Don’t go out – it’s everywhere!

 

 

Boris Johnson is in hospital – a NHS hospital, ‘Our MSM’ assure us – because he’s still got a fever and needs more tests. Is ‘more tests’ now the code work for ‘treatment’? Or is the nation too fragile to be told that the PM may need treatment? Perhaps the tests the PM has had didn’t work? I’m sure all our MSM medical experts will serve us with explanations as to what might be going on – starting later this morning! 

We wish him a speedy recovery! It’s not good news, especially when we read that there’s already wrangling about who is replacing him at the helm of government: Dominic Raab, as designed, or Matt Hancock as self-proclaimed, who is also in conflict with Rishi Sunak about an exit strategy (link). It seems to be dawning on our government and on various experts that a prolonged Lockdown is not sustainable. On the lifting of lockdown restrictions, there’s this:

“Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has said it is “too early” to make those decisions. “What we need right now is for people to show resolve, to follow the rules, to stay at home and to get the curve under control and coming down,” he told The Andrew Marr Show.” (link, paywalled)

Doesn’t this sound like ‘Nanny’ telling us unruly kiddies to behave, stay at home, wash our hands or else the house arrest will go on and on and on, as punishment? More on the exit strategy:

Last week the Treasury asked civil servants in the departments of health and business to draw up options for a segmented release. This could be by region, by industrial sector or by gradually expanding the list of “key workers”. The restrictions are to be officially reviewed next week but with cases still rising exponentially there is little likelihood of any immediate change. Officials are acutely aware that they need an exit strategy to start removing restrictions while attempting to prevent an overwhelming spike in infections. Such a strategy will almost certainly involve a ramping up of community testing, but at present there is no capacity in the system to achieve this.” (link, paywalled)

Is there ‘no capacity’ to ‘ramp up community testing’ – or is there no will by PHE to involve private enterprise who are, as we saw last week, capable of doing those tests? There’s more:

“A senior government source said the Treasury had been pushing for more detail on the lockdown strategy but said it was not a “personal” issue between Mr Sunak and Mr Hancock. “There’s a real question of whether we will have an economy to come back to at the end of this. We have got to get clarity on the exit strategy,” the source said.” (link, paywalled)

Yes, you do indeed, and if the government were perhaps less driven by panic headlines in ‘Our MSM’, a strategy could be developed quickly. Then there’s also the new Labour Leader, finally able to put his oar in:

“Sir Keir Starmer, the new Labour leader, increased pressure on the government when he called for it to publish its exit strategy. “Ministers should be clear about their exit strategy,” he said. “We should know what that exit strategy is, when the restrictions might be lifted and what the plan is for economic recovery.” (link, paywalled)

I didn’t watch that show, so if Sir Keith Starmer made actual, sensible proposals, for example a Labour Strategy to resolve the Lockdown, instead of demanding to be told, then please let me know! And of course, ‘that’ professor also had his say – is he now part of the government?

“Professor Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College London, who has been a key adviser on coronavirus, said the challenge was to find an exit strategy that kept transmission rates low. […] He added that no country had a clear and proven strategy to lift restrictions without experiencing a spike in new cases. “We warned in our original report, which came out the same day as the lockdown was announced, that exit strategies were very problematic. They will rely on testing but the precise strategy has not yet been formulated. It will be in the next week or two. It is the highest priority of the whole scientific and medical community.” (link, paywalled)

Crikey – so it’s the medical and scientific community’ which now runs our country? Astounding! Utterly astounding! As for ‘ramping up’ tests, this is where the jam-tomorrow announcements come in – or not, as the case may be. On those antibody tests, showing that someone has had the infection and is now immune, we read:

“None of the antibody tests ordered by the government is good enough to use, the new testing chief has admitted. Professor John Newton said that tests ordered from China were able to identify immunity accurately only in people who had been severely ill and that Britain was no longer hoping to buy millions of kits off the shelf. Instead, government scientists hope to work with companies to improve the performance of antibody tests and Professor Newton said he was “optimistic” that one would come good in months.” (link, paywalled)

Ah – China again! Isn’t it wonderful how our government buys stuff from China that doesn’t work! While ‘Our MSM’ are praising S Korea, ‘Our NHS’ still is bent on reinventing the wheel:

“The digital arm of the NHS is currently working on a contact tracing app which would notify people if they have come into close contact with someone who later tests positive for coronavirus, so that they can quickly self-isolate before passing it on to many people. It is a strategy that has worked successfully in other countries such as South Korea. And the Government has promised 100,000 daily tests by the end of April.” (link)

Why don’t we buy this app from S Korea? Could there be vested interests in PHE and indeed ‘Our NHS’ sabotaging this? Perish the thought! Why don’t reporters ask such questions which occur to us, the ignorant masses? Are they not allowed to?

Instead, we get articles with advice about drying our hands properly, after having washed them: ‘use paper towels’ – because the virus may survive on clothes (link, paywalled), we get articles on Putin (in The Express, I won’t even link to them), and we get this one in the DT, with the utterly inane headline “Britain now has more critical care beds, so why are more people dying?” The author answers in the subtitle, for what it’s worth: “Experts believe the severity of the disease is to blame, with only half of those receiving intensive care surviving” (link) and asks:

“But why, given we have expanded our critical care capacity and not yet seen our hospitals overwhelmed, are we seeing so many deaths in the UK? Surely, with all those new ventilators, we should be doing better.” (link)

So ‘Our NHS’ isn’t ‘overwhelmed’? How interesting! Why didn’t that reporter follow this up? Could it be that in their hunt for ever more screaming headlines, be they ever so ridiculous, ‘Our MSM’ are losing the plot? Could it be that their aim is to discredit the government and the PM any which way they can? It’s not as if the government has been covering itself in glory, but surely ‘Our MSM’ ought to recognise that the PM and the rest have been faithfully doing what the MSM have demanded? There’s more, showing the magical thinking and the pernicious comparisons with other countries that our MSM love:

“Confirmed cases are even less reliable and really only reflect a country’s testing capacity rather than the incidence of the virus. The reason Germany’s death rate appears so much lower is likely to be explained by the fact it is doing so much more testing – Germany has conducted more than 11,000 tests per million people versus Britain’s 2,580.” (link)

The numbers of ‘confirmed cases’ are ‘unreliable’ – even though Our MSM have been using them constantly in their competition to show how bad we are doing, how gruesome things are in Italy and Spain (no mention of France)? Well, shouldn’t that have made at least some in Our MSM sit up?  No, it’s: ‘Germany wins’: fewer Germans die because the Germans have done more tests …

That also applies to Norway which has been testing many more people than we did, and because of that there’s only a small number of deaths (link). It’s the number of tests that count, not actual case numbers or mortality rates. Here is a fascinating graph from the USA, the CDC no less. Shouldn’t at least some in ‘Our MSM’ ask about general mortality rates and if they’ve risen due to COVID-19 or not?

Doesn’t it occur to at least some reporters that both Germany and Norway might be more stringent in how they define who did and didn’t die of the virus? Didn’t we read last week that here even just the mention of coronavirus on the death certificate is sufficient, regardless of all other preexisting illnesses who did cause the death, to add to the number of ‘death by virus’?

Meanwhile, both here and in Germany (!) people were flouting the restrictions and went out en masse to enjoy the sunshine. It seems we’re still not scared enough. So prepare for more experts to come to the fore, with utterances either critical of the government or with praise for ‘Our NHS’. After all, this is what it’s really all about: ‘Saving Our NHS’.

So clap your hands on Thursdays but otherwise stay inside and on no account criticise ‘Our NHS’.  Yeah right …

 

KBO!

 

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