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Dstl Porton Down, were right bang in the center, when The Skripal poisoning was”happening”, only one death.
Yet barely a word from Dstl with covid-19.Maybe the largest pandemic with millions dead is not of interest to Dstl?
Japan seems to be spiking quite well, 15,000 plus a day
I wonder if the olympics is playing any part?Can someone help? I made a post in a thread sometime back about Yeadon after doing some digging and I cannot find it again. It’s hard to search this site for posts one has previously made. Can someone point me back to it?
Tis ok, I found it 😀 having read through 20+ pages of a thread. What happened to Dave and Steph? I hope you guys are ok. If Dave is who we thought he might be congrats on your re-election.
So each day there are more covid positive cases, more persons in critical care and more deaths in Japan.
The IOC have claimed that the spike in covid in Japan is nothing to do with the Olympics.
Some perspective. It’s difficult to take the IOC seriously when they make such a claim. Equally, it can never be proven that the games did have an effect. So they’ll get away with such a statement.-
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OK, that post didn’t work out. Click on the x-axis and it will move to the recent figures and choose what countries you want.
The government of France is pressing ahead with the extension of an already-existing health pass to cafés, restaurants and intercity travel on Monday, 09/08/2021, despite four weekends of angry protests that saw almost a quarter of a million rally nationwide on Saturday.
Not actually quite sure why people in France are always so angry?
There is a pandemic.
Free vaccines are being offered.
Get your covid jabs, then get on with life.
You can vote Macron out next year but meanwhile get your jabs.Pharmaceutical firms rake in billions with Covid jabs……….
“BioNTech reported on Tuesday revenues of $7.3 billion euros in the first half. Unlike its larger partner, the company’s only product on sale is the coronavirus vaccine.”
Note, it’s revenue not profit as are all the other figures quoted in this piece. However, I’ll bet a significant percentage is profit.
Iran is in its fourth covid wave.
They have huge numbers in critical care and huge numbers of daily new cases.
I thought they were going to rely on China and Russia for vaccines.
It has been said that the vaccines from China are not very useful.
Russia seems to be struggling to make enough, thereby not exporting enough.Although President Macron is clamping down on the civil liberties of French people, their numbers in critical care continue to escalate.
Their overseas countries are also not doing too well.
France’s overseas territory of Guadeloupe is to return to lockdown for at least three weeks because of a “catastrophic” surge in Covid cases, officials announced Monday.
https://www.france24.com/en/france/The U.S.A. State Department has advised all Americans to avoid all travel to France over rising coronavirus cases in the country.
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210810-us-warns-citizens-against-travel-to-france-over-covid-19-concerns
France is now in to a fourth wave of covid-19. The State Department issued a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory for France on Monday, based on a parallel warning from the US Centers for Disease Control, the country’s top medical body.What strikes me as peculiar, we had France on a watch list, yet a few days ago we took France off our watch list.
Is this joined-up-thinking?
“France’s overseas territories — left under French rule even after the end of colonialism — are integral parts of the FRENCH territory and give Paris a valued strategic footprint across the planet.”
However, the French Authorities have allowed the covid pandemic to get out of control on most of their overseas lands.
Only the other week Macron was larking about wearing garlands of floweres in French Oceania.The aim of the governments rolling out this measure is to boost vaccinations against COVID-19. The region has been facing a surge of new infections blamed on the more transmissible and more dangerous Delta variant.
But the measure has been met by fierce resistance.
Tens of thousands of people demonstrated across France last weekend, chanting “Liberty!” and describing the measure as “liberticidal”.
https://www.euronews.com/2021/07/27/critics-say-covid-19-vaccine-passes-violate-their-rights-europe-s-courts-may-not-agreeI would say, as far as the covid pandemic, that the government of France is not wining, they do not have most of the people with them, many of their people do not trust their government,they were slow off the mark with covid vaccinations, they have let their overseas lands slip dangerously out of control, with the pandemic.
Comparing cases per milion population USA and France are on an equal footing, rising in both countries but not as high as Spain or UK with UK numbers (Hospital admissions, Ventilated patients and cases) beginning to climb again. Deaths per million are highest in USA with UK just behind. By pretty much all metrics UK is doing worse than any other comparable country except perhaps USA. By that reckoning USA should advise against travel to USA? (and UK)
France’s vaccination rate is still slightly behind UK but they are not far off although they have fewer fully vaccinated and more partially vaccinated. The difference is 3%. Almost everywhere rolled out their vaccinations slower than UK because of availability. That situation has changed and UK is no longer the outlier with some countries having better vaccination rates than UK. Canada, Spain and Ireland for instance.
Lets be honest, no country has eliminated it, cases and other metrics are rising pretty much everywhere despite the vaccinations and the two worst performing countries are USA and UK.
The better news is that the deaths, hospitalisations, ventilatted patients numbers are fewer than they were for similar case numbers in the past. Vaccinations appear to be the main reason for this. However it remains a huge concern with the world awaiting a further variant. The end is nowhere near in view imho.
Russia, France, Spain and the U.K. each day post similar covid positive cases.
Spain and France presently have more than twice the number of persons in critical care, as does the U.K.
Quite recently the U.K. was posting very high numbers of covid positive cases.
I think that as the U.K. tests very many more persons, than any other country in Europe, that we must be recording people who have very, very mild symptoms.
The opposite of this coin is that hardly anybody is tested in France, unless they are very sick.
If I am right in my thinking, then France probably has many more cases than they admit to.
In short we are singing from different hymn sheets.Entirely off-topic, but as I started the thread I might get away with it, and we could all use some light relief…
It’s the peak of the Perseid annual meteor shower some time around now; tonight and the next two nights could be good times to take a look, if it isn’t too cloudy. There should be around a hundred per hour, though you can’t see all of those. They all appear to streak away from the same point in the sky, in the constellation of Perseus, but can appear any distance from it in any part of the sky, so the best way to see as many as possible is to choose the darkest spot with as few obstructions of the horizon as you can, and relax on a blanket or a deckchair taking in as much of the sky as you can. Good luck!
Deaths, and the number in basic and critical care, are indeed more consistent indicators of overall infection prevalence than positive test results. But caution is needed because vaccination – with all its variables of which vaccine, how many shots, how far apart and to which vulnerability groups – is decreasing the number of severe cases relative to infections.
But comparing most EU countries / US states etc. is a bit like divination from tea leaves or something; they’re all much of a muchness. There may be differences of a factor of ten at any given moment, but over time this proves insignificant in comparison to the few countries and various islands that are implementing a strategy of elimination. Their infection, care and deaths numbers are all 100 to 1000 times lower, and their people on average have spent a fraction of the time under lockdown.
Too cloudy here to see anything in the skies.
Numbers are rising again, that has to be a worry. Israel, the country that vaccinated earlier and most is having similar rises. I suspect that governments have accepted that it will be endemic and we will have periodic excess covid deaths from now on.
France seems to be getting worse, yesterday the posted in excess of 30,000 new covid positive cases, biggest number for a third of a year. On Moday last their covid-pass came into full use.
What I find strange, is that the United Kingdom has France on a watch list, because of infection rates in the French Overseas lands, then we changed to them no longer being on our watch list. Yet the French themslves describe their Overseas lands as being out of control with covid infections.
France itself has moved up the leader board to take TOP SPOT, yesterday. U.S.A. has moved to put France on their watch list.
In the U.K. we seem to do our damndest to keep the pandemic going?
In one of my interest groups in which I take physical part, lots of the members also volunteer at vaccination places, they report huge numbers of keen young people, getting there before they open to line up for their first covid jab.
contrast this good story with France
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210812-france-urges-better-protection-for-covid-19-vaccination-centres-after-vandalismAccording to the interior ministry, some 22 acts of vandalism against testing and vaccination centres as well as pharmacies have been recorded since July 12 alone. Almost 60 threats have also been recorded.
In mid-July, a vaccination centre in Lans-en-Vercors in southeast France was flooded with a hosepipe, causing damage to equipment. Slogans such as “vaccinations are the new genocide” were found daubed on the walls.
I can not work out why they are so angry?
Michael, I expect it’s caused by the “United Nations depopulation programme” / Agenda 21 conspiracy theory, which is related to the “MMR vaccination causes autism” conspiracy theory, and anti-vax in general.
Basically it promotes the idea that the “world’s elite”, AKA “them”, have been planning to kill the majority of the world’s population, that the Club of Rome set out this plan under the name of Agenda 21 (which is a genuine public document), and that this plot is to be implemented by the United Nations using its supposed stranglehold over science. This nonsense has been festering and propagating for decades. Now, due to the pandemic, it has coalesced with anti-vaccination propaganda, and is leading to mobs vandalising vaccination centres and attempting to invade the headquarters of the BBC (but getting the wrong building).
Humanity seems to be suffering some sort of collective psychosis, especially in the richer nations. I just hope it doesn’t turn into fascism like it did in the 1930s.
People are angry because they’ve been locked down but to no good effect, so it has gone on and on and on, destroying people’s lives and livelihoods.
Half measures.
Lockdown is meant to have a purpose. It’s for getting infections down to low enough numbers that trace-test-quarantine can take over, but to do that it needs to be very thorough. It’s no good just telling people to stay home unless they are also given money to keep their lives going, because people will avoid getting tested so that they can go out and work. I know someone who did that; she was working as a carer visiting old people in their homes. She continued to work even when she developed symptoms, because she needed the money. She convinced herself that she just had a head cold or a mild dose of flu. A few days later a routine test by the care company came back positive, so she went into “self isolation” – except of course that (1) it was too late by then and (2) she lived with other family members so it wasn’t isolation – at no point has the UK government set up quarantine facilities.
Sometimes it’s the employers. I have another friend who was working in a care home kitchen. Kitchen staff were asking the management for time off to self isolate because they were getting symptoms, but against government guidelines the management were sending them for lateral flow tests and insisting that they kept working until a test came back positive, because management couldn’t find interim staff to cover for sick leave. Staff were calling the place a “covid cess pit”. My friend’s job included making up the meal lists; she watched the number of meals drop from sixty to forty as the residents died off. Management had residents locked in their rooms, while the staff infected them with covid. My friend had symptoms for three days before her test came back positive. She was then permitted time off. When she returned to work after her illness, the kitchen chef had been killed by it. He was 61.
This was in the second lockdown, back in January this year. By then, this country had had a year to reorganise to cope with covid, but it hadn’t been done.
Governments have lost the trust of the people through incompetence, slavish adherence to their neoliberal ideology, and years of deception and spin. Their ideologically hobbled, half-hearted lockdowns were doomed to failure by having no quarantine, no kerbside food distribution, and no support for the poorest workers. The failure of the lockdowns has made increasing numbers of people think that there must have been some ulterior motive, so they are turning to conspiracy theory instead, which just makes matters worse.
It’s a colossal tragedy unfolding before our very eyes, but it is nothing compared with what the growing climate and ecological crisis will become unless we learn the lessons of this pandemic.
Of course, governments won’t admit to why they are failing to control covid. Governments never admit to any failure; they bluff and spin in order to protect their chances of re-election.
This of course increases the public’s distrust. All political parties do it, so there is no one to trust. Consequently more and more people turn to conspiracy theory in a desperate effort to make sense of the world.
We desperately need a new consensus of openness and transparency. You can’t fix any problem, nor even vote for an effective solution, if you’re obstructed from understanding the problem in the first place.
Strangely, if you looks at the share of variants in almost all cases in most european countries and USA are all delta variant but France it’s 43% share of positive cases with the alpha variant (p.1/Brazil) being 48%. Does this mean both are spreading or does it mean France is behind the curve in the propagation of delta? As in, they are about to get hit even harder as delta takes over from alpha.
“I just hope it doesn’t turn into fascism like it did in the 1930s.”
I fear we are almost there already.
Below is a quote from Caitlin Johnstone and I apologise to mods for posting the whole quote but I think it speaks volumes.“I might actually end up moving away from using words like “capitalism” and “socialism”, because they have completely different meanings to people from different ideologies. Leftists understand what I mean by those words, but those to the right of me consistently misunderstand what I’m saying because of the way those words are used in their ideological circles. I could just use other words to describe the same stuff I’ve been talking about.
I run into people who think socialism is when the government does something authoritarian, or when the government does anything at all. I’ve been told that capitalism is when people do what they want to do (someone once literally told me hugs are capitalism), and that capitalism is anything that’s good. You can’t get around communication barriers that thick if you want to convey ideas to large numbers of people, and there’s not necessarily any reason to try to do it that way when I can instead just talk about economic injustice, how everyone should have enough, how systems where mass-scale human behavior is driven by profit-chasing will always lead to imperialism and ecocide, and how greatly people’s lives would be improved if there was democratic control in areas like the workplace.
I might stop using -ist and -ism words altogether, or use them sparingly, and just talk about the actual concepts without having to rely on any label which tries to capture them all. I already kind of do this, but I can do a much better job of it. I’ve never had a stimulating conversation with anyone who uses a lot of -ists and -isms anyway; mostly they just use it as a crutch to hide the fact that they don’t understand the individual components of the concepts being discussed.”
I don’t think there is a common “language” of communication between governments and the rest of us and between various groups of us. Objectively, the French government is trying to curtail the spread of the virus and its consequent detrimental effects on the public at large. Some of the public don’t see it that way. It’s not just in France; in Ireland and UK there are vociferous groups with the same sentiment albeit less impactful than in France for now. UK and Ireland are the two countries most accepting of the vaccinations and other measures according to the eurofund study I posted some time ago.
It’s a bizarre situation.
“You can’t fix any problem, nor even vote for an effective solution, if you’re obstructed from understanding the problem in the first place.”
— Quote ClarkI agree Clark.
So the questions then turn to why do they do their damndest to stop you learning the truth?
Why is Julian Assange being tortured by governments in cahoots with each other? Why does his own government of Australia do diddly squat to help him? -
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