Tag Archives: Will rioters catch Covid-19?

On the crest of the Covid wave

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 169 [30 August 2020]

Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye …

As we get set to wave goodbye to summer, and goodbye to the waves as they roll along the golden sands, the question that seems to be foremost in almost everybody’s mind is are we about to say hello to second-wave coronavirus? The simple answer to that is, that there isn’t one. As with everything concerning this modern pandemic, the information/disinformation is so muddled and contradictory that should second-wave coronavirus arrive it will possibly be lost beneath a triple-figure coronavirus conspiracy wave.

I am reading social media responses that have gone from conspiracy theory to conspiracy conviction, the favourite expressions of which are ‘on purpose’, ‘crash the global economy’, ‘they want people to distrust one another’ and the valedictory ‘the damage has been done’. In this mindset the only wave that it is credible is that we have already waved goodbye to life as we knew it.

Here, in Russia, I quote from InfoRos: “There will be no second wave of the coronavirus infection in Russia, Russia’s former chief sanitary doctor and now a member of the lower parliament house, Gennady Onishchenko, said on Tuesday.” [https://inforos.ru/en/?module=news&action=view&id=112523 : published 29 July 2020; accessed 30 August 2020]

Severity of COVID-19 cases may increase in second wave, scientist says
“According to the scientist, the novel coronavirus infection is likely to have three waves and it will be possible to return to the accustomed way of living only by the summer 2021” [TASS Russian News Agency: https://tass.com/society/1193965 : published 26 August 2020; accessed 30 August 2020]

Meanwhile in the UK, the situation as reported is markedly different, as this 28 August 2020 headline from The Telegraph shows:

Highest UK virus total in three months adds to second wave fears
“Total of 1,522 new infections in one day is the biggest since June 12” [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/highest-uk-virus-total-three-months-adds-second-wave-fears/ : accessed 30 August 2020].

But just look at this conflicting array of UK headlines:

Coronavirus: Hospital staff prepare for possible second wave (BBC)

NO SECOND WAVE More coronavirus outbreaks will come this winter, but Europe will avoid ‘horror’ of a second wave (The Sun)

Will there be a second wave of coronavirus in the UK? If cases of Covid-19 could surge again in UK
“With lockdown restrictions eased across the UK to varying degrees, concerns amongst experts are growing in regard to the possibility of a second wave of coronavirus cases if social distancing guidelines are not adhered to” [Edinburgh Evening News]

UK researchers warn of much worse 2nd virus wave (Anodolu Agency)

Going on the headline sample above, for the first time in my life I am tempted to stay with The Sun!

But it is not only the ‘will there be, or won’t there be a second wave’, it is should we all be wearing masks? Does social distancing work or is it counter-productive to herd immunity? Are we supposed to be exercising some kind of self-imposed isolation? If it is alright to go to work, why is it not alright for children to go to school? If masks have to be worn on public transport and in shops, how come it is still alright to go to cafes, bars and restaurants? How many ‘spikes’ in Covid-19 resulted from non-social distancing during the BLM riots? How many Covid-19 cases have resulted from holiday-period hotel stays and crowded seaside resorts?

Now, in the midst of all this confusion, I have not yet mentioned ~ although I am just about to ~ when does the vaccine cometh and, as sure as night follows day, when it does have you decided which camp you belong in? In other words, are you an opt-in vaxxer, an anti-vaxxer or a resist-at-all-costs vaxxer?

I read this really amusing article ~ it was not meant to be ~ published by The Conversation. Never heard of them? Neither have I. You will find the article here: https://theconversation.com/should-a-covid-19-vaccine-be-compulsory-and-what-would-this-mean-for-anti-vaxxers-143742.

This ‘know your rights’ article strikes me as funny as it contains the sort of tautology that Ronnie Barker would have been at home with, and it would not look out of place in Jonathan Swift’s biting satire, Gulliver’s Travels, in which Swift sends up political and bureaucratic aggrandisement as so much windbag waffle.

The polemics of compulsory vaccination can be overcome by self-isolating where nobody can get at you ~ I would suggest asking Mrs Doctor Who if you can jump into her box ~ or by inventing the first social-distancing personal force-field, guaranteed to prevent anyone entering your personal space inside the one-metre limit.

As I contemplate these options, I will continue with the second phase trial of my unique vaccine against confused messages, which is to see all, believe nothing and to take heed of Frank Sinatra singing ‘I did it My Way’.

On the crest of the Covid wave waiting to be vaccinated! — **VACCINATE! VACCINATE!!**
**(Photo credit:** https://www.needpix.com/photo/download/449638/dalek-robot-white-science-fiction-future-fun-alien-futuristic)

Covid 19 Vaccine Race

The Grand International Covid-19 & Culture-Threat Vaccine Race Not Quite Live from Gaydock Park

Published: 5 August 2020

Hello and welcome to the first Grand International Covid-19 & Culture-Threat Vaccine Race not quite live from Gaydock Park.

Held in somewhere that used to resemble the UK, this is the first equestrian race of its type where most spectators are watching in self-isolation from the comparative bailiff safety of their coronavirus mortgage-reliefed homes. The only people who will get an actual glimpse of the race live are boatloads of migrants, who will have a clear view on their approach to Dover. That’s them cheering in the background, ‘give us a free house in Surrey’, and there’s a man on the cliffside watching through his binoculars who has given us a tip for the 1960s’ Race at Haydock, which is odds-on favourite, They Should Have Listened to Enoch.

Described by some as the first nationalist race symbolising the inevitable, irredeemable, inexorable demise of globalism, and by Others as being sexist, what we do know is that it is the first race ever in which the horses will be wearing face masks, even if nobody else is.

For those of you who have just joined us, from anywhere and everywhere, the police are providing a free taxi service to a hotel of your choice, for the rest of you who understand English, and there aren’t many, but never mind we’ll provide an interpreter, it’s only money, this is a high-stakes race, the first one past the Vaccine Finishing Post not only out-prestiging everyone else in the civilised world, as well as those in Scotland, but also monopolising the coronavirus vaccine for his country and ensuring that their pharmaceutical sponsor makes mega-bucks whilst holding the world to ransom.

Ahh, and now we see the horses approaching the starting gate. In a few moments, a billionaire philanthropist will fire the starting gun and the first Grand International Covid-19 & Culture-Threat Vaccine Race will be underway.

There goes the gun (blast, he missed himself!) and they’re off! (I wondered where my wife was?) and the horses are off too.

And up front, but not so up front as we’d like, it’s China’s Unnamed Unknown Vaccine, followed by Discredited HOO, odds-on favourite Oxford Fix close behind with Gay Parade too close behind for comfort as Labour Party falls back, but not far enough for some. And China’s Unnamed Unknown Vaccine going like a bat out of hell, neck and neck with Conspiracy Theory as they approach Bills Gate. And in the black & red face mask and German tin helmet its BioTank putting pressure on Rest of the World with Open Borders, Big Mistake and Murkal’s Refugees crowding in the middle and everywhere else, whilst US Operation Warp Speed fails to trump False Liberal Media. Into the first hurdle and down goes Lockdown, Conservative Party unseating its rider, Nobody Cares and Who Gives A Toss on either side of LGBT, Tony Blair a casualty But He Doesn’t Seem to Know It, as She’s Got More Mouth Than a Cow’s Got C… ridden by the Dwarf from the North thunders into fourth place. False Liberal Media making difficult headway as they enter the Straight & Narrow, with Selfish Brits Crowding Brighton Beach and Social Distancing now one metre, could be two, behind Confused Government Policy. There goes Statistics and its China’s Unnamed Unknown Vaccine fighting it out with Poisoned Meat Market, Don’t Believe It and Whose Laboratory as Mrs May’s Highly Likely is overtaken by Truth, Porton Down and Unbelievable Story with outsider Russia’s Vaccine closing the distance on Collusion Complex and Clinton’s Hacking Jacket an also and almost ran. Ahead now and quite round the bend Entire Liberal Media, closely pursued by Populist Vote, which surges into first place as Farage’s Triumph sails merrily into the lead, threatening EU Dominance, pulling the plug on EU Court of Human Blights and Whose Democracy Is It? Common Sense is out of the race replaced by All Kinds of Liberal Agendas, Lost Heritage and Law & Order Matters, and its Muggers Alley, Hand-Over Your Cash, LoL and Innit, and Churchill’s Statue battling it out with Defund the Police as the race enters the final straight. Black Lives Matters, Reputation in Tatters and Obsequious Corporate Policy making the running, in the opposite direction, alongside Fickle Government Policy and Overpaid Untalented Celebs all surprised by BREXIT.

And its Bullshit, Bullshit and the Liberal Media, Bullshit, Russophobia, Bullshit and BBC Licence Fee hard pushed to pass They Won’t Pay It with Historical Drama Revisionism tangling with Gender-Bending Dr Who and Sink Estate in a TARDIS as they round Diverse Psychosis Corner. And its Bullshit in the lead, Ballshit out in front, Ballshit trampling Anti-Vaxxer, Trump with Second Wind as he trounces Second Wave and yes, its … Wait one moment. News just in! Apparently, we’ve just entered the third wave. Traditionally, it takes 10 to 15 years to develop a vaccine, so the finishing line has been moved to 2035 ~ stay tuned, stay in, stay safe and whatever you do don’t back Nightmares.

😉(Featured image Photo credit: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/10000/velka/1-1239868251vifh.jpg)

Watching the Riots on TV

Musings on the 10 June 2020 ~
or the joy of being TV-free (Part 2)

Published: 10 June 2020

“Threw the television out and it was one of the best things that I ever did,” so said my friend Collin, as I recorded in my previous article.

What ignited this conversation on independent minds and symbolic images of TV sets tossed resolutely into rubbish skips, was the mutual notoriety that we had both gained from the public knowledge that neither of us owned or watched TV. Whenever I revealed this fact to anyone, I could guarantee responsive shock of seismic proportions: “What, you haven’t got a telly?!” ~ they would cry in disbelief.

Time for a bit of Frank Zappa

This is not to say, unfortunately, that I am happily oblivious to what is going on in the world. In today’s technologically hard-wired world, even though I eschew ownership of a so-called smartphone, I still use a computer for research and by which to write, and on this necessary evil the news is but a click away.

When I want to know what is happening, feel the need to know what is happening and/or just feel the need to annoy myself, I go to Google News, that is Google aggregated news, or as I have christened it, Google Aggravating News. And there it is: the whole world and its ills. However, lest we forget, it is the whole world and its ills predominantly filtered through the lens of the liberal left.

At no other time in my personal history of non-TV ownership have I had so much reason to rejoice as recently. I cannot imagine how awful it must be to be placed on a strict diet of coronavirus doom and gloom. I know that there are people out there who suffer from the same inability as mobile phone users ~ they simply cannot turn the telly off. How do such people survive? Do they survive? In this age of news surfeit, with rolling news channels churning out the same disturbing images over and over again, underscored by the same relentless and inevitably biased commentary, it is a marvel we can think at all. We do, don’t we?

Frank Zappa again.

Reasons to be cheerful part 2 was when I heard from my wife, who is an inveterate social media twiddler, that it was riot season again. No, I am not a liberal subversive. My joy came from the realisation that as I did not have a TV, I could ‘tune off and drop out’ ~ that sounds suspicious!

As soon as I was apprised of the facts, white cop USA kills black suspect, I thought, ‘Hello, here we go!’ I knew as you did, that we were in for a grand media fest: acres of newsprint and airtime given over to mob rule, rioting, street unrest, arson, violence, looting. I had, in effect, one of those distinctly déjà vu moments.

Watching the Riots on TV — I’VE BEEN WATCHING THE RIOTS ON TV
(Photo credit: Michael Lis on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/@mq1?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)

The following day a couple of articles in the UK liberal press confirmed my suspicions that the fallout from a crime committed on the other side of the world was about to be encouraged in the UK.

Naah, I thought, don’t need it. My status as a non-TV owner would grant me some immunity, but in order to batten down the hatches I would need to avoid goggling on Google. One part of me was arguing, surely not. That is to say, that surely people are not so stupid as to start rampaging through the streets in the midst of a pandemic. It was a little ray of logic that I knew was but a straw. Letting go of that, I life-rafted into the comfort zone of where I was located, thankfully far away from the artillery of the western media and scenes of abject capitulation that surely would follow as dark follows light. Alas, my incorrigible twiddling wife driven by her social media addiction, could not help but leak snippets of information to me, which I tried to avoid as if they were carnivals.

With Covid-19 conspiracies cascading around our ears like confetti at a fallen angels wedding, who could blame anyone for entertaining the suggestion that in the matter of the riots extreme liberal factions are at work behind the scenes provoking and antagonising, attempting to disempower law enforcement agencies so that they ultimately lose control of the streets. Or is it all just an epic miscalculation? After all, something similar happened in the UK about thirty years ago with the premature curtailment of stop and search laws, the disastrous result being …

I was just thinking wistfully bring back the Sweeney, flared polyester trousers, thick knotted Axminster ties and proper-job policing, when the words of my old childhood physician echoed in my ears, and other parts of the body. “Clear the decks!” he would say, meaning drop your trousers, which he always asked you to do when you presented with an earache. They’d certainly have pulled his statue down if he had had one erected! Come to think of it, they probably wouldn’t.

With his words ringing in my ears (he never did get to the bottom of my tinnitus) and my trousers still on, it did make me think that it was time to take evasive action before the decks of my mind became strewn with the sort of liberal tat that I would not get five bob for if I took it to Peacock’s auction.

“Wife!” said I, “Desist!”

I do not know whether she understood me or not, but the cat did, as he promptly sat on her mobile phone.

And so it has been that for the last four to five days I have, how does the expression go, simply ‘not gone there’, and by boycotting Google News and in fact any kind of media output, I have harvested the twin benefit of not only avoiding the ghost of Enoch Powell but also losing touch with coronavirus confusion. It has certainly been a win-win situation!

Of course, with Arsebook never far away, my wife continues to sneak information piecemeal to me, but I have adopted the expedient of placing my hands over my ears. It cannot be right can it? That they uprooted Nelson Mandela’s statue in Parliament Square and tossed it into a cabbage patch? Perhaps it was Lord Nelson’s statue or the statue of Ron Nelson, a fish and chip man from Scunthorpe … or could it have been …*

*For one night only, due to Rioter’s demands, BBC 1 presents the National Historic Figures Statue Desecration Ceremony live from the Arthur Hall (please note that Prince Arthur is currently being investigated under the Racist Statues of England Act so will not be in attendance. The fact that he died many years ago does not make him less culpable of things he never said or did in an age which is so remote from our own that even a female Dr Who is having difficulty finding it.)

Will the rioters remove The Statue of Liberty? — What du yu reckon when it’s gone ~ Martha & The Vandellas?

If you live in a country that has not yet ventured down the road of multiculturalism, pause for a moment. The social experiment comes at a price, and the interest on the debt is something you’ll never repay ~ Source: a man who did not make it into The Museum of Tolerance but was later inducted into the Hall of Sagacious Fame (please note statue removed) and was then prosecuted for inciting commonsense

In brave new America, leaders kneel and looters are saluted.