Eddie Large and COVID19

Comedian Eddie large who sadly died, yesterday. RIP.

Many of us who lived through the 1970's, when weekend light entertainment was characterised by a series of comedy double acts like Morecambe and Wise, Keen and Hope, Mike and Bernie Winters, Cannon and Ball and Little and Large will have been sorry to hear of the death of Eddie Large. RIP. As someone in the public arena, the media were forced to cover his death, in the same way they have covered the deaths of other individuals in recent days, in relation to COVID19, and in the same way they have had to report on other well known individuals, who do not fit the hysterical narrative surrounding COVID19. For example, they have had to report that Prince Charles, Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and a series of other people have had the virus with no serious consequences, as against the hysteria that has surrounded the virus as though it is the modern equivalent of the Black Death. 

In fact, Eddie is typical of those that have died with COVID19. And, the important point here is the word “with” rather than “from” COVID19. Eddie was in the elderly category, being 78, and he was also in the category of those suffering with “underlying conditions”. This matches the nature of nearly everyone that has died from or with COVID19, as being elderly and with some medical condition. Indeed, Eddie was typical in another sense. He was actually already in hospital, being treated for heart failure. He contracted COVID19, whilst in hospital. That is typical of a large proportion, and probably the majority of the people who died with COVID19 in Italy, and the same is being repeated in Britain. It is probably also the case in China. 

In China, recent data shows that 3,000 health workers had the COVID19 virus, and many of those that died with it undoubtedly contracted it as a result of coming into contact with these health workers. That is also what happened in Italy, where health and care workers who contracted the virus, because they have not been provided with proper PPE, then passed it on to other vulnerable patients, and residents of care homes, who then succumbed to it. That appears to be what is happening in Britain, and what happened to Eddie Large. It is the same thing that happened several years ago when thousands of people who went into UK hospitals with minor ailments, or for minor surgery, died, because whilst in hospital they contracted MRSA, which spread amongst the vulnerable hospital population like wildfire, as did C-Dif. 

The real lesson here is that if you want to avoid contracting COVID19, and the potential of dying from it, stay well away from having to go into hospital for any treatment, and if you are old, avoid like the plague going into a care home. Hospitals and care homes have become killing fields for the elderly and sick, and it is there that the source of the deaths from COVID19 is to be found. The real basis of that is the criminal policy of the government in failing to properly invest in the NHS, even in the provision of adequate PPE for health workers and other staff. It is also in the continued operation of healthcare on the basis of Fordist principles of mass production, the assembly line of beds in the Excel Centre shed in London, being a classic example. It is also a result of the failure to invest in Primary Care, so as to reduce the number of people requiring hospital treatment, as well as the lack of funding for social care, which has expanded hospital populations artifically, particularly amongst the elderly. 

That is the real crisis that Britain faces, not COVID19.

Meanwhile, in China, what was predicted to happen has happened.  As soon as they relaxed their lock down in Wuhan, there has been a new upsurge of infections in surrounding areas, causing them to again impose a new lockdown in these other areas.  The policy of imposing general lockdowns of populations does not work, because as soon as the lock down is relaxed any small number of infected people rapidly leads to the virus spreading in the rest of the population that have no immunity against it.  The only ways of providing such immunity is by vaccination, which appears to be at least 18 months away, or else by the development of herd immunity amongst the 80% of the population who only suffer, at worst, mild symptoms from it.  This development of herd immunity is probably what has happened in previous years, when previous strains of coronavirus have spread amongst the population along with the flue and other flu like viruses, but when no similar moral panic over them has been created.  In these previous years, many people will have contracted a coronavirus, but known nothing about it.  Similarly, in previous years, between 8-14% of those that suffered serious illness or death from flu-like symptoms, would have been people who had coronavirus, but this was not detected, because no one tested for it, simply putting these cases down to "flu".

But, China's economy has already been crashed as a result of its previous close down.  It cannot withstand a further period of such close down, and certainly not a close down for another 18 months when a vaccine may be developed.  Less still could the world economy engage in such a period of lock down.  But, even the question of a vaccine is something of a diversion.  There is nothing particularly special about COVID19.  It is just the current strain of coronavirus circulating within populations.  Coronaviruses have spread amongst populations for years.  In previous years coronaviruses have been given other names like SARS, or MERS, and so on.  As with any virus or other living organism, including the flu virus, the coronavirus goes through mutation, so as to produce new strains.  next year, there will be some new strain of coronavirus that will circulate within the global population, and so any vaccine developed against COVID19, may be useless against the strain of coronavirus that predominates next year.  The idea that you can keep the global economy in a state of permanent lock down against such infections is simply ludicrous unless you are prepared to return life to the conditions of the stone age.

Now, some catastrophists who seek to see economic chaos, some environmentalists who  want to see such a return to pre-industrial times may be happy with such a development, which is no doubt why some such elements are keen to join in all of the hysteria over COVID19, but the truth is that such a course of action is disastrous for workers, for humanity, and such developments always result in the strengthening of reaction, a phenomenon that is already being seen with the actions of Orban in Hungary, the imposition of Martial Law in a number of countries, and the Bonapartist, police state measures introduced by Johnson.  Socialists should have nothing to do with it, and Labour should stand well clear of any siren calls for it to provide cover for the unfolding Tory disaster, by soiling its own hands by taking part in a national government.