David Craig, on March 31st, 2020(Tuesday blog)
Today I just wanted to correct two recent mainstream media lies about the Chinese Covid-19 plague.
Lie 1 – We should have joined the EU ventilator scheme
This lie has been widely reported in the Europhiliac, Brexit-hating media. The claim is that British lives will be lost because the UK didn’t join an EU scheme to buy ventilators. There are two reasons why this is total rubbish:
Reason 1 – Ventilator production capacity is already sold out
All ventilator production capacity is already sold out for at least the next year due to individual countries placing orders for ventilators. So it’s far from clear how the useless, self-serving, overpaid, over-pensioned EU bureaucrats are going to find factory space for the 100,000 to 200,00 ventilators which will be needed across Europe when the Chinese plague hits its peak. I suspect the great EU ventilator procurement scheme was just a pro-EU publicity stunt – the EU was desperate to be seen to be doing something – and will quietly be forgotten when the EU is unable to get any ventilators at all.
Reason 2 – Ventilators would have been a “common resource”
If the EU had managed to buy some ventilators, these would have been what the EU calls a “common resource”. This means that the ventilators would belong to all EU countries. So bureaucrats in Brussels would decide which countries to send them to. Given that the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) seem to be the countries worst affected by the Chinese Covid-19 plague, it’s more than certain that the first 10,000 to 20,000 ventilators would have been sent to the PIGS. So we would have seen ventilators made in Britain being sent abroad. This would have resulted in more deaths in the UK. By not being in the EU scheme, the UK Government can ensure that every ventilator made in Britain remains in Britain.
When I tried to point this out by commenting on the Times website, my comment was deleted for supposedly “breaching community guidelines”. I guess we live in an age in which the truth is seen as dangerous by those in power over us.
Lie 2 – Evil Tory austerity means we have too few hospital beds
It’s absolutely true that we have disgracefully fewer hospital beds per 100,000 of the population than almost every other EU country:
But it wasn’t evil Tory austerity that caused the shameful shortage of hospital beds. The biggest cuts in the number of hospital beds occurred between 1997 and 2007 – the ten years of Lord Anthony Blair’s New Labour:
Even worse, while Blair’s New Labour were slashing the number of hospital beds, they were hugely increasing the number of managers in the NHS from around 25,000 in 1997 to over 40,000 by 2007. The result of this was a ludicrous drop in hospital beds per manager:
Under New Labour’s bed cuts while increasing the number of managers, the NHS went from around 8 beds per manager in 1997 (when New Labour first came to power) to fewer than 4 beds per manager by the time New Labour lost to the Tory/LibDem coalition. Since then, the number of managers in the NHS has declined slightly from about 40,000 to somewhere around 37,000.
What seems incredible to me is that we don’t have a single mainstream-media journalist capable of telling the truth and exposing the above two lies.
Category: 
I have recorded the published numbers of deaths from this virus (from the Telegraph) For the last 3 days daily deaths have reduced 260,209,187.
Suddenly !! deaths are going to be reported differently and include not just hospital deaths but any death considered by a doctor to result from coronavirus. This change will almost certainly show a dramatic increase in deaths. BUT the increase is purely due to the system of measurement. Bear this in mind when the media starts to froth and instil panic
Daily Mail today
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8168373/Take-coronavirus-lockdown-seriously-urges-Belfast-daughter-parents-died-12-hours-apart.html
A heartbroken daughter is pleading for the public to protect themselves from the coronavirus pandemic by self-isolating after her mother and father died within 12 hours of each other.
Father Cancer, Mother Stroke
But its Corona wot done it!!
A very useful set of statistics indeed. Should settle quite a few arguments with the guardianistas.
ONS have published weekly deaths YTD to 20 Mar today and they are still below 5 year average. Seems to be similar in other parts of Europe too and with difficulty in accurately testing for this strain of flu we probably are just watching the normal flu season playing out.
So sadly it seems we have killed our economy for lack of peak resources in the NHS. It would have been cheaper throwing them another 100 billion or so but then you end up with empty beds for 9 months of the year. Maybe their plans were wanting but how can any health system plan for 500,000 critically ill ICU projections without temporary extra facilities which seems to be what they done.
Although the NHS senior managers are claiming that their processes are still coping within existing capacity and no real need for anymore so far. Whereas labour and medical unions claim the opposite and fair to say that people are not going to hospital unless they really have to and fewer road accidents etc because of lock down.
Although by forcing front line staff to self isolate we have taken 25% from the usual available staff resources who could have dealt with this in previous years.
Maybe the lesson is every year in future we set up temporary facilities to separate flu virus from general population. Then we won’t have to have a repeat of this every year going forward although we don’t have a trump presidential election every year so suggest all will be forgotten going forward.
In connection with lie 1, it is effectively another socialist, collectivist long term plan that hasn’t worked and they have never worked.
Apparently, three years ago the NHS failed a cross-government exercise codenamed Cygnus which tested its response to a severe pandemic. We have not been told about this. The Telegraph reported it but I have not seen any details, just a brief reference.
Lie 2 is really about assessing all risks in order to allocate limited resources, and this is related to lie 1. Governments make decision that have to apply to all of us and when they take responsibility from us we have their group policy forced on us. But when this happen people expect the governments to provide everything they promise. After decades of disappointment they still vote for socialist systems and fail to understand that all risks cannot be eliminated.
If we paid for health care through an insurance system it should offer different levels of service. If we wanted beds, staff and equipment available for a 1 in 100 years event the premium for that level of service would be extremely high. Most people would not pay the premium and they would have to accept the consequences. It should be our choice and not be forced on us by state controlled health services.
However, the government should also be considering the risks and limited resources, and telling us how they will impact on us. They never do this and now we have utter chaos as a result with unknown consequences from the damage to the economy. They should have carried on as normal and accepted the consequences. I suspect they will be saving very few lives and the damage to the economy will be far worse and result in more deaths in the long term.
We do not even know the number of people who die only from Covid19 and nothing else. It is difficult to know what the truth is when the government and NHS are doing everything they can to avoid admitting failure. Protect the NHS is not the same as protecting us and no other organisation is viewed in this way. The conditions we have to day are looking like the socialist USSR at its worst. There has been no revolution and the years of excess and easy living has resulted in us walking blindly into a socialist nightmare.
Here is a link to an article, which one comment says should be on the front page of every newspaper. It cuts through all the media and government nonsense:
https://principia-scientific.org/an-explanation-of-why-the-covid19-numbers-appear-high/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+psintl+%28Principia+Scientific+Intl+-+Latest+News%29
Australia rations booze, are we next ? Chief Constable of Avon & Somerset says we should not drive our cars ANYWHERE unless for essential supplies….petrol rationing next? Meanwhile Sir Patrick Vallance says social distancing is working and there are fewer hospital admissions! What on earth is going on ! PS Does anyone reading this blog actually know someone with this virus? I don’t.
Worldwide deaths just this year are shown on http://www.worldometers.info
So far, CV19 makes up only a small proportion of the overall deaths – you know, all the “usual ones” we don’t worry or care about, like seasonal flu, HIV, malaria, or under-5s dying.
Is the economic destruction worthwhile?
So, Matt Hancock has decided that the old and sick are more important than the unborn.
Good question Chris. I have also been asking people if they know anybody with it and the answer is always no.
Whatever the outcome and the final statistics the government will claim it was because their policies worked. As for the collapse of the economy they will claim that they were elected to listen to what the electorate wanted and so we will get the blame for the mess.