Bijou Drains
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Dave
I won’t go through all of what you have written, but a few examples will suffice to make my point.
To reiterate I do not believe that all those dying with covid have died from it.
Nice that you have a belief, the Christians and Muslims and other religious nutcases base their views on belief, what would be nice is some proof.
An example of a factual case would be that the Italians reviewed or sampled a set of died with covid cases/ death certificates and decided that in fact only 13% of them could be reliably diagnosed of dying from Covid.
Where is this study? I have looked on line and cannot find it.
This was supposed to be about Lockdown and the amount of people that could be killing, will kill over the next year or so and the general misery for the working class around the world that is now too late to stop.
Data is already suggesting that about 30% of excess deaths in the UK are non covid deaths.
Again where is the report, also how does that link to lockdown in terms of causality
Many of those people have died for lack of proper medical supervision and stress in old peoples home.
Again massive assumptions. What kind of old people’s homes are you talking about? Are you talking about residential care homes which provide social care or nursing homes that provide both social and nursing care, or did you not know there is a difference?
EG
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/05/14/625355/UK-care-home-residents-fading-away
please do not use extraneous material in that as another opportunity to go off on another tangent. It is just something I just read.
If you don’t want people to comment on it, why put it in? So despite your plea not to analyse the evidence you are using to support your case, I will analyse it. the report states that:
“The virus won’t be the killer of these people, it’s the distress and fear of not seeing family that is doing it,” said one carer who asked to remain anonymous
So your entire case that care home residents are not dying of coronavirus is based on one report by one carer, as reported on the highly pro Iranian presstv.
As a demonstration of the accuracy of that report I quote the following statistic from it:
The homes have tried to keep residents in contact with their loved ones through the telephone or online. However, 80% of care home residents have dementia, preventing many from using technology.
Anyone who has any bacground or knowledge in this aea will know that that statistic is absolute nonsense. I could write at length about the “care” arrangements for older peope in this country and the inadequacy of that, but that is an altogether different topic, however the term Care Home is a catch all term which the press have used very inexactly to describe several different settings. These include:
- Sheltered accomodation, which is accomodation open generally to those over the age of 55 that have commununal spaces and gernerally have a trained warden ont he premises,
- Residential care- this is care provided to meet social care needs, funded by local authorities, if you have less than a certain amount of assets, but not ususally provided by local authorities. IN these settings staff are trained to meet social care needs not nursing or medical care needs
- Nursing homes – where people with medical needs are cared for, although many of the residents of these homes have dementia many do not and have other physical and nursing needs. These are usually funded through the health service as continuing health care needs.
- Physical disabilies residential homes – homes for adults, usually under 65 who have physical disabilites which require them to have full time support and care (there are a very small number of registered nursing homes that deal with physical disabilites for younger people)
- Learning disabilites residential homes – where people who have learning disabilies and require full time support and car.
- Mental Health residential homes – where people with enduring mental health conditions, who require full time support and care are cared for.
- Hospices – where people who are reaching end of life for various reasons are nursed to their deaths.
So as you can see the situation is a lot more complex than just “care homes” no where near 80% of residents of “care homes” have dementia and to state without any evidence to support it that “Many of those people have died for lack of proper medical supervision and stress in old peoples home.” really about sums up what you are saying, it is ill informed and based on supposition. But let’s plough on any way.
Given what is known to have happened on those two aircraft carriers as well documented examples it is inconceivable that that the majority of people in the UK has not already had it.
Making Lockdown a waste of time.
Even the statistics that you provide for the USS Theodore Roosevelt show this to be unlikely to be the case, the statistics for the aircraft carrier infections were as follows:
As of 20 April, 4,069 sailors had been moved off the ship, out of the total crew of 4,500. Some 94% of the crew had been tested or the virus, yielding 678 positive and 3,904 negative results.
So if a majority on the USS Theodore Roosevelt were not infected, how can it be in your words be “inconceivable to think that the majority of people in the UK have not already had it”?
People are assuming that lockdown is a tried and trusted method with a proven track record for this kind of thing; it hasn’t .
Again more supposition, which people and which assumption, my anecdotal evidence is that most of the people I know do not believe this is a tried and trusted method, just the best we have at the moment. However the general principle of quarantine for infectious diseases is, I would argue, a tried and tested method which has some degree of success stretching back millenia.
there is good cleaned up data an analysis on the UK at this site.
Yes, I agree it is a very good clean up of the stats, although I cannot see how any of the cleaned up stats they provide support any of the arguments you have made.
My viewpoint at the moment is that people are probably not dying of covid at all but probably from something else maybe an influenza or another cold type virus.
So we are back to the old chestnut that it is all caused by the flu, but this time it is a mysterious one known only to you.
People mistakenly think when you have a respiratory illnesses you have one infection from one virus, [fungi, bacteria or yeast ].
This may be the case for “people” who ever that refers to, but it is not the view taken by those who work in medicine, so the fact that the general public, may have a mistaken view of the nature of infection is neither here nor there.
In the real world you get an infection which degrades the respiratory pathways and that is followed by a host of other microbes.
If covid 19 is a secondary opportunistic infection testing for it as an affect is going to miss the cause and more importantly, if applied on a mass scale, is to generate some bizarre data if the hypothesis is that covid 19 is a primary causative infection .
So you are saying, if the virus is a secondary cause. However there is no evidence to suppport this whatsoever, most people who die of cancer don’t actually “die” of the cancer but from infections that come in the end stages of cancers, that doesn’t mean that getting cancer is fine and we shouldn’t worry. The overwhelming evidence is that there are a very high number of deaths over and above the expected deaths for this time of year in many different countries and a great number of these have been infected with Covid 19 and additionally these deaths have shown a unique set of symptoms, suggests extrememly strongly that Covid 19 is the primary infection which allows other infections to get a hold. In the absence of your mystery cold and flu (a disease so far unknown and undetected by medical science), can you provide any other explanation for these events and statistics.
[Covid 19 as contributing factor is relevant as in deceases you can synergistic effects.]
I hve no idea what this is supposed to mean so I cannot comment.
In pandemics you do not usually have per million capita death rates varying from 600 to below 10.
Actually yes you do. I studied epidemiology and statistics at degree level, and studied in depth the global pandemic of bubonic and pneumonic plague and for instance in Great Britain, the plague was very area specific, with some places, for instance at one time London, massively infected, whilst at the same time Ireland and Scotland were practically untouched by it. Similarly it was only when pheumonic plague overtook the original bubonic plague (Yersinia Pestis) did large scale infection in Scandinavia take place.
It doesn’t flare up in one city and then die out without affecting the billions in the rest of the country and then move to the other side of the world and create alleged havoc there.
But actually that is what did happen in previous pandemics, look at the history of the Spanish flu infection for one instance and going back to what I said about bubonic plague, Venice was ravaged by it, whereas nearby Corcula was hardly touched during the height of the Venice plague. The issue here is transmission. In previous pandemics transmission was generally quite slow and location specific being transported by road and sea travel. In the epoch of air travel, it appears that the greater amount of tranmission has been through air travel and the pattern of infection which has emerged is one which fits in very neatly with such a transmission process.
There are other issues evolving now about whether some treatment regimes eg hydroxyquinoline are actually killing people and sub groups, a proportion of whom can react badly to it.
Johns Hopkins University reports that there have been global deaths in the region of 320,000 people, the proportion of those who died as a result of a bad reaction to a drug that hasn’t been used in any great numbers is likely to be miniscule. However if they HAVE been giving patients hydroxyquinoline which I believe can be used as a pesticide, I would be very surprised as the drug that is being tested out is hydrochlorquinine
Eg BAME people who appear to be dying in higher numbers than others.
EG AGAIN
The you go on and with this link you appear to contradict all that has been said before, i.e. that Covid 19 is not really that harmful and that the response is overblown, by quoting a link that states that there is a very serious risk for BAME people.
I could be very unkind and say that your viewpoint is that it only effects the elderly and the BAME population, so as I am neither why should I be bothered. I am sure that is not your position, however it is difficult to say what that viewpoint is.
It is no more practical to quarantine older people or people in care homes than it is to segregate people from BAME backgrounds
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As well as unnecessary intubation of patients which is a desperate high risk strategy.
As I know only too well.
Again I know from previous postings that you have expereinced being supported by a ventilator, I had personal experience of this myself when my mother was twice placed on a ventilator and also had to use other types of positive pressure devices. It is a horrendous experience and I am deeply sympathetic to you, however from my experience, entubation is not something which is done without consideration and it is a high risk strategy. Surely the fact that you are here to tell the tale and that my mother lived on for another 8 years is a demonstration that that high risk strategy often pays off.
“Human health and the care of the most vulnerable cannot be governed by market forces alone. If we leave these things solely to the market, we run the risk of exacerbating inequalities to the point of forfeiting the very lives of the least advantaged.”
The implication being that we need market forces plus something else, and the market, plus something else.
It boils my piss when these fuckwits pontificate about the way forward, yet they haven’t got the imagination to see beyond trying to pleasantly rearraging the prison we all live in, so we can have a nice humane prison.
Of course the 4,500 young fit crew of a nuclear powered Aircraft carrier are a very close fit to the demographics of the UK. There must be lots and lots of over 60 year olds on that ship.
You have misleadingly used the “data” to make a comparison with the general population of the UK. On that data the death rate would be 1/4500. This would mean that based on a UK population of about 66.5 million there would be about 14,700 fatalities.
Although this figure fits in with your previous prediction that deaths would be under 15,000, it doesn’t seem to fit in with the lived reality. I did say at the time of your prediction, that if the number of fatalities stayed below 20,000 I would show my fat hairy arse in HO window at the next conference. I would rather that I had to do that than be right in my prediction, sadly that is not the case.
A far better comparison would be using the data from the Daimond Princess, which, although not matching the UK demographic by any means, would be a hell of a lot closer than the USS Theodore Roosevelt.
On the Diamond Princess, Of the 3,711 people aboard 1,045 were crew and 2,666 were passengers.
The median age of the crew was 36 while the median age of the passengers was 69.
I have not been able to find a source that gives the mean age, or the mode which might have added a little more to the data.
The passengers were 55% female and the crew was 81% male.
<sup id=”cite_ref-CDCCrew_64-2″ class=”reference”></sup>Of the 712 infections, 145 occurred in crew and 567 occurred in passengers.
Of the 14 fatalities, all were from the passenger group.
That gives a fatality rate for the total ship’s crew and passengers of 0.377%.
Assuming that the infection rate of about 20% was the same for the UK population, then that fatality rate of 0.377% would lead to about 250,000 deaths.
Some of your earlier posts made comparison to the seasonal flu statistics, surely you cannot still be holding that position?
The strategy of the reformist neatly summed up in one paragraph. Short term issues over large scale change, whilst simultatiously riding two horses at the same time.
At least Chomsky has done Socialism one servce, by demonstrating in his own words the confused and contradictory position of the reformist.
Alan – “Just as some abused children are said to go on to become abusers themselves,”
This is a pretty poor argument, and also part of what has become a bit of an urban myth, and I can speak here from having worked in the field of child protection for many years. I acknowledge that you say some victims of child abuse rather than all victims, but the statistical difference is very small. It is sometimes called the vampire hypothesis, and basically it is proved wrong by the current focus on the R number.
Child abuse has gone on for millenia, if child abuse victims were to go on to be abusers then they would be highly likely to have more than one victim, to put it in the context of the current focus on the R number, R would, given this hypothesis, have to be far greater than 1. As you will know from all of the publicity on the R number, if R was higher than one with abuse victims, then by this stage in human development all of us would be probably be victims or perptrators, or more likely both. As this is very evidently not the case, the vampire hypothesis can be discounted.
This does not mean that poor early childhood experiences cannot have a profound impact on all aspects of our development they can.
I think a good understanding of Attachment Theory and the work of John Bowlby and those that use his theoretical approach, is an essential weapon in the armoury of all Socialists, and I would encourage a greater understanding of this theoretical approach within the WSM.
I might take issue with you John about the idea that other species of animals don’t create atrocities. I worked out in rural Northumberland for many years and some species have what appear to be particularly unpleasant traits. Magpies for one who would peck out the eyes of chicks of other species, similarly foxes can go into killing frenzies in a chicken coop or with a rabbit warren. I’m sure there are other examples.
As to your trophy hunter with the rifle and the lion, I for one would be more than happy to see the lion take home a trophy of his own.
I think, and I am happy to be corrected, the jist of what John is saying is that through the process of property relations, which had their genesis in the capture and “ownership” of animals, class society began.
I would argue that regardless of the ownership of animals the ownership of crops would and did have the same effect. So had humans become complete vegans at that stage of their development, class society would have developed.
In a similar vein John appears to be arguing that without the development of class society we would have remained at the stage of primative communism and would have been spared the horrors of future class societies, i.e slavery, feudal bondage, wage slavery, as well as the impact of capitalism, with all the horrors it brings: mass destruction of the environment, disease, warfare, Love Island and Simon Cowell, to name but a few.
Had this been the case and primative communism had rrevailed humans and the planet might well have been better off, but the fact of the matter is it didn’t happen that way. I’m not to blame for that, nor are any other living humans responsible for the advent of property ownership or class society. So we are where we are and the only sensible solution to getting rid of captialism is to organise for socialism. Which is what we are doing. I haven’t met a socialist yet who believes we are some kind of superior being or that we are the top of the ladder in terms of evolutionary race.
I don’t really understand what your beef is John. (I admit that’s not a very appropriate choice of wording, but no cattle were harmed in the production of this post)
What I woud say is that governments support has been directed firstly to the banking sector and the business class, secondly to the “middle classes” and lastly to the poor.
If you look at the government backed loan schemes, what is any sensible business owner going to do with that loan money? Pay off creditors, which will include a high proportion of bank loans, overdrafts, business credit cards, etc. So in effect the banks have swapped unsecured loans with businesses that are in trouble for loans, 80% of which are backed by the government.
The furlough scheme also suits business, effectively tying their workers to the firm, who’s going to chance going for a job anywhere else when you have at least got 80% of your salary paid. The people who are most likely to be in that position are those who are wage vulnerable such as minimum wage workers and zero hours contract workers.
If you’re in the “middle class” sector you get paid 80% of a relatively high wage and you have the option of 3 months deferred mortgage costs, with no transport costs, you could actually be better off.
If you’re at the bottom of the shit pile, you get 80% of what the minimum wage (if it’s now officially called the living wage, does that mean you only live for 4/5ths of the week?) and because the liklihood is you live in rented accommodation, you will probably get no rent relief or support.
Looks like a bribe scheme to keep the capitalist class and the previous Tory voters on board and fuck the rest of us to me.
John, whilst I accept that humans are part of nature, they are are passing species which will disappear from evolution in the same way as they rose from evolution, it must be said that (at this particular point in time) they are remarkable because of the way that they have evolved and spread so quickly.
They have demonstrated behaviour on a scale that no other animal in the earth’s evolution have every done and impacted on the planet in a profound way. That is not being self congratulatory it is an observation based on what I know of both evolution and the history of the planet, as a matter of fact I can’t see how I can congratulate myself for something I didn’t do.
This behaviour has it’s origin not in our physical capacity, which is rather unremarkable when compared to other animals, or our sensory ability, which is similarly unremarkable. Any examination of why it is that humans have had the impact they have had involves an examination of how it occurred, i.e. what makes humans different not just from other animals, but for instance from our very near biological relatives. My contention is that it is the development of cognitive abilities, based on the use of internal and external language which have been responsible for this. I am not saying it is a good thing or a bad.
Differentiation is not a bad thing, it doesn’t demean from the whole. For instance if I am to differetiate between the Phytomyza ilicis and other forms of Agromyzidae I would look at the fact that the former mines holly leaves only, this doesn’t make is special, but it does make it unique.
Similarly I do not feel I have a feeling of superiority over any life form, however I do not have any qualms about killing other life forms if I need to or if it is in the interest of myself/humanity. In the same way that the bateria Yersinia Pestis is not concerned for me if it kills me, I am not concerned for it if I kill it.
But in this case it is more than a error of taxonomy (for which Bijou’s observer from another planet might be excused).
I’ve already said the observer isn’t bloody real, I made him up. He or she cannot be excused anything, he’s a fiction!
I think that key points I was trying to make are possibly being missed.
I used the idea of a visitor from another planet concept as a thought experiment about what contribution an outside observer could make with regard to the debate about the “difference between human animals and non human animals”. I did not assume anything about the visitor, I was trying to take an outsider view into that debate. I did not assume any characterics of the visitor, because the visitor hasn’t got any, I made the visitor up. What thoughts the visitor would have about “surface bacteria, or any other aspect of life on earth” are irrelevant, because the visitor is a fiction, made up purely for the purpose of this debate. I am sorry to disappoint readers of the forum, but the sad truth is that the visitor is not real.
As to what I was saying about language, I was not saying the use of language to communicate with others, which animals do have in certain aspects, is the difference between human and non human thought. it is the use of language in our own thoughts, our communication with ourselves, which is the element of human cognition which doesn’t appear to be present in non human animal cognition. This means that as a human animal I can remember and alter my thought pattern as a result of inner dialogue I had at a time previous.
Lev Vygotsky’s work in this area, especially his collection of essays, “Thought and Speech” is very interesting. Vygotsky was working on the concept of develping a Marxist theory of the psychology of development when he died. Although his work was hit upon by some of the American psychologists who air brushed out the Marxian nature of his work, this is fortunately now being revisited and the Stalinist and “Westernised” alterations to his work are slowly being filtered out.
There are clearly differences between humans and other species on the planet, this does not make them “better” per se, but the things that humans are very good at appear to be unique to humans.
If an observer from another planet were to observe the planet I don’t think the “tool maker” factor would stand out, other animals make tools, not to the extent humans do, but they do make them. I would also say it is not abstract thought, I believe other animals are capable of that. My dear departed cat (and I do use the words my cat, as I am sure I was his human) could clearly think abstractly. He could think about the consequences of me opening a door for him, he could think about what might be in the fridge, even though he could not see it. That is abstract thought.
What humans have is language, the importance of which is not only in terms of communication, it has a more profound impact on the way we think. Once we become verbal, at about the 2 year old stage, we start to think primarily, but not exclusively using language. I do some work teaching those who work with troubled children and young people and I often ask them “who is the person you speak to most in your life”. The answers come back, mother or father or partner. However the answer is yourself. It follows that the vocabulary you have the greater ways you can express yourself to yourself, if you can’t say what you think to others, it follows that you can’t say it to yourself. Through the process of his internal talk (technically known as the intrapsychic conversation) we refine and develop our thoughts and understandings, not only of the world outside, but also of our selves and our internal world. But more importantly we can store memory in language form and pass it on to other humans.
The mother cat has to show the kitten how to catch a mouse by demonstration, the mother human can tell her child how to carry out task as well as demonstrating it. Through this process of language use, internally and externally, the knowledge of generations can be built on and passed down, initially through the use of such things as story telling and verbal remembering, and latterly through the use of writing and reading. The sum total of cat knowledge is not that much greater than it was a thousand years ago, because once a cat has learned something, it is difficult for the cat to pass it on to the next generation, humans can do that through the use of language. This does not mean that humans are superior to cats, but their use of language means that their cognitions are vastly more sophisticated.
This does not mean that animals cannot think, they just cannot think to any extent, using language. It also doesn’t mean that humans are “better at thinking” than cats, as any cat would tell you (if they could speak).
