What does Brexit have to do with the Covid-19 pandemic? Quite a lot, as I’ll try and explain below. As I’m no medical doctor don’t expect any ‘health advice’ in this article. However, as a ‘veteran’ of the various global warming/climate change/climate extinction campaigns and as veteran of the Leave campaign, I am rather good at recognising bovine excrement spewed by governments, MSM and vested interests.
Let’s first look at COVID-19 and Brexit. We’ve noted that some Remainers took the opportunity last week to demand that Johnson beg for an extension because of the virus. They will now have found another reason because the WTO is going to ‘suspend meetings’ in Geneva:
“Director-General Roberto Azevedo announced the drastic measures today, with all WTO staff told to work from home until the end of March.” (link)
If people are ‘working from home’, they are working, no? And if governments across the globe are taking unbureaucratic measures – never mind how useful they’ll turn out to be in the end – then surely the WTO bureaucrats can be expected to do the same? Or is it that they expect their employees to simply skive off?
Then there’s the EU … our friends at facts4eu have taken a look at the EU’s response to the pandemic – it’s devastating, so do check out their report (link)!
Meanwhile back here in the UK the MSM, especially the TV broadcasters, were lambasting the government for two aspects in combatting the pandemic. One is this new expression they’ve got their teeth into without understanding what it means: “herd immunity”. The other is the proposal to keep all over-70s isolated in their homes.
Looking at ‘herd immunity’ first, it’s remarkable that this is being spun in the MSM as something horrific, as if government ‘wants us all to die’. The publications promoting this interpretation also seem to imply that it’s ever so slightly disrespectful, labelling the population as ‘herd’, as if we were sheep – perish the thought, especially when you look at reports and photos of people emptying supermarket shelves of pasta and bog roll!
What then about the truly ghastly proposal of quarantining all over-70s for four months? We don’t know yet if this will go ahead, the COBRA meeting later today will tell the nation if this proposal – leaked to the Guardian at the weekend – will become reality. The accompanying proposal that the police will be given ‘emergency powers’ to detain and fine any who ‘refuse to self-isolate’ (here, here, paywalled here and here), meaning jail and a fine of £1,000 a pop, is serious:
“People suspected of having coronavirus who defy public health advice could be taken into custody or fined up to £1,000 under the powers. They could also be detained in a secure hospital for up to 14 days.” (link, paywalled)
We have ‘secure hospitals’? What and where are they? It is deeply worrying that the MSM report this staggering measure, this unheard-of curtailing of our liberties, giving the police unheard-of powers, with barely a raising of editorial eyebrows. This is the same Westminster commentariat screaming ‘racists’ at the drop of a hat when it’s about curtailing the activities of those who, for example in London, create daily bloodbaths. It gets worse:
“Mr Hancock confirmed yesterday that the bill would be published on Thursday, and the new power would be in place for two years.” (link, paywalled)
Two years – even though the same MSM have published another ‘leaked’ document: representatives of ‘Our NHS’ and ‘Public Health England’ were talking about a truly worst-case scenario according to which this epidemic here in the UK could last until spring 2021 (link, link, paywalled). That leak, Interestingly, also went straight to the Guardian … Is it now two years until spring 2021?
To emphasise the seriousness of it all, there are also reports coming from NHS figures that ‘Hospitals could run out of oxygen within hours:
“In a special webinar organised by the Association of Anaesthetists, watched by around 1,000 medics this weekend, experts admitted that there was not enough equipment or staff available to fight the crisis. The experts predicted that a hospital with 10 patients with coronavirus would run out of the crucial sedation drug propofol within 11 days and alfentanil – a painkiller and anaesthetic – in less than 24 hours. They also warned that there was already a national shortage of opioid fentanyl. Stricken hospitals could also run short of oxygen within “hours rather than days, […]” (paywalled link)
Oddly enough, weeks ago when the epidemic was only rampaging through Wuhan and Hubei province, German doctors pointed out already that stocks for propofol and alfentanil were dangerously low because they are manufactured in and exported from China.
So the warning from those UK doctors, serious as it is, is not really about ‘everybody with a coronavirus infection will swamp Our NHS’, it’s about a woefully prepared NHS thanks to how Our NHS is managed: they can’t do anything on their own, they apparently need Government directives. Why is that? Didn’t the NHS managers (not the doctors) take this seriously, something which they and of course the MSM are now blaming Johnson for? Or did the managers curtail initiatives of critical-care doctors? Who knows – we’ll certainly not hear or read any reports asking such questions.
Then there are those tests which, if caught by the police, you must submit to. However, according to a report (here) NHS staff will not be tested unless they’re seriously ill with secondary pneumonia. That’s helpful – not! Other NHS staff are ‘seriously anguished’ because government hasn’t taken more drastic measures yet (paywalled here). They seem to believe that Johnson ought to have gone ‘full China’ weeks ago.
And so to the over-70s. In a sweeping proposal which ought to be sufficiently drastic for the Johnson bashers, the whole cohort of that age group will be told to stay at home. “Details” will be set out in the coming days, but meanwhile The Times has this helpful advice about self-isolation and the over-70s:
“More detailed instructions will be issued once the advice changes but self-isolating means not going out, not having visitors and not answering the door. Deliveries should be left on the doorstep or in a similar place. – Could older people actually be told not to go out at all? There is unlikely to be a full ban on leaving the house. The rule of thumb when going out is to avoid coming closer than two metres or three steps from someone else.” (link, paywalled)
So all oldies will be told to ‘self-isolate’, perhaps permitted to get sniff of fresh air in their back gardens so they have one. The police, we might assume, will chase all white-haired oldies wielding a stick back into their homes. This is a welcome development for all those who’ve blamed everything and their own misery on ‘baby boomers’. Finally, for the sake of ‘Our Health’, ageism is officially going to be encouraged!
The same Labour Remainers who deplored that the ‘thick old Brexiteers’ ruined the future of the EUrophilic yoof and should just curl up and die so a new Referendum can be won are now deploring that ‘the Torees’ aren’t protecting ‘our old’ who will die needlessly.
Perhaps you’d like to read this article by Ms Sarah Vine, the missus of a certain Michael Gove, who seems to think this is a wonderful opportunity for ‘the yoof’ to show neighbourliness. I think that a certain David Blunkett, formerly Home Secretary, gets it right when he says it’s wrong to ‘stigmatise’ his generation (link).
The consequences for the lives of all over 70s should this emasure be implemented will be truly horrific. Some comment posters helpfully proposed that oldies could perhaps wear yellow security vests so they can go out to get fresh air, indicating to all others to keep away. If you’re old, it seems, you’re a ‘pest carrier’ who must be shunned …
Strangely enough, in the ‘good old days’ at the beginning of this year, no such proposals were even thought about when we saw this report in the DT, from the 3rd of January 2020:
“The number of people hospitalised with flu this winter is almost ten times as high as this time last year, new figures show. The NHS statistics also show rates of winter vomiting bug are a quarter higher, putting hospitals under mounting pressure. […] Total numbers hospitalised with flu have now reached 3,152 this season, compared with 331 last year, the figures show.” (paywalled link)
I can’t recall any outcry for ‘measures’, e.g. isolating people, can you? Are these COIVD-19 measures perhaps meant to protect “Our NHS” who can now finally decline treating oldies for any of their ailments which are not to do with the coronavirus?
I don’t know if I really want to live in a society where such proposals as those described above can even be thought about, never mind be enforced. Still – it’s for us to show that we won’t be cowed and that we bloody well will
KBO!
I DON’T WANT TO CATCH IT, BUT IF I DO, I DON’T WANT TO PASS IT ON ! ….. The elderly like me are not free from responsibility, and we need to get to grips with life’s facts during this Coronavirus. – We elderly ARE INDEED WIDE OPEN to this damned virus, and life can be a real bitch !
In the USA, they have made much of it, and have it written down as a right to ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’, and I don’t think this means to the exclusion of other people’s happiness ! ….. Come on you Senior Ladies and Gentlemen. – Lets show everyone, including ourselves, just why we are the Senior Generation with a little self discipline, so lacking in those younger folk !
None of us want to Self Isolate, as most of us are social people. – Some of us will remember our parents being involved in the Services and the work required during WW2. – I’m sure that they would have chosen more entertaining ways to spend their time ! – Today we have a silent war with the use of germs, made more sinister by the incubation length, during which time we are carriers. – GOOD SENSE AND DUTY FIRST please !
Thank you Mike for your good sense and call to put duty first; better than inventing silly conspiracy theories. This disease began because of the ignorance and bad habits of ordinary human beings. It will be spread all the faster if we call for irresponsibility in the name of freedom. Was this worldwide pandemic created for the purpose of blocking the departure of one country, viz. the UK, from the EU? Can anyone really believe such nonsense? Come on, get real!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-727K585amo&feature=emb_logo
Was this all planned?
If anyone can be considered responsible for this serious worldwide pandemic it is those who make a habit of eating creatures like bats, rats, snakes, and pangolins; all of which God has declared unclean and unsuitable for food (The Bible, Leviticus 11). Nobody seems to want to mention that fact. Virtually all the viral epidemics, including the so called Spanish Flu of 1918/19, which killed more than 50 million people, have had their origin in that part of the world. It can only be hoped that this lesson may now be learned – but I won’t hold my breath. These diseases would not occur if everybody was vegetarian as I have been since 1958, and my family after me.
So far as goes the suggestion that the current pandemic is not as serious as it is made out to be, that is just silly nonsense. As an 82 year old husband caring for my 82 year old wife of 61 years who suffers from COPD I resent it. We are now self-isolating at home, probably too late because one of our sons is confined to his house with his two small children because he went down with the virus 3 days ago, on the same day as another member of staff at the college where they work. The “best scientific advice” dreamed up by the Darwinist intelligentsia always leaned on by politicians coldly envisages many thousands of grandparents (so-called “loved ones”) becoming deceased whilst the virus is permitted to rage widely so as to develop a “herd immunity” in the survivors. Not only is this deeply immoral and unethical it is plainly evil. It is also impractical because as we know with common-or-garden flu last year’s vaccine does not work on this year’s influenza because the viruses mutate.
So what’s the answer? For the present it is to do everything possible to contain the outbreak by taking stringent action in good time without delay. If my son’s college had been closed a month ago, or even two weeks ago, he would not now be ill. Still the politicians vacillate. Their heart has not been in the prevention strategy. They have favoured the wide spreading of the virus to develop the mythical herd immunity. For the future people should learn to live in a clean way with good personal hygeine and healthy clean food.
Apart from going vegetarian which is debatable, I agree with everything you have said and have discussed this with friends and family as my husband has seen the state of food and hygiene standards in Asia and some European countries who simply ignore any rules and regulations they don’t like. As for isolating over 70s, if selfish children didn’t go to pop concerts and participate in large public sports, everyone would be safer. This is becoming sinister.
All of Spain is now obliged to stay indoors. Going out is only legal for work, shopping for necessities, going to the bank, or for medical reasons. There are fines or potential imprisonment for arguing with the police when you try walking the dog, or cycling for exercise.
This is not limited to the old.
The army has been authorised to protect supermarkets and delivery trucks.
Spain has about 8,000 cases, but just a week ago it had around 1,000 like the UK. It was only about 2 weeks ago that Italy had around 1,000, just like the UK.
What is being proposed in Quarantining the over 70s is nothing less than pure tyranny. The so called Covid19 pandemic is an over-reacted nonsense. How many people have died from this virus since January? Is it thousands? Is it hundreds? or is it 21 people who are vulnerable to chest infections? And, are they suffering from this Chinese virus or simply the flu? Yet, based on these small numbers of deaths they want to imprison the elderly like me and shut down the nations ability to go about business. The powers to be have lost their minds. Maybe they are the ones who should be held in secure hospitals. Broadmoor comes to mind.The whole issue is based upon the global perspective. America has totally over-reacted, though i don’t blame Trump.He is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. What choice does he have in this matter.
Do we have to trust that the figures coming out of China, Italy, and Spain of infection to Covid 19 are accurate. That the thousands of infected people are not simply seasonal flu sufferers. How many millions die of flu world wide? Millions! in 2015 approximately 30,000 people die of the flu in the UK. In America 67,000. Was there an international panic then. No! so why now? Why draconian action by the governments of the world? Maybe because the irresponsible press are whipping up a storm and putting the masses into panic. Or maybe something more sinister is at play.
Quarantining the over 70s is nothing less than pure tyranny.
Totally correct. One law for some and not for others is the essence of it.
The government policy appears to be to make no serious effort to contain the epidemic which does not have serious economic consequences: let’s let it rip to gain herd immunity but nevertheless remove old people from the equation and spread it out so as not to overwhelm the NHS (open to the world but run on a shoestring). The government policy is garbage: the way to achieve herd immunity is to vaccinate; as a vaccine will not be available possibly till the summer, the fall back plan must be measures to contain the virus and prevent its spread as is taking place in East Asia. No one knows how this virus will behave in the future so to presume that it will not mutate sufficiently to threaten those with ‘herd immunity’ in the future has no basis in science.
We are being ruled by people whose only qualification is that they joined the Tory Party; none of them has any scientific or organisational ability. People do not want to get this disease so the further and deeper it spreads, the more people will withdraw themselves from external contacts with a devastating effect on the economy.
If you want to get ahead get a hat
The effect will to make over 70s targets for scapegoating since really to blame for the virus. I wrote to that idiot Hancock yesterday telling him to resign and to Starmer telling him to try to stop this. But is he an idiot? Great way of taking the heat off him and blaming older people. Perhaps over 70s by law should have to wear yellow stars so they can be identified and attacked in the street. It won’t be long before the first attack by someone screaming you are risking my life.
Who told us to vote for these tossers? Farage gushed over them.
Four months solitary confinement for being over 70. Jesus how wicked can they get.
Sorry but this is rubbish. It is mainly old people who suffer the severest penalty for catching this virus – the death penalty. Sensible old people, unless they have a suicidal tendency, will try to avoid getting it. That is the purpose of the quarantine. If you get it you also risk passing it on to others – or doesn’t that bother you?
Meanwhile in Germany, the latest news is that the ‘young and fit’ are planning to hold ‘Coronavirus Parties’, to get infected quickly and get it over with. Is that ‘responsible’?
It is the unnecessarily harsh length of this ‘house arrest’ which is the point – not that those who are in danger shouldn’t take precautions. I’m not ill – but I’ve not been anywhere where there are many people since the begin of February. Meanwhile, neighbourliness and ‘community spirit’ can only last so long as neighbours who are working are not burden for four months (if this gets through). Also meanwhile, online grocery sites, on which ‘the endangered silver-haired’ are told to rely are crashing right left and centre, items are rationed or sold out, and the next delivery slots are in two weeks, if you’re lucky.
That’s why this is a horrible ‘solution’ – and nobody has told us what those old people are supposed to do who are falling ill with something else.
well, let’s see what th COBRA Meeting has come up with.
How do they stay fit if they can’t walk briskly or cycle anywhere? How will they get Vitamin D through sunshine (excellent against viruses) if they are trapped in a dark flat? Perhaps like other prisoners in solitary confinement they can communicate by knocking on the party walls. Maybe they would rather take their chances with the virus instead? I know TPTB don’t want to overwhelm Our NHS after all the sterling work its managers have done building up oxygen supplies and setting up wards full of ventilators over the last couple of months but really?
Bilge Neville. Most over 70s are not at great risk. The ones with serious health conditions are and may need to isolate. Age Concern says this. As for getting and passing it on that applies to anyone of any age. So everyone should quarantine according to you! Will YOU be going into solitary confinement for four months?
I have to say that the possibility of £8 million or £9m hospitalised in mostly NHS hospitals and the virus lasting to Spring 2021 is definitely a “project Fear”. If it were true that is not much point in self isolating for four or nine months just carry as before with care. No I dont go to gym or travel on buses at the moment and hope to buy toilet rolls this afternoon (some hope). Being over 70 with medical issues presumably I will be self isolating like or not. But not until Spring 2021. Someone said locally on interview: “If you fall off the perch you fall off the perch!” Sorry to see Roy Hudd go no mention of covid 19 thankfully.
Sorry about £ signs!
Perhaps all those extra flu hospitalisations in January were covert Covid-19 cases . . . and if they weren’t then, they will be now!
I note (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32133832) that the test for Covid-19 that was used by the Chinese has been outed as sporting 80% (you read that right!) false positive results . . . the more diligent the testing, the bigger the pandemic . . .
Having said that, news from Italy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0LJEU0r7bQ) is not reassuring.
I’m keeping an open mind.
An extremely rare event today. I disagree with Viv.
I certainly do not agree with hounding oldies with truncheon or fines; the old are generally wiser (I have to say that, being one) and more ready to take advice and will I am sure do their best to limit contact where possible and where feasible in any case.
But how advising the group most at risk of serious consequences to do something for their own safety if they can, is ‘stigmatising’, I am not sure. This is not a blame game; it’s a risk mitigation and safety game. If it does become stigmatisation then that must be down to how it is spun in the media for their own purposes: Blonde man bad.
In the first instance, it’s David Blunkett who said that – not me, although I do agree with him.
In the second instance this goes towards ageism – as if oldies, as opposed to the young’uns, are too stupid to understand what to do to keep themselves safe. The underlying ‘argument’ is that they are thick and stupid (that’s why they voted Brexit, but we won’t say that any longer …) and that they need the Nanny state to tell them what to do. That most of us are either physically well and can look after ourselves, thank you very much, that others have a good network of helpers, not necessarily health carers, that others have a network of family (there still are some …) – that it graciously overlooked: this ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach is not only demeaning, it doesn’t help those who do have illnesses and should see their GP, but won’t be able to if they’re stuck in their homes. Do you really think our already overstretched GPs will now do home visits when someone falls ill with some other illness than the flu or the covid-19 infection?
There are several scenarios which fill me with dread – but the worst, for me, is the underlying ‘strong state’ doing something ‘to help’ which not only makes ageism now acceptable but may well turn out to be contra productive.
And btw – will MPs such as Sir Bill Cash or Sir John Redwood have to ‘self-isolate’ as well? Just a asking …
If all 70+ are locked in their homes then white hair will become a rarity on our streets. Anyone with white hair will be stared and pointed at and possibly cursed at (what are you doing outside you coffin dodger etc.) Silver shamed.
Really? (tosses long blond locks with a silvery laugh). Me, officer? Over seventy? Of course not!
JF
I tend to agree with you Vivian. I was very impressed with David Blunkett’s article this morning.
With regard to your remarks about people with illnesses needing to see their GP, we can, I think, extend that to people who have routine hospital appointments. I am a few years off 70 yet, but I do have health issues. If the government insists on my being incarcerated at home, how am I supposed to attend out-patients for my cancer treatments and chemotherapy medication? I am on oral chemotherapy for a blood cancer and such medication can only be prescribed by a Haematology consultant and dispensed by a hospital pharmacy.
I also have a hospital appointment due for me to see a bone specialist for severe osteoporosis. Again, being incarcerated at home isn’t going to make that easy either. As David Blunkett said in his article – the government hasn’t thought things through.
Kind regards.
I totally agree Phil. Good to read some commonsense amidst a welter of the other!