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Covid-19

How totally stupid are the people of the UK who celebrated the news yesterday from Boris Johnson that effectively Covid-19 will be over in the UK next month?

People won’t need to test any more, that they can be positive and as long as they feel able they can then go where they like. Work, cinema, theatre, gym, pubs … absolutely anywhere and that will be totally legal.

Omicron is just one variant. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem to terrible on the vaccinated and the majority of those in intensive care are unvaccinated, more fool them but, just those people are still having a knock on effect for the whole NHS. What if the next variant is the worst of the lot? It turns up in the summer just after we have had everything covid related dismantled here in the UK? We will be unprotected, unprepared.

We are still having issues getting to see our GP. All waiting time expectations have now been dismissed. People waiting on vital treatment are dying because of the extra wait for a bed taken up by someone suffering from Covid-19.

Many ‘routine’ surgeries are cancelled for an indefinite period. These are surgeries, any surgery which is not deemed life saving and that is the majority of what the NHS does now.

As time passes our vaccines become less effective, for many they will just not protect them at all even with the booster and yet, there are no plans to give top ups heading into a period where we just won’t know how safe we are wherever we go.

More people will get sick, need time off work meaning, more of us already waiting months for repairs will wait longer.

The decision about Plan B was meant to be next week. Boris has had an awful week over his ignoring his own laws on covid, he needed to distract the country and it seems to have worked. He has announced with no scientific back up, that Covid-19 will be reduced to endemic status by the end of March at the latest, much sooner if he can arrange it.

The expectation that COVID-19 will become endemic essentially means that the pandemic will not end with the virus disappearing; instead, the optimistic view is that enough people will gain immune protection from vaccination and from natural infection such that there will be less transmission and much less COVID-19-related hospitalization and death, even as the virus continues to circulate.

This all supposes that we all will have that immunity and that also, we know and keep on top of the variants and that our protection, such that it will be, will cover any new variant.

This announcement yesterday has no scientific basis, we are the only country in the world making this decision whilst having one of the highest infection rates. We have over 3.5 million active cases of covid19. Over 700 of those are currently critical. Boris says we are the best in Europe, the only European countries with more daily cases than us are:

Andorra

  • Andorra
  • Gibraltar
  • Montenegro
  • San Marino
  • Slovenia
  • Czechia
  • Faeroe Islands
  • France

Every other country in Europe has fewer daily confirmed cases of covid-19 and most have very similar rates of vaccination and testing as we do. The only other European country with more active cases than us is France. Every other country in Europe is managing better than the UK.

To balance it (by a tiny bit) we are number 7 in Europe for the most critical cases with the following countries having more critical cases than us as of Wednesday this week

  • France 3881
  • Germany 2664
  • Russia 2300
  • Spain 2230
  • Italy 1688
  • Poland 1391
  • UK 703

Is this the picture Johnson is painting of how well we are managing covid?

Not enough evidence yet? Let’s look at Daily Deaths because, if Boris is right, we must have some of the lowest in Europe so, here it with the worst at the top:

  • Russia 698
  • Italy 380
  • Poland 376
  • UK 359

Remember, they are DAILY deaths 2500 a week. If this is the new normal then every year we will lost 130,000+ people to covid and this is us, under control and ready to ditch all our further protection, as things currently stand, that is our new normal whilst other countries are in lock down with better statistics than we have.

I heard on the radio yesterday from people who voted for Boris and said never again after all the lies and parties, how him getting us out of Covid had probably changed their point of view.

God Help us

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They make the rules but, they don’t follow them

What do we do?

We know there is a pandemic, that means that every country on this planet lives with Covid, no country is unique, no country has got rid of it.

We do not need a government to tell us these things unless we really are that obsessed with fake news.

However, to keep safe we have to be advised on what keeps us safe and what makes no difference.

Shall we look at those measures and examine them, no fake news just common sense?

  • Face masks? Ask yourself this, pandemic aside, would you feel comfortable going to a dentist if they didn’t wear a mask or, would you be happy if you were wheeled into an operating theatre and none of the nurses or surgeons were wearing a mask? Did you ever see any surgeon anywhere who was not wearing a mask? If they didn’t work against virus and other nasties, why do we expect them to be worn, why is that just ‘normal’? So, it stands to reason, that it is common sense that wearing a mask during a pandemic makes sense.
  • Vaccinations, do they work? A little history, smallpox … we don’t have this horrible illness in the UK now because we have a vaccine against it. Other countries which do not vaccinate against it still has smallpox. Likewise, measles, mumps and rubella, none of those are life threatening in the UK yet, they are in countries which don’t have the vaccines given automatically to the majority of us as children. In short, if enough people have it and there is a critical mass of people who have to have it, they just work. Even if we are suicidal or believe we are so healthy we do not need the vaccine, it protects others amongst us that might actually become seriously ill from a virus or, indeed, prevents death and, we don’t know who those people are, we might think we do but, we really don’t. To make matters worse, the people who might become ill or die don’t know it’s them. How can that be? Because people who think they’re healthy don’t go see a doctor, we have no routine testing for otherwise healthy people. There are mates who might have a heart condition, they don’t know they do but, there it is. These ‘healthy’ people get covid and then, they’re dead, a statistic. Some have lung problems they don’t know they do but perhaps their parents were heavy smokers and they still live at home, don’t smoke themselves but, their lungs are damaged. They’re just 18, crazy healthy, play football at weekends, can stay up all night clubbing but, their lungs are damaged and the first thing covid attacks are the lungs, they die. It’s not just about you nan of the old bloke in Primark. We can all understand the argument there, they’re old so they are going to die soon so, what difference does it make … well, stop thinking about them. It’s your brother, sister, best friends of your teenage children.
  • Vaccine risks, what about that? Every vaccine in some very rare cases has some bad side effects which might in even more rare occasions, lead to death. Your argument here is that you are never going to put yourself at risk of death regardless of the low risk because you are more sensible than that except that … all these things are many more likely of causing death than any vaccination and yet, how many of them apply to you? Smoking, using a car, crossing the road, standing on a ladder, unprotected sex, binge drinking, using cannabis, using any other ‘recreational’ drug … do you need more to find one or two which apply to you? All that which you accept as an OK risk but, you won’t take a vaccine which can save your life or the life of someone you care about.
  • Vaccine passport, that’s just too much control isn’t it? When it comes to things which can kill we are surely used to quite evasive measures to prevent such things before getting into a club are we not? Do they use scanners? Do they look in bags? Do they pat people down to check for weapons? Do they ask for proof of age at all? So, all those things to keep you and me safe, they’re just part of going to such places and we accept that don’t we? Can we go clubbing in Ibiza without having a passport? So, why are you really making an argument about showing a covid vaccine? Are you the sort of person who still refuses to wear a seatbelt in a car because it takes away your life choices? Do you still smoke in the pub despite knowing it’s illegal? If you are doing both those things still then, you are that sort of people who will ignore all common sense to shove it to the man. Hmm.

Because we know now that the Government has not been following the rules they have told us we have to follow, how do we behave now?

The Prince caused an accident, he was a figurehead of the country, part of the system. Was he wearing a seat belt?

If you get angry that a seat belt wasn’t worn do you stop wearing one? Maybe you are ‘that’ person who would do exactly that, I don’t know. I would love to think most people would never now be persuaded to not wear a belt because they know it isn’t just their safety but it’s the safety of all our mates in our car or our kids in their car seats … it’s a happy coincidence that it might also save the life of someone we care about in another car.

So, what is the difference between wearing that seat belt and abiding by all the common sense things we looked at earlier? Most if not all of those now we are doing because, it’s just ‘right’ to do it, I can but hope I have shown you that in what I wrote earlier.

Let’s not allow our decisions to be drawn down into the abys by those who have less standards than we do.

Fake news … to show how easy it is to fall for a compelling argument even though it’s totally untrue, I lied, the prince was wearing a seatbelt. As Boris openly admitted in an interview and, this is 100% honest, now and then someone needs to lie to get people to do the right thing. He was referring to a bus advertising £350million day which he knew was a lie but said it was important to get people to vote leave.

Be you, don’t be daft and become them because they annoy you. Because they were wrong on that doesn’t mean that the science is wrong.

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Neither a borrower nor a lender be

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan doth oft lose both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” Hamlet. … In this line from Hamlet, Polonius gives his son Laertes advice on managing money. He starts off by telling him never to lend or borrow money from friends.

It is very good advice as I have found, to my cost, over the years.

I have lost friends who I loaned money they didn’t repay, sometimes £100’s and, in one case £1000’s.

Being owed money which doesn’t get repaid sucks big time

Do you know, if all the money I was owed were repaid tomorrow (just what I can remember) I would be nearly £10,000 better off, that’s amazing isn’t it?

Of course, I do lend money which gets repaid but, somehow I still get stressed as I rarely seem to know my financial worth.

Just now, a friend who hit rough times borrowed £350 from me. I actually paid him £250 for work he did on the basis that he was actually just doing me a favour. I did him a very similar favour in the same period but, he suddenly expected paying so I paid him. A few weeks later he used the money I loaned him to pay bills and groceries as a down payment on a new car. Same guy reads but doesn’t respond to messages, effectively, in modern terms, I have been ghosted, I no longer exist to him.

I am a victim of Gypsy scammers too. I engaged them to do a job for me, they took me for a few £1000. I took them to court, I won, they have a county court judgement against them but, of course, I will never see my money again.

Covid too has cost me. I now have solicitors fighting my case to get over £1300 back from Philippines Airlines who have owed me this money for the best part of a year now. I doubt I will see that again either.

I borrowed money myself, from a bank and credit card. I owe more than I can ever repay. Not all on luxuries, it started with a person who took me for another 4 figure sum. Then it was all the legal government theft to get the visas for Dennis, that cost me way over £10k so far, the money had to come from somewhere.

I’ve not had any proper break away for years and my health is in decline and I am stressing I don’t yet have enough to pay for next years round of visas, I’ll need over £4000 for those and then, finally, Dennis will be a joint UK/Philippines citizen and … I’ll be broke.