Sceptical

Why do conspiracy theories circulate so widely, why does it appear so many believe them to be true? And then I remembered Arthur C Clarke's Third Law

Today I stumbled across another post on Twitter suggesting that the coronavirus is in fact spread by 5G technology. Another said that in November 2019 Wuhan was the first city to roll out 5G, and lo and behold two months later, the virus struck. There had to be a connection!! I went further down the rabbit hole; another post said that the virus was purposely released into the world, and when we receive the vaccine a small electronic chip will be injected into each of us, allowing governments to track our every movement. Meanwhile, the Canberra Times reported that one-in-eight Australians believe the virus is spread by 5G. Lord help us.

Sadly for the conspiracy theorists, there is no Bond-style villain orchestrating their dastardly plan from a secret lair. Indeed, if the UK government is a part of the master plan, they are making a right bloody mess of it; they can't even get their world beating track and trace app up and running!

Joking aside, why do these conspiracy theories circulate so widely, why does it appear so many believe them to be true? And then I remembered Arthur C Clarke's Third Law;

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

I remember my grandad used to like building crystal radio sets. He understood why they worked. He would know which components to use, and how to connect one to another. If anything went wrong, he would know how to fix the problem. The same is not true with mobile telephones. The majority of people don't know why or how a mobile works, and the technical wizardry utilised might just as well be magic.

Might this ignorance of technology and how it works explain why there are so many who are prepared to swallow these ridiculous theories? Or maybe I am over complicating matters, and I will just have to accept there are a lot of very gullible people in the world.

27th May 2020

#coronavirus

Was his decision to travel to Durham a genuine error of judgement or did it amount to hubris?

I cannot believe that someone as politically astute as Dominic Cummings would not have known the reaction that was likely to greet news that he had broken the lockdown regulations. Was his decision to travel to Durham a genuine error of judgement or did it amount to hubris?

No doubt your answer will be influenced by your opinion of the man and your political leanings. Whatever your views, the government's decision to support him has undermined their message; for many, following the rules is now a matter of choice rather than necessity.

The governments plans for an orderly relaxation of the lockdown is likely to have been badly damaged by this episode.

Hubris: a personality quality of extreme or foolish pride or dangerous overconfidence, often in combination with arrogance.

26th May 2020

#coronavirus #politics

Now, when failing to abide by the restrictions, one need only quote Mr Johnson, and claim “I was simply following my instincts”

After it emerged that his Chief Advisor, Dominic Cummings had apparently broken the lockdown rules shortly after the restrictions had been implemented, Boris Johnson yesterday made the following statement;

I have had extensive face-to-face conversations with Dominic Cummings and I have concluded that in travelling to find the right kind of childcare, at the moment when both he and his wife were about to be incapacitated by coronavirus – and when he had no alternative – I think he followed the instincts of every father and every parent. And I do not mark him down for that.

The government has never got to grips with this crisis. I accept that when dealing with an unknown quantity such as covid-19, difficult decisions have to be made, and mistakes will occur. However, in such uncertain times what one needs is strong and clear leadership, and in the UK that has been sorely lacking. In trying to defend his closest advisor, Johnson has effectively re-written the rules for lockdown. Now, when failing to abide by the restrictions, one need only quote Mr Johnson, and claim “I was simply following my instincts”.

The consequence is that the lockdown may soon collapse as people shrug their shoulders and ask “what's the point?”.

25th May 2020

#coronavirus #politics

What we have seen in countries where schools have remained open is that there have not been big outbreaks in schools

Here in the UK the government had wanted primary schools to re-open on the 1st June. There was immediate push back from the teacher's unions, their position receiving support from the chair of the British Medical Association, Chaand Nagpaul.

On the 15th May Mr Nagpaul said in a letter to the National Education Union there was conflicting evidence from scientific studies on the effect of reopening schools, citing the “relatively small amount of research available and the uncharted territory we find ourselves in”. He said “until we have got case numbers much lower, we should not consider reopening schools.”

In an article produced by the BBC on 20th May, it was reported that in the UK, 0.01% of deaths were people under 15, 1% were aged 15-44 and about 75% were over 75. Put another way, 3 children under 15 had died with covid-19. The BBC article goes on to report “the role of children in transmission is unclear, but consistent evidence is demonstrating a lower likelihood of acquiring infection, and lower rates of children bringing infections into households.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan says that children are “less capable” of spreading the virus, and are at “very low risk” of getting ill from the disease. “What we have seen in countries where schools have remained open is that there have not been big outbreaks in schools.”

The British Medical Association has since softened its stance, and on 19th May said schools can reopen on 1st June, or earlier, as long as it is “safe to do so”. The BMA accept there is “growing evidence that the risk to individual children from Covid-19 is extremely small.”

With schools closed, parents have been asked to home school their children. Home schooling is possible if one has access to a computer and the Internet, but can it work if there is only one Internet capable device in the home and the parents are having to use it to work from home? A survey conducted by the Office for National Statistics in 2018 found 12% of students between the ages of 11 and 18, a total of about 700,000, had no internet access from computers or tablets. The survey reported another 60,000 students said they had no home internet access at all. The ONS comments that;

Of those in this age group, 68% who did have home internet access reported that they would find it difficult to complete school work without it, suggesting that there may be educational implications for those without internet access.

An American publication, Education Next has considered the effect of school closures on children's education. They cite the example of teacher strikes which closed French Belgian schools for more than two months in 1990. Students affected by the strike “were more likely to repeat a grade and did not advance as far in higher education as similar Flemish-speaking students whose teachers did not strike”.

Inevitably, it will be children from disadvantaged backgrounds, whose parents cannot afford home computers, who will be unable to access on-line schooling during the lockdown and whose education will suffer more than their middle class contemporaries.

This morning it was reported that a group of independent scientists (calling themselves the Independent Sage committee and chaired by former chief scientific adviser Sir David King) had produced modeling which apparently shows delaying school opening by another two weeks will half the risks to children from the virus.

The question I am left asking is whether halving what is already a tiny risk is worth the additional damage to the children's education and their future prospects?

21st May 2020

#coronavirus #education

The country is about to be hit by “a severe recession, the likes of which we haven't seen”

The Telegraph reports today that the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has told the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee that the country is about to be hit by “a severe recession, the likes of which we haven't seen”. He spoke of the damage long term unemployment can have on health; according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a 2% fall in in employment could lead to a million more with chronic health problems.

The coming economic crisis could prove to be more damaging to health and wealth than covid-19. Can the country afford stay in lockdown for very much longer?

20th May 2020

#coronavirus #politics

Total number of excess deaths in the UK was over 53,000 in early May

Referring to my previous post, Rabbit in the Headlights, the Office for National Statistics had reported that the total number of excess deaths in the UK was over 53,000 in early May. Covid-19 was responsible for 37,187 or 75% of those excess deaths.

What of the 25% not connected to covid-19? What was the cause of their deaths? Does this number include people whose treatment was delayed because the NHS was under orders to prepare for the coronavirus? Are they what the military might call collateral damage?

19th May 2020

#coronavirus #politics

This country needs is strong leadership and a clear message

According to data released by the Office for National Statistics the total number of excess deaths in the UK was over 53,000 in early May. Covid-19 was responsible for 37,187 (75%) of those excess deaths. For families who have lost a loved one, this is a terrible time, but we need to put the figures into context.

By way of comparison, according to the World Health Organisation a total of 1,500,000 people died from tuberculosis in 2018. An estimated 10,000,000 people fell ill with the condition worldwide. The disease affects men, women and children of all ages. However, because over 95% of cases and deaths are in developing countries, here in the UK one rarely hears about it.

Despite those extraordinary figures, the world economy does not shut down, airlines are not grounded, people continue to get on with their lives.

Professor Karol Sikora, a former advisor to the World Health Organisation, is quoted in todays Telegraph as saying he thinks the stay at home message has been too effective. He says “everybody is just too scared to move”. He believes the Government's message should be “go out and live your life”, that risk is “inevitable” and cannot be eliminated. To further quote the good Professor;

I look at Boris Johnson and he looks like a rabbit in headlights.

What this country needs is strong leadership and a clear message; at the moment we are getting neither. The Government needs to be honest with the country, to explain the risks and how how we might deal with them, but also the need for us to leave our homes and live. It is a bridge we will have to cross at some time, so why not now, before the economy is utterly shattered?

19th May 2020

#coronavirus #politics

The Government has announced a vaccine for nearly half of Britons could be available by September

This morning's headlines proclaim;

Vaccine for 30 million could be here by autumn

The Government has announced a vaccine for nearly half of Britons could be available by September. There is though one small caveat; it is dependent on successful trials of the vaccine. Bearing in mind the pharmaceutical companies have never been able to produce a successful coronavirus vaccine in the past, isn't the Government being overly optimistic?

The Government was not able to meet its target of 100,000 covid-19 tests per day by the end of April. Is this latest announcement just more pie-in-the-sky nonsense designed to take our minds off the more pressing concerns of schools reopening and deaths in the care homes?

For those of you not of this manor, pie in the sky is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as;

Something that you hope will happen but is very unlikely to happen

18th May 2020

#coronavirus #politics

It was announced the economy contracted by 2% in the first quarter of this year

It was announced the economy contracted by 2% in the first quarter of this year, and by 5.8% in March alone.

The Treasury is estimating that the cost of the coronavirus to the country will be £300bn this year, leaving the economy in the worst position since the Second World War.

And yet still some question why the government is asking us to go back to work, especially as there has been no appreciable reduction in the threat posed by the virus. Surely, they ask, people's health should come before the economy? Why put wealth before health?

The situation is not simply about the wealth of the nation. The country is heading into recession. A deep recession will leave millions on the dole, leading to a growing number of people falling into poverty. This in turn will have an adverse effect on physical and mental health, the consequences of which may be worse than the virus. Rising unemployment would also inevitably lead to falling tax revenues, meaning less money available to fund the NHS or the ongoing research into a vaccine.

The virus will be in our midst for months to come and we will have to adapt the way we live and work until or if a vaccine is found. The lockdown has given the NHS the time it needed to prepare. The doctors, nurses and numerous front line staff have shouldered the burden to date. It is time for the rest of us to share that burden, and work to ensure the ongoing health of the nation.

13th May 2020

#coronavirus #politics

For us to successfully negotiate the exit from lockdown, the message has to be clear and consistent

Much of the guidance contained within the government's 50-page document makes sense, and it is a welcome first step out of lockdown. However the presentation of it has been woeful. The delay between the PM's speech and the release of the document created uncertainty, the problem compounded by confused and contradictory statements made by the government ministers.

If the ministers do not properly understand what is required, what we should and shouldn't do, what hope for the rest of us? For us to successfully negotiate the exit from lockdown, the message has to be clear and consistent.

12th May 2020

#coronavirus #politics