Tuesday 23 March 2021

One year on and halfway point reached in the Covid-19 mess?

It has been a very long year and more transformational for our society and economy than any other year in my lifetime. Little did I ever think there would be challenges to life defining moments like 9/11. But here we are and with Brexit as an added bonus too!

The economy on communistic style life support with ever increasing Bank of England balance sheet and the liberal use of the magic money tree with all thoughts about the future and its impact being ignored. 

60,000+ excess death, over a thousand extra people a week dying has contributed to a fall in the population for the first time since 1941. With no casual work, an arm of Eastern European casual workers has left, with some estimates of the population fall at over a million in a year. 

The Government has settle easily into its role as advisor to Public Health England and the NHS. The ease of this position is clear to see and leadership from any politician has been sorely lacking. The only right move they have made is putting Kate Bingham in charge of Vaccine procurement.

However, the move to blocking foreign holidays until at least July, plus the upcoming slowness of the vaccine roll-out due to supply issues is a yellow flag for us. Additionally, the EU has predictably got itself into a political mess over vaccines. There will not a a significant portion of Europeans vaccinated until the end of the summer at best. Meanwhile, a vaccine-evading variant is rampant in Brazil and every other major variant has quickly spread around the world. 

This is why I think we are at only the halfway point in this mess, with another full year of measures of varying kinds likely before a real return to something like normal in 2022. 

35 comments:

djm said...

"with another full year of measures of varying kinds likely before a real return to something like normal in 2022"


C'mon Man. Where we are now IS the normal.... Just the phase in which the conquering force restores “normality” (i.e., a “new normality”) to the society it has just destabilized and terrorized. It installs a new occupation-friendly government, restarts the economy, and otherwise begins the gradual transition from martial law to something resembling “normal” everyday life. It hands out sweeties to kids, financial aid to businesses, power to generals and police, and “freedom” to the shell-shocked public. As you’ve probably noticed, the corporate media, government leaders, and medical experts have been making noise about “ the end of the pandemic" or at least “the end of the emergency phase of it". Cue the entrance into the spotlight, & the corporate media "line to take" is “some level of Covid is tolerable", "Zero Covid is unlikely" etc. Now that the vaccination push is underway, they are trying to temper the mass paranoia and hatred that they have fomented for over a year with some hope and a vision of a post-crisis future.

The demonisation of political dissent will continue, and intensify, both overtly and subtly. Corporate media will continue to warn of imminent “attacks on democracy” by imaginary “domestic terrorists,” as well as the old “non-domestic terrorists.” They will also continue to warn of imminent threats posed by exotic viruses, and “variants” of exotic viruses, and permanent “conditions” caused by viruses, and other threats to our bodily fluids. Above all, they will continue to warn of the danger of ingesting “misinformation,” “conspiracy theories,” or any other type of unverified, unauthorized, un-fact-checked content. They will thoroughly diagnose the sources of such content, and exhaustively explain the pathological conditions from which these sources will clearly be suffering. They will explore a variety of treatments and cures, and recommend prophylactic measures against potential exposure to these sources. These various “threats to democracy” (i.e., “terrorists,” “viruses,” “misinformation,” “racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” “transphobia,” “electoral-system scepticism,” “oppositional-masklessness,” “vaccine hesitancy,” “religion,” etc) will fuse into a single easy to identify enemy which “New Normal” children will be conditioned to reflexively hate and fear, and want to silence, and quarantine off from “normal” society, or “cure” of their “illness” with government-mandated, “safe and effective” pharmaceutical therapies.

After all, 1984 was only a book......... wasn't it ?

Anonymous said...

1984 wasn't just a book - turns out it was a user manual!

Penseivat said...

I'm afraid I'm already preparing for the 'new normal'. I'm learning Mandarin.

Elby the Beserk said...

BTW, researchers in Norway and Germany say there IS a problem with blood clots with the Astra Zeneca jab.

"New Research Points to Link Between AstraZeneca Vaccine and Blood Clots
Researchers in Norway and Germany say they’ve identified antibodies that provoke immune reactions leading to the type of cerebral blood clots experienced by some people who received AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine."

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/link-astrazeneca-vaccine-blood-clots

dearieme said...

"an arm of Eastern European casual workers has left": Christ, that's nearly a pint of blood left the country.

Matt said...

If you can't risk your livelihood to protest at the state of affairs, at least refuse the vaccine as a small show of defiance. It doesn't matter whether you take as that has no bearing on the lockdown and its length.

Don Cox said...

We are probably near the end of the beginning of this war against Covid-19 and its successors.

The restrictions are far less than those we had in WWII, and unlike the Nazis the virus has mounted a successful invasion. I expect this to be a tough fight.

Protests are a good way to spread the virus, as are raves and parties.

Don Cox

DJK said...

"60,000+ excess death.." Keep up at the back there! Current UK figures are 125,690 dead after a positive test, 145,464 deaths with covid-19 on the death certificate, and 123,319 excess deaths.

Bill Quango MP said...

Update on the housing situation.

6 properties of interest to myself appear on rightmove on Friday. Booking up to view on Monday, four are sold. Viewing for remaining two for Wednesday. Tuesday, both sold. Six out of six off the market.

Wanting ( not really wanting. Pretty crappy properties in wrong location, but will have a look,) to book some viewings was told by two agents, property one, advertised today, has six offers all above asking.
Agent two. Only arranging viewers for cash buyers as they don’t have enough stock left.

E-K said...

Social distancing and face masks will be with us for at least two more years. This according to Imperial.

I think it's with us forever. The litigation culture will see to that.

I've been right on most other predictions. I told you this would be a very long haul.


Mr Hancock has just said on BBC TV "To think. A year ago we all thought mask wearing odd - now we've all got used to them."

What a peculiar man he is. Even my easy going wife lost it and nearly smashed the screen.

I'm afraid the old life is gone for good. And the mental health issues this is going to cause among the young is going to be catastrophic. All those crucial rights of passage that create stable adults lost.

"It's not war. Get some perspective."

And God help us if it were. The West has gone safety crazy and would not have lasted 5 minutes.

Are we sure that focused shielding was any less viable or destructive than this ?

And WHY haven't they started counting deaths because of lock down ? Why are excess deaths assumed to be CV-19 ?

jim said...

I suppose this Covid will drag on to some sort of close eventually. Not so much a bang...

What bothers me a bit is how the economy will? recover. The animal spirits have been knocked back a bit. A load of useless? shops have been taken out. As for people, I reckon a lot will struggle to get back into a mortgage-paying job. Indeed stoking up the property market is a traditional make-work for us. But not worth doing if no one can afford to pay. Perhaps the whole idea of Brexit was to turn us into one big BTL region.

The difficulty seems to be we are too expensive for average manufacturing work and not enough are clever enough for proper techy stuff and the smarter business stuff. Education is one thing but the cultural infrastructure that drives a sophisticated society has taken a big knock not just from Covid but cutbacks as well. An unpleasant thought is that every one else in the West is facing the same problem and competing in the same market.

Rather than muck about with a few kids toy drones perhaps our planners can get to work on Covid MkIII. We have the prototype, all we need to do is make it a bit more deadly - and make sure its not (many of) us on the receiving end.

Don Cox said...

How exactly would you count deaths caused by lockdown ? What criteria would you use ?

It would be a very difficult figure to get agreement on.

Don Cox

Nessimmersion said...

We could have done as per Sweden and as the UK Pandemic Preparedness Plan specified, but Doris & co were panicked into wrecking the country by Prof Always wrong Ferguson.
Meanwhile as even the ONS now admits every week more in lockdoen costs an extra billion.
Manna from heaven for corpocrats but a death sentence for a free market economy.

Nessimmersion said...

We could have done as per Sweden and as the UK Pandemic Preparedness Plan specified, but Doris & co were panicked into wrecking the country by Prof Always wrong Ferguson.
Meanwhile as even the ONS now admits every week more in lockdoen costs an extra billion.
Manna from heaven for corpocrats but a death sentence for a free market economy.

E-K said...

Don @ 9.45

"How exactly would you count deaths caused by lockdown ? What criteria would you use ?

It would be a very difficult figure to get agreement on."

Well, in case you hadn't noticed, they haven't exactly been scrupulous on counting CV-19 deaths "Within 28 days of infection" even if crushed to death by a bus. No second opinion needed on declaring a CV-19 death by a militant NHS and plenty of anecdotals on people whose relatives have been recorded as CV-19 deaths when it was no such thing - including my own uncle who contracted his in the last week of S4 prostate bone cancer.

But the answer to your question is an easy one.

Any death not recorded as a CV-19 death goes down as a death by lock down.

Any natural death becomes "because of delayed/defective treatment because of lock down"

Any accident "because of lock down ... lack of concentration/depression"

Any suicide "because of lock down" of course it should be !

Any murder "because of lock down" especially domestic ones these days

and any road traffic accident "Because of lock down and the inability to use the safest modes of transport there are - rail and air"

Why not ?

Why is that any less scientific than the counting for CV-19 deaths ?



E-K said...

Boris has just had his "No such thing as society moment."

"UK vaccine success because of greed."

What a plum. (or was it deliberate ?)

So now, to save the Tory party - because that's all that counts - from being called "greedy" and "nasty" we're all going to be held back to let the slowest boat in the EU convoy catch up.

The vaccine roll out is about to be sacrificed and our third wave mutant about to be found.

Don't worry. Sunak has the furlough in place already. And we're all used to those masks now, aren't we !

dearieme said...

Yesterday we found ourselves in our first traffic jam since a year ago. It seems that lockdown is ending whatever Boris says.

Elby the Beserk said...

DJK said...
"60,000+ excess death.." Keep up at the back there! Current UK figures are 125,690 dead after a positive test, 145,464 deaths with covid-19 on the death certificate, and 123,319 excess deaths.
=========================================================================

These will be deaths of people who had had COVID in the past 28 days

NOT those who died BECAUSE of Covid. The death rates for healthy under 65s has no statistically significant variation from recent years, and the average agte of deaths is over 80.

At no point has COVID ever worried me in the slightest. What does worry me is the state of the country after SAGE and the Johnson Thugs have finished with us. Hanging's too good, frankly



https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/vaccinating-people-infected-covid-cause-avoidable-harm/?utm_source=salsa&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=cc4fbf8a-fef7-446e-b013-777366a5330a

Dr. Hooman Noorchashm wants people to know that he’s a staunch supporter of the new COVID-19 vaccines, but with one very important warning: People who have already been infected could be at risk of serious injury, including death.

In the interview below on Tuesday’s Tucker Carlson Tonight show, Noorchashm said:

“I think it’s a dramatic error on part of public health officials to try to put this vaccine into a one-size-fits-all paradigm … We’re going to take this problem we have with the COVID-19 pandemic, where a half-percent of the population is susceptible to dying, and compound it by causing totally avoidable harm by vaccinating people who are already infected … the signal is deafening, the people who are having complications or adverse events are the people who have recently or are currently or previously infected [with COVID]. I don’t think we can ignore this.”

As The Defender reported earlier this month, Noorchashm believes that a #ScreenB4Vaccine campaign could save millions from vaccine injuries. The cardiothoracic surgeon and patient safety advocate has been speaking out about the need to screen people before administering the COVID vaccines ever since his initial plea to Pfizer and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) failed to generate a satisfactory response.

In a Jan. 26 letter to FDA officials, Noorchashm warned that if viral antigens are present in the tissues of subjects who undergo vaccination, the antigen-specific immune response triggered by the vaccine will target those tissues and cause tissue inflammation and damage.

Noorchashm told regulators that “at the very minimum” Pfizer and Moderna should “institute clear recommendations to clinicians that they delay immunization in any recently convalescent patients, as well as, any known symptomatic or asymptomatic carriers — and to actively screen as many patients with high cardiovascular risk as is reasonably possible, in order to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2, prior to vaccinating them.”

DJK said...

Elby:

Please read what I wrote and try to understand:

125,690 people died within 28 days of a positive test. Of course, that picks up some people who died of other causes, but it also misses some who died alone, at home, of covid.

145,464 people had covid listed by a physician on their death certificate as a cause of death. Not necessarily the single cause, but a cause.

123,319 more people died than would have been expected. This may be due to covid, or it may be due to the effects of lockdown.

Bonkers conspiracy theories are just that, and no more.

John Knox said...

Seems that those interfering judges are at it again.

Closing Church of Scotland churches unlawful under European Convention on Human Rights. So if you are not a "wee free", you don't have any rights.

I'd out that under the heading of bonkers too.

Anonymous said...

"no casual work, an army of Eastern European casual workers has left, with some estimates of the population fall at over a million in a year"

I don't see it in my neck of the woods - most of the delivery drivers are Eastern European, all the "Balkan Foods", "Polski Sklep" and shops for Romanians/Hungarians/Baltics are still open and busy, lots of job adverts in the windows in languages that few Brits know ("illegal? What's that?").

When I see some of those shops closing maybe I'll believe it. Sounds like Jonathan Portes disinfo to me, from the same people who told us only 13,000 would come.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,9061,1157431,00.html

visc said...

"Bonkers conspiracy theories are just that, and no more"

Simple way to avoid what you call conspiracy theories would not to be massage figures, change definitions, obfuscate, and demand OFCOM notices. Additionally that our security services are deployed against the general public ("brave boys and girls" of 77th Brigade et al). That all this and more has been done indicates a deeply corrupt, flawed and criminal response by the authorities and their hangers on.

PushingTheBoundaries said...

@elby
Not convinced that blood clots are due to vaccine. I think more likely it's the virus. Especially if the Crispr edits are incorporating any elements of the virus in order to activate the body's defences.
A timely anecdote was heard on Monday. Went to pick up car after MoT. Speaking to mechanic who i know quite well, turns out he contracted Covid just before New Year and was rushed to Watford General due to a seizure. Turns out the Drs knew what was causing the problem - CV was sending signals to the brain to produce more coagulant in the blood and causing clotting around his brain and heart. He spent a few days on the 'death' ward and pulled through - he's 54 and he had his jab last week and no ill effects.

Having the jab does not give you instant cover - it can have upto 10 days before enough anti-gens are present, so it's easily possible to contract CV and confuse it as part of the jab side effects

E-K said...

I've read that there is a reaction among people who have been vaccinated after having had CV-19.

PushingTheBoundaries said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
PushingTheBoundaries said...

@ek
Yes, there has been anecdotal evidence, that's why various countries suspended use of AZ version. But, no link was found in EMA and WHO examinations amongst others.

A couple of thoughts to stir the pot..

The vaccines DO cause the clotting, but it's deemed a rounding error versus immunising the vast majority and therefore downplayed..

We're injecting dead strains with a slight mutation to start the body's defences, but the strain has the protein that causes the clotting as part of the makeup of the vaccine as a whole so you will see more clotting as you're willfully giving it to everyone, even those who may have avoided it naturally and have a predisposition to being susceptible to clotting.

Anonymous said...

@ I've read that there is a reaction among people who have been vaccinated after having had CV-19.

I've read that CV-19 is caused by 5G.

I've read that Bill Gates is injecting microchips into something.

Graeme said...

"Protests are a good way to spread the virus, as are raves and parties."

Unlikely to be true about protests. Was there a spike after all that statue pushing last year.

Re parties and raves, yes that Belgian Prince got covid at a party but that age group tend not to get severe covid anyway. They should be encouraged to party and rave to build herd immunity

Graeme said...

It seems fairly likely to me that if you have antigens and antibodies from fighting off covid, then they will attack the vaccine. The vaccine is supposed to stimulate production of your body's defences.

Anonymous said...

OT - is the Ever Given insured in London?

Given that the canal might be blocked for weeks, can other shippers claim against her?

The potential loss could be large, especially if the ships waiting either side have to turn round and head for the Cape route.

Graeme said...

The salvage fees will be enormous either as a daily fee from the tugs and divers or as a proportion of the value of the vessel.

Timbo614 said...

Re: Ever Given,
Yes, I've been following that story - last count is 150 ships queued up and new estimates of 2 weeks to move it - crikey!
Some one is going to get a very hefty bill. I wonder how it affects the supply chain financing type deals - given the state of the co. that can't be mentioned hereabouts.

E-K said...

'pparently the Capt had been told (prior to entering the canal) to take his ship in a holding pattern in the Persian Gulf. He drove his ship around so that the shape of a huge cock and bollocks appeared on the controller's radar.

He said it was just an unfortunate coincidence. I disbelieve him. If that was the kind of mood he and the crew were in then no wonder there was such a fuck up.

Anonymous said...

OT but it looks as if the US are arming Ukraine for a war in early summer to take back the Donbass. If Putin responds then goodbye NS2, hello Iran-style sanctions.

E-K said...

Oops.

Red Sea.