Life in the Time of Coronavirus Part Seven

And we're still in 'lockdown'. It's wearing thin - thousands flouted the 'rules' at the past weekend and it is entirely possible we'll be seeing stricter enforcement thanks to the people flocking to the beaches and DIY centres Saturday and Sunday.

I understand why they've done it, I was tempted, mightily tempted. I was raised Roman Catholic - I know how to resist temptation. But oh my I was tempted!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O8iOBW6JBM

Lyrics: (Squirrel Nut Zippers, 1995)

There's a flu bug getting passed around
Spreading like fire through this town
There's a virus holing up inside us
Each one that I know is coming down
There's an Asian influenza
Infecting us all by the scores
And it's turning into pneumonia
We must go out once more
There's a fool moon howling at the night
And each bark is much worse than each bite
So we must go out and dance around

Yes we must go tonight
So the doctors came on the evening train
With their flasks and their caskets and vials
Mass psychosis was their diagnosis (yes)
So we all cashed our checks and went wild
There's a fool moon howling at the night
And each bark is much worse than each bite
So we must go out and dance around
Yes we must go tonight
La Grippe!, Salsa!

***Note: there is a new version video of this song performed by the current band make-up, filmed in 2020 just after the pandemic was declared. It is quite disturbing, I don't recommend it***

Sadly, with the covidiots on the beach and at the B&Q and the polis having to try to herd cats rather than actually fight crime, the stabbings in London resumed yesterday although two of the five deaths may have been 'just a domestic' rather than gang violence.

Yes. The people have lost tolerance for 'Stay Home - Save the NHS - Save Lives'. My guess is the news outlets claiming the numbers have dropped for cases and deaths has convinced the more selfish and gullible the threat is over and it is now safe to get back out to Life As We Used To Know It rather than what the deputy PM is calling 'the new normal' - which is to say if we go on long jollies to beauty spots including the beach, crowd in queues and refuse to keep our distances in other public spaces, we'll be back to strictly enforced 'lockdown'.

The British and the hangers-on crowding our once green and pleasant island are so obsessed with the pandemic and how it is blighting our lives they're not even interested in the more 'interesting' worrying news the little dictator in North Korea (NK) might be dead. Late Saturday evening a very few Japanese news outlets picked up on some rumours slithering out of NK that a botched angioplasty OR a case of Covid-19 may have put Kim Jung-Un in a coma he was probably, according to the first rumours out of NK, not going to survive. Later, in the wee hours of Sunday morning the rumours progressed to claiming Kim was dead. Throughout Sunday news trickled out of increased military 'drills' and hints of a power struggle that may or may not lead to a nuclear war should the power struggle be won by 'the wrong person(s)'. 'This ain't gonna end well' is probably the understatement of the century.

But no worries, the 'big story' continued through Sunday of how low the Covid-19 death count was and how Boris Johnson was back at No.10 ready to resume full control of the Covid-19 response by the UK Government. (oh this should be interesting considering SARS-CoV-2 nearly fecking killed him and he's reportedly much more aware of just how bad the pandemic is and could become more so as time goes on).

La Grippe!

LIFE IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS PART SIX

Lockdown went into effect 23^rd March 2020 although we’d had a bit of a hint the week before when Prime Minister Boris Johnson started talking about ‘shielding the vulnerable by the weekend’.

When I heard that phrase ‘shielding the vulnerable by the weekend’, I knew.

In late November – early December I noticed a very few reports out of China. The reports, posted on the back pages or in the ‘Odd’ or ‘Health News’ sections of newspapers and online feeds, were short and sparse on information. Usually just one line – There are rumours coming out of China about deaths to a strange new pneumonia. Later, closer to Christmas and New Year, the reports expanded just a wee bit to say the strange new pneumonia hadn’t killed many people (at the time still in the low double digits) but the deaths look a lot like SARS. (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) 

Which of course got my attention and I began preparing in case this strange new pneumonia that wasn’t carrying off tonnes of people (yet) went seriously SARS version 2.0 on us. Which, of course, it has.

Inventory – food, household goods, BBQ supplies (power outages). Medical supplies including spare disposable gloves, masks, and mob caps. Reading up on caring for a pneumonia patient at home. Reminding myself of SARS and ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome), how it is contracted, how it spreads, how it kills. Oh dear, that didn’t help my peace of mind.

By the middle of January everyone had heard of this novel coronavirus killing thousands in China, specifically a city, Wuhan, in the Hubei region. Here in the UK no-one had the virus and the belief early on was essentially ‘Oh, but that won’t happen to us’.

Meanwhile I was topping up the fridge-freezer and store cupboard, buying a small chest freezer, and buying one last large box of disposable gloves and other medical supplies.

When the lockdown was ordered, I was more or less ready for Paul and I to manage comfortably for at least two months. Then Britain saw the first cases, two and in the same Chinese student family group down in Yorkshire. And then a super-spreader came home from a ski holiday in Europe and the cascade of cases began. I began a spreadsheet of cases and deaths. The numbers here in the UK grew.

And I kept topping up the supplies, worrying where I was going to stack everything we needed to get through what was beginning to look like a six months long mass quarantine about to happen, and how I was going to get replacement supplies in as what I had stocked needed to be replenished. I checked with the local butcher – yes, he would deliver our monthly meat order. I signed us up at the big box supermarket (ASDA) for Click&Collect when I couldn’t get a slot for home delivery before June (this was the first week of March – I wasn’t the only person paying attention, clearly).

First C&C slot I could get for us? The middle of April and I used the booking to fill in some gaps – more ‘pot noodles’ (actually pasta packets, with a few pot noodles in addition), peanut butter, Bisto Best Gravy Granules (don’t laugh – in a pinch that reconstituted gravy over rice or pasta with some veg on the side or mixed in makes a decent and filling emergency meal). Paul picked it up Monday.

From the last week of January the Government began issuing guidance to GP surgeries and hospital A&E units on handling suspected cases of what was being called ‘the novel coronavirus’ whilst advising it was only dangerous to elderly and those with underlying conditions, and that younger people would have mild illness if any at all. Transmission routes were considered to be the usual droplets and it wasn’t until the beginning of March it dawned on anyone this ‘novel coronavirus’ spread easily, the droplets were like a fine mist that bloody well might have been considered airborne, and were found to be ‘live’ as long as 17 days (from swabbed cruise ship cabins where the virus had swept through passenger and crew lists like wildfire). It’s not front-page news, the way this virus remains live on surfaces – but it should be. Also not front-page news is the virus can be spread by the asymptomatic, and just by talking unmasked – the infected person doesn’t have to cough (or sneeze) to spread the virus.

WHO was exposed relatively early on as being China-centric and unwilling to call this bloody spade the spade it is, the global spread and shockingly painful death from what scientists at least began calling SAR-CoV-2 (and are now, not surprisingly, calling simply SARS-2) finally forced WHO to declare it a pandemic until 11 March 2020. The ‘common name’ of the virus became known as Covid-19, or ‘the virus’. But the real name is SARS-CoV-2 and it is SARS returned and this time better equipped to overcome immune responses, and to overcome the antibody immunity in a person declared virus-free. Several patients have been discovered to be testing positive weeks after recovering and being tested negative. The research is on-going, does the virus go dormant in the body to return later, or does the supposed immunity in recovered patients have a very short shelf-life?

Worse, the virus is mutating and it’s doing so in a way that makes it more deadly than the previous mutation – but bloody well don’t try saying that to anyone as they are taking comfort in the ‘scientific advice’ from Governmental science and medical advisors who tried to talk the PM and Cabinet into letting this effing virus ‘run free’ and thereby create ‘herd immunity’. The bastards should be struck off and they should be in the stocks for us to pelt them with rotten fruit and veg!

The news is grim. So grim the Government is skewing numbers by not counting nursing home and in-home deaths. That scandal erupted as a side-bar scandal to the growing scandal of the shortage of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) in hospitals. There were concerns among the older population and some organisations dedicated to the older population that this virus would be looked at as ‘an old and weak’ illness that should be left unchecked – ‘respecting the dignity of the deceased, of course’ – and there were suggestions the virus would be seen as a sad (but useful) cull of people not able to contribute to the Treasury.

Each Thursday night we stand on our doorsteps and driveways or hang out first floor windows to clap as a United Kingdom for the NHS and other essential workers keeping the country going during the most difficult days we’ve seen globally since WWII.

Fox and I talk on the phone once a week. Since February, our greeting consists of ‘No coronavirus in me, how are you?’. He is an essential worker. My heart is in my throat 24/7.

LIFE IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS: PART FIVE

3 Apr 2020 0930hrs

Yes, I know, I’ve skipped over part four. I wrote it, yesterday. But I’ve chosen not to publish it – I vented some frustration, the piece was over 2K words and really, it’s just not worth publishing.

I have, however, decided to try again, this time without the length. If possible. We’ll see.

I refuse to watch BBC News. I refuse to use the website. I think what the BBC has become is utterly disgraceful and their institutional bias against Britain and Britons doesn’t only border on outright treason, it is flat-out bald-faced treason.

Late last night I did a scan of news headlines at online sites and saw a headline proclaiming an ‘expert’ told BBC in an interview dying by Covid-19 is dying of pneumonia, more like falling asleep, is not at all painful, and the only reason medics can’t allow family to be with the dying loved one is strictly down to the need for bio-haz-mat suits they’re trying to save those for the medics. I forced myself to go read the piece on the BBC site because I really was hoping the ‘expert’ had been quoted by the non-BBC outlet out of context – surely, surely no medical professional would say something so completely untrue. Surely.

But no, she was quoted correctly. She also claimed death comes quickly - and that is almost the worst lie of all as most patients who die only do so after WEEKS on vents. 

I am outraged, disgusted, dismayed, and deeply, deeply disappointed the BBC and their lying sack of ambulatory faecal waste 'staff' will get away with spreading such a spurious lie.

The use of the label ‘Covid-19’ is incorrect and I think if people had the scientific name in their faces 24/7 they’d finally really get the depth of horror – the correct scientific name is SARS-CoV-2 and yes, that is SARS.

A man gave his life (Chinese ophthalmologist) trying to get the word out to online colleagues a ‘SARS like pneumonia was cropping up in his Wuhan hospital and in his honour at least the scourge should be given its real name at every opportunity. IT IS SARSv2, PEOPLE, WAKE-UP!! SARS is back and it’s worse than the first round in 2002. Much, much worse. 

If the proper name was used people might actually understand why our Governments are pleading with the public to follow social distancing and strict hygiene guidelines. Every time I see some keyboard warrior downplaying this nightmare as ‘Flu kills more every year…’ and ‘the Government is trying to grab total control over us scaremongering Covid-19 when it’s nothing more than a silly little cold bug’ I want to reach through the screen and bitch slap the pillock back to reality.

Death by SARS is horrific. It is death by a particularly painful ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome) pneumonia. For the BBC ‘expert’ to claim it’s like painlessly falling asleep is the most shameful lie in a string of lies and for this lie alone I have now fallen into the camp wanting the BBC disbanded. At this point I want to see every damn one of the management and editorial team in the dock.

There have been questions as to why so few survivors have spoken publicly – the answer is the few who have spoken are unanimous in saying the disease HURTS terribly and none of so-called experts want that getting about, and the so-called experts don't want to say the only reason patients on vents, 66% of whom die, btw, appear to die ‘painlessly’ is BECAUSE THEY’RE SEDATED TO THE POINT OF BEING NEAR COMATOSE. Which probably contributes to their death as the sedation will depress breathing, ffs, it’s not rocket science, I’m not a medically trained person and I know that!

SARS related ARDS hurts – a lot. The prognosis is dire, as above, 66% of these patients die and they die horribly. Sepsis, multiple organ failure cascade, drowning on lung fluid accumulation – how can ANY so-called ‘expert’ dare to claim this is not a horrendously painful way to die?!

In the name of God, humanity, and all that is sane and intelligent – USE THE BLOODY SCIENTIFIC NAME OF THIS 21^ST CENTURY PLAGUE to wake the public up to why the hell we’re currently living under what is fast becoming a polis state.

And while I’m very glad Prince Charles and Prime Minister Boris Johnson are on the road to recovery from their ‘mild’ cases (they both look as though they’ve been run over by a steam roller, but they are recovering), I think the PM has questions to answer as to WTF he went along with Mengle’s minions - Professor Whitless and that fop Lord Whatsit (medical directors advising the PM) who pushed for letting this nightmare run riot through the British population in hopes of creating ‘herd immunity’.

By going along with these bastards the PM is now at risk of being blamed for the death of over 2000 Britons so far. Had we done the sensible thing – come right out and explained to the British public we face a horrific 21^st century plague, described the truth of the way this plague kills, and then shut the bloody country (including borders, ffs, again, not rocket science!), 2000 Britons would not be lying in makeshift morgues wrapped in bloody shrouds, their bodies still so infectious the handlers are suited up in full haz-mat kit to move them. 

And the death toll is only going to increase, here and everywhere else where the economy has trumped the very survival of the people who create that precious economy - THE PEOPLE.