WHEN I WAS a child, we had ‘outbreaks’ of diseases. Living very close to
Aberdeen, I miraculously survived the famous (only if you lived near
Aberdeen) typhoid outbreak of 1964,
which hospitalised hundreds of people. The only thing it killed,
temporarily, was the corned beef trade, as the outbreak was traced to a
tin of the popular Fray Bentos product. Life soon returned to normal, as did the consumption of tinned meats.
That
was the first and last ‘outbreak’ that I can recall. Almost anything
that more than a couple of folks have caught since has been named an
‘epidemic’. That sounded much more threatening, until it was superseded
by the term ‘pandemic’, which seems to be the ubiquitous phrase for
anything that used to be an epidemic.
Trying to distinguish an
epidemic from a pandemic is a fruitless task. The definitions seem to
differ depending on where you look and, for all intents and purposes,
are interchangeable. The problem for the public health brigade is that,
clearly, neither term instils sufficient fear into the population, as
demonstrated by the Covid-19 fiasco.
Admittedly, they rode high
for a time. However, very few people, for example, still wear face
masks, apart from a few fainthearts, virtue signallers, and those once
again mandated by their NHS employers.
Enthusiasm is waning for covid vaccines. Nevertheless, they must be
given credit for their tenacity; they simply don’t give up.
In
their efforts to paralyse us with fear, pepper the joy of the festive
season with a little misery and turn our minds towards the perpetual
worship of the NHS, we now have a new category of killer to cope with:
the ‘quad-demic’.
In case you are interested, this is an allegedly lethal cocktail of
‘flu, Covid-19, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and norovirus’.
The
quad-demic didn’t seem to do the trick, as the irresponsible British
public celebrated the birth of Jesus, visited their families and partied
like it was 1999. The outcome? According to NHS England, this has resulted in a ‘tidal wave’ of flu and, in a week, a 70 per cent increase in hospital cases.
On New Year’s Eve, clearly concerned that we were not listening, the quad-demic has been upgraded with the epithet of ‘terrifying’. How do we know this? Apparently, over a quarter of British people,
or at least those gullible enough to take a test, have tested positive
for influenza. This does not take into account any false positives,
which plague this kind of testing, and it does not report how many of
these people were symptomatic. In other words, such testing statistics
are virtually meaningless.
Professor Sir Stephen Powis, NHS
National Medical Director, said that the worst of the tidal wave was on
its way. There have been almost 4500 flu patients every day,
with 211 people in critical care. Therefore, 0.0078% of the population
is hospitalised with flu and 0.00037% is in critical care. Expressed
like that, the tidal wave seems more like a puddle in a car park. So,
why the fuss? Obviously, it is to do with pressure on the NHS which,
above all, must be ‘saved’.
The usual guilt-inducing measures
are employed to imply that it is all our fault, thus it has been
reported that the surge in infections will continue to pick up pace in
the coming days as a result of more people socialising indoors over the
Christmas and the New Year period. Mask-wearing is encouraged, social
distancing rears its ugly head and our old favourite lockdown-style
measures have been recommended by virologist from the University of
Warwick, Professor Lawrence Young. Laughably, it is recommended that you
isolate yourself if you have the flu. In my experience, as flu is a
near-death experience, the last thing you would want to do is move, eat,
drink or speak....<<<
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