Ideological zealots

Subject: Ideological zealots.

Has democracy seen its day. Has the rise of propaganda via the internet along with fake news destroyed our assumptions about democracy being the most fair, best balanced way of engaging the populous in the political debate by allowing each citizen one vote  to elect who will lead them for a period of 4 to 5 years.

Many people cherish that moment of turning up at the voting booth and casting their vote, its akin to receiving the political equivalent of the sacrament. When the world was less sceptical the political process was more akin to belonging to a club. The Tory Club stood for one thing the Labour Club for something else. Meetings held on a Sunday night or in a room hired above a pub were the essence of Socialism whilst the Tories were inclined to the more ornate surroundings of hired rooms in the local town hall.
Which ever venue it was, the talk was man to man, sometimes overheated, usually passionate and largely representative of the class structure which existed in those days. Political ideology ran deep in the psych and although turbulent, ran to a set course and could best be summed up as, 'them and us'.
Today the ideology has been displaced by a sense of 'what's in it for me' and the historical text of societal justice has been driven underground by short-termism, a perfect breeding ground for propaganda and the pigeon holing through the massive data collection on segments in the society who are thought likely to be swung by persuasive, targeted story telling, where 'facts' are a poor substitute for 'fiction'.
The gathering of data and its analysis became the work of companies such as Cambridge Analytica used in the States to give Donald Trump victory over Hillary Clinton  and in the UK, the Brexiteers over the political establishment. The segmentation of the voters and the targeting of each segment with a message they wanted to hear was immensely powerful and whilst it's what politicians do, the manipulation of whole swathes of the population in this way has nothing to do with old fashioned oratory but more the prompting of a subliminal psychosis which revealed itself in the data sets mined from the historical profiles kept in Facebook on the individuals who use this platform.
The question, "is democracy dead" has to be understood in this ability to feed specifically profiled people with hundreds if not thousands of messages, planting a seed and then irrigating it with more and more propaganda.
This was the wholesale mechanisation of politics perched on and within an interactive social platform which was deemed innocuous to the user, a trusted companion in their daily search for friendship. Mixed in amongst the chit chat lay the messages, the adverts, the fake news about both the political contestants profiles which  once created left an indelible impression which then was added to each day built to confuse realistic dialog with a tailored mosh mash to make black seen like white and day like night.
This is not what the democratic process is supposed to be about, rather perhaps the implementation of a dictatorial state where controversy divides and rules turning well meaning people into ideological zealots.
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Waiting for the grocery truck

Subject: Waiting for the grocery truck.

It's an interesting comparison this Covid 19 pandemic has with the Spanish Flue pandemic of 1919 1921 and the underlaying effect it had a century ago on society at large. 

Coming out of the bloodbath which was the 1st World War nations, right across the world were plunged into an even greater loss of life inflicted by the Spanish Flue. In the case of the flue it took the lives of the younger end of society leaving many children scarred by the loss of their parents at such a vulnerable age. In this Covid 19 attack we have thankfully not been shaken by a terrible war which threatened, not only ones life but ones sense of who you were and what you stood for. On the whole we in the 21st century have experienced a much more benign life and whilst it is true the media today amplify the effects of the virus in a way that people in 1919 could not envisage we are blessed with the confidence that the medical profession will find a way to beat it.  It's also a blessing, in some ways that it's seems to be the older generation with pre medical weakness's who bear the brunt of the disease.  Having grown old they have less to contribute and therefore have less an effect on society at large when they die.

Of course the flue epidemic of 1919 killed people who today, because of medical advances would live but even today flue kills more people than we acknowledge simple because Flue has become commonplace and with inoculations the vulnerable are to some extent protected. Never the less, on average 400.000 people die of flu each year.

In the current pandemic the death toll, world wide is currently 200.000, but the majority of those deaths have arisen in just over a month and the toll is still rising. Clearly Covid 19 is much more deadly than flue, especially so since the signs of having it and being able to respond and isolate oneself from others is far more critical and whilst like flu, most health people only experience relatively mild symptoms, the virus is here to stay and will change our lives for decades until a cure is found.

Self isolating for the elderly may become the norm along with the caution younger family members have to show when visiting old relatives. Maybe the age of taking the old buggers out for a meal is over, retirees splurging their pensions on a lunch in the restaurant is gone for ever. Perhaps grandchildren will only recognise their grandparents through a sanitised video link and those special connections between the very old and the very young will be lost. Perhaps the retired will no longer flock to the cruse ships or embark on journeys around the world, enjoying for the first time that freedom from the toil of work.

A world without the perspective of the old, a world without the sagacity of chatting with a glass of wine in hand in the boulevard cafe to a person who has done this and seen that, perhaps 60 years ago when things were different will be a weaker world.

Of course the pension fund industry will be pleased as the actuaries no longer have to blind guess how long the annuity has to keep paying the monthly cheque. The health clinics can get around to dealing with the more mundane ailments which afflict the living and stop adding useless years to tired worn out people.

The streets will soon fill again and only behind the widows curtained facade lurk that vulnerable  group, waiting for the monthly grocery truck !

Unpreparedness

Subject: Unpreparedness. 

I'm reminded as I watch the daily Corona virus News Conference in which the wise men and the less than wise politicians bat the questions away, of a quote in Alice in Wonderland,  "That's the reason they are called lessons" said the Gryphon "because they lesson from day to day".
The question of needing to carry the populous along with you in fighting the Covid19 pandemic is self evident,  there aren't enough policemen or even laws to convince a recalcitrant public into doing what the government deem necessary.  The  number of U turns and the governments haphazard directives have left most of us confused and frankly very skeptical.
Targets, which in the initial process of fighting the virus, assumed prime importance are not now needed.  Methodologies which were deemed wrong are now the only solution. Testing which was spoken of with barely disguised contempt not many weeks ago is now seen to be the answer to getting a grip on who has it and who hasn't and therefore who can resume work and who must remain in quarantine.
We have called it wrong from day one and now with a death toll pushing past 20.000, a number conveniently disguising the real number of people dying because the deaths in Old Age Homes and also people dying at home of the virus are not included.

Must we conclude that old people living in care homes are living on a different planet and don't count, or is the total picture too horrible to bring to the publics attention. The excuse is pitiable if it were not so sad, that the deaths in the Homes are counted fortnightly and therefore could not be introduced with the daily hospital death toll. A simple instructive email to the Care Homes for deaths occurring from the virus each night would bring the figures into line but perhaps the story it told was politically unacceptable.
Our historical friend and foe, the Germans cottoned on to the importance that testing had been in keeping the death toll in South Korea relatively low and they adopted testing as a main plank in the control and almost equally important an understanding of the  response required when you need to get people back to work. The Germans were testing 700.000 a week at their peak in that country, we meanwhile promised 100.000 a week by the end of April but have barely managed 20.000 in total.
The testing stations set up for Key Workers have been massively underused because we added another layer of bureaucracy to the process by insisting that people had to receive an email stating that 'someone' had decreed that they needed the test. People who worked each day in the hospital, such as maintenance workers and cleaners were not thought needy and so were left off the list, care home workers likewise were not thought eligible.
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) has been a scandal from start to finish.
The Germans had spent a great deal equipping their hospitals, after the experience of combatting SARS (also a corona type virus) with ventilators and the attendant PPE whilst we, following our obsession with reducing the costs on the infrastructure to  run the country such as the NHS, the police, the fire service, nurse training, doctor training were all severely hit by George Osborne's austerity measures and our obsession with market forces, an obsession we caught from our cousins across the Atlantic when Margaret and Ronald had their famous economic love in in the 1980s.
We don't learn because we are taught we know better. 
It's the downside of Establishment interbreeding, a lack of new blood with new ideas and more modern perspectives. It's the protection of 'old money', and old school exclusivity that has seen us in decline for decades. Where the solution to poor investment in industry and young men and women leaving education untrained to fit in to a modern economy. Our solution was to print stimulus packages which fed the financial community but never seemed to filter down into business ventures. This money printed with scarce a reference to assets has swollen our indebtedness, way beyond our ability to pay 'the piper', who's own sovereign wealth which relied on oil production may be quickly drying up, causing the sheiks to call in their loans

Thinking out of the box .

Subject: Thinking out of the box

Leaving aside the government debacle regarding ordering and supplying PPE (Personal Protection Equipment ) to front line medical staff in our hospitals who are fighting the Corona virus we have to ask, why do we seem to get through so many thousands of masks and gowns in each hospital totalling a billion pieces of kit when taking the NHS as a whole. Why is there a need to dispose of each item at the end of a shift or even at the end of each individual patient  procedure. The obvious answer is the basic medical mantra that everything must be completely sterilised.
Each piece of equipment is designed to give the nurse/doctor protection from the virus spreading from the infected patient onto exposed parts of the body of the doctor/nurse, the hands and face being the areas most at risk. The gowns and gloves along with face masks and the protective visor are made of materials which one would think, in a crisis can be treated and reused at the end of a shift. The gowns have a coating which prevents the abortion of fluids and it been found that this protective coating can last at least three cleans before the protection is nullified. We are told soap and water is the method we must use to keep our skin virus free, why can't a stronger more targeted detergent be used to treat the gowns in some sort of spray chamber through which the garments can pass and, if the crucial fluid protection needs replacing why can't the fluid repellent be sprayed onto the gown prior to its reuse.
It's been my experience that the mind set within the medical profession is pretty hidebound and new ways of working routinely questioned and summarily  thrown out. Sterilisation and reuse of equipment used in the operating theatre follows very strict criteria and the protocol used is set in stone. In a previous life I used to try to convince the medical staff in Prisons to use a sterilised kit which contained most of the things a surgeon would need, a kit which had been sterilised using radiation  to kill the bacteria. The items in the kit which were not used were thrown away. This built in redundancy and the need to start each new procedure with pristine, out of the box equipment was thought to be critical in the prevention of further infection.
Now it seems an obvious no brainier that to keep the tools of the trade, needle's, forceps, scalpels, clamps etc etc as sterile as possible is vital, but does the clothing which is designed to provide a barrier between doctor and patient need the same level of sterility.  In the case of a virus infection this protection of the doctor/nurse is paramount but can this protection be accomplished by thinking out of the box and not be so slavish to protocol in a crisis, especially since the medical staff are seemingly on the verge of not treating patients until the supplies of PPE are made adequate.
If the gear they use can be made reusable whilst perhaps not the advised procedure, will at least prevent a total failure of the critical care the patients so desperately need and only then we can turn our spotlight on the incompetence of our government in the purchase and provision of the gear in the first place.

The lock down.

Subject: The lock down.

It's Saturday morning, another week under lock
'Time on your hands' has caused consternation in some quarters, particularly if you have a house full of noisy energetic kids bursting with energy but now cooped up on the 10th floor of a city tower block. How they manage, heaven only knows, perhaps they don't bother and the kids go off roaming as usual and without the discipline of a school to attend are inevitably getting up to untold mischief.
The self imposed exile from one another cast doubt on the reasons to leave the house as the places we normally attended closed their doors. The restaurants and pubs the takeaways and the so called non essential shops were forced to close their doors.
There is the real drama, the financial ruin of the small entrepreneur, having no income the expenditures become horrendous, not only the rent on premises but taxes due to the municipality, the stock delivered now unsold, the bills which have to be met. Theirs is the worry of business loans and overdraft extensions, of dreams of a flourishing business going down the proverbial drain.
The overall picture is one of extremes. The people sitting around at home trying to keep themselves entertained whilst on television, the chilling drama of people clinging to life by a thread on a ventilator. The nurses and doctors bustling around the bed in their protective clothing like a scene from some horror movie where an alien force attacks the  earth. Of course the virus is  not from outer space but a normal pathogen which lies around us. Part of natures complex fabric, viruses have grown and accompanied the the infinite complexity of molecular evolution which make up who we are and. Along with biological micro organisms  which are in a constant tussle with our immune system the colony of viruses has also developed. To combat the virus, antigen specific antibodies which lie outside the pathogen (the virus), stimulate the bodies defence mechanism which triggers the immune response.  In the case of the corona virus this mechanism goes into overdrive, eventually swamping the respiratory system with too much antibody fluid causing the person to drown in their own protective response system.
The virus is here to stay. Once having skipped the species barrier in China the cat is out of the bag and we must expect repeated crisis, especially amongst the frail with a weakened respiratory system. Eventually a Covid 19 vaccine will be produced although in some cases, (AIDS for instance) a vaccine has still to be found.
It shows how fragile we are in such a hostile biological environment. Darwinian evolution has equipped us with a masterfully protective array of defensive alternatives bolstered by our ingenuity to recognise the makeup of new strains of pathogen and manufacture the substances to help or bodies survive. Our knowledge of the makeup of these molecular bad boys is part of the expense of keeping the labs and the scientists continually on the front foot of research and it's been a feature of our blindness to look for savings in the health system which has led to our unpreparedness this time around. The austerity seekers who prioritise funds for their own means, rather than those for society at large have been caught out big time revealing how reliant we are on third parties to keep us safe. There has to be a reappraisal of the need to cut corners on essential services in this country and our slavish worship on the high altar of globalism where we are in the hands of the innovation of others. We have to retain productive capacity in this country for the essentials and stave off the mantra that price is everything.

down, another week wasted for some, time spent in circumstances not of their own choosing like old lags doing time in their cell counting the days to release. Of course for many passed a certain age the the inhibition caused by not being able to go out is no big deal, in fact for the really elderly nothing has changed except the fuss made when someone comes to the door and you can't invite them in, or the parcel or letter pushed through the letterbox is eyed with suspicion like a radioactive bomb waiting to go off and infect us with unseen virus.

The virus might be small change to pay

Subject: The virus might be small change to pay.

Most of us, holed up at home waiting for the virus storm to pass are expectant that the the storm will pass and that we will be able to get on with our lives as usual.
Our natural inclination is to believe in solutions, from building bridges and roads across impossible terrain to putting a man on the moon anything is possible. The diseases which in the past used to kill people by the millions have in many cases been tamed and even virulent biological missteps like cancer can be pacified somewhat to provide a lengthening of life.
Things like a virus which crop up out of nowhere but in fact lurk either in the animal kingdom and miraculously leap across the species barrier or become a refinement of an existing disease something which normally our bodies immune system can handle but in its new form flummoxes our defences. These complex biological pathogens are part of nature, much like ourselves, they are not alien life force but part of the majestic complexity we call 'life on Earth' and as such are here to stay. If they, like us continue scrambling, like children for a place in the playground, then we must surely expect more skirmishes and regular revisits.
This is the case in many of the disorders which kill us in the field of medicine and the death toll accorded to Covid 19 will be much lower than many of the diseases which we accept as common,  contributing as they do  to the 54 million total deaths from all causes who die annually. Perhaps we will just have to allow Covid 19 to join that legion of bad guys who play against us, week in and week out.

The rush to a vaccine is under way with the politicians shouting from the sidelines to get a goal whilst the ref keeps his whistle poised to call up any sharp practice and let through a goal which will later be overruled by the VAR.
Mr Trump is in a frenzy to get his economy going again and would seize any opportunity to throw the referee under a bus but his diminutive medical advisor Anthony Fauci is a giant when it comes to standing up to this bully. The odds that there will be a breakthrough in under 18 months, given the strict protocols surrounding new drugs is slight but I have always been a bit sceptical in the insistence of upholding medical ethics when people are dying. It seems to me that those who are at deaths door would prefer the hope of being used as a guinea pig, irrespective of further complications, given that death is one of them.
Anyway the newspapers this morning are waking us up to the disaster of a deep recession which might make the virus 'small change' in the overall scheme of things.

Should we be more sanguine

Subject: Should we be more sanguine 

56 million people die annually.
Cardiovascular diseases claim 18 million each year.
Cancer 10 million.
Malnutrition 9.1 million.
6.2 million people die from strokes.
Tuberculosis and pneumonia clams 3.4 million.
Smoking related 3 million.
Diarrhoea 2 million.
AIDS 1.6 million.
Diabetes 1.4 million.
Car accidents 1.3 million.
This grim list reveals the suffering, mostly underreported which goes on below our gaze and outside our comprehension. Disease and death are topics best left for the statistician given our propensity for becoming part of the statistic and our unfailing optimism that we won't. It's only when we are faced with a virus such as the corona virus and its ability to cut us all down to size, paying no heed to fame or prosperity that we begin to quibble
114.000 deaths have resulted from Covid 19 to date, its puny compared to the deaths listed above and yet it's gripped the world with a panic and forced an economic shutdown never witnessed before. Have we over reacted, should we let the death toll rise and accept it as one of those natural phenomena which smack us in the face every so often.
If we had as much fear of death would we engage in war. 85 million people died in World War 2, the numbers who were crippled far surpass that and yet our leaders tinker with the fragile peace that has prevailed since that catastrophe.
Will the mountain of debt and the economic disruption, which may never be repaired be a price worth sharing to limit the effects of this pandemic. Have we and the media got it all out of perspective with our daily news fest of hospitals full and patients queuing to be cremated. Is 114.000, 514.000 even 100.000.000 (1 million) too high when you compare the numbers with those dying annually from those named conditions which we seem happy to accept as normal.
Of course we must fight the scourge as best we can but if we gave the same prominence to cancer or heart disease, malnutrition or mosquito born diseases and reflected on the they deaths cause, perhaps we would be more sanguine less squeamish.