Coronaviral

[Warning_Hazard 156]

6 hours ago, Vesper said:

Look into pfizer's history, Johnson and johnson also. Responsible for cervical cancer in women from talc, regular billion dollar lawsuits over all sorts.

Big pharma = big scam

You talked about the boosters but foget that the virus is changing abroad rapidly which will render even booster programs hopeless.

Brown paper envelopes.

[Atomiswave 6,117]

2 hours ago, Warning_Hazard said:

Look into pfizer's history, Johnson and johnson also. Responsible for cervical cancer in women from talc, regular billion dollar lawsuits over all sorts.

Big pharma = big scam

You talked about the boosters but foget that the virus is changing abroad rapidly which will render even booster programs hopeless.

Brown paper envelopes.

The likes of Phizer are amongst the worst.....yet they get to produce this vax for covid. Their repu was already in tatters before all this.

[Vesper 30,186]

[Warning_Hazard 156]

3 hours ago, Atomiswave said:

The likes of Phizer are amongst the worst.....yet they get to produce this vax for covid. Their repu was already in tatters before all this.

None of them even took liability, Meaning they cant get sued by anyone etc!

[Atomiswave 6,117]

DP

Edited August 26, 2021 by Atomiswave

[Atomiswave 6,117]

2 hours ago, Warning_Hazard said:

None of them even took liability, Meaning they cant get sued by anyone etc!

Yes I know, no politician or pharma can be brought to justice, you cant take them to court. Thats mighty shady.

For anyone whom wants to see the other side of the coin, watch this fully, especially pay attention to min 18:30

https://hugotalks.com/2021/08/26/do-celebrities-have-blood-on-their-hands-hugo-talks-lockdown/

[Vesper 30,186]

Boardmasters festival: New Delta strain believed to have emerged among 53,000 revellers at Cornwall event

Almost 5,000 infections have been linked to the Boardmasters festival in Cornwall, and with half a million music lovers at even larger events over the Bank Holiday, officials fear revellers are being hit by a new strain of the Delta variant

https://inews.co.uk/news/health/boardmasters-festival-new-delta-strain-cornwall-event-1172393

Fears are rising that a new strain of the Delta variant of Covid-19 has emerged among festival goers after an event attended by 53,000 revellers in Cornwall led to sharp spike in cases among younger people.

With this Bank Holiday weekend witnessing the highest number of music lovers flocking to festivals in 18 months, Public Health England (PHE) is understood to be investigating a possible new Delta strain that may have emerged from the Boardmasters festival in Newquay two weeks ago.

A senior official working on pandemic response in the south-west of England said many of the infections among young people in the region had been identified as coming directly from the festival in Newquay, which now has the highest rate of infection in England at more than 2,000 per 100,000 people.

The source told i: “It was traced because they can identify where it came from by genetic changes in the code.”

While it is being referred to among hospital staff in Devon and Cornwall as the “festival variant”, it is believed to be a new strain of Delta rather than an entirely new variant. Delta already has around a dozen different strains.

“It’s still the Delta variant but they can say it came from the festival, hence why it is being called the ‘festival variant’,” added the official.

The South-west peninsula now home to eight of the top ten areas in England with the highest rates of infection. The figures also show that around half of all infections in England are among those under 30, with the highest rate of infection now in the 10 to 19-year-old age bracket.

Cornwall Council has already linked almost 5,000 Covid infections to Boardmasters, with local health officials saying they “won’t know the complete picture for another few days.”

With around half a million people at music festivals such as those in Reading, Leeds and Let’s Rock Scotland in Edinburgh over the past few days, a senior Government scientific advisor has warned that such mass gatherings offer the virus a far greater opportunity to spread than any other outdoor event type, including at football matches.

Professor John Drury, a member of the Government’s Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) – which is a sub-committee of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (commonly known as Sage), called on the Government to mandate festival organisers to implement stronger Covid-safe measures to mitigate the spread of the virus.

Speaking in a personal capacity, Professor Drury said: “Different mass events have been found to be associated with very different rates of infection, and one factor explaining this is the crowd culture.

“The [Government’s] Events Research Programme noted that fan behaviour at the Euros was very different than at Wimbledon, for example. And we can expect greater physical intimacy– touching, close interaction, hugging, sharing drinks etc – at a music festival than at other large events.

“One of the key reasons that some people are engaging less with these basic protective behaviours is that the Government has basically said ‘it’s safe now, it’s fine, you’re not going to die’. The problem is of course that 100 people a day are dying. We need to support new norms around safety at the festivals.”

Dr Zubaida Haque, a member of Independent Sage, added: “The thing about mass gatherings is that people are right to think outside is safer than inside, but it’s the travelling back and forth to the mass gatherings that’s one of the main issues. If that mass gathering is for several days, like a music festival, then there’s also going to be a lot more contact between people, which give the virus more opportunity to spread.”

Andrew George, a Cornwall councillor and former Liberal Democrat MP, slammed the Government for “populist headline-chasing above being guided by the science”.

He added: “The fact is the more we have political leaders who prefer to chase favourable headlines, ignore the science and play to the Libertarian right the more we risk creating a more virulent vaccine resistant strain.”

Jayne Kirkham, who is also Cornwall councillor, said: “Many people that went to Boardmasters were 16-29. Very few were double vaccinated, and I don’t know any who went that did not get Covid.”

Public Health England declined to comment.

 

[Fulham Broadway 17,317]

Reading festival would have been a covid cauldron

[Vesper 30,186]

Australia Traded Away Too Much Liberty

How long can a democracy maintain emergency restrictions and still call itself a free country?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-australia-still-liberal-democracy/619940/

In a bid to keep the coronavirus out of the country, Australia’s federal and state governments imposed draconian restrictions on its citizens. Prime Minister Scott Morrison knows that the burden is too heavy. “This is not a sustainable way to live in this country,” he recently declared. One prominent civil libertarian summed up the rules by lamenting, “We’ve never seen anything like this in our lifetimes.”

Up to now one of Earth’s freest societies, Australia has become a hermit continent. How long can a country maintain emergency restrictions on its citizens’ lives while still calling itself a liberal democracy?

Australia has been testing the limits.

Before 2020, the idea of Australia all but forbidding its citizens from leaving the country, a restriction associated with Communist regimes, was unthinkable. Today, it is a widely accepted policy. “Australia’s borders are currently closed and international travel from Australia remains strictly controlled to help prevent the spread of COVID-19,” a government website declares. “International travel from Australia is only available if you are exempt or you have been granted an individual exemption.” The rule is enforced despite assurances on another government website, dedicated to setting forth Australia’s human-rights-treaty obligations, that the freedom to leave a country “cannot be made dependent on establishing a purpose or reason for leaving.”

Conor Friedersdorf: How to protect civil liberties in a pandemic

The nation’s high court struck down a challenge to the country’s COVID-19 restrictions. “It may be accepted that the travel restrictions are harsh. It may also be accepted that they intrude upon individual rights,” it ruled. “But Parliament was aware of that.” Until last month, Australians who are residents of foreign countries were exempt from the rule so they could return to their residence. But the government tightened the restrictions further, trapping many of them in the country too.

Intrastate travel within Australia is also severely restricted. And the government of South Australia, one of the country’s six states, developed and is now testing an app as Orwellian as any in the free world to enforce its quarantine rules. People in South Australia will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. “We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,” Premier Steven Marshall explained. “I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.”

Other states also curtailed their citizens’ liberty in the name of safety. The state of Victoria announced a curfew and suspended its Parliament for key parts of the pandemic. “To put this in context, federal and state parliaments sat during both world wars and the Spanish Flu, and curfews have never been imposed,” the scholar John Lee observed in an article for the Brookings Institution. “In responding to a question about whether he had gone too far with respect to imposing a curfew (avoiding the question of why a curfew was needed when no other state had one), Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews replied: ‘it is not about human rights. It is about human life.’”

In New South Wales, Police Minister David Elliott defended the deployment of the Australian military to enforce lockdowns, telling the BBC that some residents of the state thought “the rules didn’t apply to them.” In Sydney, where more than 5 million people have been in lockdown for more than two months, and Melbourne, the country’s second-biggest city, anti-lockdown protests were banned, and when dissenters gathered anyway, hundreds were arrested and fined, Reuters reported.

Australia is undoubtedly a democracy, with multiple political parties, regular elections, and the peaceful transfer of power. But if a country indefinitely forbids its own citizens from leaving its borders, strands tens of thousands of its citizens abroad, puts strict rules on intrastate travel, prohibits citizens from leaving home without an excuse from an official government list, mandates masks even when people are outdoors and socially distanced, deploys the military to enforce those rules, bans protest, and arrests and fines dissenters, is that country still a liberal democracy?

Read: New Zealand’s prime minister may be the most effective leader on the planet

Enduring rules of that sort would certainly render a country a police state. In year two of the pandemic, with COVID-19 now thought to be endemic, rather than a temporary emergency the nation could avoid, how much time must pass before we must regard Australia as illiberal and unfree?

To give Australia’s approach its due, temporary restrictions on liberty were far more defensible early in the pandemic, when many countries locked down and scientists understood little about COVID-19’s attributes or trajectory. Australian leaders hoped to “flatten the curve” of infection in an effort to prevent overcrowded hospitals and degraded care, and the higher death rates that would follow. The country was also betting that, within a time period short enough that restrictions could be sustained, scientists would develop a vaccine that protected against morbidity and mortality.

As it turned out, the bet paid off. Had it behaved rationally and adequately valued liberty, a rich nation like Australia would have spent lavishly—before knowing which vaccines would turn out to be most effective—to secure an adequate supply of many options for its people. It could afford to eat the cost of any extra doses and donate them to poorer countries. Australia then could have marshaled its military and civil society to vaccinate the nation as quickly as possible, lifted restrictions more fully than Europe and the United States did, and argued that the combination of fewer deaths and the more rapid return to normalcy made their approach a net win.

Instead, Australia invested inadequately in vaccines and, once it acquired doses, was too slow to get them into arms. “Of the 16 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that have been released to the government by manufacturer CSL, only about 8 million have gone into the arms of Australians,” The Age reported on August 21, citing concern about blood clots and a widespread preference for the Pfizer vaccine. “A further 1.6 million doses have been sent offshore to help regional neighbours such as Papua New Guinea, Fiji and East Timor tackle COVID-19. But about 6 million doses are yet to be used, even as more than half the nation is in lockdown due to outbreaks of the highly infectious Delta variant.” Australia’s low infection and death rates, which the country achieved both by being surrounded by water and by adopting harsh restrictions on liberty, seemed to sap its urgency when it came time to vaccinate—even though that lack of urgency meant months more of basic human rights being abrogated. In hindsight, more urgency to get jabs in arms to end the restrictions would have saved lives, because the country would have been better protected against the unexpected Delta variant.

In return for trading away their liberty, Australians gained a huge safety dividend. COVID-19 has killed 194 of every 100,000 Americans, 77 of every 100,000 Israelis, and only four of every 100,000 Australians. That low death toll is a tremendous upside. What remains to be seen is whether Australia can maintain that performance without permanently ending core attributes of life in a liberal democracy, including freedom of movement, peaceable assembly, and basic privacy.

Read: Where the pandemic is cover for authoritarianism

If the country quickly reinstates its citizens’ pre-pandemic liberties, it can argue that the loss of liberty was only temporary (though some restrictions, such as a prohibition on leaving the country, would still seem needless if the goal was minimizing the spread of COVID-19 in the country). And if Australia’s death rate remains lower than Israel’s or America’s, Australian leaders can plausibly tell their citizens that the deprivation was worth it. If not, supporters will have a much harder time defending a record that includes handcuffing a small group of teenagers after they gathered for an outdoor hangout.

More important than whether or not the past can be justified is what the country does from now on. Promising murmurs are coming from some politicians. “New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian vowed to reopen the state once 70% of those 16 and older get vaccinated,” Reuters reported Sunday. “No matter what the case numbers are doing … double-dose 70% in NSW means freedom for those who are vaccinated." But in Victoria, the country’s next-most-populous state, the news organization reports that “Premier Daniel Andrews said his state’s lockdown, due to end on Thursday, will be extended, but would not say for how long.”

Because of its geography, Australia is a neighbor and an observer of authoritarian countries as varied as China and Singapore. But its own fate, too, may turn on whether its people crave the feeling of safety and security that orders from the top confer, or whether they want to be free.

 

[nyikolajevics 2,700]

Just learned I got this shit.. Feeling fine, have to be separated, I am only angry because it’s international football week, why covid didn’t hit me when Premier League/NFL/NBA was ongoing?

 

Keep healthy friends

Edited September 5, 2021 by nyikolajevics

[Vesper 30,186]

8 hours ago, nyikolajevics said:

Just learned I got this shit.. Feeling fine, have to be separated, I am only angry because it’s international football week, why covid didn’t hit me when Premier League/NFL/NBA was ongoing?

 

Keep healthy friends

I hope you sail through this m8

hugz

[Vesper 30,186]

roflmao

 

[Vesper 30,186]

filed under American RW batshittery:

Texas Christian Mom, A Self-Described 'Woman Of God' And 'Spirit-Soldier For Trump' Interrupts COVID-Related School Board Meeting To Rant About Anal Sex, Including 'The Idea of Pussy', 'Hand On The Titties', And The Definition of 'Cornhole'. Devolves Into Screaming She Does Not Have And Does Not Want To Have Anal Sex

 

she has a history

‘Karen on steroids’: Maskless Texas woman arrested at Nordstrom Rack

https://nypost.com/2021/04/20/maskless-texas-woman-arrested-at-nordstrom-rack-viral-videokaren-on-steroids-maskless-texas-woman-arrested-at-nordstrom-rack/

A Texas school board candidate was kicked out of an Austin store for refusing to wear a mask — and was then arrested outside as she ranted at police officers, viral video shows.

The incident occurred on April 7 at a Nordstrom Rack, where the woman refused to wear a mask inside and allegedly got physical with employees, according to Jam Press.

The woman, identified later in the video as Kara Bell, allegedly told employees she had a medical exemption to not wear a mask and pushed a worker to get into a dressing room, per the report.

After police arrived, Bell refused to identify herself on multiple occasions. Instead, Bell alleged she was the one assaulted and insinuated she was being singled out for her race.

“It kind of seems like it’s a racist thing when a black woman doesn’t have a mask on but she comes after the white woman,” Bell says in the video. “I mean, that’s the only difference, we’re both women.”

Bell, a local school board candidate, can be seen recording the entire exchange on her phone and attempted to correct the officers on multiple occasions. She grew more frustrated after the cops revealed her identity, which she claimed they did illegally.

At one point, Bell appears to start walking away before being told she was still detained and was not allowed to leave.

 

“I am a woman of God,” she says in the clip, which garnered nearly 40,000 likes on Twitter. “This is my right as much as it is yours. This is my land as much as it is yours. I did not sign up for this. I am a Christian woman of God and you are not gonna put your disgusting rules on me that are false and not true. I will not have it. I’m sick of being bullied and I’m sick of being lied to. It’s not going to happen anymore, do you understand?”

Shortly after the tirade, officers began cuffing Bell, who let out a surprised “Oh my gosh.”

Social media users were quick to comment on the video, labeling Bell a “Christian Karen,” “Karen on steroids” and a “Covidiot” for the actions preceding her arrest.

[ZAPHOD2319 4,819]

Texas needs to do more for mental illness funding.

[Vesper 30,186]

Wuhan scientists 'planned to release coronaviruses into bats' in 2018, claims report

Newly revealed documents purport to show grant proposals to release skin-penetrating nanoparticles containing “novel chimeric spike proteins” of bat coronaviruses into cave bats in Yunnan

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/wuhan-scientists-planned-release-coronaviruses-25041385

Scientists in Wuhan planned to release airborne coronaviruses into Chinese bats to inoculate them against diseases that could leap to humans, it has been claimed.

Newly revealed documents from 2018 purport to show grant proposals to release skin-penetrating nanoparticles containing “novel chimeric spike proteins” of bat coronaviruses into cave bats in Yunnan, China.

The documents have been published by Drastic, a web-based team set up by scientists from across the world who look into the origins of the Covid outbreak.

The group claimed the documents were brought to their attention by an unnamed whistle-blower.

They say that the EcoHealth Alliance worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in a bid to carry out 'advanced and dangerous' human pathogenicity Bat Coronavirus research.

The documents are for a grant proposal submitted to the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2018.

It is claimed Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) proposed injecting deadly chimeric bat coronaviruses collected by the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) into humanised and “batified” mice.

The proposal (named ‘DEFUSE’) was ultimately rejected for full funding, the group said, but the door was left open for partial funding.

 

The refusal reportedly stated: “It is clear that the proposed project led by Peter Daszak could have put local communities at risk”, going on to warn the team had not properly considered the dangers of enhancing the virus or releasing a vaccine by air.

The group who published the documents said in a statement: "The grant proposal includes some elements of research that are already public via scientific papers, as well as other elements that have never been made public.

"Including vaccinating wild bats using aerosolized viruses and further work on published and unpublished strains that could have directly produced SARS-CoV-2.

"These grant proposal documents also show a staggering level of deep involvement of EHA with the WIV, on matters of national interest."

A World Health Organisation investigation into the origin of the coronavirus pandemic has not ruled out any theory behind the outbreak.

In February, a team of WHO and Chinese experts said the virus was "extremely unlikely" to have entered the human population as a result of a laboratory-related incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

 

Wuhan scientists planned to release coronavirus particles into cave bats, leaked papers reveal

https://news.yahoo.com/wuhan-scientists-planned-release-skin-145326380.html

 

Wuhan and US scientists were planning to release enhanced airborne coronavirus particles into Chinese bat populations to inoculate them against diseases that could jump to humans, leaked grant proposals dating from 2018 show.

New documents show that just 18 months before the first Covid-19 cases appeared, researchers had submitted plans to release skin-penetrating nanoparticles and aerosols containing “novel chimeric spike proteins” of bat coronaviruses into cave bats in Yunnan, China.

They also planned to create chimeric viruses, genetically enhanced to infect humans more easily, and requested $14million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) to fund the work.

 

Papers, confirmed as genuine by a former member of the Trump administration, show they were hoping to introduce “human-specific cleavage sites” to bat coronaviruses which would make it easier for the virus to enter human cells.

When Covid-19 was first genetically sequenced, scientists were puzzled about how the virus had evolved such a human-specific adaptation at the cleavage site on the spike protein, which is the reason it is so infectious.

The documents were released by Drastic, the web-based investigations team set up by scientists from across the world to look into the origins of Covid-19.

In a statement, Drastic said: “Given that we find in this proposal a discussion of the planned introduction of human-specific cleavage sites, a review by the wider scientific community of the plausibility of artificial insertion is warranted.”

The proposal also included plans to mix high-risk natural coronavirus strains with more infectious but less dangerous varieties.

The bid was submitted by British zoologist Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, the US-based organisation, which has worked closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researching bat coronaviruses.

Team members included Dr Shi Zhengli, the WIV researcher dubbed “bat woman”, pictured below, as well as US researchers from the University of North Carolina and the United States Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Centre.

 

Dr Shi Zhengli

Darpa refused to fund the work, saying: “It is clear that the proposed project led by Peter Daszak could have put local communities at risk”, and warned that the team had not properly considered the dangers of enhancing the virus (gain of function research) or releasing a vaccine by air.

Grant documents show that the team also had some concerns about the vaccine programme and said they would “conduct educational outreach … so that there is a public understanding of what we are doing and why we are doing it, particularly because of the practice of bat-consumption in the region”.

Angus Dalgleish, Professor of Oncology at St Georges, University of London, who struggled to get work published showing that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) had been carrying out “gain of function” work for years before the pandemic, said the research may have gone ahead even without the funding.

“This is clearly a gain of function, engineering the cleavage site and polishing the new viruses to enhance human cell infectibility in more than one cell line,” he said.

Daszak was also behind a letter published in The Lancet last year which effectively shut down scientific debate into the origins of Covid-19.

 

Wuhan testing - Roman Pilipey/Shutterstock

Viscount Ridley, who has co-authored a book on the origin of Covid-19, due for release in November, and who has frequently called for a further investigation into what caused the pandemic in the House of Lords, said: “For more than a year I tried repeatedly to ask questions of Peter Daszak with no response.

“Now it turns out he had authored this vital piece of information about virus work in Wuhan but refused to share it with the world. I am furious. So should the world be.

“Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) proposed injecting deadly chimeric bat coronaviruses collected by the Wuhan Institute of Virology into humanised and ‘batified’ mice, and much, much more.”

A Covid-19 researcher from the World Health Organisation (WHO), who wished to remain anonymous, said it was alarming that the grant proposal included plans to enhance the more deadly disease of Middle-East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers).

“The scary part is they were making infectious chimeric Mers viruses,” the source said.

“These viruses have a fatality rate over 30 per cent, which is at least an order of magnitude more deadly than Sars-CoV-2.

“If one of their receptor replacements made Mers spread similarly, while maintaining its lethality, this pandemic would be nearly apocalyptic.”

EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology have been aproached for comment.

[Vesper 30,186]

Covid cures stupid

[Vesper 30,186]

Hollywood Blvd, Saturday, 11:22 AM:

ANTI-VAXX PROTESTER: Do you see all of these homeless people around. Are they dead in the street with COVID? Hell no. Why?

HOMELESS PERSON (walking by): Because I’m vaccinated you dumb fuck.

 

 

[Vesper 30,186]

Britain’s Covid Missteps Cost Thousands of Lives, Inquiry Finds

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s slowness last year to impose a lockdown and institute widespread testing had tragic results, according to a parliamentary report.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/12/world/europe/uk-covid-deaths-inquiry.html

LONDON — Britain’s initial response to the Covid-19 pandemic “ranks as one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced,” a parliamentary inquiry reported on Tuesday, blaming the government for “many thousands of deaths which could have been avoided.”

In a highly critical, 151-page report, two committees of lawmakers wrote that the government’s failure to carry out widespread testing or swiftly impose lockdowns and other restrictions amounted to a pursuit of “herd immunity by infection” — accepting that many people would get the coronavirus and that the only option was to try to manage its spread.

“It is now clear that this was the wrong policy, and that it led to a higher initial death toll than would have resulted from a more emphatic early policy,” the report concluded.

Although many of its findings were already known, the report grew out of the first authoritative investigation of Britain’s pandemic response. The inquiry, led by lawmakers from Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s own Conservative Party, described a litany of failures by his government in the months after the first coronavirus cases were detected in Britain in January 2020.

Britain has experienced one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks among wealthy nations, with 162,000 deaths officially attributed to the disease. Like many Western democracies, at the outset of the pandemic it struggled to balance individual liberties with strict measures such as lockdowns, and suffered from mismanagement at the top levels of government.

The country has tried to put those missteps behind it, racing ahead last winter and spring as one of the world leaders in vaccinations, with more than three-quarters of people 12 and older having now received two doses of a Covid vaccine. As deaths declined from prior peaks, Britain cast off nearly all restrictions, and even though infections remain high, Mr. Johnson has tried to portray the country as having put the worst of the pandemic behind it.

But as he struggles against a raft of new economic problems, the report renewed criticisms of his government’s handling of the virus. It does not require the government to act, but its findings are likely to influence the public debate for months to come. A full public inquiry promised by Mr. Johnson is not scheduled to begin until next year.

“This report lays bare the failings of the U.K. government to contain Covid, including delayed border measures, nonexistent testing for weeks, lack of P.P.E. for frontline workers and a late lockdown,” said Devi Sridhar, the head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh. “Hopefully, lessons will be learned from this.”

The inquiry drew on numerous interviews over the past year with government officials and experts, many of which were held in open sessions. It concluded that while Britain had a robust system in place to detect and respond to major public health threats, it was too heavily geared toward the risk of pandemic flu and not a faster-spreading, more dangerous respiratory disease such as Covid-19, SARS or MERS.

Asian countries with more recent experience of such diseases quickly put in place aggressive containment, testing and tracing strategies. But in Britain, the government’s scientific advisers advocated a far more gradual approach, mistakenly believing “that a new, unknown and rampant virus could be regulated in such a precise way,” the report said.

The lawmakers found that such decisions were the product of “groupthink” among top officials in Mr. Johnson’s government and its advisers, who relied on mathematical models to guide their response.

On Tuesday, the government defended its actions, saying they were guided by science, and reiterated its regret for the country’s suffering. “One can’t apply hindsight to the challenges that we faced,” Steve Barclay, a cabinet minister, told BBC Radio.

But in fact, early in the outbreak, infectious disease and public health experts pleaded with the British government to take stronger measures. It was only in late March 2020, with infections doubling every three days and the national health system at risk of being overwhelmed, that Mr. Johnson reversed course and ordered a full nationwide lockdown — a week to two weeks after France, Spain and Italy had done so.

“The loss of that time was to prove fatal to many,” the report said.

Mr. Johnson, who was hospitalized with Covid in April of 2020, has consistently faced opposition to pandemic restrictions from a large faction within his party.

The inquiry found that the government’s decision not to order a lockdown or conduct extensive contact tracing was due in part to officials’ belief that the British public would not accept such restrictions — a view that was based on limited evidence and turned out to be false, as people generally complied with lockdown measures, the report said.

The assumption of noncompliance was “one of the critical things that was completely wrong in the whole official thinking,” Dominic Cummings, a former chief adviser to Mr. Johnson, told the lawmakers in testimony this spring during which he laid into his former boss for incompetence.

The decision to abandon widespread testing early in the pandemic also cost lives, especially as older people were discharged from hospitals to care homes without knowing whether they or their caregivers were infected with the virus. The low levels of testing meant that the country “lost visibility of where the disease was spreading,” the report said. The care facilities, like many hospitals, lacked protective equipment, allowing the virus to run rampant among the country’s most vulnerable people.

Peter English, a retired consultant in communicable disease control, said the government’s panel of health experts, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, was filled with “the wrong experts,” people who lacked experience with infectious diseases.

“They had lots of modelists in place, but very few people who were used to dealing with these things and managing outbreaks in practice,” he said.

The inquiry did praise certain aspects of Britain’s handling of the pandemic, in particular its early investment in vaccine research, including support for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine that has become among the most widely administered in the world.

The government’s decision to lengthen the interval between vaccine doses, to enable as many people as possible to get one shot, was “decisive and courageous,” and “significantly enhanced the pace of protection for the U.K. population,” the report said.

A fuller accounting of Britain’s response is not likely to occur for years. Public inquiries like the one promised by Mr. Johnson tend to be lengthy and exhaustive. An investigation into the deadly June 2017 fire at Grenfell Tower in London, for example, has yet to conclude.

Jonathan Ashworth, a lawmaker with the opposition Labour Party, said the Covid inquiry pointed to “monumental errors” by the government.

“At every step ministers ignored warnings, responded with complacency and were too slow to act,” he said in a statement. “We need a public inquiry now so mistakes of such tragic magnitude never repeated again.”

 

[Warning_Hazard 156]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Unt03UBhbU

Edited November 16, 2021 by Warning_Hazard

[Warning_Hazard 156]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1GF0H9V_1g

 

Covid could be killing itself in japan and looking like japanese seem to have a protective enzyme that kills it etc.