A song I improvised this morning, a blues song, about Sajid Javid, Matt Hancock, Boris Johnson and the dreadful policy choices they keep making, in spite of the evidence that Elimination Strategy prevents all of the harms caused by their 'live with the virus' Herd Immunity eventually Mitigation Policy. Denial is a blithering Eejit, not a river in Egypt!
It is so frustrating, so utterly infuriating and very, very sad for us all, to be sitting here, on this Sunday morning in July 2021, waiting for the next surge, the new wave, the incoming tide, the looming season of increased rates of infection to commence it’s out of control spread, knowing that the disastrous policy choices of this Conservative and Unionist Johnson Herd Immunity government have placed us all in a much worse position than we ever needed to be in, and is doing so once again.
What we have is a government of immature, self serving adults, who are deploying passive aggressive management
across many areas, rather than adopting a mature, evidence based approach in order to best protect the people we are told 'they serve'.
The duty of every nation, every government is to eliminate community transmission of the virus within it's territory, not only to protect the people of each territory but also to protect the people of every other state - exporting the infection is a breach of that duty of care. #JohnsonVariant #CovidIsNotOver
The #JohnsonVariant has two fails - the first is letting the new variant in through porous borders, the second is the total lack of any elimination strategy to stop it spreading within the UK.
Here is the basic pattern, in the most simple terms.
1. They issue deliberately vague directions, and they provide inadequate support
2. If people fail to make it work, blame the people
3. If people manage to make it work, claim the kudos
4. The aim is to stay on top with minimum effort, to maximise personal gain. They are 'serving themselves'.
So now we are being told to 'live with the virus'. Sajid Javid's advice as Health Secretary?
As Christina Pagel puts it "it's stupid, it's a terrible plan."
Mr. Javid is a stupid man. He might cunning, he might even be clever but he is stupid. He, and this odious Conservative and Unionist Party Government, are stupid, venal and callous.
..It's a stupid thing to do, to think we can have millions of infections and that everything is fine@chrischirp #IndependentSAGE Friday July 2nd 2021 pic.twitter.com/TyDKiSGMiV
— UK is with EU (@ukiswitheu) July 4, 2021
Live Events Summer 2021
I read the Governments phase one report on the Events Research Program when it was released. I saw that it had caveats and gaping data holes right across the board. Then Independent SAGE issued an open letter that confirmed my observations more precisely.
Turns out these 'tests' were a scientific nonsense, and the choice to give the go ahead to 'selected events' under the guise of 'testing covid safety parameters' was political, rather than a matter of public health or event safety. That other events have moved their plans forward and taking bookings on the basis of the government's false assertions that these 'tests' showed little or no spread is a disgrace, they were all misled - it ought to lead to litigation against the Government, for compensation.
I perceive a difference between cunning and intelligent. Evil and Avarice are cunning, never intelligent. Nurture is intelligence.
As Oscar Wilde pointed out, 'once is a misfortune, twice or more is carelessness' and in the case of Johnson, Bolsonaro, Modi, Trump, Hancock, and now Sajid Javid (and many others) what we are seeing is repetitive and blatantly callous recklessness. They stand proud and defiant of their record on this!
If anyone deserves to be proud of their record, Jacinda Arden does.
Sajid Javid, the new Health Secretary misleads from the start
This rainy, windy Sunday July morning on #Marr on the BBC, Sajid Javid, the new (inexperienced) Health Secretary claimed that that there are "compelling health arguments" for removing all covid safeguards on July 19, when in England we are seeing higher daily cases than whole of EU put together and we are on course for circa 80K cases a day by July 19th.
The Health Secretary blames public health safeguards/restrictions for rise of domestic violence, when his government have done so little to measure and buffer the impact of #COVID19 *on women* and vulnerable groups in this pandemic. He does not take into consideration the Conservative Governments 10 year record of Austerity driven cuts to those precise supporting services, coming into this pandemic.
Austerity is something Sajid avoids, like the proverbial plague. He spent 2020 moonlighting for JP Morgan.
JP Morgan spokesman said: “We are delighted to welcome Sajid back to JP Morgan as a senior adviser, and we look forward to drawing upon his in-depth understanding of the business and economic environment to help shape our client strategy across Europe.”
As to Mr. Javid's in-depth understanding of his constituents economic environment, and of their needs during this epidemic, those that voted for him and those who did not, we can only guess. His MP Salary and his ministerial pensions barely touch the £2 million retainer fee his part time role delivered - perhaps he takes the view that his role as an MP is a 'part-time job'. As to Mr. Javid's ability to inform an American investment bank on European Strategy - his Brexit stance suggests otherwise.
Insanely optimistic headlies!
Sajid Javid cites the harms caused by existing policy choices of his government to argue for worse management of the epidemic. This is a deliberate manipulation tactic. We have seen this before. He, like others before him, sat in tidy offices, flags on poles, huddled with key advisors and they worked out the messaging on this, they looked at how they could trigger support among vulnerable target groups for their adverse policy choice. Cry "Freedom!"
At the current rate of spread it is expected that there will be circa 80,000 new cases confirmed on a daily basis by July 19th. Hospitalisation and death rates are rising, at around 4% for hospitalisations, of confirmed cases. What is 4% of 80,000? Every day. Hardly insignificant.
Not even a week into the job, he is promoting lies and he is gaslighting us, telling us that what we know to be true is not true, telling us what to think.
He is not an improvement on Matt Hancock, (killing us softly, with his snog) and is likely going to be much worse for the health of the nation, if that is at all possible. It was reported in January this year that the Johnson Government had issued 64 sets of rule changes in 2020. That inspired me to do a parody version of '50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,' also a song about planned betrayal. How apt.
Misleading, callous money men.
Then there's Robert Jenrick - Robert Jenrick on #Marr just said that there will be an ‘exponential growth in new CoVID cases’ but we have to just “live with it now..”
In essence the policy is 'let everyone receive the viral infection, and see what happens', with an uncertain gamble that the death toll and morbidity levels will be reduced by the vaccine to 'acceptable levels'. This 'acceptable levels' attitude reminds me of English Government attitude towards the Irish Famine.
Elimination Strategy works
We know that a well resourced elimination strategy works really well, that it is eminently doable, that the strategy to stop the spread of the virus from person to person within the community within any bordered area is efficacious, and prevents the harms associated with mitigation strategies.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00978-8/fulltext - Lancet reviews the evidence of the efficacy of elimination strategies and compares it with the adverse outcomes of mitigation policy. The evidence is incontrovertible. The kind of evidence Johnson can only deny - he dare not discuss it in any detail in Parliament, and Starmer abides by Johnson's need at our expense.
You do know that circa 1.8 billion people are living with that degree of effective protection, where responsible governments took firm action to resource elimination of community transmission strategies and took clear action to support the population in achieving that, and indeed the population engaged with their governments and together they avoided immense harms we in the UK have not That is a huge evidence base.
Mitigation aka Living with The Virus causes avoidable harm
Another 2 billion citizens are suffering the consequences of mitigation strategy, where reckless governments have rejected elimination strategy, have refused to take firm action, have laid the bulk of the responsibility for limiting spread of the infection upon the individual citizen, resulting in repeated waves of infection what got out of control, necessitating global shutdowns and intense restrictions limiting movement of people, in order to protect health services and to slow the spread, all of which caused immense harms. Death, disease and business collapse as the measure of the policy choice.
That is a huge evidence base.
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/05/26/the-uks-coronavirus-policy-still-places-too-much-responsibility-and-blame-in-the-hands-of-the-public/ - the British Medical Journal reviews the English Governments fatal 'personal responsibility' stance, noting the lack of material and logistic support to the population to manage that responsibility most effectively. What is even more galling is that the English governments paternalistic behavioural dogma treated citizens as if we were as selfish as Johnson and the crony capitalists around him are. They decided to have it both ways, and we paid the price, with both attitudes.
Evidence ignored
The English government, the News Media - the political class of England, which dominates the so-called United Kingdom, are all ignoring the evidence. They are basically refusing to discuss elimination strategy. They are blanking the science. What is that?
What it means is that one can tune into any chat show or talk radio and listen to ordinary citizens, not knowing that they don’t know, speaking with great authority about 'living with the virus', about 'opening up the economy', about vaccinations as if they provide total cover and block transmission, about ‘restrictions’ and 'freedoms', about holidays hugging and football and citing the harms caused by bad policy to argue for worse policy, all of this the hp to alleviate their frustration (understandable) in the hope that they can ‘ just get back to normal’ and the presenters dare not confront them with the evidence, they merely acknowledge ‘that’s how you feel, I hear you’ and they let it slide. Or worse, they agree and thus amplify the nonsense!
Free speech
Free speech as a concept is all about speaking truth to power. Telling the truth in public. Free speech is not a free for all, a right to spout nonsense that has lethal and morbid consequences. It’s not that I’d want to inhibit the nonsense speaker, it is that someone must speak truth to the nonsense speaker when the nonsense is being presented through public media channels that reach the eyes and ears of millions of people. The truth must be told in public, in the same fora where the nonsense is being broadcast and at the same time. The unknowing are not being confronted with the truth.
It is not good enough that the evidence is available, and can be read and listened to on platforms that do not have the reach of public news media and government briefings.
People just don't know
I understand, of course, that these people genuinely do not know what they are talking about because the bodies that ought to be disseminating grounded information are not doing that.
The news media, the politicians, the Church leaders are all mute on elimination strategy. Ordinary citizens who rely on those channels for information are in a vulnerable position, they are not getting accurate and timely information. The English government is exploiting that vulnerability. Crony capitalism is part of that exploitative mind set. Avarice governs this dynamic.
This is an infuriating situation, after 17 months of pandemic.
For the epidemiologists and public health scientists, it must be even more distressing to be caught in a position where their skill sets are being set aside in such manner.
Yesterday, England recorded 24,000+ new cases of covid19 infection, the actual numbers are probably higher, and the current growth rate suggests we will see +40k by the end of this week, and +80k, daily, by the 19th of July.
Hospitalisations and deaths lag a few weeks following on from infection. The reduction in rates of hospitalisation due to vaccine efficacy has been from 10% of cases down to 4% of cases.
For the health professionals, in hospitals and doctors surgeries, to be held hostage to repeated waves by a reckless government must be exhausting and debilitating - the resilience with which they have maintained service is all the more remarkable.
Mute Labour
Why is The Labour Party mute on all of this? Why are they ignoring the evidence? Why are they refusing to confront this situation, in Parliament and in their briefings?
Why does Keirless with the Evidence Starmer refuse, time and time again, speak truth to power in public? Why does he avoid bringing the evidence that elimination strategy prevents the harms mitigation causes?
What is that? Savile, Assange, The Forde Report and now this?
England beat the Ukraine at football, 4-0!
The feel good factor is great, yet it does nothing to protect the people from harms caused by a reckless Government.
Sajid Javid must go - he is not qualified to lead the country as Health Secretary.
Hit the road, Sajid!
Corneilius
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
