Sheer Lunacy

It is being reported that up to 25% of workers could be away from work as a result of self-isolating after being pinged, or having tested positive for COVID.  The media continue to describe such absences as people being off work as a result of sickness, which is simply not true.  In a workforce of 30 million, 25% is 7.5 million workers, and there quite simply are not 7.5 million workers ill with COVID.

What there are is large numbers of people who are perfectly fit and healthy, and who could and should be in work, but who are being prevented from doing so, just because they have fallen prey to the pingdemic.  Many of those pinged, have not even been infected.  Take all of the people employed as TESCO delivery drivers, postmen, bin men, bus drivers, tube drivers, health workers and so on.  Each day, each of these workers will be in close proximity to literally hundreds, if no thousands of people, tens of millions of such interactions, in total.  Out of all of these interactions that involve nothing more than close proximity, its inevitable, especially given the widespread level of infections, that millions of pings will be activated by the ridiculous NHS app.

Very few of these interactions will, in fact, have resulted in any virus having been transmitted to those pinged.  Its already been seen that people have been pinged, even though the person they were supposedly in close proximity to was, in fact, on the other wide of an adjoining wall between houses!  But, even where such pinging was accompanied by actual infection, so what?  Again, its only of any relevance if you think that infection and infection rates have any significance, which they don't, and have even less relevance in conditions where the increasingly dominant Omicron variant is seen to be even milder in its symptoms than previous variants, and where, in any case, there is now widespread immunity either from vaccination or natural immunity from previous infection.

The other reason that people are being forced to stay away from work is that they have been tested for COVID and found positive.  But, in a way, the requirement for testing sort of proves the point.  If people need to be tested, it rather shows that they are not obviously ill!  Simply being infected, or infectious is not at all the same thing as being ill, and certainly not the same as being seriously ill.  The reason we have large numbers of people testing positive is that, firstly, we have large numbers of people being pinged, who then go and get tested, but also that we have large numbers of people who are feeling the need to get tested, almost on a daily basis in order to be able to continue with something approaching a normal life.

That people should have to do that, even though they are not at all ill, is itself totally ridiculous.  But, the consequence of all this insanity is that we now have the prospect of millions of perfectly fit and healthy workers, in vital roles, being forced to stay away from work.  The most obvious illustration of it is in the NHS.  So, we now have the idiocy of a situation in which thousands of perfectly healthy NHS workers are forced to stay away from work, with the result that thousands of people who actually are ill with cancer, heart disease, stroke and so on, now die, because an idiotic, bureaucratic system is preventing those who could save their lives from doing so!

The other obvious instance is in education, where the same idiotic rules mean that thousands of teachers are away from work.  Our young people have already lost getting on for 20% of their education entitlement as a result of past lockouts and lockdowns, and that is education they will never get back.  Now they face that being extended, not as a result of an open lockout, but as a result of teachers being forced to stay away from work, even though they are perfectly fit and healthy!

And, the other consequences could be significant too.  There is not only the question of social care workers, who might be forced to stay away from work, but there is the potential that bin men may be off in such numbers that crews cannot function, and so refuse lies around causing a spread of disease and ill-health on a scale that would itself exceed any potential damage from COVID, let alone if basic services such as water supply, sewage, and power supplies failed, simply because perfectly healthy workers are forced to stay away from work on the basis of meaningless pings or testing!

It is as though a mass lunacy has gripped society, in which no one can even think for themselves critically.  Its like the old witch trials, in which no one dare speak out against the lunacy for fear of themselves being branded a witch.  No one dare think critically, and is forced to toe the line, and keep quiet, or else be no platformed or "cancelled".  These are the conditions that promote mass society, and the authoritarian and totalitarian systems that often accompany it.

The obvious solution to the problem of 25% of workers being prevented from working is simply to scrap the idiotic NHS pinging app, and to scrap the requirement for people who have a positive COVID test to stay away from work.  In the US, they have reduced the latter to just 5 days, but any such period, in current conditions is idiotic.  The only condition of people being away from work should be whether they are actually ill or not.

Boris Johnson, today, argued that the significance of the isolation was to prevent anyone who is infectious from spreading the virus, but again that is idiotic.  It assumes that the subsequent infection is something that we should be worried about, but as soon as you accept that infection itself is meaningless, and not important, the argument collapses.  If I am infectious, and I pass on the infection to someone else, that fact is unimportant, unless the person I pass it on to is themselves going to be seriously ill as a result.

But, the simple response to this latter condition, is not to lock me down, but is either to lock down that small minority of people who might become seriously ill from infection, or better still, to encourage all of these latter to get themselves vaccinated, so that, even if infected, they do not become ill.  Given that the vast majority of people are already either vaccinated, or else have natural immunity, the argument that people who have a positive test or who are pinged should have to self-isolate, for fear of passing on the infection is totally ludicrous.