Viruses, Virulence, Vectors and Vituperation.

 Viruses, Virulence, Vectors and Vituperation.

 Given the current western / global psychosis (in one way understandable but with forced herding excessive exuberance) which is writing its histrionic destabilising ways socially, economically and into culturally stability wellbeing; it is an exigent lesson in not assuming that all things can continue to move in assumedly progressive, moderately controllable and largely unflustered summative behaviour. Lots can change. As one can observe now, something unforeseen a year ago, other than in a few pre-preparatory ignored documents of events conjectured as ‘unlikely occurrences’ to happen, on a scale of low(ish) flexible probability; but written with variable parameters to be aware, they just might.

 In line with the existing meshed anxiety that has gripped countries in different ways and the broad similarity they have adopted in tackling the ‘killing’ problem, one can lose sight of the fact that when humans are not twisted onto finding ways to ‘legally’ kill each other in numbers, for a good state or god cause or nonspecific veiled pecuniary gain, agents of the biosphere can also slip in to do an excellent eradication job when given opportunity. And the names of some of them are known.

 Bubonic Plague:

Yesinia pestis  re “Black Death 1340+”  The virus is transmitted between animals via fleas / to humans contamination by the bite of infected fleas, (zoonotic) Incubation in humans is 3 to 7 days, the  bacterium can also transmit through direct contact with infected materials, or by inhalation. With a death rate of 30% to 100% if left untreated. Today it can be easily treated with antibiotics and the use of standard preventative measures. It is still around. (1)

 Small Pox:

From the 3^rd century onwards was a disgusting disease, origins unknown but probably initially zoonotic transferred to humans with a 30% death rate. Transmission is through direct infected fluidity contact with infected materials, or by inhalation. Declared eradicated in 1980 by WHO after killing 500m in its last 100 years. Thought there are two secure reservoirs remain - America and Russia for DNA ‘research’ with discussions continuing to completely destroy it. (1)

 Rabies:

Transmission off  infected animals bite / infected fluidity, (zoonotic) via eyes mouth, nose, broken skin. Incubation is 1 week to a year; dependent on seriousness / location of wound. 100% death rate if not suspected and treated early (difficult to do) once symptoms are pronounced death is inevitable.  (1)

 Anthrax:  

Caused by the natural spores bacterium off infected animals and in soil. Contact by breathing, eating, or through an area of broken skin. There are 4 forms: skin, lungs, intestinal, and injection injury. The risk of death from anthrax is 24%. to 80% without months of antibiotic treatment and dependent on the form of infection, with respiratory being the most lethal. Incubation period can be 1 day to two months. Generally does not spread directly between people. It has been weaponised! (1)

 Marburg:

Outbreaks recognised in 1967 happened simultaneously in Marburg and Frankfurt in Germany, and in Belgrade, Serbia, causes haemorrhagic fever. Thought to be an animal virus from an animal reservoir of bats, which spread to other animals (Zoonotic). Highly virulent, Marburg can spread through human-to-human transmission via direct contact through broken skin or mucous membranes with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people and with surfaces materials (e.g. bedding, clothing) contaminated with these fluids. Incubation is 2 to 21 days. Death rates up to 88% No proven vaccine. (1)

 SARS-CoV:

 Virus identified in 2003. Thought to be an animal virus from an indeterminate animal reservoir, perhaps bats, that spread to other animals (Zoonotic). Transmission of SARS-CoV is primarily from person to person with virus excretion into respiratory secretions, touch (hand) surfaces contamination to eyes, mouth, nose and poor toilet hygiene. Incubation 1 to 2 weeks, risk of death approx 9%, experimental vaccines are under development. (1)

 MERS-CoV:

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, a corona virus identified in Saudi Arabia in April 2012. Source of the virus remains unknown but points to dromedary camels in the Middle East as a reservoir and spread to humans (Zoonotic) Transmission/infection to humans is 2 to 14 days amplified among household contacts and in close healthcare settings. Death rate of 35% based on 2500 known infections / unprotected care given to a patient. No vaccine available but reliant on variety of heath care provision. (1)

 Ebola:

The 1979 identification and outbreak had a lethal 25% to 90% death rate in 2014/16; the virus is transmitted to people from wild animals (Zoonotic) and spreads in the human population through close fluidity excretions contamination affecting human-to-human transmission. Incubation period is 2 to 21 days. Persons infected with Ebola cannot spread the disease until they develop symptoms. Test Vaccines in progress (1)

 Flu: (Seasonal)

There are 4 types of seasonal influenza producing a sudden onset of fever, cough (usually dry), headache, muscle and joint pain, severe malaise (feeling unwell), sore throat and a runny nose. Seasonal Flu is endemic, source probably precedent zoonotic, with peaks occurring in winter months.  Transmission/infection human to human incubation is 1 to 3 days with symptoms lasting 7 to 14+ days. The virus does seem to pass easily from person to person if there are fluidity excretions via cough and sneezes and surface contact to poor hygiene – hand, eyes, nose, and mouth. Most people recover. As seasonal flu is not “notifiable” death rate is debatable at 0.01% to 4% due to severity and predisposition of those infected. There is regular annual production of vaccines to bolster immunity but no cure. (1)

 Dengue:

Virus first appeared in the 1950s in the Philippines and Thailand now spread throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the globe. Disease carried by mosquitoes with some 40% of the world's population living in areas where dengue exists. Death rate of 2.5% and the virus can cause an Ebola-like disease called dengue hemorrhagic fever with an increase death rate of 20% if left untreated. A Vaccine was approved in 2019 but carries complication risk for some people not previously infected. Potential to spread as subtropical zone extends. (1)

 HIV:

Since the disease was first identified in circa 1980s tens of millions of people have died from it. Source: unknown possibly zoonotic in origin. Transmission between humans by fluidity exchange primarily unprotected sex. Death rate now down to 1 %(?) due to powerful antiviral drugs, it is not a cure. Some 50m /100m people live infected, many without treatment. Some 1m dies each year from it. (1)

 Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS):

First identified in the USA in1993 (although now known a different strain caused an outbreak in 1950 Korea) when a heath agency isolated the virus from a deer mouse found in an infected person home. 600+ people in the U.S. have now caught HPS, and 36% have died from the disease, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Transmission is not human to human but from contact to infected mice excreta (airborne dust?). There is no cure, once HPS infection starts with breathing difficulty, if it is not diagnosed, death occurs in hours to 1-2 days; with early ICU admission attention a person may survive.  (1)

 Sars-Cov-2 (Covid-19):

This new coronavirus - COVID-19, a zoonotic virus, was identified in 2019 via a Chinese seafood market in Wuhan but the intermediate host(s) has not yet been properly identified but  thought to be an animal virus from an indeterminate animal reservoir, perhaps bats, that spread to other animals. Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is primarily from person to person with virus excretion into respiratory secretions or onto, touch (hand) surfaces contamination to eyes, mouth, nose and poor toilet hygiene. Incubation is 5-6 days. (seasonal flu can spread faster than COVID-19) with symptoms similar to seasonal flu being none (but infected) to mild to serious and most people recover but there is additional empirical evidence of new unexpected symptoms and long term after-effects from the Covid19 infection. Death rate of 3.8 up to 80% this being highly dependent on the underling health predisposition of those infected with older humans being more at risk. It is designated a global pandemic. (2)  “The COVID-19 virus is a new pathogen that is highly contagious, can spread quickly, and must be considered capable of causing enormous health, economic and societal impacts in any setting. It is not SARS and it is not influenza”. Trials are running on vaccines (3)

 And this is where the world is now.

 So the UK country, like many others, is no further on in achieving a satisfactory end to the Covid19 pandemic; with any likely / debatable vaccine some months away probably into next years? The governments media managed death rate, attributed to Covid19 in the UK is currently at 49K and long term damaged personally and socially will continue to accumulate together with the financial cost being blasted at the steps being taken in trying to (unsuccessfully) mitigate the accelerating consequences are extracting a dreadful festering toll. There does not seem to be clear inclusivity of a consolidated view of a path out of the whole debacle, creating problems that will irritate for many blighted years. Although there are a few countries that have managed the pandemic with much better committed competence and steady clear directives; the inconsistencies evident within the UK government suggest that there is, just as there was at the start of the acknowledge outbreak back in January, a conflict of government political agendas, policies and ingrained dogmas. These conflicts have been meshing with devious personalities and reeking inexperience that still shapes the ministerial outpourings of being seen to be ‘doing something’ of measured scientific backed action to disguise the lack of directive cohesion on all the challenging ramifications being thrown up by the pandemic. No one has been in charge with the knowledgeable assurance to carry off public presentational competence and able to make coherent actionable decisions without good directive leadership control, that of itself is divisive, is puppet operated and does not even know what it should do but stagger from one contradictory plan of three word meme content to another. This of the “Get Brexit Done”, “Oven Ready Deals”, “Hands-Face-Space”, “Whack a Mole” “World Beating” this that and the other to “Test and Tracing” etc presentational offerings; all vacuous memes, it is lamentable shameful. Is it the best that could have been done?        

It has to be said that (leaving aside the argument that the pandemic was ‘unexpected?’) the inability to respond efficiently has been exacerbated due to deliberate past decisions taken to ignore prior warnings, planning and the defunding of social assets. This pandemic situation is one that any governmental political party would find difficult to attend too of the past decades even if it still had or took notice of the civil service administrative preparatory awareness. But if leaders start out on denigrating the supportive foundations of administration, the embedded knowledge on how to use all the ‘levers of power’, all civil imbedded experiential knowledge squandered and prefers adopting insularity in emergencies, it is disastrous. So an arrogant government, unable to see that acting in the best interest of the country, it may have benefited from a novel created composition of an effective principality management of unity, driven by a parliamentary coalition, assembled just for this pandemic occurrence, could have gained wide public acceptance of being “all in it together”. However with the design of parliament being ‘the winner takes the spoils’ the country has to suffer the intellectual desert which has shown beyond any reasonable doubt it has gained the most ineffectual, seriously incompetent wholly inept bunch of cabinet ministers ever to creep across the threshold of No 10. Being charitable they are doing the best they can against the inherent ingrained inertia of their politicalised dogmas and it shows; scrambling to overcome the impressions of being in "la la" - "cuckoo land", ignoring concerned calls of the populace and some Politicians, that in an over enthusiastic euphemistic all-out “war” on Covid19 and disregarding the greater persistent crumbling structural settings, all is not well!

The cabinet of government are conceited with their haphazard disorganised supervision, ignoring all entreaties from Local Authorities to be at the effective forefront of the implementation of actions for the alleviation of the Pandemic. For them to see (still at this late stage) the huge financial resources, without any parliamentary oversight being handed to private operators; with no experience, no established delivery structure and all effectively squander into failures in every task, must be stupefying.  The LA’s are an established legitimate localised machinery arm of democratic governance; they have been rebuffed, only to be used as scapegoats for enforcing centralised austerity a key factor in the expanding ‘fall out’ from the pandemic. This rejection is due to the Conservatives long time abhorrence of the localisation of power, (other past governments have had difficulty with elected localism) this is linked to their dogmatic avowed stance of shrinking the overall state machinery, especially their resistant with the new aberration of democratically elected Mayoral officials into Local Regions. Particularly when such mayors are not of their own party dogmas and do not bend to the centralisation of power and the culling of financial resources to the regions or have them irritatingly exercising whatever limited powers (weakly) held by elected mayors to confront / confound the government erratic discordant script.

The country is now some 6 months into the expanding double catastrophic actions relevant to outright incompetence of government – Brexit and this pandemic. This pandemic has allowed the government to set aside parliament and enact a raft of un-scrutinised measure worthy of a dictatorial country. It is appalling and in extensive as yet unforeseeable ways, very dangerous and to be frightening destructive for the democratic process. For the moment the proletariat, after being made petrified of the likely Covid fatality rate, the cultivation of hysteria within a high risk age group and spreading ‘Lock-Downs’; the populace has been largely obediently law abiding. However there are foreboding signs, many people are reaching the limits of their forbearance for the greater good, with the loss of business, income, jobs, mental stability and long term security options.  At the start of the 'pandemic' there was a surprised outstandingly high acceptance of the restriction being placed on the populace and the subsequent resolve to stop Covid19’s rampage through to vulnerable individuals and deaths. Nevertheless the consistent vacillations of government directives, ongoing and increasing hardships, little indication of a reduction in the transmission of the infection threatening to rampage again, is giving cause for seriously challenging the modelled evidence that is used to underpin the governments overall vapid strategy. Until there is vaccine there is no end game, no vision of a way out of the punitive mess and less confidence in the government pronouncement has any truthful meaning. And one wonders if the whole mishmash of prohibition actions is now seen as a very useful means to act as a cover for laid plans to hide the seriously deranged dictatorial incompetence demonstrated at the heart of government and maintain powers forward to control any populace discontent in the aftermath of Covid19 suppressing the’ no deal Brexit’ ignominy to 2025.   

As much as the government continue to spout their “following the scientific evidence” in relation to the spread and modelled speed of transmission (which a number of experience virology scientist disagree with) and implementing the draconian restriction on public and business life; the abundantly clear failing of it and the privatised ‘test track and trace’ scheme continues to be at this late stage (November 2020) a damned administrative failure. It does seem futile to be hyper critical of government actions thus far when in the past 100 years no government has had to contend with, on a global scale, such a new, virulent, easy transmittable virus. However, one does want to round off with a perhaps partial view for why they got is so wrong and it may well have been because there was a disjointed conformity to different political policy dogmas, a) the drive to "get Brexit done" b) the need to conserve finances in the event that a hard economically fraught Brexit  is engaged and c) the Conservative long held positions on “ low taxes” and “Rolling back the state"; has been at the core of the incoherent government approach started back in January 2020.  This also means, as amply demonstrated this year, not passing any power or influence to Local Authorities giving raise to the slow, unsystematic, incompetent, financial wasteful response to the outbreak. The country as a whole is likely to pay for past ideological corrupt negligence of politicians for decades to come and it is worth considering this labelled pandemic is not potentially the worst of viruses humans will fall to.

What if another came with a death rate of 30% as in the past? One that was not as selective as Covid19 killing those of an older age or with underlying predispositions but one rampaged across the whole age spectrum; now that would be a ‘Terrifying’ Pandemic. Humans would still be unprepared albeit Epidemiology knowledge is better positioned than 100 years ago and as listed above the zoonotic sources and vectors are still available for viruses to seize an opportunity humans are not adapted too. So far this pandemic has infected globally 50m with 1.2m deaths, a rate of approx 3%; (to date 50k deaths in the UK) not exactly a global population crusher yet but certainly overall an economic stalling one. However one beneficial result from this latest fright, is (since the attack on Small Pox) the world scientific effort in finding a vaccine has been very fast, a number of which are in test now and show great promise for deliver by spring next year.

So far as one can ascertain, as in the case of other fluidity expressed transmission there is some limited evidence, based on a controlled space environment, with considered air flow / circulation, that the test substitute for this virus is able to be projected by a simulated ‘cough’ over a distance of - 2/7 meters and has a potency of 1 hour to 72 hours. Such testing is dependent on assumed viral load and type of surfaces that can hold it. Hence in a populated indoor confined space with indeterminate air flow / circulation, a form of masking safeguard is preferable. Against this there is no evidence that the virus is extensively freely airborne in the same way pollen is or anthrax spores can be and face covering or ‘common’ masks are of limited use in high viral load areas or are necessarily useful outdoors. For the majority of people outside the care sectors, consistent hand to mouth to eyes to nose antibacterial or soap washing hygiene has the optimal protective effect. However for some people mask etc. does provide a comfort factor but being carless with the use of them or lax with essential hygiene is self-defeating.  (4)

Now beyond Covid19 is there talk of the "road map" to which thus far there is no thought other than laying all strategy on obtaining reliable stable vaccines or ‘inadvertently’ shape herd immunity.

The question that has been asked before, is why when London was the original epicentre of the outbreak in Jan/Feb was it not shut down quickly until the national one was implemented in March? The northern regions have been in disastrous tough shutdowns for the past 6 months when the infection rates could not be determined by region, because of the wholly ineffective world-beating “test and trace” organization. The rate over the country has been increasing but seems to be levelling. London has a similar infection rate to northern regions yet with no hard shutdown imposed up till now. There may well be reasons for this (the manipulating of the R factor, Covid death rate, infection rate and its relationship to the number of people tested) with a probable populace reluctance to be tested raising the restrictive implication that entails. Or it has a lot to do with voting cache, global iconic image and the London economy - whatever happen elsewhere don't impact the government centre unless it has to be done. So resistance against a second national shut down had increased, not enough to stop the second one of November for four weeks to end perhaps on December 2^nd 2020! But there is much closer scrutiny of the whole bases for doing another shutdown this time and greater unease of the immediate and ongoing broader consequential damages beyond the loss of life to Covid19.

At last some element of a collective questioning sense is rising to challenge the governments handling and narrow scripted view it has taken in the overall approach of handling the pandemic and how to pull out of the accumulating disaster made extensive with this dual decade shaping predicament beginning 2020/21.It is not before time! (5)

One of the duties of governance is to keep society safe. In doing so certain legal and administrative controls are required authorised legitimately via a vibrant parliamentary processes to be able to scrutinise and challenge the cabinet / executive. This process has now been dangerously fractured under the guise of protecting people with urgent emergency measures made by cabinet ministers without effective parliamentary scrutiny. With Un-mandated powers it has put in place enforcement controls that have taken away peoples liberty and ability to choose. It is not governments function to take away individual responsibility for choices they make in life when all choices carry risk, some potentially fatal. The ability to make such life choices is assuming such choice does not diminish others ability to choose or put them unconsciously at risk due to such individuals choice.

Culmination of all life is death and if resources are insufficient to assist all in time of need, despite assumed best efforts, then the choice people make has to be indubitably consistent to the risk they carry. The ultimate direction of life and the unscripted choices made in life all lead to consequences; at some stage a few may present consequences that necessitates degrees of calculable risk, one by choice or unwittingly otherwise that may actuate death, this is, or should be expected. 

© Renot

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Source: (1) World Health Organisation

                 (2)  WHO.int/docs coronavirus.

                 (3)  WHO.int/docs/-china-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report

                 (4) www.ecdc.europa.eu/en

                 (5) Ref: crowdjustice.com

‘Public hysteria and “rushed legislation” in response to Covid-19 have prioritised the quantity of life over the quality of life is more harmful than the virus, says a campaign (Recovery)’ it pulls support from a number of notable critics of the government pandemic policy’