For around 20 years I have campaigned on the climate, trying to convince the numbskulls in government and academia, that the minuscule change in temperature that science predicts cannot in any way justify the destruction of the modern fossil fuel economy which has created so much good.
But modern academia seems to hate the modern world, and used every possible trick in the book to dream up reasons based on climate to destroy the modern economy. And as China benefited most from that insanity, and there were suggestions China was involved such as the 28gate meeting that set it on its anti-industry crusade, somehow I always felt China was responsible for that insanity.
So, it was not that surprising when a flu bug originating from China, the like of which we had seen on average once every decade over the last century, became the next reason to destroy the modern economy and push back against the modern world.
What cannot be denied, is that China, like most other countries that (having scared the west) then ignored the virus, is back to normal and prospering as the west commits economic suicide. The result, is that whilst the west suffers the worst epidemic of hypochondria every recorded, that China is now the world superpower.
As a result of the west’s hypochondria, we now live in a world, where google decides which websites you see, where google decided which videos you watch, where facebook and twitter decide what you can discuss and where government and the Media decide which news and which lies told as news, we are allowed to believe. With voting machines making an inroad into the London “major” election, we, like the US, will soon be told by big Tech who they deem to have won the elections where are votes count for nothing. We will be told by the NHS which vaccines to take which week to make their Big Pharma shares ever more profitable. We now live in a world where no risk is too small to shut down schools, close down democracy, censor what we say, where even arguing your own point of view is now deemed by OFCOM as hate speech.
Welcome to the Brave New World
What about all the deaths?
In 2015 I wrote an article: “The silent holocaust of 1million climate victims in the UK“. This was an expose of the way the press, media and government had ignored the huge number of winter deaths that had occurred since Hansen stood up and lied about climate** . Just in the UK, we’ve seen over 1million extra winter deaths. But the press had absolutely no interest in winter deaths …. until covid came along. Then suddenly, because we had a once every decade winter epidemic in the summer …. and the Chinese had created the scare porn to scare the sheeple into their pens …
I am now seeing suggestions that in the US, FEWER people died this year than in other years. I’ve seen arguments saying that if we add together the lower deaths last year in the UK to this year, then this two yearly period is not at all unusual. I suspect that we will soon see that 2020 was far from a particularly abnormal year and the autumn was within the range of normality.
Yes we do have to say goodbye to many people, almost all having lived good lives. And yes that is sad, but that is nothing abnormal.
2021
It may seem that things could not get worse, but they will! Because having lost almost all that is good about the west, we are about to enter an economic nightmare as millions of people without jobs, who are kept in pretend work by the “government” through some made up term called: “furlough”, will sooner or later have to be told the stark reality that there is no job for them to go back to.
Yesterday I attended a rally at Holyrood outside the so called Scottish “parliament” in Edinburgh. It was well attended for a cold day just after the New Year celebrations with police threatening us with jail for daring to do what the international convention on human rights says is our right to do.
But next summer, when the end furlough, when the economic collapse caused by this insane lockup becomes real as millions lose their jobs. That space, like so many others, will be filled with the people who have lost their jobs. Ironically, the people who no doubt yesterday were saying how good it was the “government” were keeping them safe, who laugh at the people in the snow, but who next year will be asking “why did no one ELSE do anything to save MY job”. And let’s be honest. As the magic money tree comes to an end, it won’t just be those currently on furlough who are out of a job, but also many public sector people who currently believe they have safe jobs and guaranteed pensions.
Likewise, millions of school kids will sooner or later discover that a year of disrupted schooling does not an education make, Likewise, millions of people needing hospital treatment will soon discover that doctors are far more valuable in other countries than in the UK, and far from waiting lists getting shorter, we enter and era of every growing waiting lists at a time WE HAVE NO MONEY LEFT TO AFFORD TO KEEP THE NHS GOING.
By the end of 2021 I doubt that anyone except the Tories, SNP and SAGE will dare to claim the lockup was sane.
The cost benefits that no one else dare mention.
Let’s have a look at the figures again.
Worst estimate that people have been using for total deaths from covid is 500,000. And that is from a man who consistently over-estimated and clearly over-estimate deaths in Sweden massively. But let’s use that worst case figure.
How much has it cost? the lowest figure I have heard is £240billion from the UK treasury.
How many years of life were saved? The average age of death is around 83. At 80 the average life expectancy is 10 years. But remember that most people who died had pre-existing conditions, so the actual average life expectancy of someone who died from covid may have been less than a couple of years. So the 10 years is very optimistic.
This means the cost per year of life “saved” is
£240billion / (500,000 * 10) = £48,000 /year of life
The cost of treatment in the NHS is capped at around 24,000/year of life saved. So, even if we use the MOST OPTIMISTIC figures, the lockdown was twice as expensive as allowed for other NHS treatment. The simple fact, is that there is not one bit of evidence the lockup has saved even one life. But if we use very optimistic, but more realistic figures, of 100,000 lives “saved” and perhaps 5 years of life “saved”, the cost per year of life “saved” is £480,000/year of life.
Or, to put it another way, for each year of life “saved” from the lockdown, we could have saved over 20 years of life by putting the money into other treatments in the NHS, without destroying the economy, without destroying children’s education, and without ending human rights.
2020 – the year the west went insane
**Hansen lied in many ways, but the easiest to prove is that his statement of temperature change was provably wrong as his own later changed metrics were well outside his own error bars.
