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Monthly Archives: June 2020

Boris Johnson’s Covid-19 u-turns (Pandemic Journal: June 17)

17 Wednesday Jun 2020

Posted by Mike Sivier in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment


200520 Johnson killed more brits than the blitz

How can a prime minister with an 80-seat majority be forced to change his mind on anything?

You may well ask. The answer is obvious: public opinion – Boris Johnson knows his politics (his real politics) is right on the edge of what the UK’s general public will accept. But he doesn’t know where the dividing line is; he thinks his ideas are all perfectly acceptable!

He only finds out where the line is when he crosses it. Here are four recent examples, courtesy of The Independent:

Free school meals

The prime minister is well-known for his enthusiasm on the sporting field – if not necessarily his skill. This time Manchester United and England striker Marcus Rashford beat Mr Johnson at what should be his own game, politics.

The call from the premiership footballer to U-turn on plans to scrap free school meal vouchers over the summer turbocharged a campaign that had already been running for weeks.

Once Tory MPs started to add their voices to calls for a change of heart it was time to drop the policy, but not before Mr Rashford had been dubbed the hero of the hour.

NHS surcharge

Boris Johnson announced in May that the £400 annual fee paid by non-EU migrants to use the NHS would be scrapped for health and care workers, just a day after defending the policy.

As the nation assembled on their doorsteps every Thursday night to clap for carers it had become increasingly untenable for NHS staff to be asked to pay extra, on top of their taxes, to use the health service.

Especially as it was inside that very health service where they were willingly risking their lives in the fight against coronavirus.

Bereavement scheme

There was an outcry when it emerged a new NHS bereavement scheme would apply to doctors and nurses but not to thousands of other critical staff, many of them low paid.

The scheme grants indefinite leave to remain in the UK to relatives of overseas born NHS staff who die fighting Covid-19. Introduced in April, there were almost immediate calls for it to be extended to other workers, including porters and cleaners.

Remote voting

The government was forced to offer concessions to MPs after howls of protests over plans to make them vote in person in the House of Commons.

The system was declared a farce even by normally loyal Tory MPs after politicians were forced to stand in a line more than a kilometre long to queue to vote.

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Five reasons the UK death toll is so high (Pandemic Journal: June 14)

14 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by Mike Sivier in Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on Five reasons the UK death toll is so high (Pandemic Journal: June 14)


200320 coronavirus

This is from a website called The Conversation – you can read the full article here.

1. Lockdown was too late

The UK acted too slowly in imposing its lockdown on March 23, which allowed the initial infection to quickly spread out of control. This was the case with infections within the UK and those coming from abroad.

The first case of COVID-19 in the UK was on January 31 – that is almost two months before the imposition of the lockdown on March 23. Other countries, such as China and Italy, were much quicker to impose their full lockdowns

2. Infections are still out of control

Because the UK let the virus get out of control to begin with, it is taking longer than hoped to come down the other side of the epidemic curve – infections are still in the thousands each week.

The R number varies across the country, and it could be higher than one in some areas. Since deaths lag behind infections by two to three weeks, and R is not consistent, the numbers are not coming down as quickly as hoped.

3. Not all deaths were counted from the start

In the initial stages of the epidemic, the UK did not account for infections and deaths in settings other than hospitals, crucially leaving out those that took place in care homes.

Understanding the roles of hotspots, like care homes, and super spreaders – people who are responsible for infecting an especially large number of others – is crucial at the onset of an epidemic. The UK government should have been taking this into account from the end of January, not from April, when care home deaths began to be added to tallies.

4. Missing symptoms

The UK has been been much slower than other countries in telling people what COVID-19 symptoms to look out for, with a heavy focus on cough and fever.

A loss of taste and smell was added to the UK’s official list of symptoms on May 18, more than a month later than in France and almost a month after a study suggested these as clinical symptoms of infection.

Hence, in the initial stages of the COVID-19 spread, many people could have been unknowingly infected and be infectious and thus carried on with their normal activities, unwillingly passing on the virus and keeping R high.

5. Failure to test, trace and isolate

Another reason the UK is experiencing large number of COVID-19 deaths is that the country was late to instigate a large-scale testing, tracing and isolation strategy. Although some testing has been conducted, the stance in the UK was to encourage symptomatic people to solely isolate in order to prevent onwards transmission.

But in a situation where we do not know the extent of asymptomatic COVID-19 infection, it might have been better to encourage testing of symptomatic people and start the tracing of contacts of positive people sooner. This is how South Korea controlled its epidemic. In the UK, testing was not scaled up and manual contact tracing only launched on May 28.

 

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A checklist of Boris Johnson’s failures to the end of May (Pandemic Journal: June 9)

09 Tuesday Jun 2020

Posted by Mike Sivier in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment


200520 Johnson killed more brits than the blitz

I’ve had this for a while but have been unable to get to it because of the country (and other parts of the world) going crazy because of racism over the last few weeks.

The list is from Prole Star and it goes like this:

  • 90% of the world’s governments took precautions at airports such as quarantine and testing. The UK government was one of the 10% that did nothing allowing 18 million people to enter the country. Many from countries affected by coronavirus.

  • The UK government delayed the lockdown by 11 days against scientific advice while Boris Johnson dithered. Even when lockdowns were in place across the rest of Europe, the UK hadn’t even ordered cafes, restaurants and pubs to close. A recent report showed that if the lockdown had been implemented one week earlier it would have stopped 75% of deaths, that being around 30,000 lives in the current wave.

  • The UK government controversially abandoned test and contact tracing in March, again against scientific advice and the guidelines set out by the World Health Organisation. The test, trace strategy has allowed some countries to keep their death tolls in the hundreds.

  • The UK government allowed people to be released from hospitals into care homes without being tested for coronavirus leading to 22,000 deaths. They also “chose” not to test anyone in care homes themselves, which one Tory minister has admitted was a “huge mistake”
    .

  • While Boris Johnson was dithering and failed to take any action he went on television claiming one solution could be “herd immunity”. A so-called solution that would have led to half a million deaths. Dommic Cummings the PMs chief advisor, who is seen by many as the man really running the country allegedly said “Protect the economy, and if some pensioners die, too bad” We have always been a nation of profit before people and the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted that.

  • A pandemic drill took place in 2016 which accurately predicted that the NHS would be in crisis in the event of a real pandemic. It showed the NHS unable to cope, with a lack of PPE for doctors and nurses and inadequate numbers of ventilators. The then Conservative Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s administration failed to act.

  • The UK government according to independent public health experts, despite anticipating the growth of the coronavirus epidemic, did nothing to prepare NHS Supply Chain capabilities for nearly two months, leading to shortages of PPE. While doctors were buying their own PPE or relying on donations, companies were shipping PPE abroad because they had been completely ignored by the UK government. A nurse from Chelmsford died from coronavirus after trying to buy his own PPE on eBay.

  • According to Professor Stephen Reicher, a member of the government’s own Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), the government has undermined efforts to fight the pandemic and “more people are going to die” as a result. This is due to allowing special privileges for Boris Johnson’s advisor. Who travelled to Durham to his mother’s on what just happened to be the day his uncle died when his mother was obviously grieving and to Barnard Castle on what just happened to be his wife’s birthday. Professor West also a member of SPI-B has said it was imperative the public did not abandon social distancing despite the exceptions made for the PM’s chief aide.

  • However the police commissioner says people are now disregarding the lockdown and using Dominic Cummings as an excuse.

It isn’t because there has been an outbreak of an infectious disease that the government is coming under such criticism. It is the way they have responded to it.

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Australia thought Johnson was bad BEFORE he eased lockdown (Pandemic Journal, June 1)

01 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by Mike Sivier in Uncategorized

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200601 London Covid

I haven’t been able to find a place for this on Vox Political so I’m putting it here.

It’s a report from Australia, panning Boris Johnson and the Tory government for its handling of the Covid-19 crisis up to the publication date, which was May 21 – 10 days ago at the time of writing. It says:

A rational person would question why Britain has fared so badly in the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a rich country with the sixth largest economy in the world, a proud history of public health and a National Health Service (NHS) arising from the ashes of World War II. This forms the central pillar of the welfare state, providing universal, comprehensive care to all citizens irrespective of ability to pay.

Despite these advantages, there has been an estimated excess death toll of more than 50,000 people, second only to the United States, with the highest deaths per million, in the world.

Why did it happen? The site goes back to 2008:

Two years after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the Conservative-Liberal Democrats coalition government embarked on their austerity program. This was an economically illiterate plan, drawing the false comparison between macroeconomics and household finances, an approach popularised by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

A hoodwinked public accepted their narrative and with it wage stagnation and cuts to public services: a monumental lie transferred the debt burden of bank bailouts onto the shoulders of the weakest. For the NHS, this meant a decade of de-funding and a reduction in the historical average annual increase in spending on health (4%-1%). Simultaneously the NHS was further restructured, a process that started in 1970s but accelerated under the fog of austerity.

A former NHS director-general for commissioning Mark Britnell explained it in 2010 like this: “In [the] future, the NHS will be a state insurance provider not a state deliverer.

“In [the] future ‘any willing provider’ from the private sector will be able to sell goods and services to the system. The NHS will be shown no mercy and the best time to take advantage of this will be in the next couple of years.”

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 ensured that advantage was taken, creating a fully marketised NHS. The Secretary of State’s legal “duty to provide” was removed and replaced with a “duty to promote” health services, abolishing the very premise of the NHS. New funding structures replicating United States private health insurance pools known as Clinical Commissioning Groups were set up to force the outsourcing of medical services.

QUANGOS (quasi non-governmental organisations) were created — NHS England and Public Health England — headed up by government appointees. Well established decentralised public health infrastructure was dismantled and institutional memory and expertise cast aside as part of 10,000 redundancies and a £700 million funding cut over five years.

Brexit is implicated:

The 2016 referendum on Brexit generated a groundswell of anti-establishment feeling. The pain of austerity was soothed with the balm of nationalism and a rejection of European bureaucracy. This returned a Leave vote, which plunged Britain into a political quagmire and bitter division.

A country in the midst of a productivity crisis, due to consecutive governments dismantling industry, casualising employment and financialising the economy, was also removing vital safety nets. Rising inequality, the vogue for zero hours contracts, and escalating living costs created precariousness with 10 million households without any savings.

By 2019, the NHS was on its knees: a decade of funding squeezes resulted in 17,000 bed cuts; 10,000 doctor vacancies; and 40,000 nursing vacancies. Britain now had the fewest number of doctors and hospital beds per capita in Western Europe.

This weakened health service and weakened population have been left to fend off this pandemic, with a misanthropic “Brexit before breathing” government at the helm.

With the groundwork completed, the profitable remnants of the NHS could now be turned over to business. The poor were no longer secure; their plight foretold by 1980s satirist Rick Mayall. “You see, in the good old days, you were poor, you got ill, and you died. And yet, and yet these days people seem to think they have some God given right to be cured!”

The 2019 general election was a crushing defeat for Labour. The Tories’ simple “Get Brexit Done” message, unremitting allegations of Labour anti-Semitism, a right-wing media onslaught and internal party divisions, led an emboldened Boris Johnson back to power with a landslide.

Preoccupied with Churchillian fantasies, securing his legacy, and relishing the prospect of shredding workers’ rights, environmental and public health protections in a trade deal with the US, his hands were full. Then came news from Wuhan of a deadly novel coronavirus, COVID-19, which caused some sufferers to develop serious breathing problems requiring ventilatory life support. Soon after, human-to-human spread was confirmed. Other countries, including South Korea, started reporting cases and on January 30 the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a “public health emergency of international concern”.

But we know that Johnson wasn’t interested in Covid-19 at all. The article refers to a piece in the Sunday Times that revealed the extent of Johnson’s failures – but you’d be better-off reading this very blog’s piece about it here. The Aussie site continues:

“Boris Johnson skipped five COBRA [Cabinet briefing] meetings on the virus, calls to order protective gear were ignored and scientists’ warnings fell on deaf ears. Failings in February may have cost thousands of lives.”

Johnson had been preoccupied by personal matters and securing his historic Brexit. Emergency government COBRA meetings were led by others, despite growing international concerns. His ministers and scientific advisers gave multiple reassurances about how well prepared the NHS was and downplayed the significance of the pandemic threat.

The policy of herd immunity, as explained by the Chief Scientific Officer, Sir Patrick Vallance, was to slow transmission to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed as the population built natural immunity by getting infected. Britain was to ignore the fundamental infection control measures of testing, contact tracing and quarantine successfully followed in many countries.

Repeated warnings from the WHO to “test, test, test” fell on deaf ears and the condemned herd immunity policy was summed up by Johnson as: “One of the theories is that, you know, perhaps you could sort of take it on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population.”

By early March, several European countries including Britain had reported coronavirus deaths. Italy and Greece had closed schools and banned public gatherings. Despite the lack of clear government advice, some British organisations and sporting bodies decided to cancel events, however, Johnson chose to attend a Six Nations rugby match with 82,000 others.

Dramatic video footage from Northern Italy showed how its health system was being overwhelmed, despite having double the number of intensive care beds compared to Britain. Anaesthetist friends who worked in intensive care units (ICU) shared their alarm at the reckless inaction and lack of preparedness given the threat.

A survey published by Doctors Association UK showed a staggering 99% saying they felt the NHS was unprepared for the pandemic, and highlighting staff shortages and lack of protective equipment. Of the 18 million people who entered Britain from January to March, fewer than 300 were quarantined. On March 12, the government stopped mass testing and contact tracing.

Johnson had already set out his priorities in a speech on February 3 that went viral on Twitter: “… and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus would trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then, at that moment, humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing, at least, to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange.

“Some country ready to take off its Clarke Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing, as the super-charged champion of the right of populations of the Earth to buy and sell freely among each other.

“And, here in Greenwich, in the first week of February 2020, I can tell you, in all humility, that the UK is ready for that role.”

Johnson’s commitment to freedom of exchange and his views on the threat of overpopulation tallied with his laissez faire approach to the pandemic. Several right-wing commentators warned against damaging the economy, preferring that the elderly and sick should perish for the greater good.

According to the March 22 Sunday Times, the PM’s senior aide Dominic Cummings at a private engagement at the end of February, outlined the government’s strategy. “Those present say it was ‘herd immunity, protect the economy and if that means some pensioners die, too bad’.”

The British government allowed coronavirus to spread to afflict a population already weakened by austerity. Academic analysis estimated an excess 120,000 deaths due to austerity, along with reduced life expectancy and increased infant mortality. Policies intended to replicate the expensive, dysfunctional but highly profitable US health system would inevitably mean many more preventable deaths. The government’s inaction was entirely consistent and deliberate, guided by profit, not the preservation of life.

It gets worse:

Vietnam, with its land border with China and population of 96 million, reported no coronavirus deaths. The Indian state of Kerala, with a population of 34 million had a death toll in the hundreds. Both are testament to the effectiveness of simple, intensive efforts that could drastically reduce the spread of the disease and preserve life.

Britain’s approach of squandering valuable time to prepare, mixed messaging and downplaying of risk was having a very different impact. Hospital ICUs were starting to fill up with sick coronavirus patients, with deaths approaching 1000 a day at the peak. Health and care staff remained without adequate supplies of suitable personal protective equipment (PPE), with reports of some resorting to wearing plastic bin bags and home-made masks.

A BBC Panorama documentary exposed how a government decision to re-classify coronavirus from a “high consequence” infectious disease to an infectious disease of lower consequence led to new recommendations that healthcare professionals use only plastic aprons and paper face masks. This was not based on science but on the grossly inadequate stockpiles of PPE.

A pandemic preparedness exercise in 2016 had highlighted the deficient stockpile of ventilators. The report’s recommendations were not implemented. If you fail to prepare, then you prepare to fail. This price was to be paid by more than 220 health and care workers who have so far died from coronavirus.

Multiple tragedies were unfolding. Patients fighting for life in ICUs, community spread unhindered, but perhaps most shocking was the fate of vulnerable, elderly care home residents. Contrary to having a “protective ring” around them, as claimed by Health Secretary Matt Hancock, patients were being discharged to nursing homes irrespective of having been diagnosed with coronavirus or being tested, in policy described as a “stiff broom”, to free up capacity in hospitals.

A cardiologist described it like this: “Our policy was to let the virus rip and then ‘cocoon the elderly’. You don’t know whether to laugh or cry when you contrast that with what we actually did.

“We discharged known, suspected and unknown cases into care homes, which were unprepared, with no formal warning that the patients were infected, no testing available, and no PPE to prevent transmission. We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable.

“We let these people die without palliation. The official policy was not to visit care homes — and they didn’t (and still don’t).

So, after infecting them with a disease that causes an unpleasant ending, we denied our elders access to a doctor — denied GP visits — and denied admission to hospital. Simple things like fluids, withheld. Effective palliation like syringe drivers, withheld.”

As the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day was being commemorated, the generation that lived through the devastation of World War II was being decimated directly and indirectly, with one estimate of the toll being 22,000.

The lockdown gets a lashing:

Epidemiological modelling from Imperial College presented to government and advisory experts on March 12 now predicted that more than 250,000 people could die if the herd immunity plan was maintained, and recommended urgent action.

Other European countries had closed schools and universities. With mounting public and media pressure, it took a further 11 days before schools were closed and public gatherings prohibited. A piecemeal partial lockdown began, but it was too little, too late.

Construction workers were classified as essential and continued working. Public transport provisions in London were reduced, producing crowded trains and buses. Lockdown is a blunt tool without the necessary measures of testing, contact tracing and effective isolation. Herd immunity was continuing in all but name.

With all routine healthcare suspended, workload for general practitioners and NHS hospital laboratories was dramatically reduced. Public resources were available to set up a nationwide decentralised, integrated testing sites and laboratories using experienced personnel and existing IT systems.

Instead, these were overlooked in favour of setting up three new public-private Lighthouse Labs, which according to their website “are being actively supported by pharmaceutical companies GSK and AstraZeneca, who are providing access to data and resources to further increase our capacity as we scale up at record pace. An extensive supply chain of resources including support from Amazon, Boots and the Royal Mail, alongside the Wellcome Trust has been established to bring further resources to our facilities.”

GP surgeries were bypassed in favour of a network of 50 regional testing sites to be run by facilities management giant Serco and management consultants Deloitte. People with suspected coronavirus were directed to the telephone helpline and website of the outsourced 111 service. Experienced NHS doctors were excluded from managing the unfolding crisis and replaced by unqualified staff guided by a computer based flow chart.

Big Tech companies have been awarded contracts, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services, Palantir Technology UK and Faculty. A controversial contact tracing app produced by Faculty, has been piloted in the Isle of Wight, despite concerns around privacy and cyber security and potential for mission creep towards mass surveillance.

Every problem had to have a private sector solution, rather than the tried and tested public sector now lying idle. The option to rebuild vital public health infrastructure was ignored as Johnson’s government doubled down on privatisation.

And the Tory media get a mauling:

Daily briefings from Downing Street revealed the media strategy to be deployed. The three line slogan, “Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives” was clear and effective, as the majority of the public restricted themselves to essential travel, shopping and working from home where possible.

A furlough scheme guaranteed 80% of salaries for millions of people. Worryingly, accident and emergency departments experienced a significant slowdown in activity and there was an 80% reduction in suspected cancer referrals from GPs. The “stay home” message and fear of catching the virus led to an indirect pandemic toll, as journalists, with few exceptions, failed to cross-examine and scrutinise government decisions.

“Led by the science” became a recurring expression that alerted some of us that perhaps this group would be the future scapegoats. When Imperial College epidemiologist Professor Neil Ferguson was publicly exposed for having ignored social distancing advice by meeting his married lover, it did not come as a complete surprise. It provided an opportunity to undermine his projections that had led to the lockdown.

On VE Day, May 8, the right-wing media were in celebratory mood, fusing the victory over fascism 75 years earlier with victory over the virus and an anticipated easing of lockdown. Two days later, Johnson obliged with a new slogan “Stay Alert. Control the Virus. Save Lives” to accompany his address to the nation. It was no longer deemed necessary to stay home.

Despite high daily new cases of about 20,000, disproportionately low levels of testing and minimal contact tracing, the government was encouraging people to return to work and was planning to reopen schools. The next day, those without an alternative or in greatest need of income were again crowded onto public transport.

Independent experts who had been openly critical warned of a second wave of infection. Teachers and their unions demanded clarity around plans to mitigate risk and maintain social distancing — difficult with young children who could be potential carriers of infection back to their families. Some journalists responded by portraying teachers as being neglectful of their duties.

On the back of a decade of austerity, there has been a rapid cull of the sick and elderly. Even a fool has a 50% chance to be correct with a binary choice. Implement pandemic preparedness report: yes or no? Follow test, trace and isolate policy: yes or no? Ensure adequate PPE for all that require it: yes or no? Prevent the spread of infection to the most vulnerable in society: yes or no? Utilise existing spare public capacity to manage the epidemic: yes or no? Award private corporations contracts to provide services for which they have no expertise or experience: yes or no? Introduce untested tracking mobile phone app with significant concerns: yes or no?

The ideologically-driven British government has worsened the social determinants of health and repeatedly chosen courses of action that would increase the death toll.

Herd immunity strategy is still the basis of the government’s approach. The deliberate crafting of a situation in which thousands of preventable deaths are being allowed to occur has been massaged by a complicit media. Those responsible are protected by Crown Indemnity, immune from prosecution for the decisions taken while conducting their public roles.

This perverse injustice has to change. This is the pandemic public health experts have been warning us about. Preparedness and a timely, robust response are our only defences. In this, the government’s failure has been monumental.

The BBC and much of the mainstream media have failed to scrutinise and hold to account the actions of our leaders therefore we must strengthen and support alternative media voices. We can all be agents of change by explaining to others the reality of our current predicament, and becoming more engaged. We need to break the grip of the Big Tech companies who seek to replace real world services with virtual, unproven technologies with obvious potential for mass surveillance and control.

We need a grassroots movement to push back against neoliberalism, increasingly dependent upon authoritarianism to maintain the status quo. More immediate action should support key workers and the teachers, who are demanding clear and safe measures be taken before they return to work. As a matter of urgency, we must amplify the calls for mass testing, tracing and isolation, and support coronavirus-infected people to remain in isolation, thereby breaking the transmission of this virus.

What do you think? Do the Aussies have a point?

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