CoronaVirus Kills Orange Marches
There is a Silver Lining in Every Cloud
Nursing home staff spread coronavirus to other facilities, CDC investigation finds – Los Angeles Times
This is a scary factual report about the spread of the CoVid-19 illness in an American Nursing Home based in Seattle, Washington State.
A key cause of the crisis was :
low wages in nursing homes and assisted-living centers force many staffers to work in multiple facilities. Certified nursing assistants often make no more than minimum wage, and nurses typically receive less than they do in hospitals.
In addition, a sense of duty and financial stress may tempt employees to come to work sick, endangering elderly residents who have underlying health conditions.
Could this happen in Ireland? The answer has to be Yes.
Of the deaths linked to the nursing home, one was a visitor and the rest were patients.
The advanced age of many long-term care facility residents, their underlying health conditions and their proximity to one another put them at risk for sickness and death, the report said.
Life Care residents infected by the virus ranged from 54 to 100 years old, with a median age of 81.
“Substantial morbidity and mortality might be averted if all long-term care facilities take steps now to prevent exposure of their residents to COVID-19,” the report said.
Infected Life Care workers ranged from 22 to 79 years old.
A spokesman for the nursing home said Wednesday that managers welcomed the CDC report, because it could alert other facilities and lead to new guidelines.
“For us this is all positive, even if there are things they found that we could have done better,” said Timothy Killian, a crisis communications specialist, on behalf of Life Care.
He said that two or three days after the outbreak was discovered, staff members were banned from working at other facilities.
“As soon as we had an idea that this was something that shouldn’t be done, we stopped,” he said.
Killian said that “it’s a relatively common practice” for nurses to work in multiple long-term care facilities.
Dr. Michael Wasserman, president of the California Assn. of Long Term Care Medicine, said that low wages in nursing homes and assisted-living centers force many staffers to work in multiple facilities. Certified nursing assistants often make no more than minimum wage, and nurses typically receive less than they do in hospitals.
In addition, a sense of duty and financial stress may tempt employees to come to work sick, endangering elderly residents who have underlying health conditions.
— Read on www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-18/coronavirus-spread-nursing-homes
“Never Waste A Good Crisis” – Big Economic Recession Coming Our Way – Irish Ruling Class Cuts “Meals on Wheels” – EU Leaders Pour Petrol ⛽️ on Flames 🔥
An Irish Warning : Sam Nolan reports his HSE “meals on wheels” service has been suspended. Friends and Comrades are rallying, Sam will be supported. Des Derwin reacts, very perceptively :
“I’m speechless. Just as an expanded service is needed. Have y’all noticed how the (Fine Gael!) state is building up its repressive apparatus for the crisis. Templemore early graduation trainees given crash course in public order (read riot control). New standing public order unit. (WTF?!) Scores of hired in Garda cars to ‘help the vulnerable’. Maybe the HSE is transferring the meals on wheels service to An Garda Siochana.”
Former SYRIZA Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis Analyses the European Union Response :
Those of us who know how the Eurogroup works were not holding much hope yesterday. Nevertheless, Europe’s finance ministers managed to do even less than what we feared: They failed to use the fiscal compact’s proviso for loosening up fiscal policy across the euro area. They continued with the tragic error of treating a crisis of insolvency as a crisis of liquidity. And they failed to recognise that some countries, in particular those savaged by the never-ending euro crisis, need a great deal more support than others.
In short, the Eurogroup’s bazooka is no more than a pathetic waterpistol. It is time that Europeans pushed for something better than this. It is time that we organise at a transnational, paneuropean level to replace this instrument of austerity-driven recession, the Eurogroup, with an institution that can work for a majority of Europeans everywhere.
APPENDIX: The Eurogroup’s telling reference to “automatic stabilisers”
The Eurogroup communique referred to the “full use of automatic stabilisers”. What did they mean?
Here is an example of an ‘automatic stabiliser’: When people lose their job, they go on unemployment benefit. This means a transfer of money from the better off to the worse off. As the worse off, who are now unemployed, save nothing and, therefore, more of the money of the better off enters the markets. That’s what economists refer to as an ‘automatic stabiliser’ (‘automatic’ because no government decision was needed to activate it – the loss of jobs does it automatically | and ‘stabiliser’ because the higher portion of spending relative to savings boosts GDP ).
Can you see dear reader what the Eurogroup are really saying when confessing to relying to the ‘automatic stabilisers’ in the absence of concerted fiscal expansion? They are saying: Don’t worry folks. While it is true we, the finance ministers, are doing almost nothing to avert the disaster, when the disaster comes your job losses and poverty will trigger some automatic mechanism that will break the economy’s fall. A little like consoling the victims of the plague with their thought that their death will, through shrinking the labour supply, boost future wages…
Some Proposals for Resistance :
DiEM25’s answer to: What should they have done?
At the very least, the Eurogroup should have recommended to the European Council that the European Investment Bank is given the green light to issue EIB bonds worth €600 billion with the stipulation that, as part of its ongoing and recently enhanced quantitative easing program, the European Central Bank will support the value of these bonds in the bond markets. That €600 billion should be spent directly to support national health services and also be invested in sectors of the economy badly hit by the lockdown – while also nudging our economy toward greener forms of transport, energy generation etc. Additionally, the fiscal compact should be immediately side-lined and governments should effect a tax haircut for small and medium sized firms, households etc.
The above would probably be enough not to avert but to contain the recession to something like between -1% and -2% of GDP. To avert it completely, the Eurogroup should have decided to mimic Hong Kong and have the European Central Bank mint an emergency fund from which every European household is given between €1000 and €2000.
Westminster Government in London and Stormont Puppet in Belfast Planning Virus Mass Murder
Eamonn McCann, a People Before Profit Derry and Strabane Councillor, argues that, in effect, the Boris Johnson British Government is planning Mass Murder :
But this isn’t really about herd immunity. It’s about a dangerous and reckless drive to keep Britain open for business and maintain profits at all costs
Veteran British Comrade Phil Hearse Makes the Same Argument : he says the Westminster “herd immunity” strategy is akin to a “far-right death cult” https://www.timetomutiny.org/post/government-strategy-tipping-britain-towards-huge-death-toll
McCann continues in the same vein below. He calls on Admiral Arlene Foster to steer the Stormont Titanic Away from the Mass Grave. But, she won’t do that. It is Time for a Mutiny – Sinn Féin should sink the Stormont Titanic.
Read the rest of this entry »A Belt of the Crozier on Paddy’s Day 2020
Greetings! Mike Finn’s Forgets the Snakes.
The Boris Johnson/Arlene Foster CoronaVirus Inaction Strategy “Government tipping Britain towards huge death toll”
Actions of the Dublin and Belfast Governments Confronting the CoronaVirus Health Crisis Diverge.
Phil Hearse’s attached article graphically explains the “death cult” plan of Prime Minister Johnson and his Adviser Dominic Cummings.
Here are the views of a genuine expert, Professor Gabriel Scally
The nonsense in England about the #publichealth concept of ‘herd immunity’ is shocking. The Government’s Chief Scientist is a former researcher in vascular biology and for over a decade has been working on R&D for a major pharmaceutical company. Where’s the public health voice?
https://mobile.twitter.com/GabrielScally/status/1238761911459733504?s=04
Stormont First Minister Arlene Foster is faithfully implementing the Johnson plan –
Serious Questions Arise Over Sinn Féin Participation in the Belfast Devolved Government.
TV journalist Robert Peston has summed up the government’s virus strategy as follows:
The strategy of the British government in minimising the impact of Covid-19 is to allow the virus to pass through the entire population so that we acquire herd immunity, but at a much delayed speed so that those who suffer the most acute symptoms are able to receive the medical support they need, and such that the health service is not overwhelmed and crushed by the sheer number of cases it has to treat at any one time.[1]In other words, you’ve all got to get the virus, and then we’ll be OK. Except we won’t. Jeremy Rossman of Kent Universityestimates that the herd immunity strategy would require 70% of the population to get the disease, or 47 million people. He says:
Achieving herd immunity would require well over 47 million people to be infected in the UK. Current estimates are that COVID-19 has a 2.3% case-fatality rate and a 19% rate of severe disease. This means that achieving herd immunity to COVID-19 in the UK could result in the deaths of more a million people with a further eight million severe infections requiring critical care.[2]
This strategy, which the Financial Times attributes to Dominic Cummings, is an exercise in brutal eugenics. As Owen Jones argues, poorer people are much more likely to have underlying health conditions and weaker immune systems. He says:
A decade of austerity, and a social order that deprives millions of citizens of a comfortable existence, will mean many more deaths in the coming weeks and months that could have been avoided. The government’s determination to discover a vaccine for coronavirus must be accompanied by a renewed commitment to addressing poverty. Like every crisis, this one is likely to affect working-class and poor people worst. That is not inevitable. It’s a choice – and one within our power to stop, if only we had the will to do so.[3]
The Johnson/Cummings strategy is basically to let poor people and old people die. No wonder a Daily Telegraph journalist said that the virus might mean ‘an economically beneficial cull of over-80s’.[4]
— Read on www.timetomutiny.org/post/government-strategy-tipping-britain-towards-huge-death-toll
On Saturday March 14 Stormont Bosses Michelle O’Neill and Arlene Foster aired public policy differences
When asked about the different approaches being taken on the island, she said: “In terms of the co-operation I don’t think the co-operation could be any better between our chief medical officers, between our ministers of health and between the Government of Ireland and the Northern Ireland Executive.”
Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill repeated a call she made on Friday that Northern Ireland should follow the Republic’s lead and close schools.
She said: “People are taking decisions in advance of government and my own personal opinion is that schools should close now.
I think the fact that you can have two schools a mile apart and one school’s open and one school’s closed, that’s a very confusing picture and a very confusing message for the public.”
Mrs Foster said both governments had “very coherent messages” and that Stormont is taking advice from the Public Health Agency and the chief medical officer on when was the appropriate time to shut schools.
There are two different jurisdictions on this island and we may do things differently in terms of timing, but the tools are all the same in terms of what we are going to do to try and combat this virus,” she said.
Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald, who was not at the meeting, said the UK’s response to coronavirus “should be rejected” and is “totally unacceptable in the north of Ireland”.
Stormont, Lord Carson’s Crypt, Is Back to Normal – Time for Sinn Féin to Evacuate.
Renewable Heat Initiative at Stormont …where incompetence carries no sanction – Cash for Ash| Tommy McKearney
In the North of Ireland the Chuckle-Sisters Foster and O’Neill (Democratic Unionist Party-Sinn Féin) Escape Sanction.
The minister in charge of the department responsible for the scheme was briefed of its flaws by whistleblower Janette O’Hagan as early as 2013. Nevertheless, in spite of this she remained oblivious to what thousands of others knew and exploited. Moreover, having inexplicably failed to read the legislation she presented to the Assembly, Mrs Foster felt and continues to feel under no obligation to do the honourable thing and offer her resignation. On the contrary, the DUP leader has actually been rewarded and now acts as First Minister of Northern Ireland.
Across the corridor from Mrs Foster sits Michelle O’Neill who throughout the years of the ‘Cash for Ash’ scandal was Stormont’s Minister for Agriculture. Notwithstanding the fact that a majority of those installing biomass boilers were poultry farmers, the minister apparently remained blissfully unaware of the lucrative scheme that many of her constituents and supporters were availing of. However, as with Arlene Foster, this prolonged period of somnambulance has had no detrimental impact on Ms O’Neil’s career. She now holds the position of Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister
— Read on http://www.tommymckearney.com/blog-/stormont-where-incompetence.html
Tomás Ó Flatharta 