Tag: covid

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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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We don’t want to hear, we’re not interested

I don’t know how to start this really and, to be be honest, by the nature of what I am about to say, many have already lost interest!

Is it a modern thing I wonder?

More and more recently I see some in society less and less interested in anything outside of their small interest zone. Attention spans seem very short too.

I am aware of ‘cancel culture’ and I know what it is and, how I generally feel now is like that. Others feel an entitlement to shut up anyone who says anything at all that they personally have no interest in or, which makes them think even if they agree with the conclusion. Now, that said, anything more than two lines and the self same people have stopped reading and, that’s fine, leave it there, not interested, turn away, subject closed but no!

Not only do they not read the piece but without completing it they then feel compelled to make it public they’ve not read it. it’s the same ‘boring rubbish’ and they don’t feel it has any place showing up in their lives.

Now, we are talking ‘online’ here, most of these same people wouldn’t dream of being so rude face to face or so brazen but, online, anything apparently goes and is acceptable.

Back in the early web we had these people, back then they were called ‘trolls’ and their only aim online was to pretend to play devils advocate or to put an opposing opinion whether they had any interested in the subject or not, no comment about anything no matter how mundane would be left unchallenged by them. The objective, in truth, was to shut down online discussion for or by certain people they had decided shouldn’t have an online persona.

One of the scary parts now is this … if we are told to ‘shut up (because we’re boring)’ we are not permitted to complain about that in any shape or form else it’ll only get worse. Those people take it as a personal affront should someone dare challenge their right to say ‘we’ are boring.

Example at the moment would be the virus. Discussion on it has become a big no go area it seems. So controversial is any opinion on the subject. I’ve been told I best shut up commenting that anyone is breaking the lockdown because ‘no one wants to hear you go on and on about it. let other people live their lives how they want’ (the irony).

Politics, they’re not interested because ‘it makes no difference who is in power so, why bother?’ and as such, any political conversation is slammed as boring or a waste of their time.

My view all along is, the more they say we should shut up because they’re not interested, the more we shouldn’t. I have some historical precedent there in that so many in the Jewish community in the 1930’s didn’t want to complain, didn’t want to rock the boat they turned a blind eye and it came back and slapped them in the face.

In the USA just now, so many sat by not wanting to get involved that they very nearly got themselves a dictatorship out of it, one of the most democratic countries in the world almost lost their way because of their culture of not getting involved.

You see, and this is just my opinion, those telling others to shut up are the very ones who create the conditions for disaster either to cover their own wrong doing (in the case of the far right) or, to a smaller extent, to not wear a mask. I’ve even been slammed down for being critical of cannabis and I’d be forgiven for believing that anyone and everyone reading believes that we should all be wanting to spend our entire lives with cannabis use being everywhere and legal whereas the truth, most likely, is they just don’t want to get involved so, when it comes down to it, what is likely to happen with cannabis use? Of course, those with the loudest voice, the users, will win through because the others who don’t want it legal just didn’t want to upset anyone, didn’t want to get involved.

Anyway, the decision I have made, reluctantly, is to shut up, not get involved, leave them to it. My age is rapidly making me irrelevant anyway so, few will notice. My one personal decision won’t change anything for anyone, it’ll just give me an easier life as I take less and less interest in the world around me other than those things which directly affect me because ‘me’ is what society is now, all about ‘me’ and ‘they & them’ are the ones to blame for everything but no one knows who ‘they or them’ are so they just stick with ‘me’.

Well, good luck with that, let me know how that works for you long term!

Actually don’t. I’m not interested!