More on covid pandemic 2020-2?

Britain still in covid-19 lock down – with the lunatics in charge of the asylum

The same issues keep on coming up and the Government of the Buffoon (but with the Buffoon himself stating out of the limelight) still makes policy decisions which most find mind-boggling. Welcome to Britain – but if you come after 8th June be prepared to put yourself in a 14 day quarantine.

Testing

The much vaunted figure of 100,000 tests per day was, surprise, surprise, attained on 31st April – but not on too many days since. And in place of an investigation into why numbers are not going up we are merely given another number and another target date.

But some doubts have been cast on whether the information is even accurate, with the possibility that some tests are being counted twice. That might be a valid approach if that was the way they have been counted in the past – but shouldn’t have people been informed of that? I’m sure than most people would have thought that the number of tests carried out was, in fact, the same as the number of people tested.

I might be missing something but is the Government still declaring how many tests are carried out each day? It seems those numbers were bandied about when it suited but things have gone quiet as the targets are difficult to attain. And now all the news is about the new antigen test. So two different tests which will cause even greater confusion and make it almost impossible to know what is going on.

Test – Track – Isolate

Adam Kucharski, working on the mathematical analysis of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Radio 4, World at One, 21st May;

Q. Is the NHS Confederation correct that there should be no lifting of lock down until a plan for contact tracing is in place?

‘Countries have to be very careful about lifting restrictions without having something to replace them that can ensure a reduction in transmission. Over time we can have more targetted measures, such as track and trace, when we don’t need the more blanket measures. We are still seeing infections appear so we have to be cautious in how we lift those measures.’

Q. Are other European countries lifting lock down measures without track and trace in place?

‘It’s not entirely clear what the long term strategy is in some of the countries. If you lift restrictions then outbreaks can occur and be spread fairly easily so unless there’s something to replace restrictions you may well see other outbreaks occur.’

Q. How easy is it to have personnel doing the contact tracing and is the app necessary?

‘We probably need both these things to work in tandem. Manual contact tracing is labour intensive and if you look at countries who have done this, like S Korea, they have access to a lot more data, such as credit card transactions, phone location data. Even with that level of oversight very quickly the manual effort can increase. The app can particularly pick up contacts that are very difficult to trace. To identify someone in your own house is very easy, identifying some one you sat two tables away from in a restaurant would be much harder. Here apps could potentially add a lot more value.’

Q. Do apps need to be closely integrated to those doing the manual work?

‘From a public health point of view these things are always more effective if you integrate them because then you don’t have them overlapping in effort and wasting resources. Also we need to be thinking about social distancing measures that remain in place alongside these. Other countries that have used contact tracing have still kept infection control and physical distancing. Ideally we can do that in some more moderate way but we need to think of this as a sequence of tools and find the best possible way of combining them.’

Q. We hear of issues of those employed to do the tracing not knowing exactly what to do. Can you see contact tracing all happening by the beginning of next week?

‘To make sure of identifying contacts and to be confident, especially of lifting measures, we do need to ensure that we are capturing quite a large proportion of transmissions. Our modelling shows as soon as you get delays in identifying contacts this will lead to more transmissions. We want the system to be as effective as possible.’

On 20th May the Buffoon made a big thing about a ‘world-class’ contract tracing system being up and running by 1st June. Only a day later that was changed to ‘early next month (June)’ but now without the much vaunted NHSX Smartphone app.

The NHS Confederation was still cautious about any major changes in the lock down before effective contact tracing was in place. Niall Dickson, chief executive of the confederation, said on 21st May;

‘We are absolutely clear that contact tracing is the right thing to do, it is absolutely critical, it has got to be in place to prevent any notion of a second surge if the lock down is being further released.’

Testing – or not

Although already mentioned it doesn’t do any harm to remind people about the report that surfaced on Tuesday which criticised the decision to stop community testing on March 12th.

Antibody tests

These are likely to be the next ‘best thing’, theoretically providing proof of whether someone has already contracted the infection, recovered and possibly immune to any re-infection. Their efficiacy still hasn’t been proven (but even so the Government has a contract with the pharmceutical giant Roche to provide millions of such tests) but already major companies are playing on peoples’ fears, and hopes of immunity, and are selling them online.

The high street chain Superdrug was one of the first. On sale 21st May, sold out on 22nd – at £69.00 a pop.

14 day quarantine on international arrivals

Loath as I am to have to say so but I agree with one of the most unpleasant present day representatives of the free market economy, Michael O’Leary, the Chief Executive of the budget airline Ryanair, that the introduction of a 14 day quarantine for anyone arriving in the UK is a crass and irrational response to any fear of the virus coming into the country. Millions of people have arrived in the UK since the lock down was declared on 23rd March and any measures to protect the country so late in the day borders on the farcical. After a lock down the last thing you need is a further restriction on movement – especially one that doesn’t make any sense at all.

More details were unveiled on the afternoon of 22nd May. For some reason this will not come into force until 8th June. There will be exemptions – but what’s the point of a rule if there are exemptions which will basically undermine the rule?

The role of unions in the covid-19 pandemic

When we live in a time ‘ruled’ by a bunch of useless public schoolboys (and girls) – who most of the time of the covid-19 pandemic in Britain seem to be running around like chickens with their heads cut off – it’s an opportunity to those organisations of the workers to show some ability, insight and forward thinking and take on a role of leadership. In light of the fact there is no revolutionary Marxist-Leninist Party to take up that banner it has been left to the Trade Unions. However, with few exceptions, they have shown themselves lacking.

In the early days of the lock down there were a number of wildcat strikes where workers were taking immediate action to safeguard their safety – decided upon and organised at a local level, without recourse to the national leadership and certainly with no concern of so-called ‘cooling off periods’ and the only ballot being a showing of hands.

Most of the time we hear of trade unions in the present situation it’s when the union leadership reacts to an event, this is from both individual trade union leaders and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) which should be presenting a unified approach of organised labour to the ‘unprecedented’ crisis that covid-19 has brought to the fore.

At the moment it’s the education trade unions that are not covering themselves in glory. At best they are merely frightened at worse they display a total inability to analyse and respond to an unknown situation. Instead of looking for ways out of the problem they seem to look for reasons NOT to do something, being obstructive in the face of the (admittedly half-baked and muddled) plans of the Buffoon and his government to get education moving again.

One of the education union leaders, Mary Bousted, of the National Education Union (NEU), seemed to treat the whole thing as a game and a poll carried out by the NASUWT, one of the other education unions, found that only 5% of its 30,000 members believed it was safe for children to return to education on 1st June – going against the vast majority of the scientific evidence that such a move was neither prejudicial to the children nor the teachers themselves. And these are the people entrusted with the education of future generations.

We can all criticise how this pandemic is being managed (and that’s all I’m doing on these posts) but there comes a time when to move forward others have to take the reins of leadership. The British Labour Party is incapable of doing so and that leaves the task to the workers organised in their unions – but that won’t be the case if all the unions do is cower in a corner and hope the the pandemic will just go away. They are acting just the same as the Government.

Problems don’t solve themselves and it’s for organised labour to face up to the problems now or they will have no chance of having any positive impact upon society when we return to the ‘new normality’ – a normality which will have many more hundreds of thousands of workers in unemployment on top of the abysmal situation we have allowed workers conditions to fall into in the years before anyone ever heard of covid-19.

Nationalists

The nationalist parties in the UK, especially the Scottish, have loved playing their own game in the last two months of the all Britain lock down. The fact that areas such as health were devolved as part of the capitulation to the nationalists means that here is an area where the devolved governments have a great deal of autonomy. And the Nationalists have used it to their utmost, perceived, advantage. But they don’t like it when it’s pointed out.

Profiteering during the pandemic

Although there may be positive changes in attitude by many during this pandemic, which makes the society more cohesive, there will always be those who seek to profit from the misery of others. There’s constant mention in Britain (when isn’t it when it comes to any crisis?) of the Blitz (the aerial bombing of London and other major cities in Britain by the Nazi air force in the Second World War) and the Dunkirk Spirit (when retreating British armed forces escaped from western France in 1940) and how the country came together. But they conveniently forget the looting of bombed properties, the ‘Black Market’, the ‘spivs’ (small time conmen), break-ins and burglaries, rapes and murders that went on in the black-outs as well as all-round profiteering when companies knew they could charge the Government what they liked for their goods or services.

Obviously not on anything like the same scale (although we don’t now all that’s been going on in the last couple of months) profiteers have already had a field day and are filling their boots when they can. Although the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is a part of Government nothing will happen about these abuses. The response of the Government to this sanctioned theft? The Department for Business maintained ‘the vast majority’ of firms were acting responsibly.

How is knowledge growing about covid-19?

After infections and deaths over a period a little under three months since the first death on 5th March the statistics of the infections and deaths in the intervening period have started to paint an interesting picture of the pandemic – as it has worked its way through the UK but whilst also filling in the international picture.

Taking the statistics up to the week ending 8th May it’s possible to say (according to David Spiegelhalter, Professor of Statistics at Cambridge University);

• ‘pattern of covid deaths is changing
• ‘around half the deaths from covid were in the community – and therefore only half in hospitals’
• ‘the median age of deaths for women was 87, for men 82’
• ‘this shows the penetration into care homes’
• ‘epidemic in the community seems to be largely under control’
• ‘in care homes and even hospitals there’s a bigger risk of infection’
• ‘1 in 1600 of the population have died of covid’
• ‘for those over 90 ‘1 in 70’
• ‘for kids between 5 and 14 there’s only been one registered death, in a population of 7 million – although there will probably be more’

Other information from the statistics available at this moment, 22nd May;

• 90% of those who had died in March and April had ‘underlying health conditions’
• in 25% of all deaths the persons had diabetes (although it is not specified whether that is Type 1 or 2) – that came out as 5,800 out of 22,000 deaths in hospital
• those with dementia and Alzheimer are highly at risk
• at any one time (according to statistics released for the first two full weeks of May) 1 in 400 people in the UK are infected. That means the chances of meeting one by chance is very low – the problem with covid-19, however, is because an infected person can be asymptomatic and be infectious you don’t know who that one person might be.

How is the virus spread?

By a small percentage of the population normally. This has been the pattern with previous recent outbreaks such as HIV, SARS and Ebola – and now covid-19 it has been proposed. This report suggests that events where there are a lot of people, in very close proximity and where there might be a lot of vigorous activity, such as fitness centres or night clubs, could be classified as ‘super-spreader events’. Nothing is certain here as the spread of any infectious disease can be complex, but such studies start to suggest that certain activities and locations could be pin pointed as potential infectious hot spots which could then be approached in a considered manner.

Such an approach is needed to get away from the blanket approach which, honestly, only displays fear and ignorance – the approach that has characterised virtually all countries response to the pandemic.

Universities in Britain – all Open University now

The Open University was established in 1969 with the aim of providing part time, distance learning degree opportunities for those who (for various reasons) couldn’t commit to a full time university course. And it did – and is still doing – its job very well, the invention of the internet making distance learning more proactive and with occasional meet ups with fellow course members at various times of the year. But this was the exception – not the rule.

When the lock down was declared in March all universities eventually closed down, sent their students and staff home and any teaching went on line. This time of year is exam time and so even exams are taking place online – although I don’t know exactly how they are doing that. This made sense in the initial stages when knowledge of the virus was in its early stages.

But what normally also happens at this time of year is that the new intake of, mainly, 18 year olds decide at which university they want to study. At least one, Manchester University, stated they would only have lectures online for the first term of the 2020-2021 academic year – others are expected to follow suit.

However, on 19th May Cambridge University declared that all lectures would be online for the whole of the academic year.

If this matter becomes more general I can’t see why anyone would want to go to university in the academic year 2020-2021 – especially first year students. Going away to university in Britain isn’t just about education. For first year students it’s the first time any of them have been in any way independent in their lives. It’s the moving away from the parental home (although that trend has reversed with the costs of living expenses in the last few years) that makes staying in further education more attractive – as is the so-called ‘campus experience’. And those foundations get laid down in the first year – subsequent years work and study (theoretically) take precedence.

Universities have already stated (as has been the case since the lock down in March) that even if teaching goes online students would still be expected to pay full fees. Even if students do enrol in universities and the ‘social distancing ‘ rules remain the same there’s absolutely no incentive to leave home and pay the huge expense rent and other living expenses in often substandard accommodation and perhaps with people with whom you would rather not spend too much time.

The wider community would also suffer if the thousands of expected students stayed away for a year. Education has become so much of a business in the last 20 years or so that students and what they spend can be as important to a city as is foreign tourism – be that national or international. This is, yet again, a decision which seems to have been taken without taking into account the fall out.

And who is this really protecting? Students in their late teens or early twenties are among the least likely to suffer serious consequences from covid-19 and wouldn’t be at any greater risk than if they stay at home.

I just don’t understand this decision, another example of how risk averse (based upon no evidence) Britain has become.

The old may be dying but it’s the young who will pay the long term price

A report by the Resolution Foundation reports that it’s the young who are going to carry the long term consequences of the pandemic.

It found that;

• young employees are most likely to have lost work due to furloughing, jobs losses and hours reductions
• compared to prime-age adults, a smaller proportion of young employees had the same pay in May as before the coronavirus crisis hit
• young (and old) employees are the least able to weather the crisis by working from home

On top of this the number of new job vacancies has also fallen sharply – 170,000 fall from February to April, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS).

And all the debt that’s being accumulated in the last couple of months will be expected to be paid by someone – hands up the young.

The poor you will always have with you (Mark 14:7)

It’s amazing how the poor are also thought about in times of crisis – but totally ignored in the ‘good times’. There have been many declarations of concern for the poor in the last two months of the lock down such as the homeless and children who need to claim free school dinners (who are always, insultingly, described as coming from ‘deprived backgrounds’).

In the debate about whether or not schools should restart (or at least part of them) on 1st June, Andy Preston, the Mayor of Middlesbrough, argued that it was important to open the schools as soon as possible as this was imperative for the ‘deprived’ children as they need education to get them out of their ‘deprivation’.

This is merely an example of the crassness of British society. There’s the concept, constantly being promoted by those who have the wealth and the power that it only needs an extra push for the poor to drag themselves out of the mire in which they find themselves – this is the so-called ‘social mobility’ lie.

Such arguments are loved by those in power as it places all the responsibility of their poverty on the poor themselves – all they need is to pull themselves up by their own boot straps. This idea was pushed in the 19th century and it’s still with us now in the 21st. Those 200 years have not eradicated poverty and neither will the next 200 if things remain the same.

The sanctimonious Victorians made such trite statements and those who continue in the same vein maintain that ‘improvements’ in poverty can be made without any substantial changes to society. They don’t realise, or accept, that poverty is a pre-condition for the existence of capitalism.

Activities which result in large donations to charities are applauded, the very existence of food banks in every town is considered an ‘advance’, but if people are really serious about eradicating poverty, in this country or any other part of the world, a much more systemic change is necessary.

Putting matters into perspective

Amphan is the name of the cyclone that has been battering India and Bangladesh in the last few days, made landfall early on 21st May and then headed north. Events like this should make people living in the privileged ‘industrialised’ countries put the covid-19 pandemic into perspective. Before this cyclone moves away hundreds, if not thousands, of people are likely to lose their lives.

Bangladesh is one of the countries which is particularly susceptible to climate change as the vast majority of the country is only a few metres above sea level. The winds that are moving inland will no longer be causing damage but the amount of water in the rainfall when the storm hits the high mountains will eventually arrive at the Bay of Bengal, flooding the huge low lying delta on its way.

And those in different parts of the world whose lives were precarious before the arrival of covid-19 will now be in even more danger of the ravages of poverty. The 60 million (surely only a wild guestimate) of these people identified by the World Bank certainly puts the numbers of deaths in Europe, so far due to the pandemic, into some sort of perspective.

Changes to laws under the radar

The various British governments (of whatever colour) have built up a reputation of releasing contentious reports or trying to introduce changes to legislation on ‘quite news days’. They are also not averse to slipping in such law changes when everyday is a big news day and covid-19 drowns out everything else.

That’s what is happening to changes in the already draconian anti-terrorism laws. You wouldn’t have thought there was any need to restrict even more any legal rights for a suspected (but not convicted) ‘terrorist’ – but not the British Government. When someone can be arrested and held just on the say so of the security services already the Tories (no doubt with the implicit support of all the other political parties in Parliament) now want to increase unlawful detention indefinitely.

Whenever ‘terrorist’ legislation is discussed in Britain the argument is always presented, by the State, that if you’ve done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear. However, everyone should be aware that the definition of a ‘terrorist’ is growing all the time and can theoretically include any anti-State activity.

We shouldn’t let the dominance of one problem in society blind us to what is going on around us, hidden and without our permission.

More on covid pandemic 2020-2?