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Various commenters whom I describe as conspiracy theorists have consistently and repeatedly insisted that the global pandemic is either highly exaggerated or a complete hoax, globally orchestrated for the purposes of removing civil liberties, instilling fear, deliberately crashing the economy, instigating mass vaccination, and conditioning subservience to authority through the wearing of masks. I hope this summarises your positions fairly.
The English government’s decision to end all social restrictions next week seems to diverge from the behaviour of most other governments; much of Europe, for instance, is in the process of locking down again as infection rates soar. My explanation is that Johnson’s government is so arrogant as to be delusional, and even more scientifically illiterate than the ruling classes globally tend to be.
But, denialists and conspiracy theorists, I’d be interested to know what your explanations are. Are Johnson’s Tories actually heroes defying the global conspiracy, despite their wanton corruption that they no longer even bother to hide? What has brought about their change of heart? Has the global plot been abandoned due to your diligent efforts, and if so, why only by Westminster?
The test of theory is its power to explain and predict. If the pandemic is indeed a hoax, the English government’s decision will presumably reveal it. Will their rebellion go unpunished by the global conspiracy? Or, if it is a new part of the plot, how does it fit and what should we expect next? Why were the curtailments of civil liberties not permanent?
I did my own research and now I’m just asking questions, so I hope you approve 🙂
They are saying what people want to hear for popularity despite the previous u-turns. They must have calculated that it’s advantageous even if they have to do another u-turn which is more than likely to be required. Cynicism at it’s worst. Despite all the numerous mistakes more than one of my own family still have a “soft spot” for Boris. It defies reason. I guess we get the leaders we deserve.
“They are saying what people want to hear for popularity despite the previous u-turns.”
They are also doing what they always believed in: Herd immunity, but now boosted by the vaccine. Also Boris has not suffered any loss of popularity by saying ‘let the bodies pile high…’ and this seems to have given him the go ahead to do just that.
It always was Herd Immunity and let the devil take the hindmost.
Now as SA says many have been vaccinated – twice and yet thrice by October.There has to come a time when you have to choose freedom, perhaps Freedom is next week?
MN Although many have been vaccinated we know that vaccine does not stop fully vaccinated people getting infected or dying, but there will still be an increase in hospital admission, an increase of those off sick and self-isolating and also a rise in deaths. Moreover there will be more cases of long covid. The West lost its chance to stamp out the virus when the Chinese did it, now it is too late. The decision is a sort of admission of defeat without actually saying so but pretending to be the victors.
If you look at how life pans out in poor countries, they just have to get on with it.
That is how life works for all life, not just human life.
except in rich countries in very, very modern times.
I would bet that most people who have died in Europe of or more likely with covid, were at best a few years from death.
You can’t keep everyone in the World alive until they get to one hundred.
My brother died at 52, I am 70 and still here, you just have to accept that at some point everyone is going to die.
Maybe in Europe we prolong the life of people with multiple things wrong with them for too long?It really is not a valid argument at all. The life expectancy has increased over the years. Evolutionarily it is not very useful to maintain anyone beyond the reproductive age where they can maintain the species. But we have gone beyond just survival of the fittest. Covid does also kill younger people and also younger people get very ill with it and there is also long covid. There is also the possibility that a virus that keeps mutating can become more deadly and resistant to vaccines. Simplifying the problem to mean only prolonged survival for older people is a serious oversimplification.
Thanks for your replies, though really I was hoping to hear from some proper conspiracy theorists.
The main freedom arriving on “freedom day” is freedom for the virus – freedom to mutate and adapt. I for one don’t want to catch this infection. It can do ten years worth of damage to your heart, ten years to your immune system. A million people in the UK have reported long term effects. The deaths are bad enough; one paper estimated five years lost on average, so with about 130,000 dead that’s 650 thousand years of human experience wiped out – our elders, our most experienced minds. But the attrition is worse; even just the attrition we’ve already seen, we don’t even know what it might do to people over the next ten years or whatever.
There’s more to covid than just deaths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiotensin-converting_enzyme_2
First they let it kill the old people, now they’re letting it run through the kids. I’m furious. The longer it goes on the more damage it does. I keep seeing mention of “an exit wave”. That’s an assumption.
Clark
The conspiracists will have an easy and convincing answer for you. It is through the action of brave warriors like Piers Corbyn, Yeadon and others that the governement was forced to capitulate on its plan to curb our freedoms and admit that the virus is a hoax and that lockdown does nothing but stifle the economy. Also having achieved the aim of mass vaccination and pumping money into big pharma, they have achieved part of thier aim, the rest will come slowly.
But seriously though, this is a very alarming situation:
‘If you are going to train a virus to escape vaccine-induced immunity, you would do exactly what they’re doing’
And here is another article from the Independent through MSN to bypass the paywall:
“Boris Johnson’s plan? Bring on the stupidity and hope for the best.”There is no one in their right mind who would support this government’s action, based on ideology alone and forced by the extreme right of the Tories many of whom verge on being covid deniers because it interferes with their making money, except when they are getting huge payments for supplying useless PPI. In fact I have always seen a much stronger link between the CTs and the extreme right than with the left.
AS to J, having started another thread, he has disappeared. It would be kinda nice if we can here some of his thoughts, and also those of others.Well yesterday the country posting the most infections of covid was Spain. 43,960 new infections in a single day, more even than India, U.K. was close behind.
Apparently we are into our third wave, Spain seems to have had more waves?But there is good news, very few deaths.
I would guess, that now, most of Europe will go for herd immunity, they do not want to be left behind by the gravy train.Clark: I’ve been wondering for some time how the denialists / conspiracy nuts would explain away the keenness of governments – particularly ours – to lift restrictions, when apparently they were ALL in on it to tie us down with restrictions forever.
What happened to the Master Plan, when it was all going so well?
Trouble is, denialists don’t tend to be bound by the truth. So they can always make something up to explain whatever has just happened or has come to light – even if they’re not so great at predicting what _will_ happen. And when they predict something and it _doesn’t_ happen, they conveniently ignore that bit and will never speak of it again.
So denialists can simply claim that this was all a test run, for the Real Thing which will happen at some definite point in the future. Or that there were enough brave people out there who rumbled the plot, so it had to be called off. Or that everyone was waking up to the fact that nobody had really died from Covid! No – it’s all fake, and everyone was finally listening to them and the truth was becoming too obvious.
SA has a couple of good answers above too. But you’ll never, ever hear a conspiracy nut/ denialist admit that, given the evidence we can all see now, they were wrong. Never. Never ever. In fairness – if they did, they wouldn’t be denialists, would they?
Michael norton, I expect that when the dust eventually settles, it will be realised that the gravy train was actually the one going in the opposite direction. China’s doing alright.
Has anyone told the virus that this one is the “exit” wave, and will it cooperate?
Regarding ET and SA’s earlier remarks about Johnson and his government, I’m not sure they’re as popular as they maybe seem. Remember how completely wrong the opinion polls were in the 2017 UK general election. Labour has lost a lot of supporters because of Starmer which makes Johnson look more popular by percentages, but very few of those will have transferred their support to Johnson.
Johnson and his government’s apparent popularity may be mostly mere illusion projected by the corporate “news” media – though that wouldn’t stop Johnson believing it, no more than it did Theresa May in 2017.
Clark
Johnson may not be popular but Starmer doesn’t seem to be offering a viable alternative and doesn’t look like a PM in waiting, more like a hapless village lad caught in the limelight. Yes of course about opinion polls but trends and long term projections and so on all indicate that there is no opposition to the Tories. Look at this:
https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/As the Amersham by election showed, the Tory popularity can be fragile if there is an alternative.
SA, that’s voting intention rather than Johnson’s popularity. The way the Westminster system forces us to choose our votes, I’d say that voting intention consists of a large chunk of “least unpopular” supplementing a foundation of habitual / tribal single-party voters.
OK Clark, the net result is the Tories get elected with vast majorities.
I do not know why you suggest China is doing alright.
China claim to have had less than one hundred thousand cases of covid but that was the early type, Delta, the Indian covid will be coming their way shortly, Sinovac is next to useless.SA, politics is fucked and has been for decades; all that’s left is civil disobedience, refusal to cooperate, and taking responsibility for ourselves, building community with self-motivated consensus-building and decision-making. Genuine government by consent.
The covid crisis is merely illuminating our collective miasma. In retrospect it’s obvious that politics is dysfunctional and entirely unfit for purpose, from four decades of denial and inaction about global heating. Eventually it has taken the icecaps melting away to even begin the process of waking up.
Much like the West has been doing,
China is now heating and eating and poisoning and infecting the the World.
More coal fired plants than the rest of the World combined at one time they were building more than two new coal fired plants a week. They are buying up vast tracks of the World to grow food for China.
They are buying up vast tracks of the World to strip timber.
They are buying up vast tracks of the World to strip minerals.
Almost everything they do is not sustainable, maybe apart from breeding pandas.Michael norton, I expect China to cope with Delta because they have the right social restriction policies; take a look at their graph:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/#graph-cases-daily
No problem for over a year and three months. Everything is open, and ordinary people are free to go about their business. BUT, as soon as even a handful of tests come back positive, they instantly lock down that city, thoroughly test everyone, get everyone infected into quarantine (no swanky “self isolation” in China) – and this enables them to lift those restrictions in under two weeks.
Australia saw how well China’s policy works and adopted it around last August; take a look at their graph:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/#graph-cases-daily
Barely a problem since September; 44 was highest positive tests on a single day right through until two weeks ago. It’s picked up a bit lately, but I looked into that – essentially the entire increase is in the Australian Territory of New South Wales:
https://www.endcoronavirus.org/green-zone-rankings#aus
The territories have separate governments, and New South Wales recently changed policy to making social restrictions voluntary.
China is treating vaccines as a secondary line of defence. Immediate, strong lockdowns with travel restrictions and state support for those infected are their primary weapons against the virus – and consequentially, the lockdowns can be local and very short term; people are free and everything is open the vast majority of the time. By stamping out covid as soon as it rears its head, its effect upon economy and population are minimised.
Delta might change that, and I’m keeping an eye on the figures, but I suspect it will work very well. Of course, if a strongly vaccine-resistant strain arises, it’s the only policy that will work.
Yep, China are following the “developed” world’s example.
To be fair, China is doing it slightly better. For instance, they have by far the fastest deployment of wind and solar electricity generation. The expansion of coal is more for smelting than for electricity, and that goes against central government policy – big place, China, and local authority often prevails over the national government.
And it must be remembered that much of China’s emissions are from industry for export – China is the manufacturing hub of the world, so although the emissions occur in China, the actual consumption and the money to pay for it are Western.
But no, it’s not remotely sustainable. China is an offender along with all the other major governments – just somewhat less so, particularly on a per-capita reckoning.
Anyway, I’m not interested in a “good countries versus bad countries” perspective. Whatever China’s environmental and human rights shortcomings, their handling of covid is an example the rest of the world would do well to follow.
Apparently in the U.K. now one in every 95 people currently have the virus, with over half a million NHS pinged. Food producers are running out of workers.
I am not sure what Freedom Day is really going to do for us, it seems like less freedom is coming our way. Matt Handcock got out in the nick of time.
