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Node – “…shielding only the vulnerable is the best strategy”
No, stamping it out is the best policy, and many nations and islands have succeeded; Scotland’s restrictions drove two strains to extinction there. Wiping out the virus can be done in a few weeks, and the sooner you act the quicker it can be done, and presto, restrictions are no longer necessary.
Pandemics happen. All this trouble has been caused by doggedly pursuing and attempting to preserve the neoliberal economic regime – at all costs, apparently. We daren’t even suspend it for two months while we wipe out a virus, it seems.
Dredd “…. In particular Lisa White, Professor of Modelling and Epidemiology at Oxford University, is very sharp, sincere and thorough.”
Not another epidemiologist!
Misrepresentation #1. Clark claims I prioritise the economy whereas I was explicitly describing the knock-on effects of lockdown destroying our health service.
Misrepresentation #2. Clark quotes me as saying “…shielding only the vulnerable is the best strategy” whereas I was explicitly using those words to summarise someone else’s position.
@ Clark
“So anything that supports their story these denialists call “the truth”, and anything that contradicts it they dismiss as “the official narrative” – and that’s how conspiracy theory works”!
No, the Daily Mail dutifully reports the government press conference and reports what is said (the official narrative) but then also publishes an article debunking it and shows graphs putting figures into context. Letting the readers decide.
@node
“Your position seems to be that shielding only the vulnerable is the best strategy, but it wouldn’t be fair to “to impose severe restrictions on them while the rest of society continued with their normal lives relatively unimpeded.” Well, why not make it voluntary? Why not let those vulnerable through age or underlying health conditions choose whether or not they are shielded?”
Well, yes, that’s one of the things that need to be thought through more carefully.
Letting the virus spread through the population naturally would massively increase its prevalence, making it much harder to avoid. Unless the elderly and vulnerable have an isolation booth at home (like ‘the Boy in the Plastic Bubble‘) attended by people trained in clinical procedures for infection control, it wouldn’t be feasible for them to effectively evade the highly prevalent virus. The predictable result of such a scheme would be a huge increase in hospital admissions, ICU referrals and mortuary demand.
The social implications of isolating the vulnerable at home would be far-reaching. An elderly gent with a heart condition near me was so terrified of contracting the virus that he insisted on everyone else in his social bubble taking extra precautions: no shopping, no entering other buildings (even to pick up prescriptions), no meeting other people indoors or outdoors. Delivered packages had to be sprayed and left untouched for 48–72 hours. He didn’t allow anyone in his household to go back to work after furlough. It put a lot of emotional pressure on his family (on whom he is partially dependent). Ultimately anyone who declined would have to move out, because he owns the family home. So his extended family had to comply with much stricter rules than required by law in order to keep him effectively shielded. It caused a lot of strife, with a son trying unsuccessfully to make arrangements to move out. That’s the kind of social upheaval that would arise throughout the country with a voluntary “focused protection” scheme.
Perhaps, as some have suggested, old and clinically vulnerable people should be encouraged to move into sheltered housing and gated communities, out of the way of society? That kind of social segregation scheme has rarely turned out well. Should BAME people (who are at a significantly higher risk) also be encouraged to segregate too? And what if the virus breached the barriers: we’ve seen the carnage in care homes.
As noted before, we don’t yet know how effective the strategy of acquired herd immunity would be in any case. There’s no data on the duration of persistence of antibodies. And the “healthy” working age population would hardly escape unscathed. People with undiagnosed conditions would be very susceptible to serious complications. And we’re still documenting and monitoring the emergence of ‘Long Covid’, which seems to be much more common than first thought.
That’s just a quick glance at the problems with the Great Barrington Declaration. Here are some other expert opinions: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-barrington-declaration-an-open-letter-arguing-against-lockdown-policies-and-for-focused-protection/
If you know of a workable scheme to isolate the entire population of elderly and vulnerable people effectively, with the level of protection required for highly infectious diseases, then please elaborate.
Dredd
“As noted before, we don’t yet know how effective the strategy of acquired herd immunity would be in any case.”
Yet that is the strategy we are forcing through – herd immunity achieved through vaccines.
“If you know of a workable scheme to isolate elderly and vulnerable people effectively, with the level of protection required for highly infectious diseases, then please elaborate”
No I don’t, but then again the present scheme to lock down everybody, vulnerable and strong alike, isn’t workable either (in the sense that it causes more harm than good in the long run). The most workable scheme I can think of is the one I described – give the vulnerable a choice and concentrate our support services on those who choose to be isolated. The non-vulnerable keep the country running and build up herd immunity.
I suggest that building herd immunity the natural way is less risky than doing it with poorly tested vaccines.
node
“I suggest that building herd immunity the natural way is less risky than doing it with poorly tested vaccines.”
I duly acknowledge your suggestion but politely disagree. Vaccines are designed to achieve immunity in individuals without making the vaccinated person critically ill, which would seem to be a major advantage over natural infections which tend to do that in the elderly and otherwise clinically vulnerable.
You say the vaccine is “poorly tested” but the MHRA (which is responsible for scrutinising the studies and approving it) politely disagrees. Whom to believe? Hmmm.
In the end we seem to have conflicting opinions on how to proceed. It’s a complex practical decision necessitating a balance of projected benefits and risks. For the moment, I’m inclined to favour the decision of the relevant experts and officials, at least until contrary evidence emerges. You may disagree, for personal reasons. That’s your choice. You may be relieved that the vaccine isn’t going to be mandatory.
Dredd
“You may be relieved that the vaccine isn’t going to be mandatory.”
Those who refuse it will be portrayed as reckless fools who endanger the sensible majority with their crazy selfish beliefs. The media will share stories of other countries who use “health passports” to distinguish the ‘dangerous nutters’ from the rest. The British public will blame their politicians for not following suit and demand we too have to carry proof of up-to-date vaccinations, and that shops, restaurants, football grounds, everywhere outside the home, refuse entry to those who don’t carry one.
So no, it won’t be mandatory … as long as you never want to leave your home again.
Node – “I suggest that building herd immunity the natural way is less risky than doing it with poorly tested vaccines”
What? You’re comparing an infection that is known to have killed millions of people, and is known to leave several times as many incompletely recovered, is known to continue reproducing in neurons and intestinal cells, is known to infect and reproduce in cells of the immune system… You’re comparing that with vaccines that exclude the reproductive viral components, and have been tested on thousands of people without killing any of them… And you reckon the vaccines are more dangerous?
This sort of thinking is the very definition of ‘irrational’.
Re. your 13:35 comment, instead of getting all personal, you could engage with my point about neoliberal economics. But then maybe you don’t like to criticise that. Maybe you’re with those that prefer millions to die rather than change economic conditions.
– “the present scheme to lock down everybody […] causes more harm than good in the long run”
That is a very bold claim that flies in the face of the evidence. You need to assume that infections would have stopped rising without the lockdown, yet in place after place all over the world we’ve seen that infection prevalence falls when social restrictions are strong enough, and rises when they’re relaxed. In the UK we’ve just had a very clear demonstration of the effect with the November restrictions.
I’d like to wish everyone a Happy New Year, and in principle I do, but under current circumstances it seems a rather unrealistic wish.
Prepare for even colder weather. The current cold spell seems set to continue, but a sudden stratospheric warming event also seems likely, in which case the UK has about a 40% chance of bitterly cold easterly winds. And if that happens we’re almost guaranteed to suffer a shortage of gas, the UK’s former long-term storage facility being defunct, which will be dealt with by rolling electricity blackouts. And presumably from today onwards we can no longer call on our former EU partner nations to supplement our gas supply.
The above would of course make the ongoing health crisis even worse.
At least my two friends haven’t suffered any worsening of symptoms.
The problem with the Great Barrington declaration is that it is unrealistic and unimplementable. Society is not made up of discrete age and morbidity defined isolatable sections, whose path is distinct from that of schoolchildren and workers. Society is a mixture of all those people and there is no neat division. The support systems are highly interdependent. Also how should ‘vulnerable’ groups be defined and what proportion of the population will that be? If you add up those above 60 years old, those with diabetes, heart disease, blood pressure and obesity you will end up with about at least a quarter of the population.
The problem as I see it, for what it is worth, is that the approach taken, even by the so called scientific community, has given prominence to theoreticians, which to a great extent the prominent voices in SAGE are, mathematical modelers and not jobbing public health specialists who are in touch with the real world. The problem of disease modeling is that it depends so much on the robustness of data, something which was lacking at the outset of this pandemic. The old school of dealing with pandemics was a set of rules where the sources of infection were strictly isolated by all means. This means, closure of the borders, and proper isolation of all those infected, even if they were asymptomatic. The approach of this government and of many western governments was to discard the tried and tested methods for a much less ‘repressive approach, whereas other countries relied on traditional public health measures, notably China, South Korea and Singapore.
In the West, public health does not receive the prominence it should and is a Cinderella specialism. THe present mess should alert the authorities to reverse this trend.I too would like to wish everyone a happy new year. I hope that the various vaccines will be rolled out and will indeed produce much more of a much less dangerous ‘herd immunity’ than mass exposure of the population to a dangerous virus.
THe Pfizer vaccine is cumbersome in it’s requirement of a cold chain which is difficult to achieve, and the Oxford-Astra Zeneca low cost and non-profit vaccine is a more practical one.Any and all vaccines for this virus should be non-profit. Make any patents publically owned (by legislation if necessary) and let every facility on the planet that has the manufacturing capability to make them do so and as quickly as that can be made to happen.
The UK government decision to administer the two jabs twelve weeks apart is madness, and has many virologists alarmed:
Paul Bieniasz, @PaulBieniasz, 30 Dec 2020:
– I can’t be the only one who is unexcited by the prospect of a purportedly more transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variant, possibly with mutations conferring partial antibody resistance, propagating in a UK population that is ‘semi-immunized’ for 12 weeks. Experiments in viral evolution…– Precisely! When our goal is to select resistant viruses in laboratory experiments, we maximize viral population size and diversity, and then titrate in selection pressure. If I was designing a scenario to select vaccine-resistant SARS-CoV-2, I’d do what they are doing in the UK
Also, I think there are ethical considerations. The GMC ought to be stepping into this debate. Those already vaccinated gave their consent on the basis of 2 doses 3 weeks apart, that being the regimen that was shown to work. Those people who received the first dose on that basis should receive the second dose as planned. Anyone who is yet to have their first dose should be consented according to any new policy and the evidence for that should be discussed.
If there is good evidence to show it works well when given 12 weeks apart then make it public. This policy is a gamble. If there is a gap in manufacturing capacity for instance and they don’t have enough 2nd doses to go around. If it doesn’t work then they will have wasted all those first doses and have to do it again. I’d like to see the evidence for it.I think this was a pragmatic decision based on the fact that the quicker you get to achieving a herd immunity even if imperfect might reduce the transmission to a greater extent than achieving maximum immunity in half the number thereby not achieving a critical level of herd immunity.
Also I thought nobody has yet had the Astra Zeneca vaccine and if some had on the basis of having two shots then I can’t see why this couldn’t be honoured in this small initial cohort.About cost of vaccine, I believe the AZ one is available at $2-3 a shot because of low production and distribution costs.
This stupid bloody government just does everything wrong.
First they weren’t going to do anything except set up hospitals that couldn’t be staffed, and mass mortuaries – wrong as wrong can be. Then, too late, they did more than a U-turn; they did a fold-it-in-half-and-hammer-it-flat turn with their quarter-year “do not leave your home” order, while guaranteeing resentment by ensuring that it couldn’t be fully successful – open borders, no quarantine, no travel restrictions, no temporal segregation for essential shop workers – and by ensuring it would drive small businesses towards bankruptcy – no citizens’ basic income, no suspension of rent and other fixed costs. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
But covid-19 turned out to be seasonal so infection prevalence actually got pretty low, but at that critical point they turned down Google’s gratis offer of a track and trace system so they could hand a juicy contract to a known Mossad collaborator and surveillance wannabe – Gould! Well that’ll ensure poor take-up, won’t it? Then coronavirus season returned with Autumn, so they dithered again, insisted schools remain open as numbers rose. Another fold-it-in-half-and-hammer-it-flat turn about Christmas restrictions with their tier system, which predictably provoked a mass exodus from the most infected and most populous part of the country, spreading the new strain everywhere.
Not content with that they have now rewritten the vaccine manufacturers’ instructions in the worst way possible.
It’s hard to believe; could they have got it any more wrong if they’d been actually trying to?
It’s also remarkable that the conspiracy theorists see this as some sort of plan. It has all the planning of a bird dropping.
I hear that further papers are showing the new variant to be 50% to 70% more infectious, ie. its R-zero number is higher.
R-zero is the reproductive number for a strain of the virus, whereas the R that is in the news a lot is R-t, the reproductive number actually manifested in a specific population with specific behaviours. Social restraint reduces R-t; it does not affect R-zero. All else remaining the same however, increased R-zero does increase R-t.
The “news” was forever on about “getting R less than 1” so that infection prevalence would decrease, “R” meaning R-t for the old strain. But the new variant has a higher R-zero, so more social restraint will be needed to get it’s R-t below 1. If the new variant has 50% greater infectiousness, the R we’ve heard so much about will now have to be reduced below 0.67 for infection prevalence to go into decline.
During the spring/summer restrictions, R never fell below 0.67 in England. In Scotland, R may have been pushed as low as 0.5.
In short, the restrictions we had from spring onwards won’t work for this variant, at least not in England.
R-zero also affects the herd immunity threshold. For the old variant it was about 70% of the population. For this new, more infectious variant, it’s 90%.
But at least it solves Node’s problem. With infectiousness that high, everyone who doesn’t get vaccinated will get covid eventually, so there would be little point in the castigation he fears.
On Dec 30 Essex NHS declared a major incident, with all hospitals in mid and south at “OPEL 4” – Operating Pressures Escalation Level 4, the highest they can declare, “All actions have failed to contain service pressures and the local health system is unable to deliver comprehensive emergency care”.
In London, Physician Associates sent out a message to medical students requesting help cover critical sessions in London hospitals, preferably ITU experience.
On Dec 31, Royal London Hospital e-mail from management – “We are now in disaster medicine mode. We are no longer providing high standard critical care because we cannot”.
Today, Kent hospitals ICU bed occupancy reached 137%. “There are people on the wards that ideally we would like in intensive care but we don’t have the capacity”.
Case numbers are climbing faster than ever, so this is set to get much worse.
To anyone telling me all these are faked, part of my definition of conspiracy theories is that they inevitably require more and more conspirators. A worker at a Hull hospital attracted Steph’s suspicion some weeks back for seeing too many bodies at a morgue, and NHS managers in Northern Ireland were implicitly accused by Node a few days ago. The theory now needs co-conspirators in Essex, at multiple hospitals in London, and in Kent, and presumably in countless other places I haven’t happened to hear about. And that’s just in England.
“Yes, I may have been mistaken” – go on, try saying it. Unburden yourselves; you might even come to enjoy it.
There was a piece in the Guardian today written by a junior doctor. I think people should read it and especially those with the died with not from syndrome.
“Patients are dying ‘with’ Covid, not ‘of’ it.” The death certificate data from the Office for National Statistics, which provides us with the most reliable figures on Covid deaths, records causation. But even more obvious is what a patient with Covid pneumonia looks like clinically. They have very low oxygen levels, a dense white shadow in both lungs on their X-rays, a particular pattern of low platelets and specific white blood cells, and very high marker of clotting called D-Dimer. This is a clinical pattern doctors all over the world have seen time and time again. Trust us, they are dying of this disease.”
That is almost pathognomic.
Argue all you like about the response to the problem but please stop arguing that it is trivial.From the Guardian article linked by ET:
– “And, the worst myth of all: “Covid only kills the infirm and the elderly.” While age is a significant factor, we are routinely seeing patients in their 30s and 40s on ICU. Data from Scotland shows the average age of admitted ICU patients is 61, and more than 85% were living completely independent lives before they were sick. It could be any of us, or someone close to us”.
But something we never get from conspiracy theorists is retraction. They just go quiet, so that they can resurrect their zombie factoids when they think there’s another opportunity.
Conspiracy theorists, you seem to think you’re on a vital mission to wake up the sheeple, but your narratives serve the establishment you believe you have seen through. Your denial of global heating serves vested interests in the fossil fuel and dependent industries. Your Twin Tower demolition theory is widely seen as anti-Semitic because it is, and by insinuating and bullying it into the anti-war and pro-Palestinian movements you have provided false justification to the smears against Jeremy Corbyn, whilst providing cover for the neocon exploitation of jihadism.
Your latest one, covid-19, is the most obvious; neoliberalism and corporatism want us all out shopping and working to keep the profit flowing, not sheltering from a deadly virus, and low and behold, there you all are pushing exactly that message, albeit for completely different reasons. So I echo back your own favourite message; wake up!
You may have not noticed but the lockdowns are favouring the billionaires not small businesses and should the conveniently timed mutant virus, to prolong the ban on political protests be called COVID-20?
Dave
Nobody here denies that the government has badly handled the pandemic, made some of their cronies better and that the rich have flouted lockdown rules but that does not mean that the virus is not dangerous.“but that does not mean that the virus is not dangerous”.
The point for many, is not whether its dangerous, and lets for the sake of argument agree it is, but whether the response is either sensible, proportionate or entirely counter-productive and the communist restrictions are being used to serve a political agenda, which normally lies behind government policy.
I can’t see anything convenient about the new variant, unless you happen to enjoy your own and everyone else’s lives and health being at risk from viral infection. Everything economic moves money to billionaires; that’s almost the definition of neoliberalism. It doesn’t matter what goes wrong, putting it right costs money, a proportion of which always flows to those who already have most, so the bigger the disaster, the more they make. That’s why it’s called “disaster capitalism”. Read the synopsis:
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism – Naomi Klein, 2007:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine
And yes, it’s already being called covid-20.
Dave, how about broadening the perspective? Take a look at New Zealand’s response and tell me whet you think of that.
The irony of what David thinks is a communist takeover through botched lockdown is that communist China has done very well with a proper lockdown, whilst the neoliberal west is doing extremely badly with a botched pseudo lockdown.
“And, the worst myth of all: “Covid only kills the infirm and the elderly.”
That myth blows quite a hole in the Great Barrington Declaration, doesn’t it?
COVID ICU again today. Almost all my patients are less than 60 years old and previously fit. Some are very young. If you think this disease can't touch you then think again. ?
— Rupert Pearse (@rupert_pearse) January 2, 2021
Some ICUs in Kent and London are beyond capacity, with critically ill patients being transported long distances to hospitals in other regions. In some cases patients are being treated in resus or postop wards, with intensive nursing but substandard monitoring devices. It’s chaotic and very stressful for the staff. Here’s a glimpse:
This is my hospital today, right now. Spoiler: it’s not empty. Far from. Help us help you. Stay and home where you can. Wear a mask and keep your distance where you can’t. This is real, this is tough. Don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t #Covid19 #NHS pic.twitter.com/UEkmDhDvde
— Dr Kevin Fong (@Kevin_Fong) December 31, 2020
I can testify that ICU is a draining experience under normal circumstances. More people die in critical care units than any other ward, and it’s agonising to watch intubated patients gasping for every breath. I have immense admiration for the staff in the thick of it now. The flip side is contempt for those who deny the ongoing crisis, but such negative attitudes are best set aside as there are more urgent issues at hand.
And you say the video proves the hospitals are full? The ONS provide big picture statistics which is more reliable than anecdotal snapshots, particularly the one used.
New Zealand as a loyal ally of the deep state, put in travel restrictions almost before COVID-19 was officially known about, but any delay in the spread of a virus, (the initial UK spin was to flatten the curve) ends once the restrictions are lifted, even if they work anyway.
New Zealand had no infections, and then declared the restrictions had worked! But again your just scaremongering, because the best solution to any virus is build the immune system and therapeutics (and there’s no excuse now as highlighted by Trumps recovery), but your assignment is to continue to push expensive medication with side effects on behalf of the drug cartels.
There are always a range of interests behind government policy. I know some promote the Great Reset, and this crisis is clearly playing to that songbook, a mass transfer of wealth to the 1% under guise of keeping people safe. SA concedes he wants communist tyranny to solve the problem, and the western deep state are communists aka rule by the few in the name of the many.
However I think the many billions being given to the private medical profession is payoff to those providing a smokescreen/distraction from the heist and coup against democracy.
The reason is to suppress populism of left and right which is viewed as a peasants revolt against the ruling class, a revolt that may, the deep state fear, get round to asking “who controls the money”. Imperial deep state rules by pitching left against right, black against white and now uses gender politics for the same purpose and uses the virus to ban democracy aka the revolt.
However I think the main aim is to topple Trump, using the virus to steal the election, by illegally changing election rules, under guise of an emergency, with political meetings banned, despite a landslide win for Trump. But Trump’s fighting back, and so instead of the lockdowns/crisis ending with Trump conceding the election in November, a mutant virus is, by coincidence, being promoted to extend the ‘crisis’ beyond January with a rerun of virus-terrorism.
Dave wrote – “…there’s no excuse now as highlighted by Trumps recovery, but your assignment is to continue to push expensive medication with side effects on behalf of the drug cartels”
Trump was treated with monoclonal antibodies extracted from genetically engineered mice.
(1) Such treatment must be hugely expensive, I would guess thousands of times more expensive than the $3-per-patient AstraZeneca vaccine.
(2) Such treatment must surely be very difficult to scale; how many mice did it take to treat Trump, so how many would it take to treat the hundreds of millions who will eventually get ill? And it would be far more expensive to treat everyone who gets ill than to prevent them getting ill in the first place.
Dave also wrote: “but your assignment is…”
Seriously Dave? Are you saying that I’m some sort of agent? Previously you’ve “accused” me of being a Jew; are you some sort of fascist eg. a Nazi? And who else? Do you think SA, ET and Dredd are all agents too? Please answer these questions.
Really, productive discussion is impossible unless it has some grounding in reality.
Dave, I was a moderator at this site for years, and I’m a friend of Craig Murray’s:
Craig’s post “It’s Only Words“:
– “I am standing because this is what democracy looks like, as my friend Clark reminded me.”
I was on the crew for two of Nadira’s films, and I’m on the crew of both festivals Craig works with.
Maybe the problem is that you are on the wrong site? You’d be more at home on the Daily Mail ?
Dave
“New Zealand as a loyal ally of the deep state, put in travel restrictions almost before COVID-19 was officially known about, but any delay in the spread of a virus, (the initial UK spin was to flatten the curve) ends once the restrictions are lifted, even if they work anyway.”
New Zealand is a classic case of how to successfully deal with a pandemic: act decisively and early. Here is a good account of what happened. You say that they acted before Covid-19 was officially known but that is not true. It was well known that there was a dangerous new virus in Wuhan in January and the WHO declared a Pandemic, a bit late I would say in mid March. Closing the borders and isolation of travelers proved to be very effective and can be done at the outset of the pandemic but is less successful later. Here is what I wrote back on the 12th March 2020 when it became clear that the Pandemic was inevitably going to go full swing and the government chose to procrastinate.
The problem is that Johnson and other neoliberal right wing dominated countries, chose to ‘flatten the curve’ rather than adopt a more radical approach. By May, over 18 million travelers, including from areas with high SARS cov2 transmission entered the country without any attempt at isolation or reducing the number of travelers. Even when it was clear that countries like Italy and Spain, with high rates of transmission, were affected, there were no travel restrictions until the damage was done.
Dave
What a great giveaway: Reds under the beds, they are everywhere these commies, must get rid of them and flush them out, McCarthy was right, bring back the witch hunts.“SA concedes he wants communist tyranny to solve the problem, and the western deep state are communists aka rule by the few in the name of the many.”
I haver never written such nonsense, I have talked about socialism and I have described communist China’s success at combatting the virus. And what fantasy is this that the ‘deep state’ is full of these communists who act on the principle of subjugating the masses for the benefit of the extremely rich. Dave are you really that naïve? Come on please get back in touch with reality, we are trying to discuss serious matters here not tittle tattle.
I find your explanation of Trump’s treatment far-fetched, but there are therapeutics available, as normally there always are, but they’re downplayed to prolong the ‘crisis’. I never called you a Jew, I asked if you were anti-Semitic, which you refused to answer, albeit I do you think you are religious, hence your 9/11 Act of God aka spontaneous combustion due to shock theory/theology.
The chief inspector at Ofsted, the British kingdom’s organisation for “inspecting” its state schools – but not the private ones where the ruling class sends its own children, which they don’t allow to be intruded upon by bureaucratic servants of the “public good” – says that not going to school during a supposed pandemic “<b>puts children’s lives on hold</b>”.
You what?? It’s as if she doesn’t recognise that “pleb” children are born into and grow inside of families.
Can you see how the fascism that has reigned in Britain since March 2020 is getting more intense, itching to enter its next stage?
For this scumbag, children only EXIST when they are being regimented, indoctrinated, shunted around like objects, and it doesn’t matter how many people have to die in the service of this “truth”. She’s basically saying children MIGHT AS WELL BE DEAD IF THEY’RE NOT AT SCHOOL.
Similar attitudes are straining at the leash among other kinds of administrators too, as the police for example are having an absolute field day as they break up all kinds of public gatherings and rob people by dishing out “penalties” without any kind of judicial process.
Meanwhile fascism across the English Channel is also advancing, as president Emmanuel Macron is seeking to tear up the constitution and abolish the right to home educate, making school attendance compulsory in France for the first time ever.
During coronafascism so far the rulers have already changed how large numbers of people view their parents (including when they are ill, dying, or after they have died), their siblings, and their young adult children. Next in line is the way people view their children of minority age. It could soon be a case of WHAM BAM YOUR CHILDREN ARE LOCKED UP IN SCHOOL 24/7 FOR PUBLIC HYGIENE (OR FOOD SHORTAGE) REASONS AND NEITHER THE LOCAL COUNCIL NOR THE ARMY WILL BROOK ANY DISSENT ABOUT IT. Wait and see. What do you think the whole Marcus Rashford business was about? If the government wants to feed working class children during school vacations, let them give money or food to working class families. They’ve got a list of children who receive free school meals during term time, their home addresses, and their parents’ names. (Tesco can probably give them much more information too, for a “consideration”.) By all means send out some cheques or vouchers. Or how about doubling welfare payments? But no. They won’t do any of these things. They want to break working class families. They want a normal meal for children to be like a meal on a prison wing guarded by soldiers. They want children to forget who their mothers and fathers are.
Amanda Spielman, by the way, “Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector”, is married to the managing director of Citigroup, one of the largest banks in the world.
Her Wikipedia entry says she “read” Mathematics and Law (capital letters in the original) at Cambridge, graduating with a BA. The casual reader will infer that she was awarded joint honours. Well she wasn’t. Cambridge doesn’t award joint honours in that kind of combination and it never has. I’d be interested to know what she got her degree in. Did she even get it at Cambridge or did she drop out? Just because someone went to Cambridge doesn’t mean they got a degree there.
Well well well. What is allowed to be inferred by the Wikipedia entry is in fact stated by the BBC:
“Amanda Spielman, born in 1961, left Clare College Cambridge in 1982 with an upper-second-class degree in mathematics and law.“
This statement is FALSE. Cambridge does NOT AWARD degrees in “mathematics and law”.
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