Well Said, Sir… But Who Is Listening?

I don’t think anyone is listening. Is the trouble.

Here’s an extracted paragraph from an excellent little article I will link to, later:

As usual, the politicians don’t admit their shocking mistakes. Had they done so they might at least have ensured this disaster won’t be repeated during the next inevitable pandemic. Instead they are now prescribing increasingly demented restrictions, such as a maximum of ten diners in all restaurants whatever their size, ten worshippers in vast cathedrals, and schools not immediately re-opened. On top of which they refuse to admit the obvious, that sun and fresh air have always been the enemy of the virus.

Isn’t it totally true? Isn’t it totally condemning in the awful truth of those simple examples it gives? Totally condemning of our political and media establishment and – this is the really awful bit – our own complicity in their crime inasmuch as we don’t speak out, don’t object, don’t put a stop to it, don’t demand better behaviour?

It is an article in the Spectator by a Mr David Flint who I’ve been unaware of until now.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/05/comfort-the-comfortable-afflict-the-afflicted/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=OZWH%20%2020200523%20%20Back%20to%20Brexit%20%20AL&utm_content=OZWH%20%2020200523%20%20Back%20to%20Brexit%20%20AL+CID_517511bdc5c51e25ab5812d5304d2256&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Australia&utm_term=Comfort%20the%20comfortable%20afflict%20the%20afflicted

What Is The Covid Infection Fatality Rate?

That’s known as the IFR. It means the chance of dying if you get the illness.

It shows the percentage of infected people that consequently die of that illness.

A very important number.

That generally we are not told. In the beginning because it was not known – in the middle because the media didn’t care, being more interesting in whipping up the fever and the hype and promoting panic lockdowns and now – I don’t know. Shame perhaps. They (media, politicians, et al) don’t want the truth to come out until they’ve prepared some ‘ass-covering’ stories.

Well here’s an authoritative report – Mr John Ioannidis again, a much ignored authority from the very beginning – mentioned in an article from the Spectator magazine.

He estimates the true figure to be in a range always below 0.5%

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v1.full.pdf

and this is the Spectator article:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/stanford-study-suggests-coronavirus-might-not-be-as-deadly-as-flu

What About Doctors, Clinics, Waiting Rooms?

Seems to me that nowadays therapy doesn’t begin until you get into the Doctor’s room.

I mean it is not out there in the waiting room. Is it? Ever sat in a hard chair with nothing to do and can’t go away for even five minutes and with some physical discomfort – for half an hour, an hour, an hour and a half?

In a doctor’s waiting room? I have. And I know, of course, many others have. Why ‘of course’ ? Well they were all around me, waiting, as I waited.

And many is the time I’ve seen them waiting and declined to join the queue, gone away till another day. My illnesses not being so immediately critical.

Yes. Not ‘therapeutic’. Not at all. Quite the opposite if anything.

And that’s not to mention the queue before the encounter with the ‘receptionists’ and the actual encounter. Intimidating, wearying, annoying and downright aggravating as they can often turn out to be.

Why not? Why not therapeutic?

It seems the attitude the medical profession nowadays believes that their Hippocratic oath to dispense therapy is satisfied by dispensing a ten minutes (timed, planned ‘consultation’) face to face with a patient.

The conditions the patient waits in, the environment the patient comes from, goes to, is none of their concern apparently. Today.

I just found today’s ‘modern Hippocratic Oath’ . Apparently there’s a number them.

A Modern Version of the Hippocratic Oath

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.

I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

The modern version of the Hippocratic Oath was written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University.

I particularly like these paragraphs as they seem to me to point to what is missing in to day’s waiting rooms and general attitude of the medical profession :

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

Post with a pic.

I have never made a post with a pic before. This is a test, see if I can do it:

Hmmm… this seemed to work, so far…

And now try to add one:

Well that all seems good… πŸ™‚

p.s. that first one puts me in mind of a Frederick McCubbin….

Why Do The Oldies Approve in Sweden?

Just heard Radio National reporting on a survey in Sweden that showed the highest approval rating in Sweden for the Swedish Covid policy was amongst the elderly.

And they found that a bit puzzling and essentially, I think, put it down to politics – the elderly simply approving of anything ‘their’ party (which is in power) is doing – and the general docility of the elderly.

I don’t know what it is. But it could be something else. The elderly may be acutely aware that they are the most at risk. Overwhelmingly. 70% of the infected simply have no symptoms at all or very mild. The elderly generally don’t fall into that category.

And so on. There’s no debate. The elderly are the major risk group.

So why be in favour of a permissive ‘lockdown’ policy?

Well maybe because the elderly are practicing self isolation and waiting for the infection to spread through the populace to where herd immunity is reached.

And then they can come out of ‘hiding’.

This is a sensible approach. The only really sensible approach all things considered.

The sensitive are protected – protect themselves – and the ‘forcible’ (by the forces of nature) ‘vaccination’ of the populace proceeds in the quickest possible manner – slowed only by some modest social distancing measures that enable the hospitals to cope with the load.

Which in any case in the absence of the elderly will be a modest load even when the virus spreads at its quickest.

So as testing methods slowly improve it gets easier and easier to discover what percentage of the population has been exposed to the virus and fairly quickly it becomes apparent that ‘it is over’, that nearly everyone (save the ‘hidden’ elderly ) have had it.

And the elderly can relax.

In contrast to the Australian model.

Which seeks to keep the virus out. Which quarantines all of Australia.

Which isn’t bad in itself, arguably but which means that the elderly will never be surrounded by a safe ‘immune herd’.

They will be surrounded by a susceptible herd, a herd very prone to infection and therefore very prone to rapidly spreading it. They don’t report the rate, to this day we are without accurate figures for the main parameters: death rate/infected, R nought, infection rate/population. But we can clearly see it could move at its quickest among a totally susceptible population.

Aware of this ‘spreading’ danger – which exists right now – the govt. has introduced severe lockdown and social distancing measures which are currently killing the country and actually killing individuals in the country owing to various associated factors that come into play and which had not been considered.

The govt is trying to reduce these measures – ‘roll them back’. And if they are successful they’ll get to where all the measures have been removed and we are back to ‘normal’ life among the ruins and can make a start rebuilding, hopefully.

But we will remain a susceptible population. And any successful invasion of the virus from outside, any case that gets through our border controls – will find itself in a virgin population through which it can travel at its best speed.

The elderly in Australia will not find themselves embedded in an immune herd.

There will be no immune herd.

They can never feel that measure of safety. The virus still stalking them. Death still waiting in the wings.

Owing to border controls and residual ‘distancing’ measures which the govt. is saying it will continue in the foreseeable future, I believe, any new invasions by the virus into Australia will be prevented from making a sudden widespread ‘blip’ on the radar indicative of a sudden outbreak and calling forth an instantaneous full scale response such as we’re all embroiled in right now.

Rather there’ll be one or two cases here and there or something of that nature. A much slower spread. Almost a stealth spread. Not slowed by natural herd immunity making it difficult for the virus to travel through the population, but by the artificial distancing practices making travel difficult.

But, of course, travel it will.

And invasion from outside, breaching of our border controls will almost – almost, I suppose, or certainly? – occur.

So the virus will be at all time exerting a pressure, will at all times be stalking us.

And we will be at all times socially and economically ‘crippled’ by our efforts, our measures, to slow its spread within the nation if it gets in.

That’s the planned future.

The plan is to make the nation artificially ‘covid sterile’ in a covid world.

All in order to protect me. I’m elderly. So – the Swedish puzzle. Why do they approve? Well I’d approve, too. For the sake of myself and for the sake of the nation.

If you all get it and recover then I’m finally safe in an immune herd which is good for me. And the nation’s work and social life can continue which is good for you and the nation.

But hopefully I’m looking at it not perhaps all wrong but perhaps without full information or full understanding of what will happen.

Perhaps the virus will simply die out in the wider world. Run its course. Mutate itself out of existence. Polio did not. The common cold did not. Many virii do not. But many do mutate into milder forms which then coexist with us for millenia or something.

Perhaps something like that will happen. And as the Australian border controls report fewer and fewer incidences of covid detection down to where eventually there are none at all and it seems clear the virus has gone from the world the danger will have passed and all controls will be relaxed and we’ll get back to normal. Get down to counting the cost. Get down to figuring a better way to handle the next one.

I hope so. I do. πŸ™‚

ABC Radio and Barley

I’m always surprised by the shallowness of ABC radio’s coverage of the news. They appear to not think at all. Perhaps they leave the thinking to the mouthpiece, the presenter or whatever they call the person who actually speaks the news and does the interviews.

For instance this morning I’ve heard about four different iterations of news regarding China’s impost of an 80% tariff on Australian barley.

And none of them informed me as to the possibility of storing Australian barley for perhaps some years. I don’t know if it is storable and if it is I don’t know if we have the capacity, the storage facilities.

Nor did they tell me anything about why the Chinese buy Australian barley. Because it was the cheapest? Or was it always expensive but it is a premium product?

Nor did they tell me about what ‘slap’ might be available – has it been a very profitable product? Is there room for a reduction in price by the Aussie farmer to where the final price gets down to where it may remain competitive in China?

Nor did they tell me anything about how realistic this may be in the China context. If they cannot afford Australian barley can they still work with other barleys? Are they good enough? Is enough available in the rest of the world? Or is it going to damage some industries (presumably brewing, mainly) in China?

How about some human content instead of this eternal talk of ‘china’ and ‘australia’ etc., virtual entities – what about the Chinese people? How will this effect them? Will it effect them at all and if so how?

And if it won’t effect them then how about their attitude? What do they think of their govt doing this?

All I hear – and I’m hearing it again right now – is the ‘umm’, ‘errr’ ‘presenter’ trying to foment trouble by attempting to get some support for any contention that all this is a manifestation of political enmity..

Neither, as the discussion again mentions how China is our largest market, do they call into question how that cuts both ways – if they buy most of our products then that gets to be such an enormous amount that it surely must have some effect on them?

They are not buying them for fun, are they? They are buying them because they need them so they are presumably jeopardising their own future interests if they upset us.

But I hear no thoughts along those lines – just what leverage we have with China considering our overall importance to their economy.

It is all very disappointing, again and again.

That and the time given to motor mouths. One going on right now…. Never so clear a demonstration of the old adage: those who speak don’t know, those who know don’t speak. Again and again on ABC radion motor mouths hogging the air time and telling us nothing…

Life’s like that.

πŸ™‚

Funny About Posts Isn’t it?

It’s funny how what we post for the word to see is what we can’t tell anyone.

When you’ve no one to tell something to – you tell it to the world.

Perhaps anonymously but quite often boldly, in your own name, like all the major commentators or bloggers or journalists.

If you have a complaint it would generally be seen as whining and whinging by your own friends and acquaintances. Or worse – if it involved one of them. So what to do? How to give it an airing?

Make a blog post out of it. Make an article out of it. Generalise it and tell the world.

And so on. A number of different mechanisms, examples, I think. But overall: yes, the publicly announced is what is privately not welcome.

So generally we’re all looking at stuff we don’t want to see/hear.

That’s funny, I reckon. πŸ™‚

The Post Covid World

The Post Covid world will be characterised by world governments who know that they can order their populations to hide in their houses for indefinite periods of time no matter the cost.

A world full of governments who know they have unlimited powers and can spend money like they own the printer. Which, they now realise, they do.

It will be the world of the despot’s dream: a population proven to be so obedient, so servile, so simple, it will do exactly as it is told no matter how constraining, no matter how absurd.

And a treasury without limit.

Issue orders to the last extreme…. spend without limit….

It has been established.

They won’t easily let that go will they?

Near Death Experiences And Love, Truth.

check out NDE (near death experiences) and Child Reincarnation vids on youtube and you could well become convinced that we are all really just eternal spirits having a life on earth involved in matter for some reason – generally said to be educational, to learn something for ourselves.


Seems pretty certain. Then if you look a little more you’ll maybe see that while everyone seems to have the same overall things happen to them they seem to tell the story of it in their own religious terms, if they have a religion. And the more they have a religion the more kinda ‘freaky’ or peculiar to themselves their telling gets.


The more they people it with their own ‘people’, from their own faith, though going over their accounts no on in their account actually claimed to be this or that person or for this or that thing to be the truth.


They just all actually seem to have an experience of feeling enormous unconditional love, of having all knowledge instantly available to them, of being able to contact at any time anyone they’ve ever known and of being on earth to do something which they have to go back and do.


They come back and tell that story in their own particular way which seems very much to be their own interpretation of it rather than a simple recounting of it.


So that’s where I’m at these days: I see all religions as attempts to explain the truth to people by analogy, by metaphor etc and from, by, people who themselves have had NDE’s and are reincarnates with patchy recall and so on.


A very, very difficult job Never underestimate just how difficult it can be to teach human beings things. Look at two major religions today: Islam and Christianity and see how they perform when practiced by their adherents.


Apparently in places like northern syria you can be stopped and asked what religion you belong to and if you give the wrong answer you are killed immediately. Now what has that got to do with the truth of reality? of human life? of good action, good behaviour, sanity, reason, sense?


Those obviously insane murderers firmly believe themselves to be acting in accord with the wishes of their god.


That’s how hard it is. that’s how crazy people can get.


So it is not hard for me to believe that simply trying to tell people what life is ‘really like’ – i.e. ‘on the other side’ or ‘in heaven’ or ‘after death’ or ‘in a previous life’ has led to this mishmash of weird beliefs and cults and superstitions and mystic writings etc., etc…

None of which is necessary at all. None. None of those religions, none of those writings, none of the preaching.

According to common sense and according to what we hear from these NDE people and those reincarnations that remember enough to tell us anything the whole thing boils down to simply: Love.

You are/we are in reality loved unconditionally by reality itself (creation, the creator, god, whatever…). We are apparently totally loved no matter what. The whole of everything is in fact love.

So love. Simple as that.


Too hard? Can’t go around kissing everyone. Certainly can’t go around having intercourse with everyone. How to do it? See? It already begins to shade off into weird, wordy explanations tending towards ‘books’ and bibles.. Now we have to have a book of instruction.. it all begins…


But not necessary. Let’s not do it.

Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you is enough.


That’s how to love. In practical ordinary real world terms.

As simple and easy as that.

All else is sheer and utter unnecessary bullshit.

Now if that’s not good news I don’t know what is.

πŸ™‚