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Almost nobody is interested Clark in you repeating to talk about how brilliant the China Regime is.
We do not live under a Communist Regime.
We live in Western Democracies.GERMANY – hardly test anybody compared to the U.K.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned on Thursday that new cases of Covid-19 in her country were rising “exponentially”, driven by the Delta variant.
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210723-germany-sees-covid-19-spike-as-eu-wide-vaccinations-fall-short-of-70-target
“We are seeing exponential growth,” she told a news conference in Berlin, adding that “every vaccination … is a small step towards a return to normality”.So perhaps the Germans have been not watching their ball?
The politics is irrelevant. Australia has done almost as well, and they’re a Conservative government. New Zealand never let it in in the first place, and they’re a Labour government.
If others aren’t interested, it seems that they’re ignoring best practice due to their own prejudice.
Michael – kindly do not speak on behalf of anyone except yourself. I, for one, am very interested in Clark’s comparison of our approach with China’s.
If you have such an aversion to China, there are plenty of other forms of government, and you can see their responses – New Zealand and Taiwan spring to mind.
It appears you are looking for an excuse to dismiss success stories, falling back to the right-wing, business-first approach pushed by the populist press, which is owned and operates on behalf of the billionaire class. They want business running full bore again and damn the consequences to the “little people” on the front lines.
Except they are stupid and wrong, as usual – “freedom” as defined by the reckless right will end up with mass illness and death, a crippled economy and far worse consequences at every level.
We have been told, the last big event, such as we are hurtling through now, was The Flu at the end of The First World War.
We did not have much in the way of medicine then.
Now we have many vaccines that are becoming available and treatments.
Our way forward is going to be mass vaccination.
In Europe they are now planning vaccination “papers”that is health passes, that you will need to gain entry into public buildings, public transport and night clubs.
I expect we will have to do the same.
We went through The First World War, The Flu, The Great Depression, The End of Empire, The Second World War.
We do not need to live in a Communist Regime.While Michael rants on about communism – for reasons best known to himself – I thought the comrades here would be amused to hear about a cartoon I was sent this morning.
It depicts the Titanic doing down, with the following speech bubbles rising from it:
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“First they said unsinkable. Now they say we’re sinking?
Why should we believe them?”
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“I don’t see an iceberg!
Nobody I know saw an iceberg!”
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“The hole in the ship is below the waterline?
Oh, that’s convenient! HOAX!”
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“This crisis was made up by the lifeboat industry!
You can’t make ME get in a lifeboat.
I have rights!”
—I hope the vaccines work, because ‘my’ government hasn’t left any other choice. But it isn’t a clear success so far, and I’m not keen on having to be jabbed every six months nor having to carry papers to prove it.
Glenn_nl, great cartoon!
Just because a government is bad at one thing doesn’t mean it can’t be good at something else. Hitler’s Nazis made the trains run on time. That doesn’t mean that the only way to make trains run on time is to exterminate Jews and Gypsies.
By your argument michael norton, Churchill should never have declared war upon Germany. War necessitated rationing, blackout, conscription, commandeering and evacuation of children to the countryside – all of them restrictions on basic liberties. Just let the Nazis in if that’s what they want – they’re not so bad, if they even exist at all; maybe if we don’t keep counting them it’ll seem like they’re not here.
So for Michael Norton, we must not aspire to be like the Chinese because they are communist. Now I seem to remember that we were told that the reason why the West was so successful is because of capitalism which encourages competition and light touch government because it allows the market to regulate itself, despite the fact that this has produced great inequalities and increasing poverty in an ever increasing proportion of the population, and an exploitation of developing countries. So now that China has adopted some of the methods of capitalism but with some socialist/communist slant, it has become a bad thing. Humility demands that we get the best of both worlds and learn from the Chinese and adopt some of their success methods to improve the lot of humanity rather than to increase the oppression. After all would it be better to be able to live without lockdowns and fear of infections and with life returning to normal after a stringent but short lockdown, or to preserve ‘freedom’ live in constant threat of lockdowns, mass infections and economic ruin?
Clark: “Glenn_nl, great cartoon!”
Glad you liked it… another one had a picture of Anthony Fauci in a lab coat, with the apparent caption:
“Sure, I spent 50 years of my life studying viruses, so that I could “trick” rednecks into wearing a paper mask. That was my career goal.”
Tibet
China sent in thousands of troops to enforce its claim on the region in 1950. Some areas became the Tibetan Autonomous Region and others were incorporated into neighbouring Chinese provinces.Campaign groups accuse China of political and religious repression and say it continues to violate human rights.
I expect China lovers think it is a good idea that China controls Tibet, crushes their culture and robs their identity?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-57941893
It will do similar to Xinjiang, Hong Kong, then Taiwan.
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[ MOD: This has absolutely nothing to do with this topic, which concerns “Conspiracy Theorists, Why is Westminster Lifting All COVID Restrictions?”Kindly do not post so blatantly off-topic on forums threads. Start a new thread on a subject if it interests you and you would like debate on it. Kindly desist from posting snippets of news too – all such will be removed. ]
Hello Clark, you are right.
For the U.K. the only choice is to take the vaccine or not take the vaccine.
Boris Johnson is a liar and a charlatan.
Yes, we all know that, he, like Mrs. Thatcher will not change his spots.
The question should now be, will they vaccinate children to bring the end-game nearer?
Many other countries, seem to be going to do that.Michael, my position is that China is Evil Empire Joint Second with Russia, rather mediocre runners up to the USA and its assorted minions of satellite states too many to list.
But the Chinese government doesn’t seem to be using much brutality in its virus control measures.
We’d have heard about it, because Evil Empires number one hobby is slagging each other off in a ludicrous competition for some imagined moral high ground which not one of them remotely deserves. Compare your average superpower with the folks down your street. How often do they invade each others’ places or throw bombs at other families? Arm and support murderous bullies just because “we know they won’t cooperate with our enemies”? Develop, build and stockpile enough high tech weapons to wipe out the entire street several times over in various interesting ways? States act like thugs, and the bigger they are and the more weapons they’ve got the worse their behaviour. We’d never find it acceptable in our communities, but we each tolerate it from our ‘own’ governments. But sorry, I’m ranting.
Should children be vaccinated?
OK, first thing; it’s not up to me, and I shouldn’t decide. Two pages of comments back, SA linked to the UK rules of medical consent, and I think they’re about right:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/consent-to-treatment/children/
I expect in practice that most children will be vaccinated.
The appropriate tool when considering whether to vaccinate is cost-benefit analysis. In this case the choice of population to include in the analysis affects the balance; if we consider only the children, there will be less benefit than if we consider the entire population.
In both cases we can assess only costs and benefits to date – there could be unforeseen risks with covid itself, and (less likely) with the vaccines. To compare these, we need to know how well the vaccines prevent children from getting infected, and we can’t know that for potential future variants.
So no cost-benefit analysis is likely to be everyone’s favourite, and all are going to include considerable uncertainty.
What we definitely need to avoid is polarised, rhetorical argument over the evidence. We need to maximise light and minimise heat.
I’d feel more confident about vaccine development under less urgent conditions, and I expect others would too.
Hello Clark,
We in Europe seem to be riding covid rollercoasters.Spain seems to be well into its fifth wave.
Spain’s figures, do seem chaotic, which makes them difficult to fathom.
Damping down, then undamping.
The one tool that we have that will make a difference is covid vaccination full coverage.
If we hardly vaccinate anybody under eighteen but mostly vaccinate everybody older than eighteen, we will keep a large reservoir of infection, which will continue to fuck us up.I’m still for making conditions less urgent; it’s cheap, simple and reliable, it needn’t take long and it’d make the benefits of vaccination less uncertain by reducing mutation, but it would require good leadership and a proper plan and I’ve seen no sign of either.
Yes, I see what you mean about Spain’s figures. A map of Spain’s infection prevalence might help – covid tends to cluster a lot so sometimes a peak in one region suddenly flares up just as another was diminishing – or maybe it’ll smooth out after a few days.
Michael, a Chinese scientific paper about the first outbreak of Delta in mainland China:
I don’t know if it’s been peer reviewed, but note that one of the researchers is at Oxford. The outbreak was contained and thus extinguished, every case being traced back to the index case. A total of 167 local infections were identified. It is likely that far more people than that were quarantined, and I don’t know how long anywhere was locked down for; probably up to a month seeing as 30 million tests were performed. However, the government’s prompt adjustment of policy, even before the research was complete, is commendable:
“Our investigation on the quarantined subjects suggested for the Delta variant, the time window from the exposure to the detection of viruses was peaks at ~3.7 days and presented a higher infectiousness/transmission risk when the virus was first detected. In response to this notable viral parameter, the government required people leaving the Guangzhou city from airports, train stations and shuttle bus stations to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours on June 6 and further shorten into 48 hours on June 7, in contrast to the seven days in the 2020 epidemic.”
That’s really “following the science”, such a contrast to the empty sloganeering from Westminster.
I doubt that a similar study could be performed in the UK or even most of Europe; there’s just too much infection everywhere to be able to determine transmission chains and times so clearly, and not enough quarantine.
Although “the finding” of the Oxford Vaccine was most wonderful
and the consequent early adoption of the Biontech Vaccine roll-out
and slightly later adoption of the Oxford Vaccine roll-out
have been most wonderful, we now, with DELTA, seem again to be acting like a flounder out of sea.So many ( 2/3 million) are pinged that the Economy of U.K. is again starting to implode.
Where is the leadership – they are isolating!!!
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[ Mod: Michael, please stop splitting your sentences with separate lines for different clauses (as above). The mods have been stitching them back together anyway, but it would save time if you could follow the normal writing conventions when you post. Thanks. ]A couple of thoughts about the Chinese government…
Shortly after they stopped trying to cover up and admitted they had a problem, they said that the new virus wasn’t a bioweapon-level threat, but they were going to treat it like one anyway. Sorry, I don’t have a link; this is something I was told by a good source. But with the possibility of it being a lab escape, I can’t help wondering if they know something we don’t…
And one of their more totalitarian aspects that they certainly have been using, and which will have undoubtedly helped them, is state control of both broadcast and internet media – no conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers or denialists to give the public weird ideas.
These are observations, not praise – but with freedom comes responsibility; that’s an inevitability.
Why is Westminster Lifting All COVID Restrictions?
“A scientist advising the government has accused ministers of allowing infections to rip through the younger population in an effort to bolster levels of immunity before the NHS faces winter pressures.”
A guardian article link.
““What we are seeing is a decision by the government to get as many people infected as possible, as quickly as possible, while using rhetoric about caution as a way of putting the blame on the public for the consequences,” said Prof Robert West, a health psychologist at University College London who participates in Sage’s behavioural science subgroup.”
Perhaps that is why they are slow to roll out vaccines for younger folk? They want them to acquire natural immunity. It would be cheaper. Or perhaps not, who knows? An angle worth considering.
Clark, this interviewer, asked Europe WHO three times about how covid got started, he repeats that that is a question for doctor Tedros
and that this spokesperson only speaks on matters effecting Europe and that China is not in Europe, therefore what ever does or does not happen in China is not in his remit?Although you might think this WHO spokesperson for Europe was speaking like a parrot, [line break removed] I guess he was hinting that he had been hobbled and he must not go there, meaning he must say nothing about China, other than China is not in Europe.
Got it.
Under the surface, I guess you might imagine, this spokesperson thinks there is much truth covered up by China
as to how covid got going to a flying start, that has barely hurt China but has slaughtered the rest of the World.I’m not seeing anything in the text from that link you provided where anyone is asking anyone anything. Is there are video I am inadvertently blocking? From the same website Michael there is a piece relating to The WHO calls for audit of Chinese labs where COVID-19 was first identified.
“Ghebreyesus’s demand comes a day after he said it was premature to rule out a potential link between the pandemic and a laboratory leak.”
I guess The WHO has to walk a wobbly political tight rope.
