covid-19 – climate-change-briefing

Propaganda to the masses and bad thinking at the top are rife, epidemic. Some examples…

When trump tweets realise its not just his finger on the keyboard but in fact that little keyboard is a giga-powered propaganda machine with open input from any of his crooked and twisted lackeys and I include Ivanka and particularly Jared in this; the little keyboard of his phone (or more likely an office computer logged into trumps twitter feed) the most powerful meat grinder (unfortunately) in the world. Meat grinder in that trump and cohorts will quite happily sacrifice the poor and less fortunate to get past this lockdown, to mangle the truth at every convenience to trump and his constant revision of what he said the day before. At every turn, so many times trump likes to sacrifice the poor and helpless, think travel bans think border wall, all needless.
trump is the wrong man at the wrong time in the wrong position at least to all God fearing sane and decent citizens, yet to Putin trump is the right man in the right place at the right time, an unprecedented opportunity for exploitation. Of course trump is being massively exploited, I’m sure in my mind there is huge amounts of Russian money chanelled through trump activities, trump depends and needs this to survive as no American Bank will suffer him and remember the disgusting lovefest of trump and Putin at Helsinki; two hours behind closed doors, no American witnesses and no notes, trump emerging visibly shaken. This is sickening, trump indeed is skewered on Putins arm as some hapless dumb ventriloquists doll. Note trumps endless insistence that Russia did not meddle in the elections no matter the clamouring of US citizens at all levels, that Russia is his friend, that Russians have been invited and freely entered the Oval Office.
Everything trump issues as an insult or failing is in fact most applicable to himself; everything from trump is a reversal of the truth and time-won practical experience, of established institutions, of knowledge and scientific data ie climate change, the environment, sleazy tax handouts to cronies, international relations, the respect to other religions and ways of life etc etc. He courts dictators. When he points the accusatory finger “Fake news” he in fact is the only fake in the room; shouldn’t therefore everyone point back silently, good move I think and we are quite entitled to do so however the irony would be that trump would assume the accusatory finger to be in fact a fascist salute and therefore an adulation!! As usual, with trump we are in a room full of mirrors. Personally I would also encourage public booing to somehow break the bubble of the would-be fascist Emperor and his hangers on after all he is so incredibly thin-skinned.
trumps obsession and over-repeated slogan “Drain the swamp” is now utterly most applicable to himself, no great swamp existed pre-trump but now boy-o-boy trump has created his very own sickening swamp by any standards. Note handler Mnuchin always standing by rooting for Big Money, likewise Pence to ensure a fundamentalist, regressive and backward doctrine are included, to be promoted at all times.
Truth is cooked up each day according to the whim or shallow fancy of trump, as cooked up as him unfathomable tax returns or unknown educational attainment, both we assume not worth the paper they are written on if only anyone could ever find them.
Mining the moon … one couldn’t make this up! This really is an exercise of sustainable living in hostile conditions, which has been foreseeable for the last couple of years, such as the dreaded impending methane release and subsequent chaos of interconnected climate feedback loops running out of control from the efficiency / efficacy of surging methane levels. Its not CO2 that will kill us but the much more damaging (say x120 fold) and much faster acting methane release in its three forms ie microbial from thawing permafrost, methane deposits trapped within the strata capped and held in place by permafrost and probably worst of all thawing subsea hydrates for instance the East Siberian Ice Shelf. These are huge areas, far bigger any one of them than Europe.
My opinion is that there is a limit to the gullibility of trumps so-called voter base, like most things of his its smaller than he says; soon trump fans will tire of the trump spiel and media hogging, even the most unthinking zombie-like adorer of the trump stance must surely quite soon see the light, the obscuring fakery of trump.
Has anyone realised the huge places recently constructed to die and equipped with respirators, a life of lockdowns, the end of personal freedom as of cv-19 are exactly what we will need when climate change kicks in hard? Which it will, the impending catastrophic increase of methane being the real ‘biggie’.
From my UK standpoint and I think near universal is insufficient regard taken with care and health workers, these special people need special treatment in safer distancing from family members and public, to be cordoned off in effect. The PPE scandal will not go away, neither the scandal of care home deaths being kept out of the cov-19 death toll. The early hours health and care worker shopping hour needs to be redefined as a means of increasing bio-security, so far no-one is taking this angle seriously enough. This would allow economies to loosen up and get a few more contributors working again. Issuing all care workers with a badge is exactly what one would have decided is the first step in identifying such workers and hey presto was announced a fortnight ago. Funny how this can be redefined as a means to separate out care and health workers from the general population, which I think would be utterly stupid not to do so, yet no-one specifically mentions this. this in some ways silly lockdown needs to be engineered more intelligently.
In essence we need to be more aware to separate the health and care workers from the rest of the general population, the latest tragic news of two sisters, both care workers to die reinforces the need to do this.
Quite seriously, why has no-one drawn attention to the lunacy of having a beard at this time, I would imagine a virus catcher par-excellence!

Postscript, nice to hear my words echoed and the exact words indeed as utilised by Polly Toynbee a few hours after I wrote them, great minds think alike! Likewise two days later interesting to hear Nick on bbc r4 this morning echoeing my particular sentiment that nice sounding words are useless when in fact in reality things don’t happen or the PPE isn’t delivered and the cv-19 testing just is not happening as they portray. I would term this a disjoint of delivery. The latest disaster is a recall for botched cv-19 testing, also the NHS and Government seeming to be ignoring the offers of PPE manufacturing and lab testing capacity in the UK. One couldn’t make this up!

Heres Amy Goodman with Noam Chomski …

As Noam Chomsky tells us trump is indeed v v clever.

All of this is only my guesswork in realising the need to self-isolate, but I bet I’m not far off the mark. Here I am in NE England and last nights Guardian website has a map of the UK and by estimating the size of the pictorial data it looks to be seven deaths from the virus in the North East.

Lets say two weeks to show symptoms and a week to die therefore seven deaths show the scene at three weeks ago; at 1% fatality therefore 700 infected as of three weeks ago.

If contamination doubles every three days therefore 96,000 carriers are present right now Friday in this region ie north east England. Divide that by say thirty big supermarkets as a handy indicator of populations or areas (and where we still congregate) and it means 3,200 carriers in each of thirty areas across the region today. Lets use the Morpeth, Northumberland area as an illustration, divide 96,000 carriers by 30 and we get 3,200 carriers in that area and probably most if not all shop at the main supermarket. As my g/f concedes everything I’ve feared / predicted has come true.

I’ve been using disposable gloves for a month, have feared groceries, post and deliveries for the last three weeks, all are left in the hallway for a few day before opening and post and parcels only received wearing fresh gloves that are immediately binned. I operate 3m not 2m distancing and get angry when I see needless waffle at the supermarket or wherever. Remember this virus as with all viruses has never been seen by any form of optical light microscope, only are they detectable as huge populations grown in the lab or by a scanning electron microscope. Covid-19 loves the respiratory tract and is delighted to hitch a free ride on the exhaled air from peoples lungs.

I can well see why the UK Government wants us all to be self-isolating and its importance for this simple arithmetic to indicate IT IS RIGHT NOW that we need to self-isolate.

My fears and prediction of the USA catastrophe is now apparent. A combination of trump idiocy and pay as you go is incendiary to the corona virus situation. His recent cant and BS of ‘all well by Easter’ is exactly the wrong message, this will excuse people to be less vigilant. I’ve always alluded to the similarity of Mao and trump, at this rate he’ll join the big-boy league of mass killings through incompetence posing as ability.

My fearful prediction sorry to say is that our sample area of Morpeth could well have thirty two deaths by three weeks time. We heard on the bbc radio news a few days ago of instructions for each Parish to locate thirty burial plots and a site for a mass grave. It was unfortunate the term ‘herd immunity’ was much bandied two or three weeks ago, in fact this is what must happen but its not nice to hear.

I don’t think we need much of mathematical modelling from Imperial (no disrespect intended) to see what is happening, fag packet workings are sufficient, all we need know are transmission rates, multiplying factors such as rates of growth and time from infection to death and the exact numbers of deaths in the last 24 hrs. I’ve marked in my diary to revisit this post in three weeks ie Friday 17 April and see how close my fearful guesses have materialised.

I feel so sorry for frontline NHS Staff, badly let down with essential supplies and merely a face mask, ill-fitting pinny and gloves is tragic, to some extent the Johnson Government has repeatedly whitewashed over this glaring shortfall. I also feel so sorry for people in London and also supermarket check-out staff are in a woefully vulnerable position.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019

https://www.theguardian.com/world/coronavirus-outbreak

As detailed below in the Guardian today thank goodness only one country has a so-called leader so hopeless. I think also and I’ve never heard anyone say as such being out of the EU I think has allowed us to react (mostly) effectively.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/27/trump-narcissism-american-blood-coronavirus

And a day later an appraisal of trump performance yet again confirms his gross unsuitability to be a President of anything …. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/28/trump-coronavirus-politics-us-health-disaster

Hint: never speak directly to anyone, turn 90 degrees if absolutely essential you must speak, merely nod at the supermarket check-out.

Minimise / elimate all needless chatter to anyone outside the home.

Make it a 3m rule, 2m is too close to be safe. Exercise social distancing within the family, within the home, walk out for exercise but keep apart!

Only accept post and parcels with gloves, bin the gloves and leave the items unopened / untouched for a few days.

Wear disposable gloves at all times and particularly if needing to go to a shop. Try not to hop from shop to shop, ideally one shop only. If no gloves use a food bag or kitchen towel, bin all once out of the shop. Use a disposable bag and gloves when gripping the shopping basket or trolley, safer to self scan.

Ideally shed your outside or shopping clothes once home and wash them straight away.

Remember no-one has ever seen a virus through an optical microscope, they are so small, an analogy could be when fine ground chilli powder is everywhere and we know from experience how it can ‘get everywhere’ when cooking.

Avoid fools ! And regard everyone as being a carrier therefore avoid.

The unfortunate but accurate term ‘herd immunity’ means that possibly everyone will become infected.

Tag: covid-19

Lets use our brains …

the virus in NE England….