Steerage

Steerage

89p

827 comments posted · 2 followers · following 0

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Nick Hoile: Beware of ... · 0 replies · +1 points

It is worrying how so many meekly accept "the number of people suffering from flu fell by more than 95 per cent compared to the previous year" while offering "social distancing, mask wearing, hand washing, lockdowns, and an enhanced influenza vaccination programme" were the factors for such "reduced transmission".
That isn't a reduction. It is an elimination.
If those factors eliminated flu they would have done the same with Covid.
They didn't.
Instead of believing those less than credible and certainly inadequate reasons, the health authorities need to invest heavily in research to know how we were spared flu this winter and the consequent welcome failure of the health service to be overwhelmed from Covid.
My non-expert opinion tells me Covid drove out the flu virus, got in front of it, or combined with it.
The 50,000 excess deaths we get in a bad flu winter became/will become instead 150,000 Covid/flu deaths from March 2020 to March 2021.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Gimson, Gimson, Gimson... · 1 reply · +1 points

Didn't say no lockdown same level of excess deaths. Rather we are having a level twice as bad as a bad flu year. But no flu deaths.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Gimson, Gimson, Gimson... · 3 replies · +1 points

With zero cases of flu in recent weeks, attributed oddly to lockdown - yet Covid proliferates - we were able to avoid the hospitals being overwhelmed, just.
This needs unbiased investigation as to why. Are people who are dying, suffering from both or is Covid driving out flu?
We had 50,000 excess deaths in 2018, the last bad flu winter.
We are now heading for 125,000 excess deaths, in the 12 months from March 2020. So this pandemic is over twice as bad as a bad flu year in terms of mortality.
Do you remember 2018?

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - As the Treasury digs i... · 1 reply · +1 points

I don't doubt the 12 month Covid toll in excess deaths will end up around 125,000, over twice the bad year numbers of 2018, although with a novel economic collapse of 10%.
Lockdowns can suppress the rate of infection, and protect our hospitals from being overwhelmed, thus spreading out the ultimate casualties.
The vaccines however can break the virus cycle perhaps by the summer.
The Blitz analogy is daft. The 100,000 civilian deaths were all violent, affected all age groups and went from zero in 1939. The Blitz also wrought colossal physical destruction on the UK which took decades to mend.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - As the Treasury digs i... · 3 replies · +1 points

Without Covid we had 50,000 excess deaths in 2018. Did we lockdown that year?

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - As the Treasury digs i... · 0 replies · +1 points

I agree. It brought life back to the Kingdom if only for a season.
The later, high, Covid spread came mostly from family gatherings and parties and our density. It was inevitable as the virus will come back once restrictions are lifted, as happened in all EU countries. We could have gone for Zero Covid but without a vaccine at that point we would have been doomed to a permanent lockdown - appreciated by the non-economically active 55% (75% in Scotland) and thus electorally popular.
Now with the vaccines we can all expect a normal summer.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - 100,000 dead · 0 replies · +1 points

Flu does seem to be absent this year and little is being made of it not least by the BBC. Because of its absence hospitals are just able to cope this month.
Without its absence, the NHS would have been overwhelmed.
Perhaps many who died from Covid these months would have been taken out by flu or had both viruses. Who knows?
In a bad flu year like 2018 there were 50,000 excess deaths in England. I don't remember any great concerns expressed then. Do you?
Now excess deaths are around 100,000 so we are experiencing a flu year twice as bad as 2018 and it will be higher by March. But nothing like 1918 especially as young people were then the worst hit.
Comparing the numbers to the 100,000 civilian casualties from German bombing in the war is silly given there were none in the 1930s.
However the destruction in our cities can be likened to the economic impact of the pandemic and the likely 10% loss in jobs and wealth.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Neil O'Brien: Five les... · 0 replies · +1 points

Sweden has a light lockdown and its death numbers are lower than Ireland with the tightest of lockdowns. Maybe population density matters but increasingly - vaccine aside - it looks like Covid will just resurface when lockdown is lifted.

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Richard Ekins: How to ... · 0 replies · +1 points

Check out the names on the DOJ's Human Rights Act review panel and despair. Two aren't even nationals. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-lau...

3 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - May - beached not only... · 1 reply · +1 points

She is now the nasty one.