Vic Rolfe

'Interesting article in STATnews: https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-overused-for-covid-19/ In discussing the use of ventilators in treating acute respiratory distress in severely ill covid-19 patients: and:

All India's lock-down has achieved is spreading the virus from the cities to the provinces, as people have being walking home in their millions...

The Imperial College report was correct in stating: and: What the report does not make clear, though, is that the tragic death toll of the 1918 flu epidemic was made far worse by the effects of stress on the immune systems of whole populations. Stress caused by the four years of World War I. Stress caused by severe malnourishment after all the years of war. So now, we are going to get stress on a massive scale, caused by the total collapse of economies around the world... People should stop worrying quite so much about just exactly how deadly SARS-CoV-2 is - and start thinking a little bit more about how all of this stress is going to effect their immune systems? Especially if, as the Oxford University report seems to suggest, the virus is already out in the wild - and it has been since the middle of January?!! (Which does make perfect sense to me...) It does seem that no age group is perfectly safe from covid-19 but the vast majority of healthy adults who do catch the disease will be anything from asymptomatic to feeling like death warmed up for a week or so - as long as they are not one of the unlucky ones and as long as they have a good healthy immune system in the first place. It's the economy, silly!!

Two very different scenarios, were presented by two very different reports. Only time - and a serious program of testing for antibodies in, at the very least, a representative sample of the population - will tell which one was closer to the mark... Quick links: The preprint (draft) of the University of Oxford study led by Prof. Sunetra Gupta (Which may or may not turn out to be correct in its postulation that a large percentage of the UK population may already have been infected? In which case, that would bring the actual death rate per head of population way down, compared to some of the numbers that have been banded about in all the recent hysteria...) and the The Imperial College report led by Prof. Neil Ferguson that forced the UK government to change tack (As the report states:) My biggest problem with how the UK and many other countries have handled the crisis so far is that they seem to have totally ignored this bit of the Imperial College report: (My emphasis) Maybe now, before it is too late, we need to start thinking about the economic repercussions of our actions. And maybe, Imperial College could run another model, taking into account the effects of an economy in collapse on the health and well-being of the population? And that's just for the UK... The Imperial College report clearly states: Nowhere in that report does it even suggest that their modeling is in any way appropriate for any of the grossly overcrowded, under resourced developing countries where: a) Large swathes of the population simply have nowhere to go, when you kick them off the streets b) Many of those who do have homes to go to, already live in unbearably overcrowded conditions. So if you kick people off the streets, the overcrowding at home becomes even worse. c) In some of these countries, anything up to a third of the population earn a living in the 'informal economy'. Living hand-to-mouth, day-to-day. So suddenly burst into panic, lock down all forms of public transport without any prior notice. Bring your entire economy to a complete standstill overnight. And then watch literally millions of people start the long trek back to their villages, without even enough food and water for the journey. Madness. Madness. Shear and utter collective madness - all around the world...

Well... It would have been nice if I could have started-off the first blog on my brand-spanking new personal website, with something a little more cheerful. But there's not much else to talk about, these days... Hopefully, I will be proven totally wrong and we can all get back to "normal" before too long?! In the meantime, I have enabled "Guest Posting," just in case anyone wants to make a comment. (Just check-out the "Guidelines" link in the main navigation bar, on a laptop - or that little "hamburger" thing on your cellphone, for more info. on posting as a Guest.) Here's my take on covid-19... The best that I can say about it, is that this is the biggest fiasco in the entire history of the human race. Needless to say, anyone can "prove'" their own point of view by trawling through the literature and scientific papers that fit their point of view. Here's an article that happens to fit mine: (Whether or not you agree with the main points presented, I do think that this article does make some very valid points that are, at least, worthy of some further discussion?) https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/ Right... Well I don't think that the vast majority of people have any idea how much damage has been done by all this madness... They think that you can just switch off the world economy for months on end - and then everything will somehow miraculously return to "normal?" They think that governments can just keep on printing money when they are already heavily in debt? We have heard nothing but budgets and "no money for this, no money for that," for as long as I can remember. And now they seem to be "pulling it out of thin air?!" And wouldn't it have been nice if they had spent just a little bit of all that money that they are now throwing at the problem, on increasing the number of hospital beds, and building up a strategic stock of ventilators and medical supplies to cope with just such an emergency. Years ago. Not when it is already way too late? Instead of that, what we have never stopped hearing over the last few years has been: "Cut, cut, cut!" And all in the name of the great God of the economy. ('Not much of that left now, then - I don't suppose?) No. This is only the beginning... And it is just going to go on and on. The final damage and loss of life caused by economic melt-down all around the world will far outstrip the few million deaths, at worst, that we could have expected, if we'd just taken sensible measures - (early enough, instead of long after the 'horse had already bolted') - and tried to keep the world "ticking over" as best we could have done, under the circumstances. At the very best, this will take years to sort-out. Things will never get back to the "normal" that we used to know. Whatever happens now, the world has changed forever. That's the best-case scenario, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to even think about any of the alternative scenarios... Anyway, I'm not a fortuneteller! Right now, I am just wondering when they will let us out of this ridiculous quarantine so that I can try to make a bit of money before the world economy goes into complete melt-down. (As I write this, I am on a ship that has been at sea for virtually all of the last three months - since before hardly anyone had even heard of a so-called coronavirus, let alone SARS-Cov-2. It is now a full 16 days since are last port call - Salalah, Oman - when no one was even allowed off the ship. We all had our temperatures taken when we arrived here in the UAE. Nobody is sick on board the ship. We are all fit as fiddles! And they still won't let anyone down the gangway.) And I thought that seamen would be considered as essential workers? I am also seriously beginning to wonder if I will ever be able to get a pint of beer down the Royal Oak in Hollywater, ever again??!!! Watch this space, as they say?