Here in Romania we’re effectively under
Martial Law – which, most immediately, means that we have to justify our every
journey with a signed form and that I, as someone of pensionable age, can only
shop (with ID and that form) for the 2 hours between 11am and 13.00
Quite what the military hardware and soldiers now on the streets are supposed to contribute beats me –
presumably the esteemed President
assumes that everyone is as lawless as himself and the country would
collapse in chaos without them. My partner is in Bucharest and saw no sign of the military in her journey to and from the open market which is still open
But I am deeply concerned by the licence which the
military has now been given to ride roughshod over what is left of Romanian
(and foreigners’) freedoms – not just of movement but of expression.
I was intending
to drive to Lidl tomorrow lunchtime but the car has a Bucharest number plate which
gives me a reasonable probability of being stopped - with explanations required
for my certificate of residency having a Bucharest address! Under Martial Law
the system can do anything to you and you have no redress…..So I may well just
stay at home……
For the past 4
weeks, my fellow-blogger Boffy has been one
of the very few voices to express some scepticism about what he called, on his Feb
25 post, a “typical
moral panic”.
You can see why
authorities want to stop the spread of the virus – but…… if 80% of those who
contract the virus suffer no serious ill effects, let alone all of those that
do not contract it, why on Earth is the
global economy, and normal life being brought to a standstill because of it?
There are
likely to be far greater ill effects, and even deaths as a result of bringing
the global economy to a standstill, by telling people who have no symptoms to
self-isolate…. than there would ever likely be even with a pandemic.
Scepticism
has a very honourable tradition – indeed my glossary of weasel words used
by the state and politicians – Just
Words – usually has that term in its sub-title
But the term
has been tarred recently by its use by right-wing denial-ists – such as Trump and
Bolsonaro.
Boffy is, however,
a proud Marxist and his arguments have made a great deal of sense….namely that,
as those of pensionable age were at greatest risk, they should have been
strongly encouraged to self-isolate; and that the total shut-down is counter-productive ie could ultimately cause
even more deaths if labour shortages lead to loss of power and sanitation….
He’s had some
5-6 good posts over the past 4 weeks – relating to statistical and economic
issues for the UK. Let me start with his Covid19
by numbers post
What we know
from Italy is that the reason it has such high mortality rates, despite having
implemented a closing down of society, is that the virus appears to have got
into the health system itself.
This is rather
like the spread of MRSA in hospitals, in Britain, some years ago. Because those
in hospital, or similarly in care, are, by definition, those already in the
high risk groups, if you allow the virus to spread into these environments, you
will get much higher mortality rates.
Not only do you
get a spread from patient to patient, but you get spread of patient to health
or care worker, and from them to other patients, unless the health and social
care workers are provided with the adequate personal protective equipment, and
every patient is adequately isolated from one another.
This does not
appear to have happened in Italy, but we also know that health workers and care
workers are not being provided with adequate PPE in Britain either. ….
UK government
policy, in relation to COVID19, is leading quickly to economic, financial and
social disaster on a scale not seen for at least a century. The UK government
is not alone in that; the same is true for the policies being introduced in
France and other EU countries, as well as in the US, Canada and elsewhere.
It is a
populist response to a mass panic, and as with all such responses, it is
ill-thought out, irrational and counter-productive. It is like the moral panics
that have arisen in the past, for example, when crops failed or cattle died,
which blamed it on witches, or failure to appease the appropriate gods, and
thereby led to witch hunts like those at Salem, or led to increasing numbers of
human sacrifices to appease the gods. …..
The idiocy of
the government policy is that, as production and supply is unnecessarily
brought to a halt, and as online deliveries cease, those of us in the 20% of
the population who are actually at risk of serious consequences from the virus,
and who would, therefore, place a burden on the NHS were we to be contaminated,
are being forced to have to break our
self isolation, in order to go to the shops to try to find food, and other
vital supplies, as our own stock disappears! I have been in a better
position than most to have prepared for self isolation, because I did have a
stock in advance, but that stock is quickly dwindling. I expect that many
pensioners, are already having to break any self isolation they might have
wanted to exercise, simply in order to get the food they need to be able to
live from day to day. …….
The fact that
the NHS is being overwhelmed is not an indication of the particularly rampant
nature of COVID19 infections, but is a direct consequence of the fact that the
NHS itself is not fit for purpose, and compares badly with the socialised
health care systems of much of Europe. It is top heavy, bureaucratic and
inefficient with far too much money spent on expensive prestige projects, and
not enough spent on primary care, and on medical and nursing staff and
equipment, which is being demonstrated now in relation to the lack of ICU beds,
of respirators, and of the staff to operate them. It has been made worse by 10
years of austerity, just as the NHS was laid low by 18 years of Tory government
in the 1980's and 90's.
In any year, we
might expect that a part of the average 500,000 deaths are people who die at
home, and are not themselves a drain on health services. But, by the nature of
mortality, we would expect that the largest part of that 500,000 people are
elderly people, or people who have some serious medical condition that
eventually leads to their death, either directly or as a result of
complications, secondary infections, and so on. Let's say that only half of the
500,000 people who die, were receiving hospital treatment at the time of their
death. Then the actual current deaths of
422, represents an increase of 0.17%. That is such a small increase as to be
statistically insignificant.
Comment
The obvious
question all this raises is – who on earth would have an interest in panicking
world leaders and their societies (apart from, for example, pharmaceutical and IT companies and weapons dealers)?
