"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."
Mark Twain
We are told that the Fat Controller will be making an announcement on Sunday that might be the beginning of the end (or as he will no doubt phrase it the end of the beginning) of the house arrest phase of the great economic crash of 2020. The narrative all along has been to lock folk up to protect the NHS (and save lives as well it's just that that didn't work out so well, nor could it as we'll see). You can see how proud some folk are, nay not just proud but utterly convinced that their weeks of home confinement have somehow saved the NHS. But as any first grader could tell them this is delusion. There is no evidence to prove this nor can there be. There is no evidence that weeks of watching Netflix or whatever has saved a single life. No evidence for that but plenty that the whole thing has been a colossal wrecking job on the economy and the health and wealth of millions. The figures show that deaths linked to Covid-19 peaked on April 8 which means given accepted incubation periods that infections peaked before the lockdown came into force. Other evidence has demonstrated that the infection rate, the infamous R0 had fallen below 1 before the lockdown. It appears that the campaign of hand washing and mild social distancing had done the job of killing off whatever was causing the infections but I couldn't say that for sure since I'm not going to ascribe effects to causes; that's not my job.
No that silly mistake will be left to ministers, politicians, and the media who all should know better, and the vast majority of people who can know no better. They will claim that their sacrifice has paid off, that though thousands have died the totals were nowhere near those of the model produced by the now utterly discredited lockdown lothario Professor Ferguson of Imperial College, London. (I've read that other models elsewhere were equally stupid and subject to constant revision as the figures failed to rise but the Imperial College model was the one used here and it has been found to be a school boy joke riddled with amateur errors and produces utter rubbish, garbage.). They will gloss over the rise in excess deaths that cannot be ascribed to Covid-19 even with directives from Government to be as widespread and liberal as possible in ascribing cause of death to Covid-19. People are dying with Covid-19 who have never been tested, any old person dying with pneumonia has Covid-19 tacked onto the death certificate nolens volens. Which of course means the figures are unreliable and exaggerated.
As to the actual test, what can anyone say, that is anyone with a modicum of scientific knowledge of how things should be done. In the absence of any purified virus to compare assays against a huge leap of faith has been made that the results obtained after complicated manipulation of the sample of snot obtained by ramming a cotton bud up the patients nose (RNA extraction and reverse transcriptase, and multiple though variable amounts of DNA multiplication treatments) actually represent a link to the alleged culprit virus Covid-19. Though thousands of tests have been carried out no-one can say for sure they have measured anything real at all. It's all as I say reliant on believing the method to be infallible despite numerous reports of 80% false positives and almost as many false negatives. A reasonable person, never mind one with a PhD in Biotechnology (OK that's me, you can call me Dr Bill from now on ...), might be led to say the test was not fit for purpose.
So dear reader the shore is in sight... we will be told that all our suffering was worth it but we must not let down our guard (against what? The wizard of Oz? surely not Covid-19 which has peaked, is very uninfectious and has a mortality roughly that of flu, which we annually ignore though thousands die with it), that the Government's actions have been effective (post hoc ergo propter hoc gets 'em every time), that the Fat Controller walks on water (but keeps his distance). We will in short be lied to again and do you know what the lie will be swallowed (yum, yum it's just what they long to hear) and folk will go out tonight and applaud themselves like performing seals but there's more than a faint aroma of foul treachery in the air.
