
Those who, due to lack of financial support, are forced to take risks cannot be scapegoated to protect the governments that refuse to take the correct action. Those whose work is essential - shopkeepers, rubbish collectors, nurses, porters, care workers, teachers, bank clerks serving the public, post offices and their staff, public transit staff, police, ambulance crews and many, many others - need the rest of us to prevent the spread of the virus so that they can get to and from their essential it us all work, in relative safety.
Comparing New Zealand's leadership with the UK ruling faction leadership:
Being Social.
New Zealand is not a Socialist state by self definition - however their Government has behaved as a genuinely socially caring state should in terms of dealing with the viral infection spread by SARSCOV2 in order to avoid the deaths and harms caused by the disease stage of the infection, COVID19.
The New Zealand Government acted on the available evidence and the skills learned in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and others and they have suppressed community transmission and they have fully supported the health and welfare of all the people, with all the resources of the state, without profiteering.
That is socialistic in action.
Social. It is not an ideological stance - it is a social stance.
Community. All of us matter.
Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior.
What the Ruling Faction of the UK is doing is disaster capitalism - profiteering from the disaster.
Deliberately, callously exploiting people's vulnerabilities in spite of warnings, in spite of their 'errors' being clearly defined, identified, quantified and presented to them, they have persisted with policies that ensure slow spread of the virus, which guaranteed surges would occur.
If this was being done within a family group, we could have no problem calling this outright lethal intentional abuse and cruelty.
We would not fob it off as incompetence.
We cannot fob the behaviour and actions of this English Ruling Faction as mere incompetence.
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.
Recently reported in the media is the work done by legal experts which shows that UK Government has changed the 'rules' and 'guidance' on how to 'behave' with regard to the SARSCOV2 virus in order to avoid the COVID19 disease and 'save the economy' at least 64 times.
"Lockdown rules inEnglandhave been changed at least 64 times by the government since the start of the coronavirus pandemic..."
Here's a listing you can read to check the accuracy of this:
Adam Wagner, of Doughty Street Chambers, whose team made this list, has been studying the regulatory response of the Johnson-Cummings-Tufton Street Tory Administration, and he has found that new national regulations, local regulations, regulations on face coverings or rules on travel quarantine have passed into law on average every four-and-a-half days since the first restrictions were introduced in the spring.
Think about that - UK, a leading 'world power' moves the goal posts, the rules, the 'guidance' for it's own population, with regard to a serious viral infection which is transmitted from person to person by aerosol and very fine moisture droplets, every four and a half days. Confusion reigns.
New Zealand, Finland, Vietnam, South Korea and a good few others reveal no such pattern, and they have achieved zero community transmission, with strategic cluster control policies that are effective, protecting both the people and their economies.
Their guidance is clear, unequivocal and their populations trusted them, and their chosen strategy - zero community transmission - worked.
Who trusts this UK Government, today?
Do you? I don't. I haven't trusted the UK Government since Chris Whitty claimed 'behavioural science' as the basis for UK Government policy back in March 2020.
"As a result, the rules have become increasingly cumbersome, with police, lawyers and ministers unable to distinguish between laws and advice. The guidance given to the public often does not reflect the law, Wagner said.
Many rules, including those demanding that people have a reasonable excuse before travelling, are effectively unenforceable." Adam Wagner's words.
We can all see truth of that.
Mr. Wagner has been analysing the laws for nine months, and he points out that every time ministers release a new set of rules, there is an element of theatre, farce and confused activity within the people before the legislation is found to be difficult to enforce.
“There was the inadvertent banning of sex between people not in the same household, which led to the creation of linked households, or support bubbles.
“There was the issue of whether scotch eggs were a substantial meal. There has been endless confusion over exercise, which I think has been totally avoidable,” he said.
The coronavirus legislation itself has grown from being a pdf of just 12 pages in the spring, to 72 pages in the autumn, to 108 pages and 50,000 words after the introduction of tier 4 restrictions" Wagner said.
Readers of my blog are familiar with my position on all of this.
We are trapped in our homes, because we care and because we are stuck with an historically lunatic, manipulative, harm causing Government whose 80 seat majority means they can dictate what ever they like to the country.
And because we all understand that we have a duty to each other to stop the spread of the virus (stopping the spread is spreading the love) we cannot protest, march etc and so we are caught between a bully administration and the risk of death among our families.
How venal and cowardly are those 'decent' Tory MPs who know this is all wrong, and yet continue to protect that elective dictatorship as their Masters preside over 100,000 and rising avoidable fatalities!
There must be at least 80 of those 'decent' Tory MPs who know what they are doing is wrong, but their desire for power trumps the people's health and safety.
Why are they behaving in this way?
Here's one theory, based on observed attitude, action, behaviour, justifications, excuses and outcomes,- all tainted by repeated misleading narratives and gaslighting. In Public.
For the NeoLiberal Factions, Zero Covid is Socialism - full state support for the people, without profiteering, based on science led and social material evidence, to protect the people and the people's economy. Thus zerovid strategy is rejected from the get go.
That is their first reaction, a pure knee jerk thing - and their second thought, which implies thinking this through is "How can we game the epidemic to enhance our Power and increase our Wealth Holdings".
My little crony... a lay out of the person to person links, and commercial links between ruling faction and their supporters, and contracts issued to entities with little or no direct public health expertise.... creating a few hundred instant millionaires with cash they need to 'invest'...
No matter what their public face is, irrespective of all denials and statements suggesting otherwise, by politicians, spokes persons and media punditry, the effective social and material reality of UK Ruling Faction policy on managing this epidemic amounts to slow spread towards mythic herd immunity.
They wish to protect the hedge fund money tree.
I sit here in impotent fury, unable, since March 23 2020 to make any material difference.
What can I do?
I write songs, and I sing them. I write blogs and I post them. I try to keep myself as grounded and sane as possible, in safety, whilst millions of others are forced to take incredible risks to keep me safe. There's an ambulance on my street this morning as I write. Someone is suffering - and this odious Government is responsible for that suffering.
64 Ways to Mislead a Country
People are not 'heroes', they are stoic, caring, hard working and they are genuinely committed to the welfare of the whole community, non excluded.
There are hospital staff, teachers, care-workers, bus drivers, tube drivers and builders who have died simply because Johnson's Government refused to adopt a zero community transmission strategy at any stage, and issued confusing and conflicting 'guidance and advice' which muddied the waters.
The Queen has faded in inglorious insignificance, as a moral leader of this nation.
The English Church headed by Welby sits too close to the bankers.
Starmer plays nasty games within the Labour party, and still attacks the nearly got into government Corbyn movement.
Only the SNP as a whole and complete Party in Parliament show any degree of genuine, humanistic care.
What are we to do?
So I rewrote "Fifty Ways to Leave your Lover" as "Sixty Four Ways to Mislead the Country."
This is my first draft, as I write today, and I hope it will improve with time as I struggle with the song, and the parsing.
What I'd like to see is a 100,000 versions flooding the UK Charts ( yes a mad dream that will never materialise because I will never 'produce' in order to 'attract', that's not my style at all) in order to get the message across. Like, as if music was a public voice in the shared commons, speaking to all our true needs,
The Music Industry Fail
I am also profoundly disappointed that the UK Music Industry leading bodies, moguls, billionaires and Stars have never publicly called for a Zero Community Transmission strategy - even as live gigs and festivals were taking place in those countries that took the ZeroCovid approach, that managed so well to suppress community transmission and put in place systems to deal rapidly and kindly with clusters.
The added odium of irresponsible people like Van Morbidson and Wreck Claptout issuing a series of anti-mask, conTheory songs is unbearable to a people's songwriter. May they be publicly shamed and censured, and may their entire catalogue be handed over to fund support for low income folk across the UK. ( that's not going to happen, either. I know. I am a dreamer, not the only one...)
I know it won't happen. It's just a thought, an aspiration about the potential for justice.
I am angry and very, very saddened by all of this...
Here is the first draft.
I will be practicing it, and will probably make a video of it to go with my other songs from this period -
It will be an interesting album, when it is finished.
If I survive this Johnson Government.
My apologies to Paul Simon, for this wrecking of his song, which is a song about planning a betrayal. I think I have adapted it well, lyrically, at least for these difficult times.
I will avoid 5/4, 13/9 and 21/7....
"The problem is inside your head," Boris said to me
" the answer is obvious, if you take it illogic'lly.
We will not help folk in this land to be virus free;
sixty four way so to mislead the country ."
He said, "you are aware It's not my habit to be true;
we plan our rules to be easily misconstrued.
scapegoat the people who we have deliberately confused;
sixty four ways to to mislead the country
sixty four changes to to mislead the country ."
Break all the rules, Dom.
Make a new plan, Dan;
Joke about Hake, Jake,
Set yourself Free
Get back to school, fools;
no need to discuss facts;
get back to work, folks .
Herd Immuniteeeeeee....."
REPEAT CHORUS
Second verse:
He said, "It *thrills me now to see you struggle in such pain;
I wish there was somethin' I could do to make you smile again."
I said, "I get that, but can you help us to be virus free?"
"No chance" he said! "I'd rather save the hedge fund money tree!"
He said, "We will keep the airports open, it's a human right;
with the virus on board, they'll be taking their flights."
That's why he moved the goalposts, and I now I realise
sixty four ways to mislead a people
sixty four changes to mislead the people."
* "I saw the whole [European Union] change. It was a wonderful time to be there. TheBerlin Wallfell and the French and Germans had to decide how they were going to respond to this event, and what was Europe going to become, and there was this fantastic pressure to create a single polity, to create an answer to the historic German problem, and this produced the most fantastic strains in the Conservative Party, so everything I wrote from Brussels, I found was sort of chucking these rocks over the garden wall and I listened to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory party, and it really gave me this I suppose rather weird sense of power."
This self admission of his enjoyment of the buzz of causing distress in others, at a distance, is indicative...
His professional use of the mussed up hair, and jocularity is of course a performance.
On the one hand the prefect who fags his juniors, on the other hand the comedian who distracts the audience...
Kindest regards
Corneilius
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
Thank you for reading this blog.
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.
There are many valid questions concerning the long term efficacy of the various vaccines being rolled out, questions which can only be answered accurately as we see what happens, as we gather the data from the post vaccinated cohorts, which are matters of genuine and acceptable scientific uncertainty - this indicates to me, at least, that a zero community transmission strategy is still the only viable strategy available with which to save lives, protect our health care systems, our people and our people's economy in 2021/2/3.
The technical issue of how much time a good roll-out would take (setting aside for now concerns about mismanaged roll outs) implies continued risk of virus spread and community transmission continuing through out the time frame, with the additional risk of more mutations that might confer an advantage to the virus.
It is not too late to prevent further avoidable fatality and long term illness for many millions of people by stopping the spread of the virus. We are still at the early stages. no more than 10% of people in USUK have been infected, according to various estimates - there are variations where surges have been concentrated in large urban settings.
Such a strategy - Zero Community Transmission - can only work when the population is fully supported by the state and by industry. Every gap in support undermines our collective safety.
We are all in this together and that demands that all of us are working together for the same goal.
Lack of adequate support drives industries to compete for support for themselves, rather than for the whole of society.
People trying to merely survive due to inadequate support, oligarchs trying to make profit and a government trying to manage a slow spread whilst grabbing more powers ain't gonna work.
The Wealthy
Billionaires will take on more wealth no matter what - that is the nature of owning immense wealth that cannot be spent. It is invested, and those investments generate more and more and more wealth, irrespective of the daily activity of the billionaire owners. They can sit back and do nothing and still get up the next day much wealthier than the previous day.
Billionaires can never return to average financial status.
Billionaires can play philanthropy - and many do and quite a few are very focussed on providing support in a genuine and humane way. There's a lot more that can and must be done. But it is not to be left to individuals to take action.
There is resistance to a change in the existing systems of wealth creation, which is based on externalised costs, which creates their vast wealth. If all externalised costs were paid, such wealth would soon vanish and a new balance would emerge.
The poor and low income folk.
Externalised costs are the costs incurred in any activity that are not paid by those who are directing the activity - they are paid by others, by the environment and by the people.
Right now the US and UK Governments are externalising the cost of mismanagement of an epidemic to us the people.
Who is paying the price of mismanagement of the epidemic in the UK?
Billionaires and the wealthy can afford to isolate themselves from any epidemic with much more ease than the poor, the low income, the middle income working wage population. Some of the wealthy are arrogant enough to travel across borders, and become super spreaders, precisely because they can afford to isolate themselves more readily, in relative comfort.
I have access to small garden, in a shared house, which I rent. That places me in a much better position than people renting an apartment in a block of flats or a high rise. That affords me a bit of leg room and a safety that others cannot access.
I am in a better situation that someone who owns their apartment, in a block, even as I am substantially poorer. I bless my good fortune, yet I am uneasy about that lack for so many others, living in London..
That seems unfair.
Who am I to deserve such good fortune?
The poor, the disabled, the vulnerable and other low income folk.
And then there's all those who are homeless, those who are struggling with mental health and chronic ill health, there are entire families living in small apartments, some in high rises that are known fire traps - for those people this situation is a double danger induced by UK Government policy decisions.
Then the 'key workers' the lovely folk in the super market I frequent, the drivers and stackers, the door staff - the risks they are exposed to, their dedication to ensuring we are fed and well supplied.
It is a burden not shared by Westminster elites.
That is unfair, it is an injustice.
It is unfair because the policy choices of USUK Governments are the root cause of the repeated lockdowns, one after the other. There is no other causation for that cycle.
The correct strategy is one lockdown, breaking community transmission fully, treating every case in isolation, quarantining borders, etc for at most 12 weeks (and if done well, it does work) and then maintaining surveillance systems that can jump on any new clusters, isolate them and suppress the transmission of the virus. I would go as far as to say to pay people to do that is the Governments responsibility, it's core duty of care. Once the community transmission is totally suppressed, then the community can re-open, safely.
Stopping the spread is spreading the love.
Repeated open/shut policies as a result of deliberate government policy choice and action creates more time for more viral mutations, which can increase the risks for everyone. It adds stress to people's lives in myriad of ways untold, unspoken, endured.
Healthy people are the major spreaders of the virus, not the chronically ill. Tourism and Business class travel mixed with mismanagement has transformed an epidemic into a pandemic. UK has imported and exported variants since the beginning of the epidemic. Refused to control the borders. How ironic after Brexit.
Is there a Vietnamese or New Zealand Variant storming across Europe or America?
Allowing the virus to reach that part of our population with immuno-suppressive conditions - 11,000,000 people in the UK, 83,000,000 in USA - creates another lengthy well for more mutation possibilities, in that the virus lives for much longer in such cases, and thus has more time for more mutations and the emergence of new tricks.
The adverse outcomes of the deliberate policy of USUK Governments is what forces us indoors - it's not the virus that is doing this.
It is not people's confusion, nor is it peoples 'bad' behaviour either that drives this vicious cycle. These are for sure real problems, yet the solution is not more confused Government 'guidance' that appears to be more about the Governments saving face than our welfare as a people. That is totally unfair.
The root of the problem is the USUK Governments deliberate active policy.
To sum up the current situation: where we are is that both US and UK Governments have deliberately pursued a policy of slow spread, of letting it saunter through the population (rather than "rip through the population" as he said) until it is out of control, and galloping - repeatedly, surge upon reduction upon surge - even as New Zealand and Vietnam and others controlled the spread and broke the transmission of the virus within their communities, and thus proved the efficacy of zero community transmission strategies in different countries, with differing demographics. It works. It can work in any State.
This disaster has been enabled through deliberate mismanagement.
This is a deliberately induced cycle, it is not merely incompetence.
Deliberate is when the Government ministers and leaders are shown the evidence, when they are advised and warned by the best scientists across the globe, when they see other countries getting it right from the get go, and they still refuse to change course, even as more and more deaths occur, even as we find more long term chronic disease amongst survivors, even as health systems are pushed to their very limits - that is deliberate.
The mussed up hair, the blather, the messy suit and the portrayal of incompetence as a mask, a comfort, a soother rather than an accurate critical analysis. The taste of truth is bitter in his mouth.
To add to the charge sheet, we see the UK Government and Media repeatedly scapegoating different demographics of deliberately confused citizens exposed to all manner of conTheory which the Governments have allowed to permeate - indeed both Governments are in place precisely because of their political use of conTheory as a weapon within an electoral process - then we have a situation that is close to murderous as one can get, outside an ongoing war.
Deliberate de-humanisation is a psychosocial and political dynamic, a tactic and outcome of oppression.
Understanding this is key to avoiding being triggered or manipulated into internal conflict among those of us who seek to liberate ourselves and our communities from oppression. The struggle for freedom from oppression is not equivalent to the taking of liberty that Libertarianism promotes.
This is a critically important dynamic to be aware of as the embers of hatred are, on all sides, are being deliberately stoked and fuelled by online political grooming operations, public News and Press media that plays to the biases and vulnerabilities of people, that seeks to exploited the reactions of triggered folk.
The people who are being triggered, by intentional action, on all sides, are vulnerable. They are all being exploited.
It is not that people are pulling the triggers, in the sense it is their fault or that it is somehow a flaw in their character - it is that their vulnerability is being studied and targeted - they are being victimised by others who know exactly what they are doing.
We have to seek to protect all, or the project to humanise our social power structures is doomed to failure.
The consumer driven 'New Age' tends to reduce the project of liberation to a work of self interest.
Admonitions to alter individual behaviour, such as recycling, do less shopping, buy electric cars, stop eating meat etc whilst those who produce the things we need to recycle, who reap vast profits from stimulating our consumerism by offering easy credit make no effort to pay the externalised costs of their profit making is a sleight of hand.
The term 'consumer' to describe a human being is as dehumanising a term as is 'consumer responsibility' without the necessary equivalents of 'producer responsibility' or 'extractor responsibility' or 'mining responsibility'.
The sales pitch is that if only the ordinary person who has no real traction on the action and behaviour of the larger institutional powers that drive environmental degradation and air pollution could do their bit, then improvements would naturally occur and save us all. That is a lie.
Hence the rapidity with which the various streams of consumer pop psychology have become weaponised to support that lie, to normalise it so that ordinary folk cannot see the lie, cannot see the wood for the trees. The deployment of pop psychology to that end is a dehumanising act/
Paolo Friere
Paolo Friere's practical work, among the poor and indigenous of South America stands as testimony to the accuracy of his insight, the practicality of his approach, the humility of his perception.
Paolo Friere
I first read his work in the mid 1990s, and it was, to me at least, a revelation and a reassurance... That said it has taken me decades to integrate.
Freire believed education could not be divorced from politics; the act of teaching and learning are considered political acts in and of themselves. Freire defined this connection as a main tenet of critical pedagogy. Teachers and students must be made aware of the politics that surround education. The way students are taught and what they are taught serves a political agenda. Teachers, themselves, have political notions they bring into the classroom. Freire believed that :
Education makes sense because women and men learn that through learning they can make and remake themselves, because women and men are able to take responsibility for themselves as beings capable of knowing—of knowing that they know and knowing that they don't know.
I offer my readers this link to one of his works, Pedagogy of The Oppressed, as a source of insight, reassurance and focus as we face the wide spread shouting match that is disrupting rational, deliberative discourse on matters that must concern us all - our very survival is on the line, and we need to envision a future not of mere survival rather a future of collective thrivival.
The opening lines of this book are a clear and succinct description of a problem we face, right now.
This link below is to an online version of his book.
The website History Is A Weapon (HIAW) holds a lot of really good practical information and insight for all of us. It has as it's cultural locus a focus on The America's and their Histories. That said, the information is useful to everyone concerned with a healthy future for our cultures.
"While the problem of humanization has always, from an axiological point of view, been humankind's central problem, it now takes on the character of an inescapable concern.
Concern for humanization leads at once to the recognition of dehumanization, not only as an ontological possibility but as an historical reality. And as an individual perceives the extent of dehumanization, he or she may ask if humanization is a viable possibility. Within history, in concrete, objective contexts, both humanization and dehumanization are possibilities for a person as an uncompleted being conscious of their incompletion."
In other words, the possibility of becoming more human - that is to say to become more humane, more empathic, kinder and thus stronger and clearer in understanding how best to resist and then prevent oppression is real. Another world is indeed possible.
"But while both humanization and dehumanization are real alternatives, only the first is the people's vocation. This vocation is constantly negated, yet it is affirmed by that very negation. It is thwarted by injustice, exploitation, oppression, and the violence of the oppressors; it is affirmed by the yearning of the oppressed for freedom and justice, and by their struggle to recover their lost humanity."
Here is makes clear that those who seek freedom from oppression must be aware that their task includes avoiding becoming dehumanisers themselves in their struggle.
"Dehumanization, which marks not only those whose humanity has been stolen, but also (though in a different way) those who have stolen it, is a distortion of the vocation of becoming more fully human. This distortion occurs within history; but it is not an historical vocation. Indeed, to admit of dehumanization as an historical vocation would lead either to cynicism or total despair. "
This is the root of all dystopian thinking, the acceptance of a falsified given concerning our nature as human social creatures and cultures.
"The struggle for humanization, for the emancipation of labour, for the overcoming of alienation, for the affirmation of men and women as persons would be meaningless. This struggle is possible only because dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed."
In other words, if for example, one holds to the Christian worldview of Original Sin as a given, or that Humanity itself is destroying the Earth, (it's not, it's the culture of extractive wealth creation) then the struggle is inevitably undermined at source. That view makes the future appear hopeless.
"Because it (oppression, the entitlement to Rule and dominate - my added comment) is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so."
The use of unjust power over another always creates resistance.
"In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both."
This is the central thread of the hate we see being fuelled as Donald Trump cedes power, yet resists, and quite clearly, deliberately uses dehumanisation as a weapon. It is also the same thread of hate being funnelled back at those people who have been groomed to support Trump, even as they do not understand that Trump is backed by the Oligarchy and he will not, and cannot 'drain the swamp'.
I urge caution to all of us to take these thoughts into consideration, to tone up the accurate analysis, and to tone down the dehumanisation. I need to learn and practice this as much as anyone else.
If we do not do this, we will be enrolled in war fare we are unable to counter.
This is not to make excuses for anyone's abusive behaviour, it is to approach the problem from a stronger, grass roots permeating comprehensive and collective awareness of what we are really dealing with, when we face our oppressors, so that we are not so readily led astray, on all sides.
Trump has a following of people who do feel some degrees of oppression - poverty, loss of income and status, fear for the future, exposure to systemic scapegoating, dehumanisation by those on the Left who claim to be seeking freedom from liberation....
It's easy to look at other ordinary people whose views, attitudes and behaviour challenges us, and it is easy to use them as whipping boys for our rage, on both sides.
Antifa and Racists shouting at each other, threat and counter threats of violence, insult and spittle exchanged to lead towards more violence. Christians at war with Muslims. Older voters voting for Brexit 'betraying' younger voters. Younger voters 'ignoring' the problems of the older voters.
These memes are fully weaponised and are driving social and emotional divisions that undermine potential resolution of problems, the boat we are all in is rocking and cannot make head way to a safe port. We have to counter that.
Not so easy is the task of humanising the situation, of understanding enough to build the bridges that will connect our humanity - the less easy task is the one most critical to our children's children's futures.
I find this song, by comedian Katie Goodman, very humanising, heart warming and reassuring - please enjoy, and take on some of the gentle yet fierce wisdom of it. I like to imagine a large crowd outside a political administration building singing this, with joy and with sorrow, with humility and determination..
Free Speech
Free Speech is a responsibility, it is neither an automatic right nor is it an entitlement or privilege.
The responsibility inherent in Free Speech into the public domain is that one must speak honestly, one must be, as far as possible, evidence based.
The responsibility inherent in Free Speech is to be as good a listener as a speaker and to acknowledge what is verified, reliable and true as such, and to also acknowledge beliefs as made up, as guess-work at the very best.
Free Speech is not a right to promote beliefs over evidence in action on matters concerning the shared commons, the welfare of people and their lives.
Free Speech is not a right to groom, manipulate or exploit others through use of language and various logical fallacies.
Lots of very clever abusive people hide behind Free Speech - the correct way to deal with that is to identify what is being done, name it and do so in full transparency.
This blog by Kitty Jones, is really, really useful in helping with this. How bullying operates within the political and media sphere..
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