Hello and welcome back to WARoftheWORDS. This is your channel for hard hitting topics that somehow just don’t sit right. On each of my articles and podcasts I shall be ripping apart each side of the story from left, right and centre and we all will have an opinion, why? Because we’re all the subject and we’re all affected.
This week...COVID the sheepdog
Before we start, I just have to say that whilst writing my podcast Peter Hitchens stole my thunder, I had to mention it and I’ve even added it to the end of this article, in case you missed it from the Daily Mail.
So First of all can we all relate to sheep being rounded up by a sheepdog. It only takes a couple of sheepdogs to round up and put hundreds of sheep easily in their place. That being said, the sheepdogs always have a master giving them instructions too.
So with this image in your mind now...
It’s safe to say that here in the UK things aren’t exactly rosy right now. Brexit is quickly turning into the biggest political bleep-storm in modern times.
It seems with everything going on in the UK we’ve already sleepwalked into a surveillance state. And it’s no wonder too.
“we’ve already sleepwalked into a surveillance state”
If you want to get away from the watchful eye of the British Big Brother, you’ll have to either become Amish or follow the billionaires and leave the country all together. Add the fact that the UK is already, in terms of CCTV, the most surveilled nation in the world, from leaving your home in the morning to returning home at night.
And what about in-home listening devices. All tucked up in bed, One of these devices actually asked how a friend of mine was enjoying his book?! Enough for a double take of restless sleep of what? A better nights sleep from watching the Shining!
Not just physical surveillance but virtually too, Birthday and Christmas present surprises are now ruined as the pop up adverts show up to the whole household what you’ve been looking at. God help more adventuresome households and their explanations.
The UK has a long history of surveillance – and it continues to be unlawful. In 2015 and 2018 The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had ruled the government unlawfully obtained data from communications companies and didn't put in place safeguards around how it did it.
“Tech companies broke human rights laws”
In its judgment the court said the UK's bulk interception regime violated the right to privacy as there wasn't enough oversight for how data was collected. It also ruled that how data was collected from tech companies broke human rights laws. From How many bus lane tickets have you collected, To is your COVID-19 Track and Trace data safe.
Regardless of your thoughts on surveillance the UK still looks set to have a national debt of £1.945 trillion by 2021, a horrifying contrast to the previous target of a budget surplus by 2020. An unfair raised-run-up slap-in-the-face from all the handed out public service cuts we’ve had over the past few years.
Now COVID is still here like a Brexit debate on steroids, wearing a mask is now compulsory in a bank queue, We’ve been pushed and pulled into which way to enter and exit retail shops and pharmacies, red warning lights at store entrances are backing people up round the pavements and car park, and that’s just humans. Guide dog training will have a few extra modules now for sure and how’s Black Friday going to work now?
“COVID is here like Brexit on steroids”
Pubs can stay open if they serve a substantial meal while accepting those who have downloaded the track and trace app. You keep your mask on whilst walking about mixing with others outside your social bubble, Sit down and your mask can come off, like COVID is only contracted from the stood-up superheros, yet sat stuffing your chops is no more than man vs COVID than man vs food.
Not just pubs and restaurants, but homes and schools have their own support bubbles too whilst places of work are just left to their own devices! And that’s dependent on which tier of death your in. Who is making these rules and decisions?, It’s like some non-social distancing pissed up think-tank got on the phone to No.10 with, hold on lads, we’ve got an idea. Let’s quarantine the healthy, we’ll piss’em off track’em and get them to give us their personal information at the same time.
Track and trace is branded with the NHS logo on, visual for the public that this is saving lives, in truth data is getting lost and giving conflicting advice, most probably by the Department of Health and Social Care who act as controller for the processing of personal data that supports the functioning of the app. Another hard pill to swallow is the cost of the app, reports suggest between £9billion and £12billion which equates to approximately £7k per employee of the app, per day, I’m sure each region of the UK could use this money better than the petty pound per person that has already been paid out to bail each region’s businesses. Could this app only result in Mickey Mouse being the new most common name in Britain 2021?
“Mickey Mouse the most common name in Britain 2021”
Joking-side This takes nothing away from the millions of public service personnel who in the spring/summer of 2020 continued to work through the UK’s full lockdown whilst almost nobody was allowed to work or socialise, unless you were an MP on a road trip. From healthcare professionals to waste management showing us that the world does not stop revolving, regardless of the economic hangover to come, most probably a tax rise in the future.
Believe it or not the world has faced such catastrophes before – it makes for some interesting reading. About 100 years ago the world was grappling with the Spanish Flu, which killed approximately 3% of the global population. In percentage terms that was considerably more than what we face so far with COVID-19.
You don’t have to go back that much further in the history books to find that the "black death" had an even more devastating impact by killing somewhere between a quarter and a half of the world’s population. With this in mind, it’s not hard to see why the same buzzwords are being repeated over and over again in the mainstream media to keep our attention. After testing the focus will surly be all about rolling out a vaccine with more attention seeking buzzwords and narratives to follow, as well as more queuing.
“years ago a pandemic was predicted”
Boris Johnson has already met with Bill Gates over a vaccine, is this a coincidence, remember Mr Gates was on TedTalks about 5 years ago, I’ll pop the link in the description box, it’s unreal that years ago a pandemic was predicted, Bill Gates starts a foundation on vaccines and then the world is struck down and Bill comes to the rescue with a vaccine for COVID-19. When vaccines take ten plus years to make right, we have one within months of the pandemic?
What do you think? Pop a comment below, do you agree or disagree? Not just that but governments all around the world are buying this vaccine pushing up the share price of the big pharmaceutical companies involved. That’s taxpayers money being used to increase the value of private corporations. Just take that in for a moment, and all on top of the lockdowns, job unsertency we’re going to endure.
COVID Deaths have been notoriously linked to people with other underlining health issues, just like a pneumonia is a huge killer for the same reason. Would COVID be as deadly as it’s being reported to people without underlining health issues? And this is backed up on the reason why all the UK Nightingale hospitals are not in use, as all their facilities lack the multi organ failure equipment. This reminds me of the Millennium Dome, A billion pounds to build then turned into a car park and sold for a pound.
“UK Nightingale hospitals are not in use”
Regardless of repeated threats from our media to start using the Nightingale hospitals once our traditional hospitals are full up, they really should be kitted up and in use now to protect people already in hospital to stop contracting COVID on top of their main non-COVID condition, this would protect NHS staff too.
Would people who contracted Novichok be in the same ward as other hospitalised patients, No! The clear difference is 99.5% of people contracting COVID-19 make a full recovery.
Is it a coincidence that the countries with the unhealthiest citizens in healthcare have some of the most casualties? On the flip-side the healthiest populations of countries have a smaller R-rate. Is this a sign that a healthy body has a natural immune system already better set to fight off this virus or any other virus for that matter?
Are our GP’s doing enough to assist their patients and the hospitals with government help? Surely their records show who’s the most vulnerable without a track and trace system. On average around the UK the total number of doctor consultations per day has been reduced by at least half in GP’s practices.
“Are our GP’s doing enough to assist their patients?”
Why this lack of demand for locums? First of all, patients are staying away and not calling in. Partly because of the national publicity about protecting the NHS, partly because they don’t want to come in to the surgery and catch the virus, and partly because they think we are working hard dealing with sick Covid patients. And NHS 111 has not yet been booking a significant number of GP appointments.
But there are serious downsides to the present situation, which is clearly going to go on for many months if not years. Some patients with serious non Covid disease are being missed: meningitis, MI, appendix etc. Paediatricians have been noticing that seriously sick kids have been presenting later and sicker than usual. A&E attendance and acute hospital admissions are down in many parts of the country. Ambulances are recording a rise in calls in which they arrive at a house to find the patient has already died. Excess deaths are on the increase.
The behaviour of GPs now will have an enormous influence on the future of the whole profession.
Within such an environment, I feel GP’s can do more, starting off with the management of Covid. To sort the mild to moderate Covid patients from the really sick ones, NHS 111 phone triage doesn’t cut it. You need basic observations, most obviously pulse oximetry, as many hypoxic patients aren’t obviously breathless, and there have been deaths shortly after telephone triage has categorised patients as mild.
“Excess deaths are on the increase”
NHS 111 is not doing this – but GP’s can. If patients called their own practices and had Sats monitors collected for them, and then had a phone or video consultation with someone who has access to patients GP records, GP’s could assess patients remotely much better than 111.
Secondly, someone is going to need to sort out care for Covid patients who are frail and for whom hospital admission would separate them from their families without giving them any useful treatment. They will need symptomatic treatment, and their families will need support. We need teams of (maybe young?) GPs and nurses to deal with this, especially for residential homes, who are dealing with increasing numbers of Covid patients, and whose staff really are heroes!
Finally, GP’s can do more to get the message the GP practices are open. Some practices might be doing this, but plenty aren’t. If we do this GP’s will improve patient care, including for seriously ill patients, avoid some pretty damning journalism, deal with some of the pent-up flood of demand that we are going to face anyway in coming months, and also deserve and get gratitude from patient populations.
Yes, GP’s lack equipment and support, but it is surely possible, partly because GP’s do have some spare time at the moment to work on this. The publicity about not calling your GP – ‘save the NHS’, which has left patients apologetic about calling GP’s – this needs to be changed urgently. And all those doctors who have been volunteering to help NHS 111 need to resign as they are a problem, not a solution as phone triage has been fairly useless.
“Suicides overtook the COVID contraction figures”
This is a historic crisis, and the behaviour of GPs now will have an enormous influence on the future of the whole profession, as well as really helping patients in need. - And what about future patients, could more mental health become rife? the UK has already seen one month where suicides overtook the COVID contraction figures. Just let that sink in for a second. The arts, sport and other spectator sectors are all suffering, and the government’s advice, re-train?
Just like the Brexit plan, We have no clarity on how the government is planning our futures other than surveillance, any interviews on the news is like a crossed line with the Crankies or Nicola Sturgeon. it’s easy to see why 2020 might have been an excellent time for the UK government to rush through any bills it doesn’t want too much attention paid to.
This topic is now more divided than Brexit, that was complicated, it still is but you were one side or the other at least, and so much of Brexit was drilled into us that much over years that two camp’s emerged, people switched off because they couldn’t take any more, but more people switched on as they could see the same narrative being drilled into our ears and eyes through three Prime ministers over their years in charge. Two of which resigned from their fear factor narratives of “falling off the cliff” and “A leap into the dark” to name two.
Now the COVID social issue will make sure this will not pan out the same, more people are being detached physically away from loved ones and this narrative will only last as long as people will stay parted from their loved ones, and are prepared to keep their lives on hold. It’s a braking point waiting to happen.
“It’s a braking point waiting to happen”
A virus will always set out its own rules of engagement, it’s for our leaders to work it out with logical advice we will all workout and follow to save lives, not let us blindly follow politicians advice who seem to hypocritically break their own rules and getaway without punishment themselves.
It seems The West of planet earth is facing the brunt of COVID, whilst the earliest to lockdown was the East of earth, countries such as Vietnam, Thailand and New Zealand had a stricter lockdown including their borders, COVID could be a thing of the past in the East of Europe whilst the UK has at least another 6 months of major restrictions, but open borders.
The world should be working together to save the most lives by sharing technology, sharing ideas, sharing data. But this is the opposite of how global companies work, they hide their technologies, hide their ideas, hide their data. It’s all about selling their brand for the most money. It’s a sad fact that cures are bad for business.
Goldman Sachs have already admitted that one shot cures are one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy for patients, yet such treatments offer a very different outlook in regards to recurring revenues versus chronic therapy’s. While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society it represents a challenge for sustained cash flow. It’s the morality of health versus profits.
So what about the future, The future could be a economic humanity reset, where by the human way of living will reset to radical changes to a new way of living and working. The economic reset could be a reset on how the central banks value and distribute currency to businesses and the public.
“Laws which are getting sneaked under our noses”
The cash is king, will soon be card is king if your not in debt. Just look at the Bill getting passed in France right now, Paris is in flames with protesters against a government plan to make it illegal to photograph or film their police. Going to jail if you do? It’s laws like this which are getting sneaked under our noses whilst our eyes are on COVID-19. Now would you agree to this new law, how would you prove something without evidence...there will be more laws snook under the radar for sure, in many countries throughout the world.
And As we know Humanity has plenty of large epidemics in the past 100 or so years that eventually stopped ravaging society. experts suggest that what happens next depends on both the evolution of the pathogen and of the human response to it, both biological and social. Does it seem to you that governments are using human lives to shape a new dystopian world at the expense of fear? Maybe you have another view, I’d love to read your opinion.
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