The Proponents of Lockdown Are Guilty of Geriatricide

Those that have proposed the strategy of lockdowns in response to COVID19, are everywhere guilty of geriatricide.  They have the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of elderly people, from COVID itself, on their hands, along with the deaths of millions of other people, globally, resulting from the economic consequences of lockdowns.  They did not intend that to be the case, as the conspiracy theory nuts might want to suggest, but it is the inevitable consequence of their idiotic policy of lockdown, which required the perpetuation of the lie that COVID strikes indiscriminately, and that, therefore, there was no need to specifically isolate, and protect the elderly.

Proponents of lockdowns have caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, in Britain alone, but, also, in every other country that imposed lockdowns, because their strategy was based upon a known lie.  That lie was that COVID19 affects everyone indiscriminately.  The facts from China, contained even in the original Imperial College study that sparked the COVID panic, showed that was simply not true.

Age group	% symptomatic cases requiring hospital	% hospitalised cases requiring critical care	% Infection Fatality Ratio
0 to 9	0.1	5.00	0.002
10 to 19	0.3	5.00	0.006
20 to 29	1.2	5.00	0.030
30 to 39	3.2	5.00	0.080
40 to 49	4.9	6.30	0.150
50 to 59	10.2	12.20	0.600
60 to 69	16.6	27.40	2.200
70 to 79	24.3	43.20	5.100
80+	27.3	70.90	9.300

In other words, those over 80 were around 1500 times more likely to die than those under 40.  And, that is what the number of deaths has shown in Britain and elsewhere.  In Britain, more than half of COVID deaths are those over 80.  Add in those over 60, and the figure rises to 92%, and its amongst these age groups that the vast majority of hospitalisations, and serious illness also occurs.  Saying, therefore, that COVID strikes indiscriminately was patently untrue.  Its also known that it affects those with other underlying medical conditions, who account for around 7% of the remaining cases; its known that there is a higher prevalence amongst BAME communities, though cases amongst BAME as opposed to white populations are only about 4 times higher, as against the 1,000 times plus higher rate amongst the elderly as against younger people.

The Imperial study states, 

“Analyses of data from China as well as data from those returning on repatriation flights suggest that 40-50% of infections were not identified as cases. This may include asymptomatic infections, mild disease and a level of under-ascertainment.” 

However, most studies now indicate that around 80% of people have no or only mild symptoms from COVID19, and this explains why the number of infections is much greater than the number of people who have symptoms and seek medical treatment.  Its known that the original Chinese data was wrong, for example, because the mortality rate was measured only against reported infections, not against actual infections, and China even took out of the reported infections numbers those known to have had the virus, but who had obtained immunity!

By continually perpetuating the lie that COVID strikes indiscriminately, they spread the lie that older people were, therefore, at no more risk from it than younger people, which was quite clearly untrue.  By spreading that lie, they failed to ensure that older people, who were, essentially, the only people seriously at risk from the virus, took appropriate measures to isolate themselves from the risk of infection.  That meant that those older people were being put directly into the firing line of the virus, by the proponents of lockdowns, who had to spread that lie in order to justify locking down the whole of society, rather than simply focussing attention on protecting the elderly and otherwise vulnerable.

The most obvious manifestation of the consequence of that was that everywhere, as they tried to lock down the whole of society, they failed to adequately lock down and isolate the places that needed to be locked down and isolated from the virus.  They failed absolutely to lock down and isolate hospitals and care homes.  They failed to establish isolation wings or hospitals for those suffering with COVID, and in so doing they ensured that thousands of vulnerable, and often also elderly people, going into hospital for other conditions, or even just routine treatment, became infected with the virus, just as some years ago, NHS hospitals infected people with MRSA, leading to their deaths.  To make matters worse, they knowingly sent people with the virus back to care homes, where they then spread the virus amongst a vulnerable population.

The simple fact that shows that the proponents of lockdowns are guilty of geriatricide, is not only that they perpetrated the lie that COVID strikes indiscriminately, and that in doing so they failed to isolate the elderly actually at risk from it, but that there negligence meant that around a third of all deaths from the virus occurred in care homes themselves.  In other words, the place where elderly people should most easily and effectively isolated from the virus, and protected from it, was the place where they were put at most risk from it!  But, care homes are only a glaring example of that failure, because the other main source of COVID deaths is hospitals themselves, again the place where you would expect that people ought to be safe from infection from it.

When the NHS did begin to establish isolation hospitals for COVID, instead of creating small specialist units to deal with the virus, they created the huge, expensive, showpiece Nightingale hospitals, like that at the Excel centre in London, kitted out to service 8,000 people, but which only ever had 25 patients, at any one time, and treated less than 60 in total!  They were a complete waste of money and resources, which was dragged from elsewhere where it was needed.  It is another example of how the medical-industrial complex channels huge sums of money into the pockets of the health service bureaucracy, and the medical supply industry, whilst doing little to improve the health of the majority of people.  

Because the proponents of lockdown perpetrated the lie that COVID affects everyone indiscriminately, they failed to put their attention into locking down hospitals and care homes, they failed to provide adequate isolation hospitals, or to provide adequate PPE, or contact protocols, for any of those places, or for care workers visiting the elderly and sick at home.  The Nightingale hospitals were themselves totemic of the lie that, because COVID was indiscriminate, thousands of  people, from all age groups, were going to flood into hospitals, requiring the establishment of such huge charnel houses.  We were told that huge mass burials and cremations were going to be necessary, which was just one part of the way a huge moral panic was created by the media.  It was the necessary consequence of the lie that the mortality rate amongst the elderly was going to be the mortality rate across society, leading to an exponential rise, not only of infections, but also of hospitalisations and deaths, when all the data showed that was never going to be the case, because COVID is a virus that selectively targets the elderly.

In fact, although the relative proportions of deaths and hospitalisations, contained in the Imperial study, have turned out to be approximately right, the actual mortality rate, has, again, turned out to be far less, as also happened in relation to Imperial's projections of deaths from Swine Flu some years ago.  Because the number of actual infections is about ten times higher than the number of reported infections, all of the mortality rates, in the Imperial table above, have to be shifted to the right by one decimal place, at least.  The overall mortality rate, as against actual infections appears to be around 0.1% or less, as against the figure of 1%, suggested by Imperial, and the mortality rate for the elderly is around 1, not the 9% suggested by Imperial.

If you were being unkind, you would say that the proponents of lockdown spread that lie, because they had a hidden agenda of killing off the elderly, who they signally failed to protect as they focused all their attention on spreading the lie about its indiscriminate nature, so as to justify the lockdown of the whole of society.  But, that is not the case.  The real basis of the proposal for lockdown is the underlying ideology and dominance of health policy by the medical-industrial complex that sees healthcare almost entirely in terms of dealing with illness, rather than preventing illness, or promoting wellness.  It begins with the assumptions about the necessity of very expensive medicines and medical treatments, which of course, promotes the interests of the big pharma, and big medical supplies businesses, as well as the interests of the health service bureaucracy, centred in the huge district hospitals, and with the medical science institutes now attached to them, and closely aligned with, and dependent on funding through the medical-industrial complex.

Many of those supporting lockdowns did so for the same reasons that many are drawn along behind the overwhelming power of the military-industrial complex that promotes the idea that people can only be safe if they are constantly in danger of being blown to smithereens by nuclear weapons, and by a constant huge and expanding expenditure on the latest weapons technology, and ever expanding surveillance technology.

The proposal for lockdowns is motivated by the idea that the solution to COVID comes from very expensive testing and tracing, for example, as a stop-gap prior to the introduction of very expensive vaccines, and other medicines produce by the medical-industrial complex.  If the solution is effective test and trace, but such systems are not yet available, then lockdown society till they are; if they longer term solution is very expensive vaccines, and other medicines, which are an indeterminate amount of time in the future, then again lockdown and advocate test and trace as an interim.

But, of course, test and trace cannot work, because the vast majority of infections are asymptomatic, but, in any case, the £12 billion spent on developing a test and trace computer system, has not even produced a functioning system anyway.  Despite all the dangerous short cuts, to speed up production of a vaccine, it still looks unlikely to be available until the middle of next year.  In fact, on the current basis of spread of infections, its likely that herd immunity will have developed in most countries long before vaccines can be generally administered, as the situation in Sweden, now seems to suggest.   Recent claims that antibodies may only remain active for three months, as well as undermining the argument for vaccines being a saviour, also emphasise the degree to which current tests are failing to pick up actual immunity, when compared to the situation in Sweden, where deaths from the virus have more or less been eliminated.  Its likely that as with other coronaviruses such as those that cause the common cold, even where antibodies diminish, further contact with the virus, quickly prompts the body to create them once again, or that immunity comes from cell immunity.

Governments realised that although they locked down social activity rather than the economy, the knock on effects of that were catastrophic.  Even where test and trace was supposedly implemented efficiently, such as in Germany, it has seen the number of infections quickly surge once again, as elsewhere in Europe and North America.  The idea that a lockdown of six months did not work, but a lockdown of 2-3 weeks will, is clearly absurd.  Those proposing it cannot take it seriously, but its real purpose is just to drag things out for longer, in the hope that a vaccine will become available.  It won't, so governments will extend their proposed circuit breaker lockdowns indefinitely, as populations increasingly rebel against the absurdity.  In the meantime, they will pump even more resources into the promotion of test and trace systems that have no chance of working, ever more money into the medical-industrial complex, whose greatest fear must be that anyone will look at the example of Sweden and ask, why are we imposing all of this misery on ourselves unnecessarily, why are we putting tens of billions of Pounds into the pockets of the medical-industrial complex for things which are not working, and have no chance of working?

In the meantime, lockdowns, and the economic damage they have caused, have led to a sharp rise in excess deaths in Britain and elsewhere, because thousands of people suffering from cancer and other serious illnesses have been denied treatment, even whilst occupancy rates in most hospitals fell to around 40%.  The number of excess deaths has risen for reasons that have nothing to do with COVID, but are directly the consequence of lockdowns.  We know that economic hardship leads to big rises in ill-health and death, and lockdowns have caused economic hardship on a large scale; we know that the lockdowns have increased mental ill-health, an increase in suicides, and in domestic violence.  The longer term economic damage from lockdowns will be even more severe, leading to widespread ill-health and death for decades to come.

But, whatever damage lockdowns have had in developed economies is nothing compared to the effects across the globe in developing economies.  Around 500 million additional people have been thrown into absolute poverty as a result of the damage done to the global economy as a result of lockdowns.  Millions have been put into the category of malnourished as a result, and these conditions will persist long after COVID19 has disappeared from the news headlines.