Why the 3% rejoice in the existence of Coronavirus
There is a need at this point in the erosion of liberal democracy to try and point out the serious danger the average Western citizen faces. For the foreseeable future, I’ll continue to be a French resident, and so will use the data pertaining to this country. I hope people will find my analyses useful, and – wherever they live in Europe or elsewhere – compare them with their own experiences. My hope is that this will give more and more Europeans a real perspective about where things are heading.
I was very outspoken yesterday about the ludicrously draconian Elysée Presidential response to this largely manufactured crisis, and I suspect some people think this to have been melodrama for effect. Let me try and quickly dispel that assumption.
France has a population of almost exactly 70 million. There are now thought to be around 8,000 confirmed C19 cases here, with 180 fatalities.
This means that currently, one person in 7,000 is infected, and 2 people in 100,000 have died. The average flu per annum death rate since 2012 in France has been 2.9 per 100,000.
19.3% of the older population demographic (based on the best data series we have) face a potential fatality rate of 3.8%. So there could be roughly 500,000 deaths. The rest of the population models out at a death rate of 0.4%, producing another 200,000 corpses.
The total comes to 700,000 funerals. Which – to be fair to the French authorities – is not that far from the 750,000 number they headlined the day before Macron’s address to the nation.
However, this is where we need to get real about death from all causes in France among wrinklies – by far the biggest reason being low immunity to infection.
These add up to 270,000 per annum. Now of course, de-duping deaths in the 70+ demographic that happen anyway can’t be attempted going forward with any real degree of accuracy. But as the WHO stats suggest a very high Covid19 risk for that group, it seems reasonable to assume (given the rates involved) at least 150,000 people dying from it.
This gives us a net-net life risk of 550,000 French residents.
So, on the basis of a threat to 0.8% of the gallic population, on Monday night the President of France declared the closure of all non-food, non-news and non-pharmaceutical retail outlets, his Prime Minister having 48 hours earlier closed all bars and restaurants.
I don’t want 550,000 deaths any more than you do: but COVID19 is what it is. Does anyone seriously believe that an additional risk to eight out of a thousand people is worth such an invasion of the civil rights of nine hundred and ninety-two out of a thousand people?
Given I say this as somebody slap-bang in the middle of the vulnerable target hosts for C19, I humbly submit that you should give me the benefit of the doubt when I say, “This reaction is out of all proportion to the risk”.
It doesn’t end there. There is the question of widespread immunity that ought to be at the core of all sane approaches to dealing with this virus.
Currently in Europe, there are two approaches in play: denialist containment, and protection of the vulnerable alongside the desire to minimise the effect of future outbreaks.
The UK began by adopting the latter approach…..with which, by the way, I agree. But then other counsel changed BoJo’s mind: he is now on the same insane course of impossible containment as that pertaining here in France. Mark Rutte in Holland, meanwhile, continues to take what I see as the responsible communitarian response: if you will, the greatest protection of the greatest number.
What I find both fascinating and disturbing is the continuing social media trollism of people uttering gibberish such as, “it has mutated twice already”, “we do not know if immunity is possible” and “reinfection is a real threat”. COVID19 is a mutation of a virus that first appeared 60 years ago, and then 25 years ago. Such things do not mutate within weeks. As to immunity, the Chinese experience tells us that infection plus recovery is normal….and reinfection is a myth based on initially poor detection of how C19 operates.
The best defence against any virus is either (a) the Pasteur principle of immunisation or (b) individual exposure followed by recovery.
Meanwhile – on the same planet – the utter collapse of Bourse-fuelled globalism continues. At 4.00pm New York time, the Dow had lost another 9% in value, the FTSE lost 4.5%, the DAX 5.6%, while Brent crude futures collapsed 11% to their lowest level since September, 2003 and U.S. West Texas Intermediate oil tumbled 18% to lows not seen since March, 2002.
COVID19 remains the default excuse for this meltdown: but the 205,000 worldwide recorded cases (not deaths) from the virus represent 1 in 33,000 Earthlings so far.
Yet on that basis, San Francisco is in lockdown, Germany has similarly shut down malls, bars and sports venues, the UK today closed all schools, and for 15 days starting at noon on March 17, French residents have only been allowed to leave the place they live for necessary activities – as in, 1 shop per day – and forcibly confined to their homes after 6pm.
Now I ask you please to consider this: are these measures in any way proportionate to the threat? And do they add up to an explanation of the debt/credit crunch/selling mania that now grips the stock markets of the world?
Perhaps I should explain what crap this kind of corporacratic clampdown entails. As of yesterday, I now need to carry with me at all times when I’m not in my home an ‘attestation’ (to show to every squaddie, flic, Tom, Dick and Henri who stops me and asks me whatTF I’m doing going about my business) why I’m doing such things.
So far, I’m bound to say I have been depressed and disappointed by the willingness of French friends to simply acquiesce in this bollocks and – worse still – lecture me about how this is all for the common good.
There’s not much more I can say really, beyond expressing my contempt for a French President and child of Rothschild bankrolling who goes on nationwide television to proclaim the ridiculous idea that, “Nous sommes en guerre” – we are at war. Like so many other media utterances these days, it simply doesn’t bear examination.
Macron lied to the French People when he said La France en Marche! was a crowd-funded phenomenon: as Le Monde quickly established, he was almost entirely financed by his former employers. He called himself a “Centrist”, but has been a neoliberal in domestic policy and a neocon Syria-bomber in foreign affairs.
He is also, by nature, an opportunist. Whether he gratefully latched onto COVID19 or had advance notice of the caper, I couldn’t say: all I know is, he is using it cynically to rule by decree.
Do we see Macron in any way promising to reform capitalism, or trying to rebalance the relatonship between labour and capital? We do not.
The bloke is a fraud….on the same wavelength as Venizelos in Greece, Rajoy in Spain, and – very probably – Boris Johnson in Britain.
They are all chancers: but where is the Resistance that will deny them such chances as they have?
The Slog 