There is a popular narrative that Covid has gone away. Except it has not:
25,700 excess deaths in the UK in half a yr (on average ~1000 excess deaths/wk). To me, it's amazing this isn't a scandal. If this trend continues, it would be >50K excess deaths for 2023. Being largely ignored in the media - with nothing being done as people continue to die. https://t.co/q3XYYiOwjJ
— Dr. Deepti Gurdasani (@dgurdasani1) June 27, 2023
And we are not alone:
So, we are living through a staggering public health crisis where exceptional numbers of people are dying whilst many more are routinely suffering with a quite serious illness and we are told to just pretend otherwise.
If the first job of a government is to protect its population then ours is very clearly failing.
Why have they chosen to do that? Why do most people acquiesce?
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Acquiesce?
Try this for size:
1. The small number of billionaires get together somewhere and agree that Covid must be made to go away as it is getting in the way of making money.
2. They then start talking to politicians about this and throw in the politician’s need for campaign contributions too for good measure (‘democracy’ is expensive didn’t you know?).
3. It’s agreed that Covid is to be put on the back burner and normality imposed.
4. The media is called in to help tone down Covid coverage – it’s yesterday’s news apparently – we need to move on.
5. Covid drops off the radar in the MSM and the public’s daily news intake and perception of it declines and looser social behaviour returns that helps Covid to creep back or it never went away really – it is unofficially tolerated.
It could be that people are not actually acquiescing to anything.
They are having what is important decided for them by vested interests – that’s all, and as ever.
This is the real Neo-liberal trickle down theory in action. It’s not money that trickles down, it’s money power influence.
What do you think?
Possible
There clearly is an agenda of self interest contrary to public well being going on here
Once enough people are allowed to get too rich they buy the media and the political system and that’s the end of Western democracy (bit of a sham anyway IMO). It’s done already. The fork is stuck in. In related news, and quoting Dmitri Orlov, who has offered disturbing and informed opinion on the collapse of the Russias, “The old world order, to which we became accustomed over the course of the 1990s and the 2000s, its crises and its problems analyzed in numerous authoritative publications on both sides of the Atlantic—it is no more. It is not out sick and it is not on vacation. It is deceased. It has passed on, gone to meet its maker, bought the farm, kicked the bucket and joined the choir invisible. It is an ex-world order.” https://www.amazon.co.uk/Emergency-Eyewash-Essays-Dmitry-Orlov-ebook/dp/B01A3OXIA6/ref=sr_1_5
Collapse appears inevitable now. I suggest everyone stops hand-wringing and lamenting and starts prepping
instead.
It is bewildering how little this is noted -even at a university where I expected a respect for research. But people can only be as good as the information they have and then there’s Urgent Normal Syndrome which as psychic defence insists that all is well (found the term at https://jessicawildfire.substack.com/p/if-you-suffer-from-urgent-normal).
It is so chilling – almost as though politicians, media and populace have tacitly decided to collude in denying the democide underway.
There seems to be no hope – is there one single leading poitician who will speak out about this and take a lead?
The very minimum is to have some mitigations in health care and institutional settings (masks, clean air etc)- and an emergency catchup programme to get waiting lists for treatment and diagnosis down.
Governments have clearly decided that the elderly and vulnerable are expensive to maintain and therefore expendable. Covid is being used as a silent winnower of the unproductive elements in society. The Tories are, of course, eroding their voter base, but probably think it’s worth it, as the next election is lost anyway and Starmer is little threat to the rich and powerful.
As Von Bismarck showed us when he developed social security, maintaining the elderly and the vulnerable is an integral part of any enduring economy. This lot are either too stupid to understand the idea or are aware the jig’s up and are interested only in last days of Rome-style looting. I’d accept either answer…
Excess deaths on this magnitude should indeed be causing a scandal whatever the origin. However, other stats would be interesting, notably intensive care bed occupancy, demand for treatments for respiratory problems, and where exactly excess deaths on this scale are happening. If Covid is the actual reason for these excess death figures, there should be a context that supports the assertion, not to mention red flags from the medical and/or social care professions.
I don’t deny the excess death figures, BTW, nor that society (especially the MSM) is capable of looking the other way: only that I don’t want to jump to conclusions based on one set of data. If it was only the UK (it isn’t, apparently) then we’d look hard at the state of the NHS and social care.
It’d be great if Tim Harford or David Spiegelhalter could cast an eye over it.
You’re ignoring the inducer consequences now e.g, the extraordinary rise in premature deaths from heart disease that are likely to be Covid related
I fear you are accepting data at face value
Ate you making excuses, maybe?
I thought I was doing the opposite of simplistically taking the data at face value – and I certainly don’t want to make excuses.
The OECD figures on excess deaths tell a more complicated story. Just looking at France, Germany and the UK it looks – very crudely – that excess deaths were high in January and have fallen (but not smoothly or consistently) since, apart from a rebound from week 15 (Germany), or 12/13 and 16/17 (UK). In France there has not been the same rebound.
I do remember, however that there was a storm of concern in France about bronchiolitis and RSV, especially in children, during winter.
Factors other than Covid might be responsible.
ref: https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=104676
Respectfully, I disagree
The Covid Actuaries Group are a good source of reliable information.
However to give this some context, in an earlier analysis from them this year they estimated there were at that point around 500 deaths a week – around so half the figures you quote – attributable to the delays patients are experiencing when seeking help for urgent conditions. And those are very definitely due to government failures.
Are we complicit in it?
We discuss it in the group but do we talk about it to anyone else?
Even Indie Sage gets very little mention. They used to have weekly briefings, but even though they call them weekly, they are now monthly.
https://www.independentsage.org/weekly-briefing-23rd-june-2023/
Anyone follow covidactionuk?
https://covidaction.uk/2023/06/15/its-the-covid-cover-up-stupid/
Probably the most eye-opening book I’ve read in years, packed with sources. Explains why Covid has been so devastating.
The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Anthony-Fauci-Democracy-Childrens/dp/1510766804
“If the first job of a government is to protect its population then ours is very clearly failing.”
Your title implies they’ve chosen not to? It’s policy. Success, not failure.
More evidence on top of the piece about child hearing and deafness caused by austerity.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/28/cost-of-living-worsening-health-children-uk-school-nurses
This is the future of the UK being ground down and killed off. Where is the counter evidence to support the idea that this government is doing *anything* to protect its population?
https://www.tussell.com/insights/covid
Interesting article from the covidaction article about who got the money. I hope this gets in the covid enquiry going on at the moment.
There’s a special NHS Repair Shop at the moment. Michael Rosen has taken his book of messages in to be repaired. It was the book that nurses wrote in when he was in a coma. Just seeing the esteem he is held in by them makes me even more determined to ensure that Johnson and Hancock get what they deserve.
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