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At the Anglican service I attend each Sunday, my church currently draws only about only one-third the number of people as compared with pre-COVID times. Precautions are taken. There is ample space and pews are marked to ensure social distancing, procedures are in place (e.g., no pew-by-pew collection, ‘peace be with you’ via hand signals) to minimise the possibility of transmission, most people wear masks, hand sanitizer is available, the names of those attending are recorded, no singing is allowed by government edict, and the pews are wiped down with disinfectant after each service. Yet still they don’t come.
Why is that? The answer is clear. Such alarm has been created by governments, their public health gurus, and by most of the media that many people have a quite distorted and grossly exaggerated view of the virulence of the virus. You can do what you like to engender particular calm but it is trumped by general alarm.
Notice, even conservative commentators add weight to the alarm. So far as I can tell, only Alan Jones stands apart, with an honourable mention going to Andrew Bolt. Quarantining, social distancing, testing and contact tracing are all promoted. It’s got to be serious. Hasn’t it? Sure, they only go a small part of the way with Despot Dan. But they travel in the same misdirection.
There is no evidence that the virus can be stopped. The time pattern of death from COVID-19, so far as the figures can be relied upon, follows a similar pattern regardless of the extent of lockdowns, quarantining, social distancing, mask wearing, etc. There is a sharp upsurge as the virus does its work on those susceptible – the aged with co-morbidities – and then the death rate tails away once the virus meets up those with the ability to fight it off. The discovery rate of new infections, largely as a result of increased testing, is an irrelevancy; and more so, if testing, as is now suggested, picks up the remnants of past infections among those who are well.
For illustrative purposes this is a graph of deaths per million in the UK and Sweden, but a similar pattern applies across all Northern hemisphere countries.
Essentially, deaths are the only thing that count and they are now trivial in number. But not if you want to keep everyone alarmed. Reporting very few deaths simply doesn’t do the job. To be clear. It is essential to keep people alarmed. The costs and destruction have been too great to ever concede that we haven’t been under, and still face, an almost existential threat.
Time will eventually produce a kind of perspective. When we look back on this year in some years’ time it might be hard to distinguish any noticeable lift in the overall rate of death. Perhaps a short-lived blip. At the same time, the political machines will have been out in force concocting and giving currency to the storyline that a health disaster, at least on the scale of the Spanish flu, was averted only by wise governments applying tough medicine. And, with the media onboard, it will be a bagatelle.
And what of the factual perspective: This disease was very selective. It killed the old and ill who, on average, had only a little time left. And it left those not in this category alive and kicking. Yet, governments delivered the worst of worlds. Those in aged care bore the brunt of deaths. Those who were healthy and under no risk from the virus bore the brunt of being thrown out of work or of having their businesses destroyed.
The factual perspective will have few fans. Even Donald Trump, a true hero, single-handedly holding back the onslaught on our civilisation, is heavily invested in the storyline. Just listen to him. He is still saying that over two million Americans would have died without the lockdown. Sweden rather ruins the script, but who really cares about a few million Swedes in a land far away of which we know little.
There are two kinds of DEATH.
[1] HALF LIFE: eg a neutron rich nucleus waiting to radioactively decay by the weak force: a colony of mice in an ancient Egyptian grain store shared with a cat: a young patient with an exponentially growing cancer = systems operating under ADVERSE CONDITIONS.
[2] LIFE SPAN: eg a red cell aged 120 days: the Soviet Union aged 70 years: an aged/diseased man suffering from a weak virus like Wuflu = a system with NO RESERVES.
The red cell is a perfect example. It lacks a nucleus and therefore cannot manufacture spare parts [proteins etc]. It lacks mitochondria [power packs which produce carbon dioxide] and has to operate on 1/15 of the energy available in all other cells [just like South Australia/California]. It carries dangerous cargo = high pressure oxygen, which oxidizes [damages] 1% of its working parts every minute. It has a full time job repairing its working parts. The red cell is born with 300% of working parts. After 120 days it is down to 100%. An hour later 99%. Two hours -> 90%. Three hours 0% and dead.
A man with no reserves is at the end of his life span.
It was clear in February – March who was most at risk and as Peter eloquently points out rather than getting a proportionate response we copped it from both ends. Despite the low death tolls, despite the lack of a bounce in overall mortality compared to past years, the pain continues as no politician is able to face the truth: that they failed so spectacularly in living up to their responsibility of balancing cost and benefit and delivering the greatest good to the greatest number. Their red faces and fidgeting fingers give away the fact they truly know how wrong they were, and how much needless suffering they have inflicted. How many more years of life lost due to their mistaken actions, rather than the actions of a virus that is less deadly than the Hong Kong and Asian Flus and only mildly worse than the Swine Flu pandemic in 2009, for which we washed our hands but did little more yet which took nearly 7000 life years in Australia compared to covids 500 or so.
While statues of long dead heroes get torn down as history gets reparsed by pale faced intellectual midgets in front of police bending at their knees impotent to interfere under directions of fat headed and just plain fat Police Commissioners whose lips grip the assholes of their bent overlords as tightly as the ABC hold onto their outdated and failed Marxist philosophies, I do wonder how long the statues to be erected to the government’s covid “warriors” will last.
Bronzed models of those wise health bureaucrats who guided us through the dark like Victoria’s blundering bedragled Brett Sutton and the ultra woke – thick as a brick Captain Cook hating Annalise Van Dieman, Queensland’s Jeannette “I love Tom Hanks so screw coming to Dad’s funeral” Young, and of course one shining towering monolith for dear leader #elcapiDan who singlehandedly saved us from the 100000s of dead promised by shonky models formed on assumptions written on the back of coffee cup coasters sodden with lactose and gluten free low-fat almond “milk”. The bodies piled high in their dark imaginations. The cartloads of corpses young and old, the virus does not discriminate apparently (except it does to an extraordinary extent with a median age of death as great as our average life expectancy) to be buried in mass graves in Hoppers Crossing or Pakenham, as the living cower in fear from the dreaded scourge playing wildly in their empty heads made all the more vivid by the suckers in the mainstream media all too keen and gullible to grovel at the feet of the side show schysters that pass for members of parliament these days. “Bring out your dead” : yeah, right, sack clothed charlatans the lot of them.
So how long will the big lie last? As the public wake up to the sham, to the missed opportunities, lost jobs, lost hope, lost lives, lost sanity, as they wake up to the gross incompetence of those they trusted, those statues to liars and thieves will last not a second. The ring of black helmeted, carbon fibre clad riot squad goons trammeled to dust as millions tear down the effegies to the false gods and fake heroes they once so fervently worshipped.
Change is coming.
As a churchgoer myself, I’m inclined to think another reason people aren’t coming to COVID-adapted churches is that they don’t like them. A lot of people are not going out at all where I am in Victoria, unless absolutely unavoidable, because they find it so unpleasant under present circumstances. I would attend any church that offered a normal service, including congregational prayer and singing, no masks, no social distancing, no name-taking, and preferably the tedious topic of the virus forbidden.
MEDICAL THERAPY.
[1] LIFE SPAN disease: it is economically wasteful and completely misguided to waste resources on these diseases: the current example is the Chinese Biological Warfare Laboratory Bungled Virus = Wuflu.
[2] HALF LIFE diseases: eg amoebic meningitis with a half-life measured in days/hours – I cured this 49 years ago – most of the world is still catching up. Another such disease is the dangerous virus HIV [AIDS] with a half life of months/years. I discovered the relevant molecular receptors and made the Scientific Breakthrough of the Year for 1996.
CONCLUSION: attacking a lifespan disease like Wuflu produces an almost invisible result. Curing a half life disease like tuberculosis produces a normal life span. Politicians, bureaucrats, and brainwashed voters don’t understand the difference.
Excellent contribution, Peter.
Speaking of church services, here is a recommended COVID prayer:
“Lord, save us from those who would save us”.
It should be incorporated into the standard liturgy until the COVID Curtain is lifted from our beleaguered country.
I went to an Anglican church service recently to try it out. I was astonished by the corporate prayer: lead story was Coronafear. Now, people are right to pray about their fears, but I’m more afraid of the fear of CV19 than CV19 itself. In my view there are more important topics of prayer than this. I relay information from a friend. At his Anglican church there’s a frequent reflexive paean to the god of ‘climate change’. Same comment as previously.
Another fairly accurate summary of the most recent and by any measure the most bizarre mass hysteria to visit the human race. But as I have said before while the finger of scorn should be pointed at our elected leaders, history will show that the public was a willing hostage to their incompetence.
Peter:
Today I happened to come to your article here after reading a piece in the Guardian (link below). I could not help noticing a certain similarity, inviting an all-in-good-fun parody, though some readers may not agree:
PARODY BEGINS: At the river I swim in each Sunday, my favourite deep stretch currently draws only about only one-third the number of people as compared with pre-CROCODILE times. Precautions are taken. There is ample space and river bank spaces are marked to ensure safety, procedures are in place (e.g., no stepping outside the patrolled boundary, ‘stay safe’ via hand signals) to minimise the possibility of becoming a croc’s meal, most people go armed, ammunition is available, the names of those attending are recorded, nothing that might attract a croc is allowed by government edict, and the beach spaces are sprayed down with croc-repellent all the time, but still swimmers don’t come.
Why is that? The answer is clear. Such alarm has been created by governments, their zoologists and croc-experts and by most of the media that many people have a quite distorted and grossly exaggerated view of the danger of the crocs. You can do what you like to engender particular calm but it is trumped by general alarm.
Notice, even conservative commentators add weight to the alarm. So far as I can tell, only that croc-hunter Alan Jones stands apart, with an honourable mention going to Andrew Bolt. Patrolling, ringing croc alarms, looking for croc tracks and croc-meal remains tracing are all promoted. It’s got to be serious. Hasn’t it? Sure, they only go a small part of the way with the late Steve Irwin or Matt Wright, the so-called “outback wrangler” (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/17/sit-sit-how-one-australian-dealt-with-a-4m-crocodile-called-bonecruncher ). But they travel in the same misdirection.
There is no evidence that the crocs can be stopped. The time pattern of death from CROCODILE NUMBER 19 (C-19 for short) so far as the figures can be relied upon, follows a similar pattern regardless of the extent of lockdowns, precautions, armoured car driving, wearing of croc-repellent clothes, etc. There is a sharp upsurge as the crocs do their work on those susceptible – the slow runners – and then the death rate tails away once the crocs meet up with those who can run faster and fastest. The discovery rate of new attacks, largely as a result of increased investigation, is an irrelevancy; and more so, if investigation, as is now suggested, picks up the remnants of past attacks among those who have survived. PARODY ENDS.
As any habitue of the rivers of tropical Northern Australia will tell you, it is the crocodile that you don’t see that is the real danger. I speak from a certain first-hand experience there.
You know Ian I have to confess that the thought of being eaten by a crocodile is so alarming that I doubt any assurances would still my fears; and, to boot, I can’t run nearly as fast as I used to.
TBL. re LIFE SPAN DISEASE. I note that the eminent Cambridge statistician Sir David Spiegelhalter assures me that my risk of dying of Covid at age 70 is the same as my risk of dying from any cause during the next year. Should I be worried?
Stephen: You can alter your probability of dying at any particular age of some causes, including C-19, being eaten by a crocodile, car accident, paragliding disaster, drowning etc, by taking sensible precautions, evaluating each according to who will be doing the dying: you or someone unrelated. (NB: there are plenty of testimonials around on the Net to the effect that C-19 affects the lungs, kidneys and probably other organs.)
But each of us will die of something: 100% certainty of that and 100% true to date: even for those among us who look forward to life in Heaven after the event.
SD: Dear Stephen, I understand that you are a doctor. Accordingly, it is your duty to put the patient first. Unfortunately, when AIDS appeared in Australia – in 1982 at Kings Cross, adjacent to St Vincents Hospital, Sydney, the pathologists there refused to perform autopsies on AIDS deaths. I regarded this as gross dereliction pf duty. In 1985, I personally had HIV blood on my bare skin for ten minutes, from a very good looking 19 year old Portuguese prostitute, who had come to town for a military exercise. I simply washed my hands and failed to catch HIV. I had her diagnosed 2 hours later. The clues were [1] a tattoo on the back of her pelvis [2] she smiled at me while I performed a painful procedure [3] she had 15% plasma cells in her bone marrow – so all I had to do was a confirmatory test. Meanwhile, in 1982, as regional commissar, purely on instinct, I had quarantined the Central Queensland Blood supply and kept medical HIV out. In 1984, my good friend Dr O’Duffy, diagnosed the HIV epidemic in the Brisbane Blood Bank, where the Director was a sodomite and encouraged all his sodomite friends to become blood donors – so they would get free tests for those other diseases of sodomy = syphilis, hepatitis B and still undiscovered hepatitis C – the latter by a free liver function test. Dr O’Duffy had four babies die of autopsy confirmed Pneumocystitis at the Mater Hospital Brisbane – all after blood transfusions. So one day Dr O’Duffy bounced into the dumb pathologists office and said you’re stupid – these babies died of AIDS, which must have come from the Brisbane Blood Bank. The Blood bank Director did the right thing and committed suicide. After this, I called in the mothers of my dead Pneumocystis babies: none of them had HIV.
Worry will only get ordinary citizens so far. It didn’t work in New Zealand. The very week that prestigious but error prone publication The New England Journal of Medicine printed a celebratory article from New Zealand declaring – How we beat Wuflu – the blasted virus struck back and made fools of them all.
I had a clinical patient in the 2017 H3N2 flu season, aged 80 with only one lung. I told him to stay quarantined, but his wife used to go to the supermarket etc. He developed a respiratory infection. I made a clinical diagnosis of flu and put him on Tamiflu. In retrospect this was wrong and probably respiratory syncytial virus. Next week he got a court order from his brother’s last mistress and had to visit a very small post office for two minutes to fax a document to a court. He caught H3N2 from the stagnant enclosed air in that small space in 2 minutes, and 2 days later I sent him to hospital with an oxygen pressure half normal [54mm].The H3N2 flu of 2017-2018 caused 3% of all deaths that year. Normally flu causes 1% of all deaths each year. The USA has been a mega Petri dish in 2020, with each State doing its own thing. Here Wuflu has been present at 6% of all deaths. But as you say these are life span deaths. Wuflu kills 1/10,000 of apparently healthy adults. My theory is that these “healthy” deaths have subtle genetic defects in their immune systems, whereby they are unable to properly recognise Wuflu, or mishandle the response.
Dear TBL: I’m not a doctor, but reading your posts is a kind of medical education in itself!
Ian MacDougall: I love your comments. I would love to propose you for PM of my native New Zealand, but I fear your approach to things may seriously distrupt the current drive to a Socialist Paradise. Thank you for a very happy start to my day.
And then I found this… https://youtu.be/8UvFhIFzaac. The truth will out… eventually…
If the government pays a bonus to families of people who die of COVID then everyone will die of the disease . It makes sense!
In well-managed nursing homes, Wuhan virus doesn’t get in. This is evidence that the usual anti-contagion isolation techniques are useful for nursing homes. It is not simply a matter of “stopping the virus”. It is a matter reducing the damage that it does. Death is not the only ill-effect of infection. There are other sequelae, uncommon but significant. To judge from the response of infection rate to lockdown, it does seem that ordinary precautions against virus contagion are useful to some degree, though of course not able to utterly eliminate the spread of infection.
We need to stop the lockdown, but continue to efficiently protect the vulnerable. People are afraid of the virus, and a majority seems evidently in support of lockdown. To persuade people to accept an end to lockdown, we need to carry on with more widespread testing and contact tracing, and with good isolation of the vulnerable. Objectively, this has to be costly, but not as costly as continued lockdown. We need to attend to subjective aspects too; people are afraid. It is part of the communist agenda to bring the capitalist system to its knees. Dan is a brilliant politician. At present, his fear-mongering has us utterly outsmarted. He will succeed in continuing lockdown till we persuade people otherwise.