Britain turns it’s back on the world with its vaccination programme

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Britain turns it’s back on the world with its vaccination programme

If you wanted to be generous, you could probably have said that any government would have had a problem facing the pandemic that hit the world at the end of 2019/beginning of 2020. Indeed, it was unprecedented – a word which has been so overused (as have so many others) in the, now, just under two years. But at the same time we were told (in Britain), over many years, that the government was prepared for such an event. It’s just that when covid arrived it was ‘the wrong type of pandemic’.

From the beginning we were faced with a government which had no idea what it was doing, had no strategy (and still doesn’t) as it bounced around from decision to decision. Supposedly, decisions made ‘following the science’, but in reality they’ve been clutching at straws when it comes to the action they’ve taken.

We’ve been struck by innumerable U-turns, so many it’s impossible for most people to give you an exact number. And after such a long time Buffoon and his government seem to have become accustomed to this way of doing things. Before any decision is made there’s speculation going on for days. There’s uncertainty. There are contradictory statements being made – even at the highest levels of Government. Nobody really knows what’s happening and when there is a decision made, few people in the country really understand what’s been decided.

And this is the case with the change in the vaccination policy which has taken place in the last few days.

12- to 15-year-olds will now be vaccinated as well as something like close to half the population, getting a third, so called ‘booster’, injection.

In a sense, this was bound to happen and should come as a surprise to no one. Not because of the science, not because of how it keeps people healthy. It’s because it’s playing to the audience.

In a country of rabbits people are looking for something, anything, which will assuage their fears.

And children getting vaccinated, older people getting a third ‘booster’ jab just panders to all those fears.

But what it doesn’t do is play any role in social justice with the recognition of the fact that there are still vast parts of the world where you could count the number of those who are fully vaccinated on the fingers of one hand.

Some scientists have been arguing against this extension to the very young and the so-called ‘vulnerable’, not on esoteric grounds (i.e., that it’s the ‘right thing to do’) but that vaccinating as many people as possible in the poorer parts of the world would be, ultimately, beneficial to all, even in Britain.

But even those arguments don’t go down well in a country which has reverted to simple tribalism and narrow-minded parochialism.

Rich countries take advantage of their wealth and their accessibility to vaccines and the rest of the world can just go hang. And that’s the situation we are in in Britain at the moment – a selfish little island nation scrambling for more and more vaccines and finding the weakest ‘reasons’ to justify their approach.

It’s been quite interesting the way the vaccine rollout started with the old and ‘vulnerable’ and the age has gradually gone down to include more and more people – with more and more spurious arguments to justify it. Yes, arguments can be made for vaccinating everyone on the planet but not the least vulnerable when there are still billions of people who won’t see hide nor hair of a covid vaccine needle until well into 2022 – at the earliest.

No doubt once the 12- to 15-year-olds have been given their one jab someone will start looking at extending the programme to even younger children. After all, it’s the really young, primary school children who have been the principal vectors for the annual flu outbreaks in the past.

What is also interesting (and important) is that the extended vaccination programmes will both be using the expensive and difficult to store Pfizer Biontech vaccine.

As time has gone by the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine has not proven itself to be any better than virtually all the other vaccines that are around. Each one seems to ‘shine’ during a different period in the life cycle of the virus and the battle against it. But what makes the Pfizer vaccine stand out is the smear campaign the company carried out (with willing accomplices such as the Zionist Settler State of Israel) to denigrate and create a climate of fear in many so that the cheaper, just as effective and more manageable AstraZeneca vaccine is being effectively shunned in the ‘civilised’ world.

So, in Britain, not only is the extension of the programme fundamentally immoral it also has the effect of, yet again, shovelling even more public money into the bank accounts of ‘Big Pharma’.

Vaccination programme in Britain ……

Take-up of second covid jab in England levelling off – concern as scientists say vaccinating adults is more important than inoculating children or booster shots.

Vaccine passports will make hesitant people ‘even more reluctant to get jabbed‘.

Mandatory jabs for health staff being considered in consultation.

UK scraps covid-19 vaccine deal with French firm Valneva – why would anyone be foolish enough to have any dealings with ‘perfidious Albion’?

….. for children ….

NHS planning covid vaccines for children from age 12.

Ministers could defy Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and go ahead with covid jabs for all 12- to 15-year-olds.

Covid-19: 12 to 15-year-olds to get ‘final say’ over covid jab if disagreement with parent occurs.

UK vaccine advisers ‘acted like medical regulators’ over covid jabs for children.

All children aged 12 to 15 in the UK will be offered one dose of the (surprise, surprise – the hugely expensive and not necessarily more efficient) Pfizer-BioNTech covid jab.

….. and/or boosters ….

Vaccine boosters are likely to increase protection against variants. Presumably, if you keep pumping all the available vaccine into the same arms you’ll eventually produce a super resistant race amongst the dead population from the rest of the world.

Britons with severely weak immune systems to be offered third covid jab.

No urgency on covid booster shots for healthy adults.

AstraZeneca bosses warn against rush for boosters.

Boosters not needed for all, says Oxford jab creator – send to countries in need, instead.

Covid booster vaccine roll out to begin next week – and the winner is ….. (surprise, surprise – again) the hugely expensive and not necessarily more efficient Pfizer formula.

….. and the rest of the world

Russia’s covid-19 response slowed by population reluctant to take domestic vaccine.

Third coronavirus vaccines aren’t ‘luxury boosters’ taken from people without their first, WHO Europe boss says – the ‘rich’ countries will always find a way to justify their greed and denial of a fair share to the rest of the world.

Why it’s time for the UK to start sharing its vaccine doses.

Israel was a leader in the covid vaccination race – so why are cases spiralling there?

Immunity?

Covid infections may give more potent immunity than vaccines – but that doesn’t mean you should try to catch it.

Four factors that increase the risk of vaccinated people getting covid.

How other countries deal with the pandemic

China crushes Delta spike after weeks of strict measures.

Against all odds: how New Zealand is bending the Delta curve – but for how long?

The ever changing virus

Covid variants: we spoke to the experts designing a single vaccine to defeat them all.

Mu: everything you need to know about the new coronavirus variant of interest.

Covid – effects on children

Long-lasting symptoms rarer in children than in adults.

The care home ‘crisis’

Volunteers may be required in staffing shortfall at English care homes.

Who is dying of covid?

Scientists are comparing the profiles of those who are dying with previous waves – here’s what they know.

What will happen in the winter?

Further lock downs unlikely but some winter restrictions are possible.

‘Collateral damage’

Front-line nurses did not receive the mental health support they deserved.

Poverty in Britain

One in three working-age families with children to be hit by cut to Universal Credit. This came from a report carried out by the Joseph Rowntree Trust. Constituency Analysis (this is an Excel file) and the Technical Appendix.

Cuts to housing benefits led to over 75,000 more overcrowded households during the pandemic.

School spending in England: trends over time and future outlook – briefing or full report.

Teachers gaming pupils’ A-level grades highlights need for fundamental change.

The effect of local housing allowance reductions on overcrowding in the private rented sector in England.

Schools in poorest areas of England to be worst hit by pupil premium change.

Ending universal credit boost will hit sickest areas the hardest.

The truth will out! Perhaps not

The Government’s refusal to make messages between ministers public is (perhaps) an indication of how thorough the inquiry into the dealing with the covid pandemic (supposed to take place some time next year, i.e., 2022) will be.

Attempt to force release of Johnson’s messages on covid in care homes fails.

British Medical Association (BMA) to issue damning critique of government over Covid crisis.

Travel tests

Ministers doing bare minimum to stop covid travel test ‘rip-offs’.

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Ukraine – what you’re not told

England on the eve of ‘Freedom Day’

More on covid pandemic 2020-2?

View of the world

Ukraine – what you’re not told

England on the eve of ‘Freedom Day’

In less than an hour Britain (or at least the English part of it) will enter a watershed moment for 00.00 on Monday 19th July 2021 will see the end of all restrictions under which the country has been living for the last 16 months. Or it won’t. (It also should be the end of this Journal of the Plague Years 2020-202? – but it won’t.)

(There are even nightclubs waiting to open up, with queues forming, as I write, to enter on the stroke of midnight.)

Legal restrictions will be lifted but that doesn’t mean that local restrictions won’t remain in place. For example, masks will not be obligatory on some forms of public transport but will be on others and it varies between different parts of the country (England) and matters won’t be changing on the 19th in the other constituent nations of the so-called ‘United Kingdom’. And worse still some areas seem to be following a ‘wait and see’ approach before making a final decision.

The uncertainty and confusion that has beset the whole approach to dealing with the pandemic is now being carried over into the ‘new normal’. Having had no strategy to deal with the consequences of the covid virus since March 2020 the government of the Buffoon is basically giving up and hoping for the best – more or less what they have been doing since the pandemic hit.

When it comes to the science people can get proof of their approach whatever it might be. Some scientists are predicting the end of civilisation as we know it, others are arguing the ‘if not now, when’ approach. No doubt all will eventually be proved correct, at least in their own eyes.

From the beginning we have been arguing here that there must be a better way of dealing with a pandemic than following the tactics that were adopted 700 years ago during the time of the ‘Black Death’ (bubonic plague) that swept through Europe. But that would require a strategy which has been sorely lacking. At the same time it cannot be denied that the ‘collateral damage’ caused by the lack of a clear and carefully thought out strategy has been, is and will be in the near to long-term future, immense.

Modern societies just can’t close down with the hope the virus will run its course and eventually disappear. If that thought did exist at the beginning of 2020 the hope has all but been dispelled by the general argument now that ‘we will have to live to learn with the virus and that it will be with us (probably) forever’.

However important it might be for British society to get back to normal (with all its problems of inequality, racism and poverty) it would have been useful if lessons of mistakes made in the last 18 months had been learnt so the country was more prepared for what is to come – an uncertain future for sure.

But in England (and it’s not really any better in the rest of the UK) that’s not the case.

On the very eve of ‘Freedom Day’ the Buffoon makes even yet another U-turn (this time one of the quickest ever, timed at less than three hours) over the matter of self isolation of himself and his spendthrift neighbour. But it wasn’t just the changing of approach to self isolation (‘one law for us and one law for them’) it was the way it was explained away.

In the same way that the Buffoon has lied and blustered his way through events of the last year and a bit he turned his lack of strategy on to the population of England. His video speech explaining the change in approach consisted in mainly saying that we all have to be follow a sensible lifestyle in the coming weeks and months and ignoring the chaos that his own actions (and that of the rich and powerful) in the last 18 months has just created confusion in the minds of some, incredulity in those of others, and downright antagonism in the minds of the rest.

We didn’t enter the pandemic all together and we’re not moving out of it (however temporary it might be) as a united force that would be the only hope, if not a guarantee, of success.

From tomorrow the debate will change, accusations will be liberally thrown around and politicians will be seeking to score points for their own short-term ends. ‘I told you so’ will become the most oft quote phrase and chaos will reign.

How well or badly we in Britain will get through this crisis is still in the balance. But the same question that was posed at the beginning of 2020 is still valid so many months later. The ruling class in Britain (and the rest of the world) have shown themselves incapable of dealing with such a crisis – apart from filling the banks accounts of their cronies and allies with public wealth.

Are working people willing and able to do better?

Vaccination programme in Britain

Covid-19 vaccine boosters: is a third dose really needed?

Most covid deaths in England now are in the vaccinated – here’s why that shouldn’t alarm you.

Can ‘viral shedding’ after the covid vaccine infect others? That’s a big ‘no’.

Pressure builds on ministers to reach a decision on covid vaccines for children. This decision will be based upon politics and will have nothing to do with science – or the ‘data’. There is in Britain – as in virtually all the wealthier countries – no real concern for situation in the poorer countries where many millions of the ‘most vulnerable’ are still from being protected. The Buffoon will be playing to the selfish gallery.

Freedom Day … or perhaps not

End to Covid rules for England ‘leaves 3.8 million vulnerable people feeling abandoned’.

UK faces a difficult summer.

Confusion continues to reign

UK government under fire for mixed remote work messaging.

The ever-changing virus

Lambda variant is now in 29 countries, but what evidence do we have that it’s more dangerous?

Consequences of the virus

Younger adults still at risk of serious organ damage.

Long covid has more than 200 symptoms.

The argument over masks

Seven reasons mask wearing in the west was unnecessarily delayed.

Who gains from pandemics (and in any other health care situation)?

UK drug companies fined £260 million for inflating prices for National Health Service.

Test and trace

More than half a million people in England pinged by NHS test and trace app in a week, the highest figure recorded.

Wealth distribution in Britain

The Resolution Foundation produced a report, (Wealth) gap year: The impact of the coronavirus crisis on UK household wealth and there was a discussion around the findings of this report in a webinar on 12th July.

The masters of the U-turn

Buffoon and chancellor to self-isolate in U-turn. This one in less than three hours.

Vaccine ‘passports’

Are covid-19 vaccine passports fair?

Poverty in Britain

More than 1million children from key worker families living in poverty, says Trades Union Congress. So when are the unions going to do something about it?

The Joseph Rowntree Trust has published another report into poverty in Britain entitled A Minimum Income Standard for the United Kingdom in 2021. Also just the findings.

The expiry of the Universal Credit uplift: impacts and policy options, from the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

More on covid pandemic 2020-2?

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Ukraine – what you’re not told

The future of the country in the feet of a football team

More on covid pandemic 2020-2?

View of the world

Ukraine – what you’re not told

The future of the country in the feet of a football team

If there was one word that could be used to describe the manner in which the present covid pandemic has been managed in the UK then that word would be ‘surreal’. (I have been more closely following the situation in Britain but from what I know about other parts of the world the epithet would not be misplaced elsewhere.)

Perhaps, at the very beginning, there was an excuse for this impression. But only a small ‘perhaps’. Previous governments, of whatever political colour, had given the impression they were planning for any such eventuality (be it medical, natural or even military) but when it came it seemed – in Britain, at least – that they had been planning for the wrong type of pandemic. The cunning covid virus had snuck under the radar and it should have been a variety of flu.

That was a weak argument as there must be certain constants that exist in a pandemic; testing; isolation plans; a properly functioning, resourced and financed health service; support for those who are infected but can’t work; a well thought out strategy; an idea of worst case scenarios; a long term perspective as a modern city based society has little to fall back on compared to when pandemics (much more virulent and destructive in terms of human life) struck in past centuries – failure to do so could quite well lead to a situation where the cure can become more destructive and longer lasting than the disease itself.

But none of that was there, nothing concrete and thought through existed from the start and the situation is not that much better now.

Following the ‘data and not dates’ has meant that prior to long publicised ‘crunch’ times speculation is rife, with the Government no doubt promoting leaks to see how they are picked up by the media and the population in general. Lacking any strategy, lacking any real ideas, lacking any courage they seek to place (in whatever manner) the responsibility upon the the people themselves.

Whilst claiming ‘leadership’ the Buffoon and his acolytes have bounced around like a ball in a squash court with no one knowing where the ball will land. U-turns have been made on virtually all important decisions (when they are proven to be totally out of tune with reality or because they realise the plans just aren’t workable) and getting close to any sort of strategy is just a pipe-dream.

The period where speculation is rife before the making of a decision on the way forward gets extended from one week to two, the resultant ‘debate’ almost certainly causing more confusion the longer it goes on. But one thing is certain, whatever the consequences of changes in the present circumstances (which must happen, at some time in the future, a modern society can’t go on as it has in the UK for the last 18 months or so), if it all goes tits up it won’t be the Buffoon or the politicians that are at fault.

The Tories have tried (probably not very successfully) to claim credit for the success in the vaccination programme in the country. They were hypocritical in their ‘celebration’ of the 73rd anniversary of the establishment of the National Health Service which took place on 5th July. A party that had fought against its establishment in the first place, has been trying to undermine it ever since and which is, at present, pushing through changes that will further weaken its ability to provide what it promised to do in the immediate post-war years looks even more shallow when they are forced to attend such celebrations.

Now the Buffoon has become the country’s most avid football supporter and the Euro Cup Final that’s taking place as I type is supposed to have everyone in the country supporting ‘our’ team, an attempt at narrow minded nationalism which will help us to cope as we come out of the ‘unprecedented’ situation of the last year and a half.

If the feel good factor kicks in if England win what happens if they lose?

Vaccination programme in Britain ….

Covid vaccines: combining AstraZeneca and Pfizer may boost immunity.

Heart inflammation link to Pfizer and Moderna jabs.

….. and the rest of the world

Delta variant exposes the flaws of stop-start vaccination programmes.

Proposals to extend covid jabs to children in west would delay worldwide roll out and allow deadly variants to develop elsewhere.

South Africa’s vaccine quagmire, and what needs to be done now.

The ever changing virus

What’s the ‘Delta plus’ variant? And can it escape vaccines?

Age, sex, vaccine dose, chronic illness – insight into risk factors for severe covid is growing.

We should treat covid like norovirus – not the flu.

Moving forward …..

Chris Whitty: keeping covid restrictions will only delay wave.

Why it’s time to think differently about covid.

Living with covid: is now the right time for England to lift all restrictions?

….. or pumping up the fear

UK scientists caution that lifting of Covid rules is like building ‘variant factories’.

Covid-19: ‘For us it’s not freedom day, is it?’

Global experts urge Boris Johnson to delay ‘dangerous’ covid reopening.

England’s ‘freedom day’ to be day of fear for elderly people.

‘Collateral damage’

How missing out on nursery due to covid has affected children’s development.

A hidden covid crisis? Assessing the pandemic’s impact on young workers and their mental health. This page has a link to a recording of a webinar that looked at this issue in May.

Remote workers suffered most mental distress during pandemic.

Some things we are learning

How scientists can help tell if someone caught the virus at a nightclub.

Why we should stop testing in schools.

Poverty in Britain

How inequality explains the high impact of covid-19 in the UK.

£20 cut to benefits to impact families’ ability to put food on the table.

Universal credit £20 top up to be phased out.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies published a report entitled Living standards, poverty and inequality in the UK: 2021. On 8th July there was also a webinar where this report was introduced.

The covid death toll in poorer areas highlights long term inequalities in Britain, the conclusion of a report by the Health Foundation entitled Unequal pandemic, fairer recovery.

Chaos that follows the ‘no strategy’ strategy

Parents angry at shifting government covid messages.

Covid-19: New rules for schools in England to be set out.

Hypocrisy in Britain

For an example of the shallowness of British society, and the ease with which a sizeable section of the population can be lulled into inactivity, just look at the ‘honours’ system that operates due to the existence of an hereditary monarchy. At a time when wide ranging changes are being proposed for the National Health Service which could drastically alter (for the worse) general working conditions; when staff shortages are getting worse – not solely down to the pandemic as it arrived at a time of a staffing crisis that had been developing for years; when a derisory pay offer is being offered by the Buffoon’s government which will very likely lead to strike action and/or an even greater departure of trained staff; and still a lack of a strategy to deal with covid – which we are constantly being told will be with us for ever – what is the government’s response? The Queen gives ‘courageous’ and ‘dedicated’ NHS the George Cross as William and Kate mark its 73rd birthday

Corruption in Britain

Greensill given access to covid loans without detailed checks.

Testing

UK pupils use orange juice to fake ‘positive’ Covid test results.

Test-and-trace rules ‘wreaking havoc’ for pubs and restaurants.

After the pandemic – or at least after Britain returns to ‘normal’

Why early-years education must be prioritised in pandemic recovery plans.

The Centre for Ageing Better has produced a report on access to the internet for older people, Covid-19 and the digital divide, with suggestions how things could change in the future.

Sunak must spend extra £10 billion a year on public services because of Covid – Office for Budget Responsibility.

Lessons from the pandemic

Human behaviour: what scientists have learned about it from the pandemic.

And how did it all start?

Covid origins: Scientists weigh up evidence over virus’s origins.

More on covid pandemic 2020-2?

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Ukraine – what you’re not told