New Zealand, learning from the present. Statues, and learning from the past.

Learning all the time, learning through honesty, learning because we care.

If we use a metaphor and suggest that Racism is a Mental, Social, Economic and Political Virus, then Honesty across all History Education Curricula, and in all Universities and Museums, is part of the vaccine and we, we the healthy, evidence based decent people who reach out to ensure that Racism and other similar oppressions are confronted and then excised from our culture, we are the Medics. Poverty is also key to this, as is kindness. Kindness is political. Poverty is oppression, because it is a structured part of the existing economic system. Poverty also causes profound chronic stress. Kindness as a political dynamic alleviates both.
Abolishing poverty is a crucial political act of kindness, above and beyond all charitable action. Jacinda Ardern, as New Zealand's current Prime Minister articulates what that means in practice.

On June 8th, 2020, the New Zealand Government announces that they had eliminated community transmission of COVID19 within New Zealand.


In this video New Zealand government lays out that they have no new cases of SARSCOV2 infection or COVID19 disease, and that to all intents an purposes they are ready to return to 'normal' life, to restart normal economic and social activity within New Zealand. They will of course remain vigilant.

In this presentation, Jacinda Ardern lays out the time line for New Zealand's action taken, starting from their very first confirmed case of COVID19.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_New_Zealand#Transmission_timeline

The New Zealand Government and the people, together, took action immediately after WHO issued global notifications and it was clear that a global pandemic was under way.

On 28 January, the Ministry of Health set up the National Health Coordination Centre (NHCC) in response to the outbreak. An Infectious and Notifiable Diseases Order was issued to take effect from 30 January, which required health practitioners to report any suspected cases.

From that point forwards, they paid close attention to what was happening around them, they drew on the experience of the Chinese, the Taiwanese, The South Koreans and others and they moved with clarity to stop any importation of the virus, to limit the community transmission of the virus within New Zealand and to work towards eradicating it from the population.

They have achieved that in 11 weeks.

I have posted previously about the efficacy of this kind of protocol, within a time line of 12 weeks, to achieve the same result, in any population, anywhere.

I have posted my thoughts about the British government's quite different approach.

In essence it boils down to this : The UK Government chose to allow the spread, the community transmission of the infection in order to game the situation, to exploit the emerging vulnerability so that they could re-rig the economy in classic neoLiberal fashion, as outlined in detail in Naomi Klein's 2006 study of this pattern of political, economic and ideological anti-democratic policy enforcement, Shock Doctrine.
The exact opposite of kindness, the exact opposite of the policy chosen and implemented by New Zealand's government.

In choosing this policy direction this they have caused 60,000 excess deaths, most due to COVDI19, and many due to loss of NHS normal service as it was converted to COVID19 status en masse, which was a dreadful policy - it ignored everything that is known and proven practice in managing and controlling an infectious disease that is at community transmission stage.

I wrote about that wilful ignoring the evidence, with focus on the utility of Fever Hospitals as a key element in controlling and stopping community transmission.

The UK Government have lied repeatedly about their actions, when challenged. They claim they are following the Science. That is a blatant lie.

The UK Government have also co-opted every push back by epidemiologists, public health professionals, health care professionals, social care professional,.teachers and many others who have challenged them and demanded changes to policy, based on the science.

Every action the Government has taken has led to continued transmission, rather than suppressing and stopping community transmission.

The ordinary people are the ones who have slowed the transmission - by staying home, by observing physical distancing, by their discipline.  By enduring the limitations of a Government declared shut-down that was inadequately resourced. By putting up with the disruption to daily life, to family life, by staying home and by that means alone was the community transmission reduced.

The NHS staff have been forced to work with inadequate support across the country, care workers in residential care settings have been forced to work with inadequate support across the 11,500 care homes and other settings across the country.

So the question raised today, by New Zealand's present status is this - can this country, The United Kingdom, it's Government and it's people, learn from the present, in the present, in order to create a safe and healthy and prosperous future?

What is the answer to this question?

The answer is the UK Government has no intention of learning from New Zealand, or China, or from the WHO. Their policy on Corona Virus is deliberate, and they have no intention of stopping the spread, eradicating the virus within the islands of Britain. They are causing harm to the citizens of the UK in pursuit of ideological political economic profits and power grabbing.

They should be arrested, for misfeasance, misconduct in public office and for manslaughter.

The people have been abandoned by their Government, their press and are divided and in danger.

Statues and the past.

image source : "being colour-blind isn't good enough."

This weekend, people demonstrating their feeling, and their understanding of the situation, past and present, concerning Racism, Slavery and Empire took to the streets across Britain.

Some people took direct action in Bristol, within the context of Global Anti-Racist Violence movement, Black Lives Matter and the international response to the widely published video of the 8 and a half minute murder of George Floyd by 4 Minneapolis Police Officers.

 A gathering of demonstrators toppled a statue of a Bristol based slaver trader, Sir Edward Colston, off it's plinth, and dragged it to the harbour, where his ships had berthed, where the bodies of slaves who had died on his ships, in chains and utter misery were often thrown, more than 300 years ago, and they pushed the statue over the rails, and into the waters, where it sank to beneath the waterline, to huge cheers.

An iconic moment, generated by genuine popular action.

It has since been retrieved. It will be place in a Museum. The people of Bristol have spent many, many years working through the various democratic processes afforded them to have the statue of this notorious slaver removed. Time and time again promises have been made, and time and time again delays and obstruction by local right wing politicians have stymied their best efforts.

Direct action was what remained. The toppling of the statue was filmed, the event has become an educational focal point, and no doubt the press will move on - however hundreds of thousands if not millions of people have restarted their education on slavery and racism history within the UK.

Public Education.

The toppling of this one statue stands in contrast to the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein, orchestrated by the invading American Army, in Baghdad in 2003, and the dreadful slaughter that followed that propaganda moment.

The widespread publication of video from US air gunships shooting a crowd of unarmed civilians in Baghdad stimulated a similar reaction, of horror and revulsion among decent people world wide. Julian Assange is in jail, Chelsea Manning is under constant oppression. Tony Blair and George Bush walk free, and receive vat pensions from the tax payers.

We are learning about our shared past in ways that the Establishment of the UK, the USA and other places  have resisted, and are still resisting.

Priti Patel's threat's of 'justice', and Johnson's claim of 'thuggery subverting' the Black Lives Matter demonstrations' are typical of this continued 'refusal to learn', this determined refusal to address long standing and present abuses of Power. They do not want to learn. They know enough already.

Corona Virus and BAME communities within the UK.

And there is the learning that we need with regards to Corona Virus and BAME communities within the UK, where the experience and evidence of the past four dreadful months,as outlined in a recent report  on how long standing experience of racism underlies what the data is revealing : there is a proportionally greater lethal impact of the disease COVID19 across BAME communities.

And there are genuine concerns that the UK Government is limiting the discussion of those factors related to structural racism and social and economic inequity, by excluding them from discussion.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the MP for Streatham, said the fact the review overlooked factors arising from structural racism and wrongly focused on comorbidities including obesity and diabetes sent a message that “we don’t matter”.

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, the MP for Slough, who has lost three relatives to coronavirus, said: “It’s all very well saying black lives matter but if you’re not going to be taking any action to make sure that, yes, those lives do matter, then those are just hollow words.

 What does the UK Government fear the public might learn that they already know?

A friend pointed out that the rulers of the UK, the Establishment, probably know as much as they want to know - which is mostly what ever they need to know to be able to retain their power and status, their established position of occupying an artificial power disparity which they can exploit to garner more wealth to service ever greater power.

They do not want us to learn what a callous, cruel and nasty hierarchy they really are. They certainly do not want that knowledge publicised, discussed in public, in an open and transparent manner.

They are interested in learning better the skills of manipulation, deceit, grooming, psychometric analysis - and they study us very closely indeed in order to be in the best position to undermine any movements that might 'threaten' their ability to hold on to power, as a class.

Learning from history to avoid causing harms in the future is not on their curriculum. They will justify and rationalise the harms they cause, as they have always done, as long as they occupy positions of power in our society, in this culture.

Past and Present, and learning.

Here, with regards to COVID19, and infectious diseases, we have an example of the Establishment appearing to 'refuse to learn' in the present, with regards to China, Taiwan and New Zealand, and how to manage an epidemic, and refusing to learn from the past, with regards to Racism, and institutionalised Racist violence by police and others. 

I would suggest that they are not refusing to learn rather that those 'mistakes' are essential tools of their continued oppression, and they have no desire to not have those tools at hand.

Thus we can see that using the phrase 'refusal to learn' in relation to the UK Government and Establishment is a fig leaf, it is a way of avoiding facing the truth - it holds out the hope that the rulers might, if we plead enough, if we vote in the right politicians, if we protest and demonstrate and remain loyal to the ideal of a democratic system, that they might choose to learn the lessons and change their behaviour.

In both cases the 'refusal to learn' leaves an injustice unresolved, and causes great and lasting harm to many, many innocent people.

This refusal to learn is deliberate.

They really do not care for our lives.

Ordinary peoples lives do not matter.

That is what COVID19 has revealed in stark detail in the UK and USA.

New Zealand's Government embarrasses them both.

The British Establishment, and the British Government, Civil Service and the Press are not fit and proper people to be the most powerful actors in this country. They are abusing us all through their established power, which was artificially created, through conquest, though slavery and oppression, and it is a power which is artificially maintained, through political grooming, corruption and bullying.

They must be held to account, before more harm is caused.

But how? That is the most pressing question we face today.

Total non compliance,  rent and mortgage strike might be enough to call them to the table.

Who knows?

I don't.

Democratic learning.

How can anyone be expected to exercise Democracy without having any practice?

Why do our schools eschew Democracy as an organisational methodology that students, staff and parents engage in?

Why do we permit the Secretary of Education the powers over all students, in relative terms, of a King?

How can 12 years of habituation to hierarchy and authority prepare our youth for active engagement as democratically active citizens?

What would a democratic school look like?

"Imagine a school where children and teenagers are accorded all the rights and responsibilities of democratic citizenship; where students truly practice, rather than just read about, the principles of free speech, free association, and freedom to choose their own activities; where students vote on the rules that affect them, and serve on juries to try those accused of violating those rules. What better training than this to prepare students for democratic citizenship?"

Take these thoughts home with you, and muse upon the difference this approach might make to our current situation.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"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.

Thank you for reading this blog.

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Living within a Violent Hierarchy - Protest, action, change, healing and recovery amidst a pandemic.

Today I feel a bit poetic... so here goes..

Protest

I get that these protests are ways to
speak out,
to call a voice
to
say in public :

'stop! this is a harm you are causing!'

To spread awareness,
to gain support,
to start, yet again,
honest conversations
in public
that we must have.

Such harm cannot be allowed
to continue.

Racial profiling? Really?

I get that the people and institutions
who Rule do not Govern.
They seek therefore to control
public published narratives,
because they have to -

Stay Alert!
Control The Virus!
Control the Narrative!

- they cannot bear the truth
and we all know why.
They will try to co-opt whatever they can,
and what they cannot, they will bury.

They will not mention the warts
on the Emperors nose.

They do not listen to hear,
they already understand
what it is we are protesting about.

I am not against the protesters.
I am for seeking ever more efficient,
effective ways
to counter the system's silence,
we are all leading through example
as in:

Disabled people in the UK where
Thousands die before their time
confronting the Government
with support from the UN -
almost nothing from The Press,
and the general population
are mute on this?

The disabled are leading,
and who is following?

Really?

Today, in the midst of epidemic
and pandemic,
a protest where
we observe social distancing
which we need to do, in these times.

SARSCOV2 is real -
and it changes nothing about the abuse
of power.

COVID19 changes nothing
about the existing power disparities,
it accentuates aspects of that dynamic,
in that Governments in New Zealand
and Vietnam
appear to care more for the people
than do the Governments of the United Kingdom
or the United States of America.

Some people exploit
emergent vulnerability.

They know who they are.

We know who they are.

We all do.

Social Distancing
is Physical
Distancing,
it is
people taking care of each other,
looking out for each other.

Physical Distancing is extending generosity,
and is very, very social.

and for all these:

Black Lives Matter, 

Me Too, 

Disabled Rights,

War is Shit,

Nukes are Puke,

Misogyny is Medieval. 

Abolish Poverty,

Stop Polluting The Earth,

Just Stop Male and Female Genital Mutilation,

and

of course:

Stop The Spread of Infection, 

Spread The Love.

Go, New Zealand!
Go, Vietnnam!
Go, Finland!

and more.

Inequity is all around us -
we know this.

Every demonstration
turns out to be a demonstration
of our human vulnerability:
this is a discipline,
this is a human strength -
and I think that this is the only way to avoid
being co-opted by the system.

Remain vulnerable.
Never armour up.

Never be a cop, in armour.

Each 'protest' ought to have that same deep, deep discipline,
a determination to show how strong our mind really is,
how strong our heart.

Honesty.

That we are vulnerable
and still ready
to resist the ones who abuse,
to resist the ones who want to start a fight,
by refusing to fight,
refusing to shout at,
and always shouting about the subject,
the harm that must cease -
still refusing to be drawn in -
and there is silence, as a deliberate action,
that too can be potent in a public space.

The Emperor gets no applause.

Millions just standing there, silent, accusing,
presenting the knowledge, the evidence.

We all know.

Some things do not need to be said,
let alone shouted,
once they are fully understood.
And it is reaching for that understanding
that is a critical task,
to go beyond personal belief and opinion,
to find what is really true
and useful to know.

Justice is based on knowledge rather than belief.

We know injustice causes harm.
We know this.
We know.
You.
Know.

Only with that understanding
does the silence
of knowing
begin to present the
space for ways
take action
together
to stop
the harm.

Ghandi got it wrong.

Mandela was co-opted, he was threatened:
'the mines are ours!' the owners said
dangling war in front of his people.

Martin Luther King had to be murdered.

Because the bullies could not co-opt Martin Luther King.

He was that powerful. He was that vulnerable.

A quiet voice. Did he shout? His heart was louder.


For me the cycles of news worthy events
and the timing of protests,
the headlines and head lies,
the hashtags, the issues,
the stories behind the slogans
and the soundbites - are not cycles.

They do not come and go,
they are not tidal,
they are not seasonal.

They are all permanent flavours,
they are tastes I taste every day,
they are scents I pick up on the wind of thinking,
they are sounds and silences that tell stories,
that speak of the unspoken,
that cry the tears of frustration and despair,
they are the rebels wise laughter
in the midst of obvious deceit,
 - i see through you  and that sets me free -
no matter what the media,
be it public, social or secret
mainstream,
alternative,
alt-right,
underground
or open source
is promoting,
loving
or hating,
or ignoring
on any given day.

#metoo
#bulliesexploitthevulnerable
#eglaitarianhealthisabiologicalmandate
#kindnessispolitical
#blacklivesmatter
#all_lives_really_do_matter_more_deeply_than_you_could_possibly_imagine
#BLEAKLIVESMATTER

I was there before 'the media',
I will be here after they have gone.
We all were, we all will be.
They and the bullies they serve
are temporary, delusional,
ugly, ungainly, awkward,
lacking grace or style -
the Human Heart is ancient,
potent, beautiful, resilient,
an intelligence kinder that they can ever imagine,
braver than heroes,
stronger than their biggest bombs.

The Vietnamese stopped the spread,
because they spread the love.

Their love also broke the Yankee Impertinence of Imperialism.

They broke the bully who broke his own children.

They persisted. They remained.

58,000 murdered on one side,
3,200,000 murdered on the other.
And no American leader was prosecuted.
The Land of the who?

Ali did not participate:
so they threatened him with jail.
He protested, court by court.
He won without ever throwing a punch.

We all have issues,
they are big in our lives,
and
yet they are also small change,
because when we see the real devils in our midst
- the system itself,
the power system is the devil among us,
the bully is the anti-human in all of us -
we see that most human distress is
generated by bully social systems,
rather than by human or personal flaws

or predispositions
or genes
or sinfulness.

What is sinfulness other than
the vaguest label possible?

Self judgement is the bully within,
the cuckoo in the nest,
shame is the bully within,
guilt is the bully within,
pride is the bully within,
and yet, true remorse
and kindness
and compassion
and honesty
can throw that bully out!

Because we are vulnerable.

Trump was a born baby,
little Donald was vulnerable,
that baby boy was not a born bully - that he learned,
that he was taught.
This is not to excuse his behaviour,
it is to understand it,
to prevent it feeding back
into our lives.

And to any degree that it -
The Bully -
is within us,
in our unchecked assumptions,
in the values we have internalised,
in the forms the bully culture gives us
that we adopt,
in the  ways we bend to fit in,
in the ways we give up our honesty,
in the ways we seek escape,
the comfort
of numbness
and in our parades of self-righteousness,
to those degrees of infection,
we must turn our attention
and see them,
release them and then

stand free, alone and together,

without labels,

or even names.

Who am I?

Who, exactly?

Our love for nothing,
our love for being,
our love for each other
just because we are,
that love will quell those bullies
when we put it into action.

There is so much useful going on
away from the
Mefia-politico indoctrotainment
cycles

When the day comes
when nobody reads the newspapers,
when they get no clicks on their web pages,
when the trigger content is disarmed,
when theories give way to evidence,
when the only activity is their few
remaining
paid up hacks
liking their own content,
pretending they are more of them
than there really are. Bots.

Make that day happen.

Sooner rather than later.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"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.

Thank you for reading this blog.

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We don't need no Education - not when we have 8000+ infections daily, and rising, we don't: Home Learning is Efficacious!.

The Nation Education Union has issued a press release today.

As things stand,  is not safe to open schools up as the UK Government has ordered.

COVID19 Deaths and infection rates are too high.

Stop Wider 1st June School Opening : their press release direct

I will be looking at it below, but first lets take a look at the overarching situation,
the wider context of the NEUs request.

Learning all the time.

Self motivated learning - the desire to know, the urge to explore what truly interests one's mind, to excel in any given subject or skill, expressed as the desire to share and contribute to one's family and community. by way of applied skill originating in some native interest. Unquenchable interest and fascination. Study till you drop, from happy exhaustion. Home learning. Education.

Schools have been and are open on a limited basis, serving a smaller (6%) population of children of NHS staff and other essential key workers, as well as providing for various categories of vulnerable children, as organised by each individual school. This limited service is working well.

Teachers are also engaged with plenty on-line curriculum work with students who are staying at home. That appears to be working reasonably well. Better than the testing, tracing, quarantining and isolation treatment programs are. Teachers are adaptable, and their students are too.

Children's education continues. Everyone is doing their level best, including stay at home parents who are learning what learning is like.

There's a lot of home learning happening in the UK at the moment.

Cummings is, by his own admission, a media strategist, among other things, and he is a Master Baiter. He likes to lecture, and does not seem to show aptitude for learning. A bit like his political boss, Boris Johnson.

He baits the hook, he dangles the hook, he watches them bite, he pulls them in.

"£350 million to go to the NHS."

We will tell you that to think!

"Corbyn is a communist!"

We will hint at what we want you to think!

He baits the hook, he dangles the hook, he sees them bite, he pulls them in. I have written about this in a recent blog post.

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-purpose-of-cummings-road-show.html

His road show was about breaking the citizens will to stay home to quell the spread of the infectious virus, an act of collective human solidarity.

In opinion polls taken around the 10th May, on average about 60% of citizens said they'd rather stay at home until they knew the infection was suppressed, because they had concerns for their elderly relatives and vulnerable people they knew. It was not a question of fear, rather it was a matter of concern for others.

Love. Compassion. Solidarity.

May 10th speech and much that has followed has been indirectly undermining the current, humane  and quite wonderful grass roots solidarity - through sowing confusion, through conflating problems that were already in place exacerbated by the inadequate provision during lock down, with the lock down itself.  It is the inadequate provision that is the problem. Easing the lock down may not resolve those issues unless there is funding and logistical support directed to those areas. Why not direct the resources anyway?

Keep this in mind as you read on.

Who benefits from broken grass roots solidarity?

UK Citizens have for the most part decided to bear the strain of staying at home, missing out on family and wider human contact, missing out on work, losing income, losing trade and business opportunities, in order to stop the community transmission of the infection, in effect an action of immense humane kindness and social cohesion, which the behavioural planners had assumed would not emerge, let alone be sustained. They were proven wrong. And not for the first time. The Behavioural Insights Team are pseudo-scientists, one and all.

From my perspective, the Cummings road show was orchestrated as part of a wider Government move to ease the lock down, which is being pursued even as there are more than eight thousand new infections daily, hundreds of deaths daily with no control of the spread of the virus in sight.

The only logical conclusion is that this is being done in order to increase spread of the infection towards mythical herd immunity at 20% of population infected. There are economic gains to be had, if the NeoLiberal sponsors can re-rig a broken economy, and blame a virus or a population for the broken-ness.

There is no real need to 'get the economy going' yet.

Things are not that bad. Three months of disruption so far. The nation has much more capability and capacity to deal with this. This is not a 5 year proxy war. This is not Vietnam, or Yemen. We are good. We could use better management, for sure. It is nowhere to be seen in Parliament or 10 Downing Street.

There is a real need to stop the spread of the transmission, to eradicate the virus from the population on the Islands of Great Britain and Ireland. That it can be done is clear, from all available evidence, even now. UK population infection rate is not even at 10%! That it would strengthen the UK economy is also clear. Multiple waves will not.

"I thought herd immunity was ditched!" I hear you say.

An article proposing a lower threshold for Herd Immunity appeared in early May, a week before Johnson's Sunday speech to the nation, in The Spectator, where a certain Ms. Wakefield works, where once Boris Johnson worked as the Editor. Throwing rocks in glass houses from a a distance gives him a 'weird sense of power'.

Here is the article, read it. see for yourself.

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

Then on May 10th this article emerge, online, in support, coming from  a Climate Modelling Scientist, of all people!

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

Herd Immunity has always been the background planning.

Stopping the spread, and eradicating the virus from within the population of the British Isles and Ireland has never been the policy objective.

I have written about the efficacy of the New Zealand approach, and how they looked at the experience of China, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, and they chose to learn from that.

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/04/new-zealand-demonstrates-efficacy-of.html

The situation in New Zealand is now a matter of record. They have eliminated the virus from within the New Zealand Island population. Success. We can do the same here, and yes, it would demand resourcing and commitment and it could be done within three months, if done diligently.

Meanwhile in the UK, slow spread has been the effect of Government policy. Some claim this is the result of incompetence. I reject that claim, The Corona Virus Policy  of the UK Government is deliberate and intentional.

This was Professor John Edmunds, SAGE advisor on Epidemiology, on March 14th

"Indeed, the only way to stop this epidemic is to achieve Herd Immunity"


He was talking then about the idea that at 60% infected, the population would  have achieved Herd Immunity. He was supremely confident in his assertion, to the point of arrogance.

In vaccination science, Herd Immunity is typically reached at 93%!

A month ago, he argues 'well there's always a risk.... but it's worth it."

This was in the lead up for moral support of the drive towards Johnson's May 10th speech



At the same time the Social Media world was being peppered with ConTheory, New Age, Alt Right commentariat calling for ending of the lock down, based on a series of lies, gaslightings and false assumptions, and this chatter was feeding into the pressure to 'ease the lock down'.

Today he states the obvious via the BBC, and others broadcasters, along with other SAGE Advisors, that the Ro is too high, that there are too many fresh infections and "it's a political decision, not mine to make."



The science has not changed.

Not since January 6th.

Not since February 3rd.

Not since April 1st.

We know more - we are learning all the time - and the more we know, the more damning the evidence is that SAGE, Edmunds, the Boris Johnson, Cummings and The Cabinet as a whole entity, have lied, manipulated and gaslighted the citizens of the UK.

They have collaborated in behaviour and action that has caused and is causing avoidable, horrible, lonely deaths in their many tens of thousands - between 40,000 and 60,000 excess deaths, whether it's due to COVID19 or due to the way in which the shut dawn has been imposed, either way are entirely down to UK Government policy decisions.

John Edmunds is covering his arse.  A bit too late for my liking.

The shit is all over the shop, and it stinks.

Still, it is good that he is making a public statement, and it's not too late.

We could have a government that initiates a stop the spread, eradicate the virus policy, there is still time, and plenty of leeway, we have not reach even 10% infected across the whole population.

The National Education Union have issued a press release, demanding that the Government step back from the brink.

Four prominent members of the Government’s own scientific advisory body have broken ranks to express worries about the safety of wider primary school opening on Monday.

SAGE members Professor Peter Horby, who is chair of the Government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group  (NERVTAG); Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Institute; John Edmunds, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Calum Semple, professor in Child Health and Outbreak Medicine have all expressed fears about the easing of lockdown.

Professor Edmunds said “There are still 8,000 new infections every day in England without counting those in hospitals and care homes… If you look at it internationally, it’s a very high level of incidence.

“I think many of us would prefer to see the incidence driven down to lower levels because that then means that we have fewer cases occurring before we relax the measures.”

Professor Farrar tweeted: “Covid-19 spreading too fast to lift lockdown in England. TTI [test, trace and isolate] has to be in place, fully working, capable [of dealing with] any surge immediately.” 

Professor Semple said: “Essentially, we’re lifting the lid on a boiling pan and it’s just going to bubble over… We need to get it down to simmer before we take the lid off, and it’s too early.

DO NOT GO BACK TO SCHOOL

"We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control,

no dark sarcasm in the class room!

Williamson! Leave the kids alone!"

23rd March 2020  : 102 covid19 deaths in UK

28th May  2020 :  377 covid19 deaths in UK

In essence, there are three times as many deaths per day today as there were on the day Johnson's Government ORDERED lock down, without adequate preparations in place at that time. We know that that caused.

There are no adequate preparations in place today.

Test and Trace is not ready; there are no Fever Hospitals to treat symptomatic cases away from the community, there are no suitable quarantine support systems in place, many care staff still do not have the correct PPE.

The transmission rate is currently Ro hovering at 1, only because citizens have upheld the stay at home policy, and it can easily move upwards with "return to work!" order...

Here is a detailed reveal of the Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, emotionally blackmailing the public, gaslighting parents, bullying teachers.

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2020/05/gavin-williamsons-emotional.html

It was not safe then, it is not safe now.

That is why he was and is using such tactics. When the evidence does not support the action being suggested,then deceit and force are all that remain.

Do not go back to school, do not send your children to school, stay home, stop the spread - sue any employer who threatens to dismiss you for protecting the nation.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

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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

Thank you for reading this blog.

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

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