Saturday, 23 January 2021

What's Hard To Understand?

If you are part of the 20% of the population at risk of dying, or being seriously ill from catching COVID19, i.e. if you are over 60, or have other underlying medical conditions, then you should not voluntarily put yourself in a position of coming into contact with the virus.  Similarly, if you don't want to have your house flooded, you should not voluntarily buy a house next to a river, or in a flood plain.  What is difficult to understand here?

If you can't be bothered to use simple common sense to avoid such problems, why on Earth would you think other people are going to bail you out for acting recklessly?  There are lots of us who are at risk from COVID, who have put ourselves out over the last year, to ensure that we do not come into contact with COVID, by isolating ourselves, not doing things we might otherwise have wanted to do, including meeting other family members.  Its up to everyone else in at risk groups to do the same, and for those unable to do that, its up to their families, communities, and ultimately the state to enable them to do so.

That includes, the NHS, whose performance, however, has been abysmal.  The NHS should really be charged with corporate manslaughter.  In the last 6 weeks, 11,000 people, being treated for COVID, caught it after having gone into hospital for treatment for other problems.  The very least anyone should be able to expect is that if they have to go into an NHS hospital for treatment, it is not going to infect them with COVID!  Yet, the NHS appears to be the biggest single source of COVID infections.  I've looked for data on the number of people infected with COVID having gone into a private hospital, and can't find any.  That is similar to the situation several years ago, when large numbers were infected with MRSA in NHS hospitals, whereas none were infected in private hospitals.

Not only is the NHS infecting thousands of people with COVID, but it is then also sending many of them to care homes, where they are then infecting thousands more people.  This is a disgrace.  Again, what is difficult to understand that hospitals need to have isolation wings or wards, to ensure that people with COVID are not being cared for alongside other people, who might be infected?  This is simple common sense isn't it, and not something that requires vast amounts of money to ensure happens?

Similarly, there are lots of us who would like to be able to have the benefits of living in a pleasant location alongside the picturesque setting of a river, and so on, but we do not do so, because we realise that the price of enjoying such an enjoyable setting is that there is a high risk of flooding.  Why should some people think that they should be able to privatise the benefit of living in a pleasant location, whilst socialising the cost of doing so?  That's like those who wanted to privatise the benefits of asset price bubbles, but who wanted to socialise the consequences of those bubbles when they burst.

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