Nobody knows how many people died as a result of the UK/US Coalition of Death led destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and, by proxy, Syria and Yemen. Nobody even knows how many people western forces themselves killed directly. That is a huge number, but still under 10% of the total. To add to that you have to add those who died in subsequent conflict engendered by the forced dismantling of the state the West disapproved of. Some were killed by western proxies, some by anti-western forces, and some just by those reverting to ancient tribal hostility and battle for resources into which the country had been regressed by bombing.
You then have to add all those who died directly as a result of the destruction of national infrastructure. Iraq lost in the destruction 60% of its potable drinking water, 75% of its medical facilities and 80% of its electricity. This caused millions of deaths, as did displacement. We are only of course talking about deaths, not maiming. This very sober analysis from Salon makes a stab at 2.4 million for Iraqi deaths caused by the war.
The number of Iraqi casualties is not just a historical dispute, because the killing is still going on today. Since several major cities in Iraq and Syria fell to Islamic State in 2014, the U.S. has led the heaviest bombing campaign since the American War in Vietnam, dropping 105,000 bombs and missiles and reducing most of Mosul and other contested Iraqi and Syrian cities to rubble.
An Iraqi Kurdish intelligence report estimated that at least 40,000 civilians were killed in the bombardment of Mosul alone, with many more bodies still buried in the rubble. A recent project to remove rubble and recover bodies in just one neighborhood found 3,353 more bodies, of whom only 20% were identified as ISIS fighters and 80% as civilians. Another 11,000 people in Mosul are still reported missing by their families.
For a vivid illustration, here is a photo of Sirte, Libya, after it was kindly “liberated” by NATO aerial bombardment. NATO carried out 14,000 bombing sorties on Libya.
Sirte, Libya, after NATO bombing
The neo-con drive to dominate the Middle East, in alliance with Saudi Arabia and Israel, has caused an apocalyptic level of death and destruction. It really is very difficult indeed to quantify the number of people killed as a direct result of the policy of “liberal intervention” in these countries. Bombing people into freedom has collateral damage. There are also the vast unintended consequences. The destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria launched a wave of refugee migration which led to politicial instability throughout Europe and contributed to, among many other consequences, Brexit.
For the purposes of argument, I am going to put an extremely conservative figure of 5 million on the number of people who died as a result of Western military intervention, direct or proxy, in the Middle East.
Now compare that to the worldwide death toll from coronavirus: 220,000. Let me say that again.
Western aggressive wars to coronavirus: 5,000,000 : 220,000.
Or put it another way. The total number of deaths from coronavirus in the UK so far is about half the number of civilians killed directly by the US military in the single city of Mosul.
Makes you think, doesn’t it? There are four horsemen of the apocalypse, and while of course I do not blame people for focusing on the one which is riding at them personally, do not forget the others. Coronavirus has not finished killing. But then nor have western wars.
The sight which I cannot stand is the mainstream media which cheered on the horseman of war as they argued for the invasion Iraq on the basis of lies – and still defend it as a “liberation” – who now pretend massive concern for human life. The hypocrites are disgusting.
I was wrong when I initially wrote about the coronavirus.
Before I detail where I was wrong, let me say where I believe I was right. Large general population sampling antibody studies are now just beginning to emerge, and I feel reasonably confident that I was in fact correct that the mortality rate of coronavirus is under 1%, and probably not too different from the 0.5% generally quoted for Hong Kong flu. The term “infection fatality rate” is now being used to describe this true mortality rate. The “infection fatality rate” is the percentage of those who get the disease who die.
These are very early days for whole population sampling antibody studies, and the true picture should become more plain over the next month or two. I must say I have found it alarmingly difficult to explain to people the rather simple concept that you cannot infer a mortality rate among everybody who catches the disease, from the results you get when by definition you have only been offering tests to the most acute cases presenting as needing serious treatment. Of course a fair proportion of the worst cases don’t make it through the disease. But there is a population of millions in the UK (and nobody has a serious idea how many) who have had the disease with no or mild symptoms, and who do not figure in the statistics.
The very large majority of people in the UK who have had coronavirus have never been tested. That is simply true. How many, nobody knows. That is also true.
I do not endorse the extrapolation from New York to the UK, in this Daily Mail piece, to try to calculate how many people may have had coronavirus in the UK. But buried in there is the best collection I can find anywhere of what sampling antibody studies are indicating for the “infection fatality rate” across various US and European locations, and there is a strong clustering under 1%. Now these are preliminary studies, though almost all from reputable institutions. Proper, large scale, antibody testing programmes to produce peer reviewed and authoritatively published studies are on the way, but not here yet. I repeat, though, that I think the infection mortality rate is somewhere below 1%.
Where I was wrong, was in not realising that what is different about this disease from a flu is that it is really very, very contagious. So a far higher percentage of the population get it, all at once. Over two seasons, only about 30% of the UK population got the Hong Kong flu. Unchecked, it seems this coronavirus can spread very much quicker than that. I do not know why, but it appears that it can. So the lockdown policies to prevent health services being overwhelmed are needed and do have my support.
I do not however support the level of alarmism and panic. Of course the disease is really appalling for those who get it badly. It is a painful, protracted and terrifying experience. But a similar level of scrutiny of extreme illnesses of other kinds would bring similar stories. I have had three brushes with death in my own life.
In 2003 I had multiple pulmonary emboli (bloodclots in both lungs), which left me in a coma for days, was incredibly painful and I understand very similar in terms of experience to the end phase of this coronavirus. In 1986 I was actually declared dead in a hospital in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria (salmonella paratyphoid B), and was woken up on a morgue trolley by a cockroach eating my nostril. In 1974 I had emergency surgery for peritonitis, and was in hospital for 5 weeks and then a convalescent home. Retailing the experience or images of any of these illnesses would be as capable or more of generating the terror being created by the detailed coverage of extreme cases of coronavirus.
Yes the coronavirus is horrible if you get it badly. Almost all severe disease is horrible and death very seldom consists of peacefully stopping breathing, despite Hollywood. I wonder if having lived so much in Africa has changed my attitude to death. We do not see death much in the UK. Did you know the British have a 350% higher propensity than the Italians to put their elderly into care homes? That is why the deaths in Italy were so much more visible, even though the truth is that the UK government is doing not significantly better, and quite probably worse, than the Italian government, at containing the virus. It is only now making a start at adding English care home deaths to the official statistics (Scotland has for weeks).
I do support lockdown, I do support every sensible precaution being taken because the virus is so contagious. I utterly deplore the vast quantities being spent on war, the $220 billion being squandered on Trident missiles while the most basic precautions stockpiling against the much more real threat of a pandemic were not undertaken, because Tories begrudged spending a few millions on the NHS. I get all of that and I repeat it. But we must not be panicked into believing that the threat is greater than it is. You have approximately a 99% chance, (still nobody knows for certain) of surviving this disease if you catch it. If you are under 60, your chance of death is almost certainly at worst 1 in 500 if you catch it. If you are older or like me have heart and lung issues, it looks a bit bleak. But we are not immortal, nor would I wish to be.
But remember this. Your odds of survival are massively better than were those of a civilian in a country that your country chose to invade in recent years. Did you, personally, do enough to try to stop that?
Remember, there are other horsemen.
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“The destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria launched a wave of refugee migration which led to politicial instability throughout Europe and contributed to, among many other consequences, Brexit.”
Ah, the “the working class are a bunch of racist, xenophobic scum” “analysis” of the EU Referendum result. That sentiment speaks more eloquently of your character than anything I could possibly say.
Extreme bluster cannot erase reality. Anti-immigrant sentiment was a huge factor in the Leave vote, which incidentally was far higher in affluent middle-class areas in the south of England than anywhere else.
And “reverse racism” (in the “noble savage” rather than the alt-right sense) and “I like cheap labour” were huge factors in the Remain vote.
I made no mention of racism, but if that is what you believe underlay all the anti-immigration sentiment then that is what you believe.
Anti unchecked & uncontrolled immigration was a huge factor in the vote to Leave the EU.
There
FIFY
Unchecked uncontrolled immigration. And why? Half of this unchecked uncontrolled immigration was within successive governments to control because it was not subject to EU laws. Even immigration from EU countries could be checked within EU laws, or at least immigrants from EU could not receive benefits and so on unless they fulfil certain criteria. Repeating what you say like mantra does not make it true.
@SA – You seem to be assuming people vote for logical reasons.
Dom and djm are right that anti-immigration was a huge factor – it was the overwhelmingly predominant factor, FAR more important than all other factors taken together – in the Leave win.
Given that most Polish people are white, I guess you could argue that a form of xenophobia other than racism played a role as well as racism, but for how many Leave voters was that an important distinction?
N_
To distinguish between xenophobia and racism in this forum is OK, but to then to extrapolate to the general public is a bridge too far.
I am not denying that both played a part in the elections, I am just trying to counteract the misinformation that has been spread that it was unchecked and that it was all the fault of the EU.
“…uncontrolled immigration was a huge factor in the vote” for Scotland to remain in the UK, and is likely to be so again in any future referendum.
@Dom – “(T)he Leave vote (was) far higher in affluent middle-class areas in the south of England than anywhere else.”
What data are you looking at? It can’t be Leave voteshare by voting area (of which there were 382), or by voting region (12), or by parliamentary constituency (650 – including estimates by Chris Hanretty), because the top Leave areas in order were
1 Boston (East Midlands)
2 South Holland (East Midlands)
3 Castle Point (East of England)
4 Thurrock (East of England)
5 Great Yarmouth (East of England)
6 Fenland (East of England)
7 Mansfield (East Midlands)
8 Bolsover (East Midlands)
9 East Lindsey (East Midlands)
10 North East Lincolnshire (Yorkshire and the Humber);
the top Leave regions were
1 West Midlands
2 East Midlands
3 North East England
4 Yorkshire and the Humber
5 East of England
6 North West England.
and the top Leave parliamentary constituencies appear to have been
1) Boston and Skegness (East Midlands)
2) Walsall North (West Midlands)
3) South Basildon and East Thurrock (East of England)
4) Castle Point (East of England)
5) Kingston upon Hull East (Yorkshire and the Humber)
…and the first constituency from Southwest England, Southeast England or Greater London to appear on the list is Dagenham and Rainham at no.20, not exactly an “affluent middle-class area”.
I think you are completely mistaken, but if there is some kind of data you can refer to to support your statement I would be interested to hear it.
This is assuming you don’t count everywhere south of Durham as “the south”, eh, Dom?
The Leave vote was 59% middle class and 52% southern. Danny Dorling breaks it down here.
https://youtu.be/eOMiUONDLno
Brexit has been unfairly blamed on the poor by privately-educated liberal pundits, just as the deficit was in 2010. The same explainers will soon be telling you the poor must also be punished for the massive furlough expenditures.
The biggest vote for Leave by a mile was the south east region where 2,567,965 (51.78%) voted to leave. In the north east region 778,103 (58.04%) voted to leave.
@FranzB – I thought the notion that the Leave win resulted to significant extent from middle class votes in southern England might have depended on that kind of strange handling of figures. Add the Northwest to the Northeast and you already get more Leave votes than in the Southeast, before we even look at the Midlands.
The Southeast including London voted 54% for Remain.
South of England (including SE, SW, London): 5.8m votes for Leave; rest of England (+Gibraltar): 9.4m votes for Leave.
@Dom – I don’t watch videos. Can you summarise? It sounds as though Danny Dorling must be looking at the figures from a peculiar angle and using a weird definition of “middle class” if he thinks the Leave vote was 59% middle class. That would be more than 10 million people, or 22% of the electorate. That would be practically the ENTIRE middle class. In fact 22% of the population might even be bigger than the entire middle class on most sensible definitions.
That’s not what Craig said Phil.
Your ill considered and phase-twisting technique says a lot about you though.
He has said it before, repeatedly, but without the epithet “scum”.
So why did you make up his words Phil?
Craig’s got enough nasty vindictive untruthful stuff to deal with as it is.
Ah, the “the working class are a bunch of racist, xenophobic scum” “analysis” of the EU Referendum result.
No, but those of them that are undoubtedly voted Leave (apologies to Will Self for choring (well, paraphrasing) his stuff.
No, but those of them that are undoubtedly voted Leave (apologies to Will Self for choring (well, paraphrasing) his stuff.
Ah, the old Guardian saw:
Not everybody who voted Leave is a racist or bigot, but everyone who is voted Leave…
The thing is that’s not actually true. A quick scan of the Guardian’s own comment forums reveals that all the racists who hate white people and all the bigots who hate the working class and the elderly appear to have voted Remain.
You cannot blame Mr Murray for words *you* put in his mouth. What does that say about your character?
Right, to clear this up…
To state that someone made a “the working class are a bunch of racist, xenophobic scum” analysis of the EU Referendum result is not equivalent to stating that “the working class are a bunch of racist, xenophobic scum” were the exact words used. Rather, the phrase points sarcastically to the “sophistication” of the analysis undertaken.
So why conflate it with Craig’s character?
To keep this short, and to quote from one of my BTL comments (on the “future” of the Labour Party) in the Guardian that didn’t get “disappeared”:
“In this, as in all other “analyses” that consider only the epiphenomena rather than the originating tendency(ies) (the quintessentially ‘liberal’ way of doing things because, otherwise, one has to deal with those beasties called first principles, which, in turn, can lead to – steady my heart – knowledge), the author misses the target.
Very briefly, as Wolfgang Streeck outlined in New Left Review some 3 years ago now (https://newleftreview.org/issues/II104/articles/wolfgang-streeck-the-return-of-the-repressed), the latent contradictions of neo-liberalism came home to roost, manifested in the reversal of a decades-long decline in manual working class participation in politics.
Everything follows from this. The intellectual working class (“middle class”), the “Chomsky 10%” educated to the highest levels by the State to populate positions in its apparatuses and the professions (including most pertinently, in the present conjuncture, the media) were, and continue to be, affronted by this upsurge in the great unwashed having the sheer bad taste to think for themselves (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ9ce-yMEfc) and, horror of horrors, not vote for continued participation in the globalist/neo-liberal ‘wonderland’ that has progressively devastated their conditions of existence over the past 40+ years and de-industrialised the West.
The liberal media, in both the ‘traditional’ and the corporate social sector (Twitter, Facebook et al), fulfilling their role as ideological supports of the State, have led the push-back against this resurgence in participation by people who, more properly, should know their place (“heads down, arses up”) and have consequently, under the rubric of “fake news”, revealed their corruption not only to the Left (we always knew that they were lying bastards) but to the proletarian Right.
Once the veil has been lifted there is no way back, either for politics or the media. The party that understood this, either empirically or theoretically, and acted on it was going to be the long-term winner (realised, in this case, on the issue of continued membership of the EU). The media that resisted this tendency have now alienated both the Left (long ago) and the Right and are left with a rapidly-diminishing core of pro-globalisation advocates.”
In other words, the highly insulting trope that “the working class are a bunch of racist, xenophobic scum and that’s the reason we are exiting the EU” is not only wrong but also obscures under “woke” ideology the real historical movement(s). Not a good look for a “historian”.
@Phil Williamson
This diatribe (with which I agree close to 100%) does not explain or justify your use of the phrase you used.
I am surprised you keep digging this hole deeper — sadly and especially so after an excellent and appreciated comment on the PRISM program, which to be honest made me mentally categorize you among the more serious and noteworthy posters here. Btw., focusing on the one word “scum” doesn’t cut it.
So where are the passages on this blog that justify your lashing out like you did. Either that, or just retract.
bj
I will merely repeat what I said above in reply to Bramble @16:55:
“To state that someone made a “the working class are a bunch of racist, xenophobic scum” analysis of the EU Referendum result is not equivalent to stating that “the working class are a bunch of racist, xenophobic scum” were the exact words used.”
Having taken note of CM’s repeated declarations over time that the working class who voted for Brexit were irredeemably racist and xenophobic, the whole tenor of the posts mirroring the ‘wokest’ of Guardian output, I felt that ‘scum’ was an appropriate term to describe the underlying sentiment.
One (amongst many) of the hypocrisies of the “progressive”, “Leftist”, theory-lite, ‘woke generation’ is that immense (and often professional) offence is taken at the slightest perceived non-PC remark (following the well-known principle that he who controls language controls thought), but that the reverse does not apply. In this case, I am jumped on for having the audacity to suggest that, just maybe, categorising millions of individuals who voted in the EU Referendum in their own economic interests as racist and xenophobic because such a vote did not coincide with the economic interests of other class fractions (the Truth that must be hidden behind the veil of “racism” et al) is bullshit (to use the technical term).
What a horrible squealing windbag you are Williamson, trying to justify your unwarranted attacks. I doubt, very much, that youve ever written ANYTHING of interest to ANYBODY.
Since Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria aren’t in the EU why would leaving the EU make a difference to immigration from them?
Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic broke EU law by failing to accept refugees, rules ECJ
https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/02/poland-hungary-and-czech-republic-breached-eu-law-by-failing-to-take-in-refugees-rules-ecj
Of course with that that attitude of the EU, Brexit was bound to happen sooner or later.
Bloody Hell Phil,
It is some ‘cognitive leap’ to turn an opinion about political instability causing many consequences including Brexit,
into the accusation that Craig infers that this is because ‘the working class are a bunch of racist, xenophobic scum’ !
Get a grip Phil, you sound like a Unionist!
For all the windy words from anyone.
If the working class are not Xenophobic and Racist ( and they are not as a whole if they voted Labour generally ) why did many of them vote for two parties that are xenophobic and racist?
Namely – the Tories and the Brexit Party.
They voted for parties whom they completely disagree with?
There’s a book to be written on that no doubt.
By the way no-one should get away with the ” My class right or wrong ” argument neither.
That is one of the reasons why the British have never got near leading a revolution and voting Tory in the Red Wall areas just confirms the theory.
“that are xenophobic and racist?”
That is why you wont ever understand the legitimate concerns many people have on the issue of immigration if you start out by calling these people racists.
I don’t think this applies to Mr Murray as much as many others anyway but there’s probably a grain of truth somewhere but not in this instance. That sentence appears to be indicating the exploitation of immigration rather than ascribing blame.
My take: If we look at the details of what happened from Afghanistan forward, the following methods are apparent:
Setting off a long war involving many states from the moment of inception (Wesley Clark’s dramatic testimony is corroborated by other sources and much information in the public domain) Massacre as a deliberate policy. Flood your target state with weapons, initially from captured weapons dumps broken open and left unguarded, later it will be necessary under the explanation of ‘fighting the regime’ to arm local patsies directly via regional allies.
After successful occupation, weaken the enemy by inciting sectarian and tribal divides however necessary, from deliberate acts of false flag terrorism (a British team was caught in Arab dress in the act of carrying out one such attack) to nciting sectarian hatred through PR companies like Bell Pottinger who created bespoke psy-ops and propaganda targeting the enemy populations.
Deliberately target, destroy and degrade all essential infrastructure, water, electricity, hospitals, food production. If necessary use proxy forces known as ‘rebel insurgents’ or ‘moderate rebels’ to cover for your bombing raids while using them to target, capture, occupy and destroy regions, inducing maximum fear and terror while you take the oil.
The enemy state can be further isolated internationally by using any move toward self defence as proof of ‘regime brutality.’ Blame the regimes for your own massacres, ensure total widespread belief in the monstrosity of the ‘regime’ and by implication, it’s people. Destroy the history, narratives and culture of the target state as far as possible. Destroy media installations/assets. Loot, destroy and degrade galleries, museums, sites of scientific, religious or historical importance, directly or indirectly, it doesn’t matter.
Consolidate domestic power at home. Ensure the founding narrative of terrorism is refreshed periodically. (Note beginning with 9/11 that in almost all successful cases of terrorism worldwide, individuals were known to or worked directly with domestic intelligence agencies.) Once ensuing waves of refugees become substantial, dam them strategically across the EU region. Exploit tension to topple leftist governments wherever possible while maintaining and consolidating power. Capitalise on long term working class media driven dissemination and inculcation of racism. Finance-capital funded and intelligence led right wing networks recruit working class to the wars and to the cause. Ensure repeated indignation against terrorism, recruit by inculcated racism, recruit by lack of opportunity. Raise the temperature. Have the middle blame the working class. Divide and rule.
In other words,
“If we tell you that you’ve got two days to live
Then don’t complain, cause that’s one more than you’d get in Zaire”
One problem is that covid is pushing all other news that has had fatal consequences off the news radar: bomb blasts in Kabul and Afrin and Israeli missiles killing people in Damascus, the continuing brutal treatment of the Palestinians etc.
There is no other perspective than covid. I have noticed it has had a blanket effect with every country responding with alarm and fear and discussing it in exactly the same indoctrinated ways as if citizens of a new world order. Frightening.
I am far from convinced about the necessity of the lockdown, and I don’t think we ever will know if it has been necessary as there are too many confounding factors.
Lockdown policies are political based on selective interpretation of the scientific evidence. Lockdown can be afforded because of economic affluence in countries that have generally high income levels and developed health and welfare systems. A Dr Mubarak (?) made the point in the recent Cambridge University debate that has stuck with me more than any other that a country like Bangladesh cannot afford lockdown because people would simply die of starvation if unable to work for their already meagre wages. They and the poor in other countries will bear the brunt of the economic consequences as they have with the social effects and policing methods which have herded people back from the healthy outside to the unhealthy confined indoors.
“I am far from convinced about the necessity of the lockdown . . .”
I agree. I think that lockdown would be necessary for the elderly for a time. However, even for them, eventually, exposure to the virus is the only way forward, so I would think a spike in deaths of the markedly vulnerable once that eventuality is reached. The only way out of that at all would be for an effective vaccine before lockdown of the elderly was lifted — but the production of a vaccine is far off, at least that is what I pick up from the news.
By my reading I think Sweden has the best policies on this so far. This is explained well in this video interview, and, the interviewer being based in the UK, we get a good comparison between what Sweden is doing and the UK. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfN2JWifLCY
What you wrote is utterly uncaring. ” However, even for them, eventually, exposure to the virus is the only way forward,” oh yes it will sort the vulnerable, survival of the fittest, devil take the hindmost, I am OK jack.
This is the problem when people think they know something which they are ignorant about. Lockdown was done in the worst possible way by this government. Lockdown can only be useful in the long-term if it is also accompanied by rigorous widespread testing and quarantining of all positive cases. Early complete lockdown would have then worked. But to just let the elderly take their chances is utter nonsense, but sadly also lines up with the ‘take it in the chin’ attitude of our PM, whom you probably admire.
Here’s the evidence that the lockdown worked and is still needed:
https://mrc-ide.github.io/covid19estimates/#/details/United_Kingdom
Look at that first graph and consider where we’d be without it. This isn’t merely about numbers of fatalities; ill people need care and alleviation of pain and suffering, which can’t be provided if half a million fall ill in the same fortnight.
So we have predicted infections and reported infections from ICL. Who have come under a lot of criticism for the way they handled the foot and mouth crisis.
Surely what we need is a figure for actual infections, and we aren’t testing enough to find out what the actual infections figure is.
This link is to some very mathematical gobbledegook, I think it falls on you to explain it a bit more.
The model works on reported deaths, not reported infections, because reported infections are only a fraction of total infections, and what fraction is highly uncertain.
One of the model’s outputs is an estimate of actual infections. Since physical testing is such a morass for so many practical reasons, the model’s output is probably the best estimate available.
The model is entirely free and open to scrutiny by anyone, which of course includes the epidemiological community. The software is downloadable from a link on the page, in human-readable form, and you can also run it on your own system to ensure what you see online really is the model’s output. If you go to the scientific journals and discussion forums I’m sure you’ll find a healthy debate about the model’s validity, and how to improve it.
Such models are pretty simple in principle. All you need is the progression history of typical covid-19 cases, and some statistics about the population and the way people behave. Then you can say that case zero is likely to infect x-many people (this is the all-important parameter Rt), which we shall call cases 1 to x, before case zero either becomes non-infectious or dies. Then repeat the same process for cases 1 to x, and the cases they infect, and so on.
Rt varies depending on how people behave. If they all go out to football matches etc, Rt is high. If they all stay home, Rt is low. Washing hands and observing 2 metre distancing reduces Rt a bit. That’s how the effects of various social restrictions are simulated.
The number of current infections is just all the infectious cases in the simulation added up.
4419 deaths added today in the UK and you still dont understand the importance of a lockdown?
The difference between Sweden and the UK? In Sweden there is a generally high level of trust in the government and working welfare systems. If a government minister in Sweden “suggests” something, then the population are likely to listen. In the UK, if a government minister “suggests” something, we are liable to do the exact opposite.
And as for the idea that we should just let everyone catch the virus and let the 0.5% die,,,? That’s just absurd. Not to mention the fact that we literally don’t know what the longer term effects might be; getting it but not displaying serious symptoms may not mean that someone is fine. Sustaining unknown long-term damage to the lungs or kidneys is hardly trivial.
Sweden have best policies?
Sweden is doing the herd immunity policy and thus the death toll is soaring.
They are 4 places ahead of the UK if you compare the death per one-million.
BBC covered the Swedish policy some days ago, not pretty, https://youtu.be/pzzVxw5FyYs
On my Worldometer figures today (30/04), the UK has 384 deaths per million, whereas Sweden is on 244. It’s too early to start comparing countries at this stage in any case. (Germany is on 77, S.Korea is on 5 (five) per million)
I notice the BBC is keen to put the boot into any country whose approach might challenge our glorious leader’s approach.
FranzB
Its not only BBC nor only british media that have exposed what is going on in Sweden though.
Compare how Sweden is doing against other European countries by choosing the country from the drop-down at the top of the page:
https://mrc-ide.github.io/covid19estimates/#/details/Sweden
I have to disagree with the whole premise of this article Craig. I’m not sure that your readers need to be reminded of the criminal tendencies of the neocons who run the UK government? What has that got to do with covid-19?
This appears to be a very infectious disease, so it is reasonable to predict over 90% would become infected, if it went unchecked. There are over 50 million folk under the age of 60 in the U.K. Even with your ” stab-in-the-dark only 1 in 500 dying, that amounts to over 90,000 people. That number would be in addition to the deaths from other causes.
Who is trying to panic me? I’m fully capable of working out the odds against myself and my family. The folk I DO worry about, are the right wing nutters in the tory party, and their rich sponsors, who are trying to panic us all into stopping social isolation, because of fears of a completely theoretical surgin the number of deaths by suicide. Now THAT is scare-mongering.
These are the same folk whose mindset generates and causes the wars you have talked about. I predict that Boris will make a seriously “Churchill”, sombre announcement soon that “after serious reflection”, “taking all factors into account”, and “on the advice of SAGE”, we should carefully start relaxing the strict conditions under which the great British public have been nobly suffering. This will happen, even though the necessary test, trace, isolate and quarantine protocols will be sketchy and disorganised.
One last point. The SAGE that he so sombrely cites will have been strong armed by Cummings and the other SPAD weasel who have reportedly been attending these meetings. What the HELL are these two reptiles doing in a scientific committee?
All the scare mongering I’ve seen and heard is entirely on the side of the virus.
Of course if what you call ‘scaremongering’ is actually a timely warning of dangers then there is nothing wrong with it.
But, in fact, the real scaremongering is coming from the right and those who insist that interference with the magical workings of the marketplace amounts to passing a death sentence on the poor.
There is increasing pressure to revert to the policies of ‘taking this on the chin’ by lifting quarantine restrictions before the comprehensive programme of measures of which they are merely one part has been implemented. This pressure comes not from the public who approve of the ‘lockdown’ policy but, from those who are unprepared to make the wealthy pay, by squeezing the surpluses, that they have stripped out of the economy, out of them and instituting generous universal benefits and rigorous safety measures to protect those who must be asked to continue to work.
These are the demands that Black agenda Report is publicising. They will apply equally to the UK:
Summary of main points from “A Swiss Doctor Writes” https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
Overview
1. According to data from the best-studied countries such as South Korea, Iceland, Germany and Denmark, the overall lethality of Covid19 is between 0.1% and 0.4% and thus up to twenty times lower than initially assumed by the WHO.
2. A study in Nature Medicine comes to a similar conclusion even for the Chinese city of Wuhan. The initially significantly higher values for Wuhan were obtained because many people with only mild or no symptoms were not recorded.
3. 50% to 80% of test-positive individuals remain symptom-free. Even among the 70 to 79 year old persons about 60% remain symptom-free, many more show only mild symptoms.
4. The median age of the deceased in most countries (including Italy) is over 80 years and only about 1% of the deceased had no serious previous illnesses. The age and risk profile of deaths thus essentially corresponds to normal mortality. Moreover, up to 60% of all deaths occurred in nursing homes, which do not benefit from a general lockdown.
5. Many media reports of young and healthy people dying from Covid19 have proven to be false upon closer inspection. Many of these people either did not die from Covid19 or they in fact had serious preconditions (such as undiagnosed leukaemia).
6. Normal overall mortality in the US is about 8000 people per day, in Germany about 2600 people and in Italy about 1800 people per day. Influenza mortality in the US is up to 80,000, in Germany and Italy up to 25,000, and in Switzerland up to 1500 people per winter.
7. Strongly increased death rates, as in northern Italy, can be influenced by additional risk factors such as very high air pollution and microbial contamination as well as a collapse in the care of the elderly and sick due to mass panic and lockdown measures.
8. In countries such as Italy and Spain, and to some extent Great Britain and the US, a serious overload of hospitals, notably by the flu, is not unusual. In addition, up to 15% of doctors and nurses currently have to self-quarantine, even if they develop no symptoms.
9. An important distinction concerns the question of whether people die with or indeed from coronaviruses. Autopsies show that in many cases the previous illnesses were an important or decisive factor, but the official figures usually do not reflect this.
10. Thus in order to assess the danger of the disease, the key indicator is not the often mentioned number of test-positive persons and deceased, but the number of persons who actually and unexpectedly develop or die of pneumonia.
11. The often shown exponential curves of “corona cases” are misleading, since the number of tests also increases exponentially. In most countries, the ratio of positive tests to total tests either remains constant between 5% to 25% or increases rather slowly.
12. Countries without lockdowns and contact bans, such as Japan, South Korea and Sweden, have not experienced a more negative course of events than other countries. This might call into question the effectiveness of such far-reaching measures.
13. According to leading lung specialists, invasive ventilation of Covid19 patients is often counterproductive and causes additional damage to the lungs. The invasive ventilation of Covid19 patients is partly done out of fear of spreading the virus through aerosols.
14. Contrary to original assumptions, however, the WHO determined at the end of March that there is no evidence of aerosol dispersal of the virus. A leading German virologist also found no aerosol and no smear infections in a pilot study.
15. Many clinics in Europe and the US have been lacking patients and some have had to introduce short-time work. Numerous operations and therapies were cancelled by clinics, even emergency patients sometimes stay at home out of fear of the virus.
16. Several media have been caught trying to dramatize the situation in clinics, sometimes even with manipulative pictures and videos. In general, many media outlets do not question even doubtful official statements and figures.
17. The virus test kits used internationally are prone to errors. Several studies have shown that even normal corona viruses can give a false positive result. Moreover, the virus test currently in use has not been clinically validated due to time pressure.
18. Numerous internationally renowned experts from the fields of virology, immunology and epidemiology consider the measures taken to be counterproductive and recommend a rapid natural immunisation of the general population while protecting risk groups.
Tom Welsh
Swiss doctor and OffGuardian are propaganda sites for fake news and cherry picking covid-19 denial. Not even worth reading. You place more faith on such websites purely because it reinforces your wrong beliefs, but of course all the other experts are under the spells of a big conspiracy.
SA
Maybe immune systems in other countries are stronger than British ones. Our water actually smells of chlorine and our climate is temperate enough to open windows. Also we are mostly
strangers to death and lawlessness. We have a massively efficient supermarket system where all food is sanitised, and we have cars.
I respect both your opinions and we should be nice to each other as here is perhaps the only space we have right now to communicate ideas
It has however been an invaluable time , this lockdown, for those of us who are not key workers, to come to terms with life and death in the safety of our own homes.
The BBC and Guardian are models of investigative reporting I suppose? But seriously, which news sources to you believe?
Nobody really everyone has his or her agenda. I take snippets from everywhere, including Guardian BBC, Moon of Alabama, other international news and websites and form my own opinion. You can actually get information from any source provided you do a background check and see what the agenda is. And also it depends on what the information is. Certain media give good assessment on ME but rather poor on for example covid-19 or Brexit or whatever.
“overall lethality of Covid19 is between 0.1% and 0.4% ”
UK population is 66.65 million (2019). 0.4% is 266,600 deaths, say 1/4 million dead if not everyone catches it.
The mortality rate depends on the health care system in a country. It being 0.1 or 0.4% in Germany with a lockdown in place does not mean it couldn’t be 4% in England without one.
So the UK failed to take basic precautions of stockpiling were not undertaken because the Tories begrudged spending a few million on the NHS.
This is a response typical of the arrogance and ignorance of the British intelligentsia. Neither the Tories nor the NHS are particularly significant in dictating global policy. Which countries had sufficient stocks of anything? Answer only Germany and China – the two great mercantile powers of the world.
You are locked in your homes fearful of death for the simple reason that you stopped doing any work at all and chose to rely on the foreign man. You created a superstructure of palpably fake logic as you sought to portray your laziness as the highest of virtues.
Now you are finding out that the foreign man could not give a shit about you and will let you have absolutely nothing at all until and unless the needs of their domestic populations are met. The enlightened westerner continues to focus on finding racists hiding under every stone and the Chinese get on with their job of exporting defective medical equipment to you.
But y’ll got a lot more to suck up yet – because your fear and your cowardice has destroyed the final remnants of any functioning economy. You are about to get a lot poorer – not poorer than you want to be but poorer than you ever imagined you could be.
Very well put Craig, rightly putting the virus in it’s proper context.
“The “infection fatality rate” is the percentage of those who get the disease who die.”
The IFR is the rate at which those infected die. “Disease” implies symptoms , and symptoms may not always be there with infection.
The Case Fatality Rate (CFR) is, ” the percentage of those who get the disease who die.”
Quite. The CFR as I understand is a “ratio” not strictly a rate. The percentage will be higher if it just the ratio between confirmed cases and deaths and will go down significantly if all the unconfirmed cases i.e. people who have the illness but are never tested for it are factored in.
Also as someone else has pointed out the CFR varies in line with age groups and the overall CFR is largely due to the disproportionate number of deaths in the 70+ age range.
“You have approximately a 99% chance, (still nobody knows for certain) of surviving this disease if you catch it. If you are under 60, your chance of death is almost certainly at worst 1 in 500 if you catch it. ”
Perhaps – but that is going to depend on a number of factors, including what sort of health care is available. And one of the big problems with this disease is that without effective interventions to reduce its spread, it spreads so fast that many people catch it near simultaneously and the severely ill amongst them then simultaneously arrive in hospitals, where they often need many weeks of treatment, overwhelming them and meaning there is not enough care to go around. If/where health care collapses, I’d think the odds you quote would prove very optimistic – and that’s before we get into the effects of people with other health problems also going without adequate treatment.
From the perspective of Natural Law, all life is precious. Brexitania has been detached from the natural law for some time now, though Brexit now makes this state of affairs spectacularly visible to all who’s judgement is not culturally colonised.
Brexitania is not a social democracy, it’s a right-wing tyranny. The yoonyawn now only lives in the imagination of yoon cultists and those who are aligned with British constitutionalism.
The Neoliberal Way of War: A Critical Analysis of Contemporary British Security in Policy and Practice
https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/40993/1/18019982_Whitham_thesis.pdf
It is perfectly clear why there was a quarantine – to flatten the curve and stop the hospital icu’s becoming over whelmed.
It is also clear we need more testing – which is woefully late in the UK and belatedly being started, though it seems we have not yet approved the tests and therefore we will not be told whether we have the correct anti bodies! More bs.
This is very specifically the fault of the UK governments political choice for whatever political ends they desired. Mainly the one they have obsessively worked to achieve over the last decade – a hard BrexShit.
The mega ‘Henry VIII’ Covid Act powers they have pocketed will be available to use to get their BS done.
We are most likely over halfway and the quarantine will start lifting in about 4 weeks, in a piecemeal fashion; Geographically and Sectorial.
London and other hot spots will be last out.
Come the winter the second wave will likely coincide with the flu season, putting double pressure on the icu capacity.
Extra icu beds or hospitals are useless without the fully trained and experienced staff needed for them, they can not be so easily magicked, especially with the BS.
The EU will be better prepared and have joint protocols to protect their 400 million citizens. They may well have better tests, new medications and faster vaccines.
Meanwhile we will resemble street urchins looking through windows of a grand restaurant full of people enjoying a feast.
Meanwhile we will be left with a much higher death toll and handicapped than an equivalent country, Germany, who reacted better.
All because of Bozo’s company of clowns and their BrexShit.
You write “t is perfectly clear why there was a quarantine – to flatten the curve and stop the hospital icu’s becoming over whelmed.”
In common with all other words the word “quarantine” has a specific meaning – and does not mean locking an entire population up – except for anyone in the population who happens to work in a grocery shop. What is happening aint exactly clear, but it is most definitely not a quarantine,
Is the reason for the non-quarantine as you suggest or could there be another reason? As with most things an analysis of the UK is unlikely to be a fruitful area of inquiry. Let’s take a look at the US. According to The Institute of Policy Studies the US economy is expected to contract by 40% in Q2 2020. Meanwhile the net wealth of US billionaires has increased by an aggregate of $282 billion in just the last 23 days. Could this possibly form part of the explanation?
I wonder how long it will be until those so in favor of being locked up in order to save lives will start to complain about growing wealth inequality? Will any of these people will recognize their own culpability in fostering the ability of the rich to steal from the poor.
Loony
I see, you’re not saying that that wealth has gone up because of the virus, just using old data which may not be up to date. Maybe the very rich are losing money now.
I listened to Mary Porteous on Radio 4 suggesting we may frequent shops less in future. Are we not compensating our exhausted selves by buying new handbags or boys toys every week. When we’re not stressed out of our minds working we realise we don’t need these things. At last we have learned how to be green and save oil.
Within the last few weeks the Fed has expanded its balance sheet by $3 trillion. Where do you think this money has gone?
– “We are most likely over halfway and the quarantine will start lifting in about 4 weeks, in a piecemeal fashion; Geographically and Sectorial.”
No. About 5% of the population has been infected. There’s a long way to go yet:
https://mrc-ide.github.io/covid19estimates/#/details/United_Kingdom
“In 1986 I was actually declared dead in a hospital in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria (salmonella paratyphoid B) and was woken up on a morgue trolley by a cockroach eating my nostril.”
A bit late, but sorry you had a really, really bad day. Sheesh.
And great read, thanks.
I’m not easily scared, but an experience like that would certainly cause a bit of trauma on me.
As you say “a really, really bad day. Sheesh.” And not so brilliant for the cockroach either! ?
2 different blogs here Craig – perhaps separate them?
In any case, the contagiousness of coronavirus is a blessing as it is over quickly and herd immunity established faster. Perhaps not so if a lock-up is decreed. As the data drips in (much more slowly than the development of tracing apps and vaccines), we are seeing that a much wider percentage of the population have been exposed to the virus than previously believed. That makes sense given the contagiousness of it. However, as it is so easy to catch, it is not at all clear how lock-ups can quell the spread. What we are seeing is familial cluster infections as locked-up extended families and their communities spread it to each other while stuck indoors where viruses usually spread – otherwise known as the flu season when it is warmer inside than outside. So, rather than isolating the old and sick, we are locking up the healthy too and they are passing the virus on to their friends and relatives who are in close quarters with them. We also know that viruses are killed by direct sunlight and immune systems are optimised by the Vit-D that sunlight confers. The lock-ups are thus dimishing immune systems and making people more vulnerable to infection. Furthermore, we know that a key factor causing compromised immune systerms is social-isolation. People with strong connections live longer even if they smoke so long as they have good social and familial contacts. The studies show that isolation compromises the immune system more than obesity, cancer, high blood-pressure, hyper-tension and so on. So, the lock-ups appear to be actually responsible for many of these deaths being attributed to COVID-19. Besides those mortalities, it is now estimated that in the UK there are 2,000 deaths per week because people are afraid to visit hospitals for treatment or because treatment for non-COVID cases has been postponed. Aside from this, the lock-ups are resulting in a spike in child molestations, mental health prpblems (and prescriptions), alcohol and substance abuse, domestic violence, suicide and other issues. Many of these problems will be with people all their lives – not merely a flu season..
“It is only now making a start at adding English care home deaths to the official statistics (Scotland has for weeks).”
This very true, ONS figures show that 7316 people during the 16th week of 2020 died in carehomes in England. The ONS projection figures of deaths in the UK overall show that they could be the highest in Europe.
Of course the five weeks that Johnson went missing from the Cobra meetings and the downgrading of the virus to save on supplying PPE to the NHS, along with the preposterous idea of herd immunity is more than likely the causes that will lead to the UK having the highest death figures from the virus in Europe.
Sturgeons submissiveness to be led by the nose by Westminster (no surprise to those who read your blog and the Revs) surely must have contributed to the some of the deaths in Scotland.
This pandemic, has shown clearly that Health devolved to Scotland doesn’t actually mean very much, and that London still calls the shots. Far more worrying though is Sturgeons compliance to Westminster, her handling of this virus has shown us all that her punchinello strings are very short indeed.
In my opinion she’s been given more airtime by the unionist media, because she’s been rumbled by many over the Alex Salmond fiasco. This extra airtime in to endear her to the public, and keep her high in the poll ratings and at the head of the SNP.
Meanwhile those who report the facts (such as yourself) are under the unionist cosh, a cosh carried in the hand that resides in Holyrood.
FWIW, of the 3 700 people with an average age of 70 on the Diamond Princess cruise ship (quarantined at sea off Japan for 4 weeks this year), 712 [1.26% died] tested positive for Covid-19.
Less than 50% – 331 – of those who tested positive had no symptoms; and of the remaining 381 who were ill, 37 needed treatment in intensive care, 9 died.
Craig, you need to boost your immune system with vitamin D3, start taking 5000 (thousand) IU per day, but with magnesium, like in the form of magnesium citrate – say 300 mg of elemental magnesium per day. Better still, get it from say sunflower seeds of about 100g per day, which is also high in protein, and, also has the full spectrum of vitamin E, not the mostly inferior stuff found in vitamins, i.e. ONLY 1 of the 4 tocopherols (& 4 tocotrienols), and only the best 5th or 6th at that. Also, the vitamin E/dl-alpha-tocopherol is the synthetic isolate form of vitamin E, the least effective form possible. And natural, full spectrum vitamin E is good for your heart.
How can you give this kind of advice, Ralph?
Even if you are a doctor, though I think you’re not, because doctors ask to make a test before calculating vitamine D dose, it may cause harm to liver if you take it with no precise control.
The lack of vitamin D can be covered by regular walks in the sun, 15 minutes daily is enough, face and arms uncovered, which at the same time will do a warm-up for all the systems of the body. This is better than taking pills uncontrollably.
In Scotland it is impossible to get vitamin D from sunlight from about October through to March – even if you stood naked outside during all daylight hours – so we have just come out of our zero-vitamin D spell into lockdown and are barely allowed outside. We need the pills, and we might be hard pushed to overdose at this stage of depletion!
(But, in principle, I agree unsolicited advice on dosage is not sensible).
As an aside, it has been postulated that Scotland’s high incidence of MS could be due to low vitamin D levels.
Place is not as important as your daily lifestyle. I live in the extra sunny Kuban region in Russia, not far from the Black Sea. In general, it is surprising to me that I was able to develop a deficiency of vitamin D. But if you look at my lifestyle, this is a workshop in the half-basement, with a tiny window, where I go to early in the morning and where I return from late in the evening, with rare weekends in the open air.
No, the place is important – also diet, as there are only a few food stuffs that give you vitamin D. The latitude matters – if you are near the Black Sea you will probably be far enough south to get a reasonable light intensity through much of the year – more northern latitudes (I don’t know the exact one) do not get long enough days or high enough intensity, and will be colder during winter so you don’t expose enough skin, for you to get vitamin D from sunlight. High oily fish intake could compensate, but that’s not a big part of the Scottish diet, but will probably compensate in the likes of Iceland and Greenland. Lifestyle does matter – but a 15-minute walk a day in Scotland, October to March, is just not going to do it. We need the supplements (or a change in diet!).
I am not a doctor, yet I can give advice.
Any intelligent adult knows that they do not just do what somebody else recommends, but they go and do their own research to see if it matches what others say, and including qualified medical practitioners, yet even the latter often are not well informed unless it involves Big Pharma.
Yes, a test could be done, if people want to pay for it, and that is a good starting point, which requires further tests to see how the body reacts to taking vit D3 supplements.
So tell me what harm it could do to the liver, based on what I stated.
‘The lack of vitamin D can be covered by regular walks in the sun, 15 minutes daily is enough, face and arms uncovered’ – that kind of advice is ill-informed, and could lead to a false sense of security, harming someone’s health. You don’t mention latitude, time of year or even time of day. See how it works?
okay, I agree, my advice on walks is no better. But I still insist on the need for a test. Perhaps your prices are different, it cost me less than 10 euros.
The level of vitamin D is critical because when it is lacking, the body does not get enough calcium, and this causes the parathyroid hormone to increase, which causes calcium and phosphorus to enter the bloodstream more than bone, which will eventually lead to osteoporosis.
A terrible prospect in old age to have fragile bones that break easily and an elderly person spends time in bed.
Very well put Craig, albeit the low mortality rate means the lockdown makes no medical sense as herd immunity to a mild virus is soon achieved and you avoid the excess non-corona deaths due to the lockdown. Also without the “something must be done” panic there wouldn’t be the excess corona deaths either due to a misdiagnosis and hence treatment of the virus and wrongly focusing resources on the healthy rather than the vulnerable.
The fact it makes no medical sense and the wall to wall MSM “we’re all doomed” coverage makes it pretty obvious this is a deep state Panic to halt Brexit and sink Trump by ruining the economy, but whether it will succeed is another matter.
And explains why the so-called “Left” is so in favour of the lockdown, leaving it to the “mad right-wingers” to oppose the lockdown. So called “Left”, because surely they should be calling for an end to the lockdown that is and will inflict so much suffering on the poor and vulnerable the longer it goes on, who will always be the first and majority victims of any economic crisis.
“pretty obvious this is a deep state Panic to halt Brexit and sink Trump by ruining the economy”
Congrats, you just owned yourself.
“mad right-wingers”
If it’s a cap that fits..
“the most basic precautions stockpiling against the much more real threat of a pandemic were not undertaken”
But it has been reported that the UK did have contingency stocks of PPE etc. Then Jeremy Hunt sold them off cheap to the the major wholesalers, to save the cost of storage and replenishment. These stocks were then sold on to the private sector at home and abroad.
Thank you for the self-critical corrections and clarifications regarding C-19, which seem to me to be as accurate as the reference to the horrible consequences of the wars of the West. We run the risk that one of the consequences of C-19 will be more wars.
Dear Craig Murray, have to strongly disagree on this: “The destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria launched a wave of refugee migration which led to politicial instability throughout Europe and contributed to, among many other consequences, Brexit”.
The migration wave did not lead to any political instability throughout Europe, and the very idea of a “refugee crisis” is propaganda, like that, more far-right, of an “invasion” of Europe by migrants. It is like the story of the Lion and the Lamb. At most, there were just under a million refugees arriving in Europe in 2016, that is a large number but not so large Europe could have not absorbed them easily, were they resettled equally through the various European countries. Europe estimated population is currently 747,557,676, from a rapid google search. Instead of resettling the refugees, they used the so called “refugee crisis” to promote racism and xenophobia, and close their borders further, with the erection of more walls and more blatant violations of human rights and national and international laws.
Well, you won’t expect the same imperialists who bombed their countires into rubble and killed their people by the millions to welcome them with open arms, after making them refugees. Instead of resettling the refugees, they let them accumulate in places like Lampedusa, the Greek islands, Calais. In 2016 there were close to 20.000 refugees in a huges shanty town in Calais, many thousands in Dunkirk too but the main spectacle was Calais, with the worst of the media circus constantly present, enough to worry the ordinary Englishman and prompt him to vote for Brexit.
I am a Calais activist for the past 10 years,and one of the guys who set up the UK No Borders network in 2005, now defunct, and regular correspondent on migration for Freedom News.
“It is only now making a start at adding English care home deaths to the official statistics (Scotland has for weeks).”
It doesn’t appear to be doing much about it though, 50% of CV deaths in Scotland are in care homes and Scotland lags behind even England’s poor performance when it comes to testing. Health is a devolved responsibility; if the Scottish government have screwed up here it’s not the devolution which is at fault.
My cousin holds a senior nursing position in Gloucestershire and says she’s relieved her parents are no longer alive to (possibly) suffer the things she’s witnessed. Although not in the health sector I’m a key worker and have had to go to work regardless. I won’t say as normal as it’s anything but. Everybody who can work from home is and a lot of things like training and non-essential maintenance have been put on hold.
I get the impression that a lot of people haven’t taken the lockdown seriously enough. We’ll never really know if how well it worked but my biggest fear is a second wave. Many pandemics, such as the 1918 Spanish ‘Flu or the Black Death, have appeared to be on the decline only to return in an even more virulent form.
“Health is a devolved responsibility; if the Scottish government have screwed up here it’s not the devolution which is at fault.”
Kempe.
Screwing it up by rigorously following what England’s doing, the question must be why Sturgeon did this, this pandemic has clearly shown that health, although devolved to Holyrood, can be overridden by Westminster when it wants to, exposing devolution for the farce that it really is.
As Nicola herself said a virus knows no borders; it was a conscious decision by the Scottish Government to act in unison with the rest of the UK although she’s already said that Scotland will start easing lockdown before England if the conditions are right. Nobody’s been overridden.
“As Nicola herself said a virus knows no borders;”
My how times have changed, a hint of defence of Sturgeon from you as I see her for what she really is now.
As for borders, even if she deviated from Londons mantra, she still couldnt close the border, nor could she stop flights entering the UK without testing passangers for the virus. Thousands of unchecked folk for at least the last six weeks have entered the UK, some surely carrying the virus, but London waited until two days ago to start testing those passangers.
I’m not in any way defending Sturgeon by pointing out the utter incompetence of the Tory government on their handling of this virus, on the contrary, it exposes just how much of puppet she is, and of just what a farce devolution is as well.
>>I do support lockdown
The global economic system is crashing. Millions have lost their jobs, many permanently, and won’t be paying their rent or mortgage bills for much longer, many millions more will soon start dying from starvation and disease, throughout the world.
Sure, a few thousand people will die from virus, is this better than millions from starvation? We all need to get back to work now, before it is too late to save the economy.
MO1
true, the Economy of a lot of the World will be crashing, one of the best to come out of this will be South Korea, they really seemed to have gripped the virus by the windpipe, as has China( apparently) but China is moving along nicely to be the new World Super Power.
In any crisis there is but one question.
cui bono?
The worse outcomes will be countries like the U.K./Belgium with large crammed together populations, countries which can’t even grow 50% of the food they need,
countries which have given up with basic production, given up with manufacture, countries which have relied on globalisation.
We will all have to learn to be more insular, to restrict any growth in population, make our own stuff, in actuality, to get real.
“Sure, a few thousand people will die from virus, is this better than millions from starvation? We all need to get back to work now, before it is too late to save the economy.”
Save it for whom? The globalists, the multi-nationals, GDP and Growth figures don’t actually mean much to the average Joe and Jill on the streets. The capitalist system in its present form is badly flawed when the likes of Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and other super rich folk can use public funds to furlough their employees.
Yes folk would like to get back to work to earn a crust to keep their families, that’s only natural, but it won’t be the multi-nationals or the globalists that end up footing the bill for this pandemic, no it will be the taxpayer who’ll be paying it off, and his offspring, for decades to come bit by bit, as prices rise and living standards drop.
Nor will Westminster politicians be out of pocket, having had a £2,500 pounds rise a few months ago and a £10,000 bonus supposedly to work from home at the start of this month.
They won’t suffer no matter how poorly they’ve acted on this pandemic, and they’ve been abysmal, even ignoring Exercise Cygnus in 2016, and defunding the NHS for decades too boot.
This is the dilemma for this particular type of right wing government.
Do they want to get children back to school because they are getting behind with their education or is it to ‘ free up’ the mothers ( mainly ) and some fathers to get back to being exploited (sorry ) work?
The problem is that what work would they be going back to?
Part Time workers are part time usually due to the employer not being that big ( except say Tescos’ etc) and my guess is that the smaller firms who were around before the outbreak will not be there in the future.
This government is caught on a hook of it’s own making due to greed and exceptionalism and ironically despite being more interested in ” Getting Brexit Done ” than saving lives when they mett for Trade negotiations there will not be much trade to negotiate about.
Johnson – ” Shall we discuss Aircraft Licence landing rights? ”
Barnier- ” No aircraft are moving at the moment – next point please ”
There will be nothing to discuss as trade will have plummeted worldwide and there is possibility that Trump could pull the US out of the WTO.
Where’s the UK’s fall back position then?
RoS – you seem to be very unhappy with the current economic set up, me too, but if you think it is better to not have one at all, be careful what you wish for.
“Nearly half of the world’s workforce is at risk of losing their incomes as the pandemic continues to disrupt lives and economies around the globe, a U.N. agency warned.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/live-updates-as-quarantine-fatigue-spreads-fauci-says-second-wave-of-coronavirus-is-inevitable/ar-BB13lEuR?li=BBn
British Airways just announced 12,000 redundancies (out of 42,000). I doubt this will be the last of BA redundancies. All other airlines are likely to follow suit. All other travel companies will follow suit. Many travel companies are going to bankrupt. Many small companies will go out of business. With so many people losing their jobs, and in the case of BA, well paid jobs, we should expect a property crash. Doesn’t bother me personally, but the many who find themselves in negative equity won’t be happy.
Nigeria’s population was 45 M in 1960, it is now just over 200M. Oil and oil products account for over 90% of the value of its exports. Oil prices were about $50/barrel pre-crisis, now about $20/barrel and heading for 0$/barrel. The govt coffers will soon be empty. Nigeria is also a large importer of wheat. Russia, for example, has just announced it is no longer allowing wheat exports for the rest of this year. All this spells potential famine on a very large scale. The same for all other countries where oil is their main or only source of income – quite a few.
UK offshore oil producers need something like $50/barrel to make a profit. Now about $20/barrel and headed for zero. Oil and Gas UK have just warned of potential 30,000 job losses, of which the vast majority will be in Scotland and especially in and around Aberdeen.
Even if the UK govt said tomorrow ‘back to work everyone’ , things would not return to normal. The govt along with their cronies in the mass media, as Craig points out, have scared everyone into not wanting to leave their homes. How about this for a fear-mongering headline (BBC, this morning): Coronavirus: The lives lost in a single day
So far, the virus has killed just over 200,000 people globally. About 120,000,000 die every year from other causes.
Due to the lockdowns, we have set ourselves up for severe economic hardships, and probably famines.
We won’t have to wait long to find out, things are deteriorating so quickly.
“Where I was wrong, was in not realising that what is different about this disease from a flu is that it is really very, very contagious. ”
Craig do you have a link to support this statement. ?
grafter,
businessinsider refers to WHO in this article
An average coronavirus patient infects at least 2 others. To end the pandemic, that crucial metric needs to drop below 1 — here’s how we get there.
Yes please, something to back this up. All the best Craig.
Strange attitude to COVID, perhaps you dont care but you might pass on the virus to someone who actually does and die from it.
It’s so ‘hot topic’ for me just now!
I see a real danger in the fact that many people don’t want to move up their usual way of life for the safety of others. It seems to them that the risk of probable someone’s death is exaggerated. And most importantly, it seems to them that they are obliged to obey only the written law, because there is no punishment for heartlessness or stupidity.
I will show you by my example: a small town in which my elderly parents live. One confirmed covid case. The city hospital has been turned into quarantinned space for the virus. Regular patients are re-directed to the hospital in a neighboring village.
A week ago, an infected person visited that village hospital, so, it was also quarantined.
On Monday, an ambulance took my dad with a kidney pain. He was hospitalized in another town. Neither I, nor mom can visit him and support him or bring him phone (he forgot to take his, when ambulanced). We have no right to even quit our towns. Hospital won’t take things from outside.
We can only pray that no one will infect him while he is recovering from surgery.
If the worst happens, those people who brought virus to that small towns, those who could not resist their travel desire, they will not feel guilty. They will justify themselves with a thousand of excuses, all of which sound alike ” wasn’t prohibited, so why should I abstain?”.
Tatyana, I hope your dad, and your mother are okay, as you say for many the virus is a hot topic, as they try and protect their loved ones hoping that nothing bad happens to them.
I saw on RT news that the virus is gaining ground in Russia, as it has around the world, my best wishes go to you and your family keep safe.
Thank you, RoS. It seems Russia has just begun to climb a steep exponent.
I obey the quarantine order, because it’s aimed at precautions. We absorbed the need for extra caution when our grandfathers told us about the WW2.
It may be an excessive precaution, but mine obeying the rule maybe vital for others. For me it is enough big reason to obey quarantine.
Please, folks, be kind-hearted people, this is not the case when civil rights and freedoms need to be actively defended. This is just a very primitive biological threat. It comes from nature, not from government.
Hope your dad is well cared for and you get to see him soon Tatyana, these times are made up of hurdles and hoops to jump through, just to get from A to B.
Tatyana
Sorry to hear about your dad, I hope everything works out fine.
I fully agree with you. This is special times and we must act together, not giving up because it might be fatal for someone.
Absolutely. I give up a tiny bit of my freedom for your mother to live. And you give up a tiny bit of your freedom for my children to have a better chance.
And later, we can again argue about the advantages of our respective economic or political formations, light and dark spots in the history, authority of our leaders, etc etc.
Later, when life is normal again, when youngers go outside to look for partners, when olders go outside to enjoy the pleasures of earthy beauty, then we can argue on politics again.
I just hate people like Pompeo use the disaster to fan enmity while everyone is scared with virus. Mrs Carmody Pompeo.
I’m not convinced that the lockdown is right.
I can’t help noticing that Sweden seems to be doing pretty well without it, and 75% of worldwide deaths have been in Spain, Italy, France, UK, and USA The ones with the strictest measures.
Japan with no lockdown has a few hundred deaths. Vietnam, which shares a land border with China, no deaths.
Something doesn’t sound right to me.
Oxford University’s ‘Corona Virus Government Response Tracker’ team have plotted deaths worldwide against ‘stringency’ of lockdown measures and seem to show that stricter lockdown measures are associated with an increased spread of the virus:
https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/coronavirus-government-response-tracker
Of course, a thousand counter arguments will be instantly invoked. Who am I to adjudicate? I have no expertise.
But I note that only one side of the debate is being had in the Media. Legions of dissenting expert voices are simply ignored.
Or, as I see from further up the thread, are called ‘Deniers’. (I wondered how long it would be before that word came out.)
There is an urgent need for a debate that simply hasn’t been had.
The argument is always framed such that those who do not agree, or who are not convinced by the lockdown, are accused of putting the economy over lives. In truth, it is a case of lives lost now to the virus and the unquantifiable number of lives lost now from other sources, and from the trashed economy further down the line.
Someone said in the Guardian recently that there were two types of people in this country now. Those with gardens and those without.
I suspect that unintentionally this points to how easy or difficult you find it to agree with the lockdown. Those in nice houses, drinking their Sauvignon Blanc and finally getting round to reading Tolstoi, & financially secure, yes they find it easy to clap every Thursday.
I know plenty of them and they seem to regard it as a dreamy sort of interlude before we return to normal. But it seems to me ‘normal’ has gone for ever. Thousands of small businesses will not now be reopening.
I suspect support for the lockdown is a lot less certain among the hundreds of sacked waiters and bar staff now sleeping rough on the streets of London, sleeping rough for the first time in their lives at the very worst time to be doing it.
Or the people crammed into tiny rooms in this photo essay. https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/27/2-metres-life-under-lockdown/
Or those countless thousands of small business owners whose livelihoods have been irrevocably trashed. And with all those businesses dead, where will the revenue come to fund the NHS which this is all supposed to protect?
Agree or disagree by all means, but can anyone seriously deny that this debate should have been had?
And all this is to say nothing of something else very precious that cannot be quantified: the cost of the freedom that the people of Britain, and elsewhere, have been astonishingly happy to surrender. Ironically, many of them invoking the spirit of World War II, when so many people laid down their lives to secure these same freedoms.
Trouble is, we won’t get the freedom back undamaged. Irrespective of where you stand on this issue, the plain fact is we have shown those who rule us how easy it is to put us under house arrest. It’s a terrible precedent. Does anyone think this will be the last time it happens? As readers of this blog, we all know what they are like, we saw how the deep state behaved with respect to the Skripals, and Alex Salmond and now Craig himself. Think about that.
And let’s not forget the origin of the phrase ‘lockdown’. From the US prison system whereby prisoners are locked in their cells until they learn who’s boss.
Who chose that?
The fact is the lockdown costs rather than saves lives. The restrictions make no medical sense (and ignored by those making them) and are there to outlaw gatherings/protests to the lockdown under the guise of protecting the public.
Dave
Why would it cost more though? Lockdown for a certain time compared to let the disease spread uncontrollably?
Here’s the debate, complete with epidemic simulators you can adjust yourself:
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
It’s a bit out of date, March 19, and CoVID-19 moves fast. To see how the spread has been modelled, see below. I’ve given you the link for Sweden because they’re not actually doing that well, but other European countries are included in the drop-down at the top of the page:
https://mrc-ide.github.io/covid19estimates/#/details/Sweden
– “stricter lockdown measures are associated with an increased spread of the virus”
The key to understanding covid-19 is timing. It spreads extremely fast because it’s a brand new virus, no one’s immune system has seen anything like it, nearly the entire global population is immunologically naive.
Absolutely, we should have had this debate, starting back in January, but unfortunately, predictably, the UK corporate media treated covid-19 as SEP, Someone Else’s Problem, something happening to foreigners, until people actually started dying in the UK. Not all governments were as stupid as ours though, and a few prepared. They were ready when covid-19 arrived. They did testing and contact tracing, and consequently they have been able to impose lighter restrictions. They know where the infections are and who has it, so they don’t need to lock everyone down so hard. They had acquired personal protective equipment so that key workers didn’t catch it and pass it on.
The correlation you cite is effect rather than cause. In unprepared countries infections and deaths soared, causing governments to react with stricter measures. But due to covid-19’s very rapid infection rate you have to look closely at the growth rate and death rates, at daily scale, and correlate that to the measures imposed.
I think the word “lockdown” was initially chosen because of measures taken in Wuhan. In many cases apartment building doors were being welded shut. Quarantine teams of four in hazmat suits were knocking on doors, taking people’s temperature and dragging them off to quarantine, not even asking if they’d come willingly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycrqXJYf1SU
Time for a bit of black humor.
Currently the death toll in Holland is 4711.
Is Covid-19 trying to tell us something?
After all — baby wipes neutralized Novichok.
we have many jokes now on the Novichok story 🙂
– Holmes, why do you think Theresa May was involved in the Salisbury crime?
– It’s very simple, Watson. Several victims. Only the real killer could know that the object was Sergei Skripal.
Hi Craig
I don’t support lockdown, having listened in particular to Professor Knut Wittkowski. His point is that lockdown is allowing the virus to remain in circulation for much longer than if we had let it spread and be defeated as a normal virus, and theoretically to infect more people that way.
He makes a particular case that it is unfair to deny children the chance to develop a resistance.
I am a hospital nurse, still practising at very reduced hours at the age of 69. I can support this argument inasmuch as my experience and that of colleagues in my location is that both the extra provided resources for treating Covid, and existing non Covid resources, eg A&E etc, are markedly underused so far.
And of course the ONS statistics make it very obvious that deaths from totally non Covid causes have also risen dramatically the last few weeks with absolutely no known cause, resulting in very reasonable speculation that it is due both to hospitals cutting non Covid related services and lay person fear of catching Covid from a hospital visit. In other words, the lockdown.
I am very aware of the fear factor. Maybe due to my own foolishness I do not feel it. I hope this doesn’t sound insensitive. I am only interested in arguments that state the lockdown is not helping anyone. There are plenty for me to read and they take up a lot of time!
Best wishes
@Ben – “the ONS statistics make it very obvious that deaths from totally non Covid causes have also risen dramatically the last few weeks with absolutely no known cause, resulting in very reasonable speculation that it is due both to hospitals cutting non Covid related services and lay person fear of catching Covid from a hospital visit. In other words, the lockdown.”
Have you got a link covering stats for deaths from totally non-Covid causes?
(But hospitals have always been places where a lot of people catch pneumonia, often for elderly people fatal.)
And if I may ask another question, what effects have the following provisions of the Coronavirus Act had where you work:
* the provision for the indemnification of medics etc. in the event that they breach their duty of care and thereby cause a death, in the course of Covid-19-related work (sections 11-13);
* removal of the requirement for a confirmatory medical certificate before a cremation (section 19)?
Yeah, I too have had multiple near-death experiences during my time in the Middle East, including waking up in the hospital in Jordan after my colleagues thought I’d died.
In a sense, you’re right, the coronavirus is bringing back to Britain what we’ve inflicted on others. We thought it was pain-free to deliver death and destruction on the Middle East. It is not the case.
What utter garbage. The only people who are suffering in the UK are newly unemployed workers in the service economy – people like waiters, cleaners, cafe and restaurant owners shop workers etc etc People like this had less than nothing to do with either the formation or the execution of foreign policy.
The people that did these things are still receiving government salaries and government pensions. The people that directed their activities have just been gifted several $trillion of free money.
It is just as pain free to bomb the foreign man as it is to economically destroy the mass of the citizenry in the host country. Meanwhile lets all impale ourselves on our own virtue to focusing all attention on already seriously ill people dying of coronavirus. Fuck the serf class – hey they were probably all racist and so deserve to die of starvation.
Heavy competition with Joseph Stalin makes another wrong even worse?
The ME is a cultural sink and there is nothing you can do about changing its complexion. Leave them be.
You will only destroy yourself.
Good article CM and I wish you well in your legal defence.
I would like to reiterate a point I made earlier, with some additional information.
The UK is in the process of destroying its economy with an obsessive and completely unnecessary lockdown. And just for good measure, it’s squandering time, energy, money and resource on pointless “testing”.
China has control of the epidemic. It is not in the process of destroying its economy. There are many sensible precautions in place, but a “lockdown” is not one of them. Shops, malls, supermarkets, restaurants, even hairdressers are open. They are much less busy than normal, but they are open. And the elderly are not in cages. Anybody who is fit enough to go shopping or take a walk in the park can do so, whenever they want, for as long as they want. Nobody is being hounded by officious plods, or being denounced by their neighbours.
The Chinese people achieved this themselves – not the government – by the simple expedient of all wearing masks when they go outside. In a reply to one of my earlier posts Tom Welsh cited an “expert” who claims that a study has shown that masks don’t work. This so-called expert’s claim is idiotic nonsense, and I have refuted it in detail above. I’m not going to bore readers by repeating myself.
The fundamental difference between China and the UK is that everbody wears a mask in China, and nobody wears a mask in the UK. The UK has had somewhere between 25,000 and 40,000 deaths attributable to COVID-19. On a pro-rata basis China would have had as many as one million. While their 5000 may be an underestimate, I doubt if even the most enthusiastic consumer of CIA-funded propaganda would try to pretend that it’s really a million.
If the UK would focus on providing citizens with a PP2 or even just a cotton mask, and make people wear them when they go outside, the epidemic would be under control in two weeks. There would be no need to destroy the economy with a pointless lockdown, and there would be no need to set and then fail to achieve targets for huge numbers of pointless tests (which work really well or not at all depending on who you ask).
China had a lockdown, a very brutal one, at least in Wuhan, and presumably all over the country, judging from the absence of traffic fumes recorded by satellites. China struck covid-19 hard with the ‘hammer’, which has permitted it to move on to the ‘dance’:
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
Once numbers are low enough, detection, testing, contact tracing and quarantine can be applied in place of lockdown, and this is what China has been doing – temperature testing in public places, and a compulsory smartphone app identifying everyone as red, amber or green for covid-19.
Evidence of China’s lockdown: satellite data:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146362/airborne-nitrogen-dioxide-plummets-over-china
Documentary from within Wuhan’s lockdown, including videos made on people’s phones, apartment blocks being welded shut, forced quarantine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycrqXJYf1SU
Is there an element of “your old mum died for democracy” in the British propaganda? Or maybe “your old mum died for queen and country, not like that despotic weldy-weldy stuff they have in China”?
China had a lockdown, a very brutal one, at least in Wuhan…
It’s true. They did have a strict (or “very brutal”, if you like it better) lockdown in Wuhan. That made sense because by the time the nature of the virus was confirmed it had been circulating in Wuhan for a month, and they didnt then know how contagious it would be or the level of morbidity.
You’re wrong to “presume” they had a lockdown in the rest of the country. They didn’t. They had a 14-day quarantine for people who had travelled, which obviously after Chinese New Year affected a huge number of people and businesses. There were different levels of emergency measures to be implemented, and city and county governments made the decision based on the situation in their locality. They made sure essential serrvices were maintained, and tried to get the rest of the country back to work as soon as possible.
I have a pass card for entry to my apartment complex and there is an instant temperature check when I enter. I also have the mobile phone health status app which I need to enter my office, many public buildings, and some malls. Smaller restaurants tend to have a bottle of hand sanitiser at the entrance.
I suppose these are sensible precautions, but the risk of infection is now minimal as there are effectively zero cases of domestic origin, and the inbound infections are being picked up durng quarantine. Some companies and organisations are arranging tests for their staff, which are picking up asymptomatic cases.
In Wuhan when they reinstated public transport they implemented full tracking, using individual QR codes on buses and metro carriages, which you have to scan when you board. So if you turn out to be infected they can identify everybody who came into contact with you on public transport. I doubt if the UK is organisationally and technologically capable of doing that.
Stonky, thank you very much for this information. I find it convincing, and it brings me hope – covid-19 can be managed and contained.
And Stonky, in your original, April 30 00: comment you described the UK lockdown as unnecessary. It’s not:
https://mrc-ide.github.io/covid19estimates/#/details/United_Kingdom
but it does appear very clumsy compared with China’s measures.
My link above shows reduction in covid-19’s reproduction number Rt for different measures applied. Masks don’t appear on that assessment. From what you’re saying, they should.
Dave
April 29, 2020 at 17:03
“Very well put Craig, albeit the low mortality rate…”
[we don’t know the mortality rate yet Dave]
“…means the lockdown makes no medical sense…”
[are you a medic Dave?]
“…as herd immunity to a mild virus is soon achieved…”
[Sars-CoV-2 is not a “mild virus”]
“…and you avoid the excess non-corona deaths due to the lockdown…”
[Do you have any evidence of excess deaths due to the lockdown Dave?”]
“…wrongly focusing resources on the healthy rather than the vulnerable.”
[The NHS has focused resources on the extremely ill victims of Covid-19, some of them young and healthy. The point of “lockdown is to slow the spread of the pandemic to protect the vulnerable. Fit and healthy people with the disease will infect others that they come into contact with, at work; in the pubs and elsewhere. This is not seasonal Flu.]