You've answered your own question there really. As an admittedly huge generalisation, the better off (only a minority of whom are self-made) always have options not available to most others. It isn't the fault of a person at the bottom of society that their education has been third rate (at best), their living conditions are piss-poor and flammable, and lawlessness rules the streets where they have to live and work, while the Police are busy counting people at garden parties. It also isn't "nobodys" fault in this supposedly civilised country. It's the fault of the Establishment and the ruling classes. Leeching off the poor for 200+ years. They ought to be grateful that a certain amount of venom is usually the worst they have to put up with.
Only a minority self made, are you sure of that? Only three people in our village come from money. The rest are like me. Worked hard, paid taxes, sold the houses / flats that took a lifetime to pay for and retired to the countryside to enjoy the last years of their lives. They are ordinary people, who had ordinary jobs so definitely not the ruling classes, though a few of us do belong to the local hunt...no we don't kill foxes, we just like riding horses...cheaper to run than a car before you get the wrong idea lol.
Never mind. Nothing personal. As Jesus would have said if he'd been a socialist; "The rich are always with us".
This is the sort of thing which comes out of Russia. They devote a lot of time and money putting stuff online to encourage anything which will destabilise the west, including the election of Trump. Putin would love a civil war in America.
Last week of July: Covid deaths 193. Deaths from flu and pneumonia 928. Figures evened out through August, but now we have double flu deaths compared with Covid. Covid is now the 24th most likely cause of death, but predicted to become insignificant due to the pending disasters born out of Covid restrictions. 45,000 scientists and doctors now backing herd immunity, yet Matt Hancock says he can control it. 120,000 excess deaths expected by this time next year. Sadly the average age of those that will die will be nowhere near 82.
Public relations aside, the main reason the Government needs to control Coronavirus is to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed. People who die of influenza don't fill up intensive care wards or use ventilators at the same rate as Coronavirus patients. And medical staff looking after flu patients can be protected themselves by the flu vaccine. (not incredibly cumbersome and expensive full PPE) Historically, bad flu years have put huge pressure on the NHS, but Governments have been good at playing that down and hoping people just forget about it. Now Flu + Corona may be enough to break the Health Service. Break it beyond the power of sticking plasters (a few hundred extra staff and some emergency funds) to fix. If the NHS collapses, the human cost to the over-stretched staff and their patients will be horrific. Pictures and video of people dying in hospital corridors will flash around the world. The British public would launch a furious backlash against the Government - perhaps even the entire Establishment. Law and order itself would be threatened. Matt Hancock and his chums would be lynched if they dared show their faces anywhere. Coronavirus is not flu. Herd immunity may be the long term goal, but it cannot be achieved at the cost of our entire healthcare system and perhaps the peaceful rule of law.
I have posted this on my Facebook page today. Things like this don't help a Government struggling for credibility: Hancock's Half Hour I don't know if Matt writes his own scripts or if they are prepared for him but the standard reached a new low this week. Leave aside for the moment the issue of whether one should accept the view of one group of medical experts that herd immunity would be a good thing, or the view of another group that it should not. This week Hancock told the House of Commons that herd immunity is not a guarantee of success in the fight against the virus because it hasn't succeeded in the cases of, inter alia, AIDS and malaria. Was this a staggering lack of knowledge on the part of a Government minister and his team, or an insult to the British public who are assumed to be unaware of why the citation of these two illnesses is absolute nonsense?
It's on YouTube. People have argued about whether or not herd immunity is a good thing but I cannot see that he has been called out for these citations.
Translation: As long as most are living in fear, I can say any old bollox and get away with it! In addition, numbering medium risk as "group 1" is very sinister.
Edit: Will be going in tomorrow morning on a toilet roll mission, Hope I don't have to use it on myself.
Millions of years ago Viruses dropped in to study our evolution, they were quite happy with how things were going and left. In 2019 they decided to come and take another look. Hmm they thought, what the hell have they done with all that free will. The air's polluted, .the weather's screwed, the ice caps are melting, they're dying through eating too much or too little, and they're stabbing each other in the back for material success. So putting sentiment aside, as viruses only have logic, what would a virus do to put things right. The first thing it would do is use fear to slow down humanity, industry and the economy. Then it would remove what it deemed as surplus to requirements, the very old, the very sick and the obese, as their industrial output is but a fraction of the human and economic cost.of keeping them alive. A virus would also segregate us, that we would learn to need each other in a more spiritual way, and when we became more honest with ourselves, we'd then become more honest with others. When "to have" becomes more important than "to be" nature steps in. If we think this harsh, it's not. It could have wiped us out but decided to give us another chance.
Not sure what the point of that story was. Coronavirus has no collective will or sentience or intelligence or awareness. And it is certainly not a judgment on Humanity from God. It just does what it does. Some of us on the other hand seem to have an excess of abstraction which leads us to project our own regrets and misgivings onto the whole of the rest of humanity, condemning it as guilty of crimes beyond measure. Is this some kind of ultimate woke fantasy? We aren't any more evil or destructive than anything else that lives. Vanity is our most enduring failing; the delusion that the universe revolves around us. People get tired pretty quickly of being told how far short we fall of what others expect of us. Coronavirus has stepped over the line. It may take a little time, but humanity will put it back in its place. When push comes to shove, Homo Sapiens kick ass. I wouldn't like to have us as an enemy.
Covid has not crossed the line, we have. I guess people who get tired of hearing about their shortcomings could stop it by not having so many shortcomings. I wouldn't like to live in a world where parents didn't pick their children up on their shortcomings, and I have no problem reading articles about how we should treat our fellow man better. An asteroid won't really care if Homo Sapiens kick ass, we've not even spotted the last two near misses. A sense of self preservation is natural and useful, fear isn't. Screw Covid, screw asteroids, live now!
Asteroids have never worried me unduly. Give us another 200 years at most and we'll have the technology to spot one and deflect or destroy it if necessary. And the chances of a big one hitting us within the next two centuries is about a trillion trillion to one. As for Coronavirus; we have the technology to defeat that now. We're just going through the process. But we don't need to rely on herd immunity. That takes generations, and we have moved beyond that. We can do in a few years what takes nature thousands of years. Given a little more time we can also improve ourselves, conquer suffering and injustice, become better than we are. But we won't improve ourselves by leaving anyone behind. That's a route back to our prehistoric past. "The ape-descendant will greet him in return, but in deference to a million years of evolution, he will not attempt to pick fleas off him; Earth men are not proud of their ancestors and never invite them round to dinner." Douglas Adams
Alcohol v Covid Alcohol directly killed 9,000 in 2019. Drunken Assaults on hospital staff 73,000 in 2019. 47% of violent offences are alcohol fuelled. 53% of police time taken up by alcoholics. Cost above alcohol tax for the NHS £7 billion And now the killer: Abortions due to drunken sex 90,000 in 2019.(father not interested was the most common reason) actual UK total was 212,000 40,000 people die from Covid, average age 82 which is above the UK average age. Answer: Shut down the country and stop living. So now we've doubled the amount of alcoholics which will probably mean this years unborn baby deaths will probably top 200,000 I don't have an axe to grind regarding abortion, but please world, don't get in my face about not caring about old people just because I don't wear a mask. Instead, lobby parliament about this legal drug called alcohol that kills more than Covid and wrecks millions of lives. Nah, carry on, everyone ;loves a drink...it's social innit!
