New coronavirus in/from China

[Little John]

In my view, this country needs a PROPER civil defence organisation, possibly run as a branch of the armed forces.
Such an organisation could hold substantial stocks of emergency supplies, including but not limited to.

Tents, for emergency housing, field hospitals, and morgues.
Camp beds, blankets.
Sand bags.
Heavy duty vehicles. Boats. Fire engines. Earth moving plant (flood defences, mass graves)
Portable lighting and heating equipment, generators.
Hand tools, power tools.
Water purification supplies and equipment.
Basic but large scale cooking and catering equipment.
Non perishable foods, grain, sugar, MREs
Basic medical equipment, including PPE.
Etc.

Slightly twitchy on the army bit. But, that notwithstanding, I'd agree with all of that. At the end of the day, an army is the largest organization capable of those types of logistics.

[Little John]

It’s Just a Mask.
It’s just 2 metres
It’s just 3 weeks.
It’s just non-essential businesses.
It’s just non-essential workers.
It's just 3 more weeks
It's just until we work it out
It’s just a bar.
It’s just a restaurant.
It's just care homes
It's just schools
It’s just to keep from overwhelming the NHS.
It’s just until the cases go down.
It’s just to flatten the curve.
It’s just to keep others from being scared.
It’s just for a few more weeks.
It's just gyms, and salons and spas and sport
It’s just church.
It's just singing
It's just no happy birthday, no shared cakes
It's just travel
It's just 3 months of lockdown
It's just some floor markings, and temporary screens
It's just a one way system
It’s just until we get a vaccine.
It’s just an app.
It’s just for tracing.
It’s just to let people know you’re safe to be around.
It’s just to let others know who you’ve been in contact with.
It’s just a few more months.
It's just some areas
It's just government guidelines
It's just for your own good
It’s just for protecting others
It's just fact-checking, it's not censorship.
It's just mandatory
It's just... it's the law now
It's just 'the science is settled'
It's just only those scientists, not those ones
It's just because of the second wave
It's just to save your granny
It's just an app
It's just another lockdown
It's just 4 more weeks.
It's just Christmas, cancelled
It's just school, they can do it from home
It's just almost a year... But after a year it will be better
It's just a swab
It’s just for medical information
It's just a jab
It's just a badge, get a lanyard
It's just a card, to store your medical history.
It’s just so you can travel.
It's just for your passport
It's just so you can go into stores, and pubs
It's just so you can send your kids to school
It’s just so you can get your driver’s license.
It’s just so you can vote.
It's just so you can go to a concert
It's just a facility, to keep you seperate from the others.
It’s just a few more years.
It's just for those people
It's just for the ones who didn't care
It's just better we keep it this way


It's. Not. Just.

[PS_RalphW]

So what is it?

[BritDownUnder]

In my view, this country needs a PROPER civil defence organisation, possibly run as a branch of the armed forces.
Such an organisation could hold substantial stocks of emergency supplies, including but not limited to.

In Australia there is an emergency organisation called the SES that is supposed to help after flooding and other natural disasters. They have trucks and boats etc as well. It is a voluntary organisation.
From memory the Fire Brigade in the UK is supposed to have this role but probably don't do it effectively.

[adam2]

Agree, the UK used to have a proper civil defence organisation, but when this was closed down in all but name, the fire brigades were re branded by adding "and civil defence" to the name.

A proper civil defence organisation holds very large stocks of often basic and low technology equipment. There was a general view that with the ending of the cold war, that we no longer needed any large scale civil defence arrangements.
This ignored the fact that civil defence was not JUST about surviving the aftermath of a nuclear attack.
Also for large natural disasters and large man made but non military disasters. Events such as;

Large scale flooding.
Huge fires if beyond the capacity of the fire brigades.
Major industrial disputes that result in large scale risk to life.
Large scale utility failures.
Extreme heat wave emergency.
Pandemic or similar event that is beyond normal NHS capacity.

[kenneal - lagger]

I wonder if we would have enough work for a dedicated Civil Defence organisation to do. With global warming increasing we might well have in the future but for the last twenty years? Even fire brigade numbers have been run down as they don't have so much work to do now. It makes sense to possibly beef up the Fire Service and have them train as a multi role organisation but its like the argument for having snow ploughs on stand by in London during the winter; you might only use them once in ten years and when you do come to use them they won't start because they haven't been used!

I was watching the News last night on the covid crisis and I wondered if LJ ever watches the news and whether he thinks that they are actors coming on and telling us how bad things are for NHS staff with covid. These people have been working flat out under immense stress for almost a year now and some of them are near breaking point. Does he have no sympathy for them or are they middle class wusses and not deserving of sympathy like a working class person in the same circumstances would be?

[Little John]

95% of the mainstream media of the entire Western world is run by about 4 organizations. It is possible to literally present any narrative by selecting whomever is prepared to bullshit for money or, better still, to find someone who actually believes whatever bullshit narrative is required. Whilst, simultaneously, stopping nay alternative views from being seen. That is how "news" presenter are selected for their posts, for example.

Heard of the Great Barrington Declaration?

No, of course you haven't

[Catweazle]

Heard of the Great Barrington Declaration?

Have you heard of the American Institute for Economic Research ?

Funders of such tomes as:

"What Greta Thunberg Forgets About Climate Change"
"The Real Reason Nobody Takes Environmental Activists Seriously"
"Brazilians Should Keep Slashing Their Rainforest"

And, of course, the Great Barrington Declaration.

[adam2]

I wonder if we would have enough work for a dedicated Civil Defence organisation to do. With global warming increasing we might well have in the future but for the last twenty years? Even fire brigade numbers have been run down as they don't have so much work to do now. It makes sense to possibly beef up the Fire Service and have them train as a multi role organisation but its like the argument for having snow ploughs on stand by in London during the winter; you might only use them once in ten years and when you do come to use them they won't start because they haven't been used!

I was watching the News last night on the covid crisis and I wondered if LJ ever watches the news and whether he thinks that they are actors coming on and telling us how bad things are for NHS staff with covid. These people have been working flat out under immense stress for almost a year now and some of them are near breaking point. Does he have no sympathy for them or are they middle class wusses and not deserving of sympathy like a working class person in the same circumstances would be?

I would suggest that a proper civil defence organisation would not need many staff, the emphasis should be on large stocks of basic equipment.
As an example it does not take many men to erect a few dozen large tents, and to put in each tent say 20 camp beds each with blankets. But you have to have the tents, the folding beds, the blankets, and the trucks in which to transport same.
Likewise it does take many people to prepare a basic hot meal for 1,000 people, PROVIDED that basic large scale catering equipment (including fuel), long life foods, and enough tableware and furniture is available. 2 well trained professionals and a dozen or two volunteers should manage it. Given hot water, detergent and basic utensils, washing up for a thousand people is easy with a dozen volunteers.
In any serious emergency, additional labour is easy to obtain, from the armed services, boy scouts, the WRVS, low risk prisoners, from volunteers, and from existing public employees whose normal work can be suspended for the duration.

[Little John]

Heard of the Great Barrington Declaration?

Have you heard of the American Institute for Economic Research ?

Funders of such tomes as:

"What Greta Thunberg Forgets About Climate Change"
"The Real Reason Nobody Takes Environmental Activists Seriously"
"Brazilians Should Keep Slashing Their Rainforest"

And, of course, the Great Barrington Declaration.

It was signed by thirty thousand scientists from around the world.

[kenneal - lagger]

.............................
It was signed by thirty thousand scientists from around the world.

Are you sure? The was another similar Declaration on climate change which when examined was found to have all sort of weird names on it and virtually none of the signatories had any standing in the field. That was 30,000 names as well.

[Catweazle]

Heard of the Great Barrington Declaration?

Have you heard of the American Institute for Economic Research ?

Funders of such tomes as:

"What Greta Thunberg Forgets About Climate Change"
"The Real Reason Nobody Takes Environmental Activists Seriously"
"Brazilians Should Keep Slashing Their Rainforest"

And, of course, the Great Barrington Declaration.

It was signed by thirty thousand scientists from around the world.

The G B Declaration website:

https://gbdeclaration.org/view-signatures/

claims 13,000 scientists have signed. However, they also publish a list of all those scientists who have been verified as genuine, in alphabetical order.

It contains 443 names.

[PS_RalphW]

UK Deaths reported today from Covid : 1820

Average daily UK deaths, 2019, 1450

[Catweazle]

Does the question "with covid or from covid ?" become more relevant now that it has spread a lot further into the population ? I suspect it does, and that the covid death stats will become a less reliable indicator as it carries on spreading.

The "excess deaths" figure might be more useful.

[PS_RalphW]

I do not think we will ever fully separate the cause and effect of the deaths from / with covid. We know that the lockdowns have modified the normal death figures, fewer influenza and road accident deaths, probably more deaths from suicide, heart disease and cancer, as other services were either shut down or redirected to fight covid. The headline covid deaths require a positive test within 28 days, but there is increasing evidence that the virus can cause permanent damage to multiple organs by triggering cytokine storms and other immune system attacks. These seem likely to hasten death by heart disease, etc., even direct damage to brain tissues in some cases, months and maybe years after infection.

Most people die of multiple factors that end up overloading the body to the point that it gives up. We all die eventually and covid will hasten the death of far more than just the headline figures, maybe decades from now.

That said, the vast majority of the 1820 deaths were directly caused by covid damaging the lungs to the point that the victim suffocated