'What is left to say?' A nice summing up of a "world has simply gone bonkers" from Dr. Malcolm Kendrick (a UK GP, US eq = primary care physician I think!) on his blog as 2020 came to an end. I opine that it is very much worth a read as are a majority of the comments.
Dr. Kendrick uses and quotes The European Mortality Monitoring project, which has presumably seen it's website traffic increase several million-fold in the last 10 months. He posted images of several graphs that by complete coincidence I was viewing yesterday, gobsmacked at how many countries had seen almost zero effect of COVID-19 last year. See HERE (scroll down to below the map). "There is a special prize for anyone who can match up the severity of restrictions in various countries, to the Z-score. I say this, because no correlation exists."
You WILL be surpised (see image left; obviously you'll need to click to enlarge but fewer than 30% of the countries listed had anything outside the 'substancial increase' range).
Then onto other concerns: in the comments themselves many have said the actions of lockdown will have far harsher effects: cure worse than illness etc, I was saying that back in early March but more from hopeful ignorance than much else and if you consider I was in Mexico at the time and currently their fatality rate is FOUR times the global average (!!!) and the average age of death 20 and 27 years BELOW the Europe and the UK respectively maybe I wasn't so 'right' for their situation, see final column 'lethality' in the image below, from covidgraph.com...WTF?
Anyhoo, a the UK Office of National Statistics estimates, 17,500 excess deaths per year for several years due only to the economic impact of lockdown. (see comment January 1, 2021 at 1:01 pm) "[You] have to take into account the cancer diagnoses not being made, the people dying from other conditions who did not attend hospital when they should have done so. The increase in household violence, women and children being battered. The people losing their jobs, the impact of poverty on health. The loneliness and depression. The destruction of the quality of life of many elderly people...
"Lockdown is killing many people. Has killed many people. may well kill more people that Covid19 will ever manage. This cannot all simply be brushed under the carpet." [sic]
Dying from Covid-19, or suffering long term effects from Covid-19 are not the only health issues that matter: "Since Covid19 arrived, far more people have died of cardiovascular disease, or cancer, or diabetes, than Covid. This laser like focus on one condition, and only one condition, is absolutely ridiculous. You can die, and be damaged, by many other things."
Indeed, and another doctor has the possible probable answer: Dr No's The Covid Delusion. "So why all the media hysteria and government interference? Just as when the only tool you have at hand is a hammer, everything looks like a nail..."
"Psychiatry still has no idea what causes most delusions, and as a result there are many theories about their origin, some plausible, some improbable, and some that are frankly downright delusional. One of the more plausible theories involves both perceptual filtering (filtering what you see and hear) and cognitive filtering (filtering what you think), with the processes becoming self-reinforcing as the delusion beds in. Could it be that, after months of constant not just daily but hourly bombardment with all things covid, amounting to external perceptual and cognitive filtering, that not just individuals, but whole blocks of society have lost reason, and become deluded?"
Dr. No leads with a quote from psychiatrist Alfred Hoche "There is no delusional idea held by the mentally ill which cannot be exceeded in its absurdity by the conviction of fanatics, either individually or en masse". This is where we are, politicians, SAGE communists, 'experts' and general hangers-on power crazed at their new found power they will do everything to maintain the fear: including lie, bluster, omit, and ignore aided and abetted by the more-evil-than-ever main-stream media. It is reminiscent of the a witch-doctor doing all he can to maintain his hold over the chieftan. The Sun god is dissatisfied, we didn't slaughter enough innocents!
Two more quotes to add to that of Hoche, both by Albert Einstein:
"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits."
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
