New coronavirus in/from China

[Little John]

Amnesty International have recently released a report suggesting the death count wouldn’t be so high without the Government's decision to move untested hospital patients into care homes where significant number above the average have died.

Predictably, that report has been completely ignored by the mainstream media.

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releas ... 0Pap8-CBWU

[Little John]

Also this entire fiasco happened on a smaller scale in 2009. Here's an article from Der Spiegel about how the WHO, CDC and the pharmaceutical industry exaggerated a pandemic to get governments around the world to commit to paying for vaccines.

https://www.spiegel.de/consent-a-?targe ... ook.com%2F

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45F44Zu ... YOi0Y4c4-U

[Catweazle]

The big question is whether or not the reduction in deaths for non covid19 reasons in hospitals is merely replaced or is more than replaced by the increase in non covid19 deaths in homes. My very strong gut suspicion is that it will be more.

If true, when these extra deaths - due to lock-down - are removed from the total death count for this year, even the slight but significant rise in total deaths for the country for 2020 compared to the typical range is likely to significantly reduce and, perhaps, even vanish. Which, if it does, would mean Covid19 will have contributed nothing to total deaths for 2020

Undoubtedly many people have died because they were scared to go to hospital, it's tragic but understandable - they were in very poor health and at high risk of dying if they caught covid. This is well known and health authorities have been urging people at attend hospital if they need to.

Others will die because diseases that would have been detected and treated were not seen due to cancelled appointments. Arguably this could have been prevented if a smaller portion of resources had been allocated to preparedness for a Covid flood that didn't happen.

Others will have died from covid, undiagnosed, we'll never know how many.

None of which brings any of the people who died from covid back to life - covid kills people, fact. Undeniable hard fact.

Look at the death rate at the beginning of lockdown and extend that to 80% the whole population, add in the overwhelmed NHS, and you get an idea of what we'd be looking at - way in excess of the "collateral damage" we are seeing now.

Lockdown did what it was supposed to do, it broke the exponential growth into manageable sized pieces which we are dealing with.

Your agenda won't let you see this, one minute you claim that people dying from Covid "would have died anyway", the next minute you're blaming the deaths of very ill people who died at home instead of in hospital or hospice on "lockdown", so desperate are you to fit the news to your pet theory.

[Catweazle]

Amnesty International have recently released a report suggesting the death count wouldn’t be so high without the Government's decision to move untested hospital patients into care homes where significant number above the average have died.

Predictably, that report has been completely ignored by the mainstream media.

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releas ... 0Pap8-CBWU

MSM have been reporting on it for months:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -test.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/heal ... 44671.html

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/poli ... s-18462208

https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/ ... hospitals/

[kenneal - lagger]

............................
If true, when these extra deaths - due to lock-down - .................

When I read that I laughed. You are so wedded to your conspiracy, LJ, that you have to bend everything to suit it. Those people who died at home died because of a fear of going to hospital; nothing to do with the lockdown. It is your ideas that are becoming laughable.

You still haven't addressed why a Welsh Labour government and the Scottish SNP with their adherence to their scientific advise would join a global conspiracy against the working classes.

[kenneal - lagger]

Here's an article for LJ debunking the Barrington Declaration and saying that herd immunity could be an illusion.

It questions the motivations of the report

as the professor of political economy Richard Murphy put it, the declaration was “the economics of neoliberalism running riot … revealing in the process its utter indifference to the interests of anyone but those who can ‘add value’ within that system�.

and points to some of the signatories of it

we should be asking who funded this piece of political theatre, and for what purpose. The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), where the declaration was signed, is a libertarian thinktank that is, in its own words, committed to “pure freedom� and wishes to see the “role of government … sharply confined�.

The AIER certainly has no interest in the rights of the working class and would certainly get rid of any rights that they still have if given half a chance. LJ is supping with the devil supporting such an institution.

Rightwing free-market foundations and institutions have long attempted to savage the public reputation of well-intentioned policies such as those aimed at curbing ecological threats and limiting smoking. Some of the tactics these organisations have used in the past are those we see at play in the Great Barrington declaration: discredit the scientific consensus, spread confusion about what the right response is and sow the seeds of doubt. It seems that lockdown restrictions aimed at bringing the virus under control are merely the latest target in this rightwing stealth campaign.

[Little John]

............................
If true, when these extra deaths - due to lock-down - .................

When I read that I laughed. You are so wedded to your conspiracy, LJ, that you have to bend everything to suit it. Those people who died at home died because of a fear of going to hospital; nothing to do with the lockdown. It is your ideas that are becoming laughable.

You still haven't addressed why a Welsh Labour government and the Scottish SNP with their adherence to their scientific advise would join a global conspiracy against the working classes.

I know, personally of two people who have died as a consequence of not receiving proper treatments in hospital and another who has gone partially blind and suffered a heart attack for the same reasons. I have also been directly informed by medical staff, in hushed tones for fear of being seen to be speaking out, of hundreds of people, in my region alone, who have gone blind for lack of regular lucentis injections into their eyeballs for a condition called wet macular degeneration.

You are an archetypical middle class hypocrite who pretends to base their views on "the science" and "rational debate" and attempts to superciliously denigrate any view that does not accord with your own narrow economic interests. Which is, of course, little different to any humans anywhere. But, the reason why your kind of self serving behaviour is so stomach turning is because is because of the manner in which it is masked.

[UndercoverElephant]

Here's an article for LJ debunking the Barrington Declaration and saying that herd immunity could be an illusion.

From the article:

The truth is that a strategy of pursuing “herd immunity� is nothing more than a fringe view. There is no real scientific divide over this approach, because there is no science to justify its usage in the case of Covid-19. We know that when it comes to other coronaviruses, immunity is only temporary.

If immunity to covid-19 is only temporary, then so will any protection given by vaccines. The only conclusion we can draw from this is that we have to learn to live with this virus. We cannot completely re-arrange society, permanently, to prevent covid-related deaths and long-term health problems.

[UndercoverElephant]

Interesting situation developing in Manchester...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54617898

The highest tier of Covid restrictions are expected to be imposed on Greater Manchester after talks over financial support broke down.

BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said local leaders had asked for £65m but would now get less than £60m.

The "very high" alert level - or tier three - means pubs and bars not serving food must close, and there will be extra restrictions on household mixing.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to hold a press conference at 17:00 BST.

Speaking earlier about the breakdown in negotiations, Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said Greater Manchester's mayor, Andy Burnham, had been "unwilling to take the action that is required to get the spread of the virus under control".

[kenneal - lagger]

And you, LJ, are putting forward a right wing backed conspiracy theory designed to get all business working again with no thought whatsoever about the consequences for some vulnerable people.

You quote those people who didn't get treatment. Was that because the hospitals were full of emergency covid patients and staff were too busy to look after non emergency patients? Or was it because people were too frightened to go into a hospital because they thought they would catch covid?

Either way your policy of letting covid rip, albeit while trying to isolate the vulnerable, wouldn't have helped with the numbers in hospitals or the perception that hospitals are unsafe places.

And you are the archetypal conspiracy theorist etc ......... but I feel sorry for you!

[UndercoverElephant]

OK...so this article is from August, but the situation it describes is looking like the most likely outcome.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08- ... ccine.html

Research shows some people can get the same strain of a common cold coronavirus more than once in a single year. And most countries have seen outbreaks of COVID-19 even when they thought they had the infection more or less under control.

So it is possible that the ongoing pattern for COVID-19 will be more local pockets of infection, with even more cases likely during the winter months. Unless the first cases are found and isolated quickly though, these pockets will probably spread over quite wide geographical areas.

This is why it is vital to continue to use public health measures such as social distancing, wearing masks and washing hands to reduce the virus to such low levels that any new outbreaks can be easily contained.

Ideally, if this were successful, the virus might eventually die out because it could no longer spread, as happened with the SARS-CoV virus behind the 2002-2004 outbreak of SARS. But COVID-19 is more contagious and less deadly and so is much harder to control than SARS, so eliminating it this way may not be possible either.

Given that at least 700,000 people have died from COVID-19 worldwide so far and many people are reporting long-term illness as a result of the disease, if the virus does become endemic we should still try to prevent as much infection as possible. A vaccine could provide a way to end the pandemic, but with no prospect of natural herd immunity we could well be facing the threat of COVID-19 for a long time to come.

What does this mean, in practice?

It appears to be suggesting an endless, relentless cycle of lockdowns and no prospect of anything resembling normality returning, ever again. There is no doubt at all that such a situation would rapidly cause the entire global economy and monetary system to collapse.

[kenneal - lagger]

..............If immunity to covid-19 is only temporary, then so will any protection given by vaccines. The only conclusion we can draw from this is that we have to learn to live with this virus. We cannot completely re-arrange society, permanently, to prevent covid-related deaths and long-term health problems.

We have to rearrange society to ameliorate the problems of climate change and high population levels and one of those problems is new diseases. The UK is going to have to find a way of making its current population more healthy so people have fewer comorbidities and possibly more precautions in care homes with visitors.

My mother is in a care home in Wales and visitors are buzzed in at the door and then go, unannounced, into the individual's bedroom or the communal lounge depending on where the relative is. There are hand sanitiser stations available with a request for use but no compulsion. This does have the advantage that you can keep an eye out on the level of care that the relative is receiving but it does open up the whole home to possibly infected visitors. Pre arranged visits to an isolated room, as some homes have instituted, might be safer from an infection control point of view but does have some disadvantages from an informal inspection viewpoint. Widespread implementation of this regime might require greater Local Authority inspection to compensate.

Old people living at home and their families would have to decide on how they approach infection control from their own perspective. This would be more difficult although we have visited our daughter and her family for a meal and have kept a respectful distance with both them and their daughter, our granddaughter. I wouldn't like not being able to hug my children and grandchildren for any length of time so we will decide on how long we carry on with the current regime according to the prevalence of the disease locally.

Eventually we will all have to make our own decisions on how long and to what extent we keep our own precautions going. Nationally it may come down to the imposition of local short term lockdowns or other precautions when there are the inevitable flairups of this disease or even other novel diseases.

Although long term immunity may not be on the cards even short term immunity will reduce the rate of spread of the disease and make it more like flu. There is some thought that having one sort of coronavirus infection does give some immunity to other sorts but we will just have to wait for the evidence of this to come along as this pandemic makes its way through the population.

[kenneal - lagger]

.............. There is no doubt at all that such a situation would rapidly cause the entire global economy and monetary system to collapse.

That could be a good thing because the current system is not fit for purpose any more but the people benefiting from it can't see that yet. And that is why they are pushing for an immediate and complete opening up of the world economy again.

[UndercoverElephant]

..............If immunity to covid-19 is only temporary, then so will any protection given by vaccines. The only conclusion we can draw from this is that we have to learn to live with this virus. We cannot completely re-arrange society, permanently, to prevent covid-related deaths and long-term health problems.

We have to rearrange society to ameliorate the problems of climate change and high population levels and one of those problems is new diseases. The UK is going to have to find a way of making its current population more healthy so people have fewer comorbidities and possibly more precautions in care homes with visitors.

My mother is in a care home in Wales and visitors are buzzed in at the door and then go, unannounced, into the individual's bedroom or the communal lounge depending on where the relative is. There are hand sanitiser stations available with a request for use but no compulsion. This does have the advantage that you can keep an eye out on the level of care that the relative is receiving but it does open up the whole home to possibly infected visitors. Pre arranged visits to an isolated room, as some homes have instituted, might be safer from an infection control point of view but does have some disadvantages from an informal inspection viewpoint. Widespread implementation of this regime might require greater Local Authority inspection to compensate.

Old people living at home and their families would have to decide on how they approach infection control from their own perspective. This would be more difficult although we have visited our daughter and her family for a meal and have kept a respectful distance with both them and their daughter, our granddaughter. I wouldn't like not being able to hug my children and grandchildren for any length of time so we will decide on how long we carry on with the current regime according to the prevalence of the disease locally.

Eventually we will all have to make our own decisions on how long and to what extent we keep our own precautions going. Nationally it may come down to the imposition of local short term lockdowns or other precautions when there are the inevitable flairups of this disease or even other novel diseases.

Forever? This is economic suicide. Now....I am of the opinion that our economic system is eventually going to implode anyway, so perhaps this isn't such a bad thing, but the nevertheless this will greatly accelerate its demise.

[kenneal - lagger]

We seem to be cross posting, UE.