Coronavirus Page 44

Quote: Firkin @ 24th April 2020, 8:52 PM

Trump got a Comedian fired for being sarcastic.

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Kathy Griffin was in a little video holding what appeared to be the freshly-severed head of Donald Trump.

It was wonderful, hard-hitting comedy and, I would have thought, acceptable to US audiences who, when it comes to comedy are (generally speaking) not squeamish.

However, Trump came up with some absolute nonsense about his children being upset by the images, the pack turned on her and CNN got rid of her.

Absolutely disgraceful treatment of an excellent comedian just doing her job.

Kathy's not everybody's cup of comedy tea but she does her job very well indeed - when she's allowed to.

If there's one thing America does miles better than Britain, it breeds top-quality women comedians in significant numbers, and the world needs more of them on TV - not fewer!

Shame on you, Donald!

How can such a towering genius as Trump be so misunderstood by so many ???

(That's sarcasm)

People think he's this amazing businessman

He's a dumbass!

His casino went bankrupt - a casino ffs! people come in, empty their pockets- and leave !

And it failed and went bust

I heard that if he had just left all the money he inherited in the bank and did nothing with it - he would have made more money , from interest accrued

He's pissed millions of dollars away on failed businesses

And now whenever the moron says something stupid without thinking or getting his facts right- "oh I was being sarcastic "

Absolute prick

As if the British government wasn't inept enough already, they're now thinking of allowing us to choose 10 friends (that we don't already live with) and we'll be allowed to mingle with those friends whenever we like during lockdown.

I haven't stopped laughing since I read about that proposal.

As if the police don't already have enough to do without seeing a group of people mingling together and immediately checking everybody's paperwork to make sure everybody there is on at least one other member of the group's list of 10 friends!

I tell you, that's not dissimilar from expecting every copper in Britain to be able to juggle soot and plait sawdust at the same time.

It may be that some BCG members are having a very unhappy time in lockdown.

Indeed, there are reports that the psychological effects of lockdown are driving some people (probably not BCG members, but who knows?) to suicide.

With regard to other people's misery, I was particularly moved this morning when I read that the queen is currently confined to her apartments (note the plural) at Windsor Castle, attended by fewer than 20 staff and obliged to give up horse riding for the duration.

If any BCG member is feeling the strain of the ongoing coronavirus situation, I hope he/she will take inspiration from our sovereign - dragging herself from day to agonising day in the most appalling conditions imaginable, passing lonely hour after lonely hour by, reportedly, "keeping up with the latest news" and spending time with her budgerigars, of which she has more than a hundred at Windsor.

We're all in this together - as the queen is so clearly demonstrating.

We can do it!

Smurf Covid19 death toll rose by 218,328 in the last 24 hours and the total Smurf death toll is now at 1,682,712.

The real death toll could actually be much lower because of treble-counting at Smurf care homes and hospitals, and because of false positive tests.

Papa Smurf is under renewed criticism after recommending a gunshot to the head as a surefire way to beat coronavirus.

1. What The Experts Claim

If you want to see one of the most bullish approaches to anything by anyone in your lifetime, try to see the programme of which I include a brief clip below. BBC Hardtalk - Stephen Sackur : An Interview With David Nabarro - WHO Special Envoy for Covid-19. I found it in style half highly impressive and half could-easily- give-someone-the-creeps. There is no doubt that Nabarro has considerable and very lengthy expertise, including at WHO, which if, according to the reports I have heard, the US pulls all funding would automatically have as its principal donor Bill Gates and associates etc. "Nice!"

Nabarro who I'm assuming may well not be distantly related to the late Gerald but then how many Nabarros have you known? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Nabarro - does an indirect form of directness so well. That hit 'em with an I'm-not-taking-any-alternative-viewpoint-claptrap arrow which, in its very bludgeoning, suggests that the bullseye is the target when to study some of his words the bullseye could potentially be nowhere to be seen. So what we get is a kind of he-must-have-said-it-mustn't-he thing about permanent changes in our lifetimes although he may not quite have said it. In other words, it is often simply heavy implication. eg: The one that goes if we don't have a vaccine or don't have a cure then we can expect some semi lockdown malarkey for ever as the "virus" ain't going away for decades to come, is it.

So given this, once you have watched the programme or brief clip, I invite you to read an article which I shall post with a brief introduction. Obviously it is aimed at forum members but if you happened to take time out to be at this year's Cheltenham Festival or are off swamp somewhere in the USA, do not think you are excluded and please feel free to learn.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hptd

2. And What History Teaches

I do love the way Sackur sits in darkness six feet away from what is actually Nabarro's mug on a screen. Anyhow, so that is now and it looks and sounds like the future but hey let's take time to consider when then was then. Here I am absolutely delighted to bring you from no less than the February 1930 edition of the "American Journal of Public Health and the Nation's Health" this article titled "The Influenza Epidemic of 1928-1929 with Comparative Data for 1918-19".

For those of you who ever said to yourselves "hey, 50 million people died of the Spanish Flu, luckily Covid-19 is nowhere on that scale, yet that flu suddenly disappeared without vaccine or cure, how the hell did that happen?", this helps to provide you with some lovely answers. The easy guessable part of those answers is that it didn't disappear. Then one can look at what happened ten years later as proof and read with further alarm and even horror of about six flu outbreaks in the 1920s. Yes, six! But hold on for one moment. In their impacts, they were all by comparison absolutely tepid. Why?

Well, just because they were. That's all. They just were - geddit? - although the one ten years down the line in 1928-1929 wasn't all that pleasant. Meanwhile football crowds increased and theatres flourished and masks were nowhere to be seen. That is, all at a time when there was barely any health service to speak of anywhere, let alone vaccinations, cures and all the rest of what we rely upon now. So, no, Covid-19 if it exists ain't going away but future waves beyond the current crop in, say, the next 10 or 20 years could conceivably be much less severe or presumably even on the sort of level of a mild flu year, irrespective of vaccines, cures or lockdown orders. So we may well have no need for any of them at all.

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.20.2.119

It turns out, actually, in material I have sourced from elsewhere that within a tiny number of years, even the Spanish Flu wasn't remembered. It seems extraordinary but it entirely went out of the public's consciousness for decades. A part of the reason was that its memory was overshadowed by the memory of WW1 and then the later experience of having to go through a WW2. It would take until two much later major flu epidemics - one in the 1950s and one in 1968 - for the occasional free thinker to dig out the old Spanish Flu stuff and write a book about it. Then it was done again in the 1980s by one or two people with reference to HIV. But.....but, had the story of the 1920s been different. Had it been a story of dire flu impacts year after year through to 1929, no one would have ever forgotten it. The devastation would have overwhelmed. But that wasn't the story so everybody did forget it and got on with their increasingly 20th Century lives.

AND THIS IS ACTUALLY WHAT WE ALL NEED TO GET USED TO

MY SIMPLE 3 POINT PLAN

1. When I went to university, there were less than 20% of the numbers at university today. That was 1982. I think one in ten of us went or if not no more than one in six. Twenty years earlier, it was even fewer. Blair upped student numbers with the aim of having 50% of all school leavers into university. I was against it. I thought it devalued it. I didn't like the way it meant hardly anyone would get a grant. However, I came to accept it. But for nearly 20 years, I have been arguing solidly that 25% of all courses should be medical courses and paid for by grants from the state. Now it is time to get on with that change. Impose it if necessary. We can't have increasingly privatised universities bleating that they can't do it.

2. There is so obviously now the need for a brand new industry in making PPE and ventilators to stockpile for use when needed. Place those jobs up north by providing incentives to private companies. They will help to restart the economy.

3. We might as well keep the temporary hospitals like the Nightingale and get used to paying for them permanently. Design them for twin use so we can massively improve services in non pandemic areas for the bulk of the time and then can switch them round for pandemic use in 48 hours if we have to. Review where research money is going and divert it to this where apt. If we are chucking millions at billionaires' projects, that should be removed if they don't achieve rapidly.

THE TRUTH

Just over 20,000 deaths to date in the UK, In mid March, Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College claimed that so-called Covid-19 could lead to over 500,000 deaths. Within a fortnight, he revised that down to 20,000 "but it could well be less" and he claimed that two thirds could well have died by the end of the year from something else anyway. Few turned a hair on hearing that staggering difference. Imperial College is now one of the two university bases which has been given vast sums of money to develop a vaccine. That is, for something on which their figures have all been hopeless and which has not even been separately identified as an understood virus.

But lets take that "two thirds would have died anyway" notion at face value. That takes the current Covid-19 difference down to less than 7,000. That's compared with the previous year. Then you have to factor in for this year who is dying because of people who are unable to get medical treatment for other things because of staff absence and lockdown. Cancer Research UK estimates that hundreds of deaths from cancer alone which could have been avoided have happened in these weeks. So let us say with all diseases that is at least 4,500. Then according to that charity and many others, many other lives will be lost when we go back to comparative normality because of the build up of people waiting to be seen for other conditions and what will be long waiting lists.

So, say, 4,500 goes up to 6,000. Then you go to the long term impacts on NHS funding and whether governments will in the future be able or more pertinently more willing to fund it at pre so-called Covid levels. That takes the 6,000 additional deaths well up. Let's say at a conservative estimate in the coming year it takes it to 23,000. Then there's the deaths from suicides and stress because of lost businesses, domestic pressures and lockdowns. Call that 23,000 something like 48,000 to include these. And then there is the sticking of Covid on the certificate when they simply had Covid as perceived but probably didn't die of it. It's now perhaps 60,000. Does this look bonkers? Yes, it is bonkers. Totally bonkers. No wonder Dominic Cummings has allegedly been involved.

This sort of 7-8,000 versus 60,000 arithmetic doesn't need to be justified by me or you but rather Imperial and Oxford Universities on why they merit having money being chucked at them by Matthew Hancock. Their starting point was lousy. They still have very little idea about what this thing is in reality. And ultimately if they fail to provide a workable vaccine quickly as seems likely, a huge number of taxpayers are going to be asking soon what the hell is going on. As for politics, if I were Keir Starmer, I'd be feeling very lucky in leadership timing.

I think the main thing on the government's agenda at the moment is the question of how to avoid losing face when the British public tells them exactly what they can do with their lockdown regulations.

People who are (allegedly) likely to die if they catch the virus are understandably keeping themselves to themselves these days.

For the others, missing out on all this beautiful and exceedingly rare British sunshine might prove too much of a temptation.

And the sheer hypocrisy of all these multimillionaire celebrities "enduring" and "coping with" lockdown in their mansions with their beautiful girlfriends, boyfriends, et cetera!

I predict a riot (and it's not far off).

F**k me, what an intelligent, intellectual, beyond brainy bunch of Stephen f**king Hawkings I know on Bacefook. There I was, confidently expecting Trump to discover a miracle cure - given his mastery of politics he's bound to solve a dilemma stumping the world's greatest medics too - but they were too clever for him. They knew it'd be bollocks all along, those shrewd little foxes... And just when I was still in doubt, they share the revelation that no, bleach up the rectum is Not A Nice Thing. How do you do it? What's your secret? I guess I'll never know.

Flour appears to be thin on the ground (and almost as thin on supermarket shelves) during the coronavirus crisis.

Accordingly, Tesco have just sent me an email telling me how I can make a delicious chocolate cake without flour.

It's not a big cake: it's only 20 cm (8 inches) in diameter but it contains 5000 calories.

The recipe suggests that it will serve 12 people (each with a frustratingly tiny piece, of course) but where on earth am I going to find 11 people to help me eat the cake during lockdown?

No, I daren't make it.

If I do, I know I'll eat the whole thing myself!

A study by the Financial Times suggests that coronavirus-related deaths in the UK currently stand at around 41,000.

That's more than double the figure being bandied around in newspaper headlines.

As has been said several times on this forum, people dying with coronavirus are not necessarily dying because of coronavirus.

However, since mid-March, excess deaths from all causes are about 17,000 higher than the seasonal average.

The "excess deaths" total is widely recognised as the best measure of the effects of the pandemic.

https://www.ft.com/content/67e6a4ee-3d05-43bc-ba03-e239799fa6ab

Quote: Rood Eye @ 25th April 2020, 10:38 AM

I predict a riot (and it's not far off).

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Are the Brits starving yet due to job losses and an absence of social welfare payments? Or do you feel they would riot just because it's nicer outdoors than indoors?

I have just lost my appetite. I never wanted a freezer. It feels I am being locked in by chickens and frozen sprouts. Like being the owner of a battery farm in an ice age where the chickens fought back by chucking green pellets and going vegetarian. Right next to a bed which is no longer a bed but a place where people you met once in 1967 and some you never met are all dressed in kaftans and talk to you in your sleep about a Christmas tree. A tree which is decorated by nucleated cod and cabbage, pairs of gloves made from ten condoms and measles spots the same colour as Ovaltine. And where the robin is mating with an angel, a fairy and a star without using proper protection to produce a miracle child.

In this article from the Grauniad this bit is well worth noting : "The Cabinet Office document, which runs to more than 600 pages, not only analysed the risk of a viral flu pandemic but also specifically addressed the potential for a coronavirus outbreak .......though it regarded this as potentially MUCH LESS (!) damaging. In reality, the UK is dealing with a HYBRID OF THE TWO" . So hold on. Less not more? And it isn't even a coronavirus then? It's a hybrid with the flu? THAT'S news!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/preparing-for-pandemic-national-security-risk-assessment-coronavirus

Next:

BBC - Coronavirus: Immunity passports 'could increase virus spread':

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-52425825

The PLUS side of this is that it removes for now a two tier system in which one group has to stay in and the police have to ask anyone who is out to produce health documents. It will also free up police time to allow them to deal with the thousands of extra cases we are about to have of people getting beaten up on the streets because someone's fake app says there is a person with a virus in their vicinity. That's including many murders of old people who set off their bleeps.

The MINUS side is that it is the latest of about a dozen reasons why the entire idea of a vaccine is ludicrous because they are going to have to convince that somehow a vaccine does create immunity. Of course, they will say it does because it provides the right amount of antibodies. In fact, if there was any idea that there was a natural individual or herd immunity then those who had supposedly had the disease would say they didn't need to be vaccinated and discredit it.

So, yes, it has to be this way so they can produce something they call a vaccine quickly, insist everyone has it, and feel themselves godlike. For as long as MPs say that they themselves "have to" rely on "the science" they will continue to renege on their responsibilities to scrutinize and sell out democracy for all time. The choice is now clear. EITHER they cave in to professionals who when eight had a God Complex and peculiar obsessions about bugs on clean toilet seats while other people kicked a football around or did ballet lessons around their much loved pony. OR they govern first by sending them for psychiatric assessments to see how much their childhood problems have morphed into global policy.

Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is telling Britain "We must stay strong!" during the coronavirus pandemic and the accompanying lockdown.

I'm not sure how much she herself will be suffering. She's earning about £150,000 per year as Home Secretary and, according to the Guardian last year, she has a contract worth £1000 per hour with a global communications firm that supplies products and services to the UK government.

I'd say her position was very strong indeed compared with that of the overwhelming majority of people she's encouraging to be stoical in the face of the current hardships.