There is an oft repeated story about the German bombing of Coventry in the UK during WW2.
It was said that Churchill knew of the massive bombing raid in advance because the Brits had cracked the Enigma code (inventing the computer in the process).
Churchill was presented with a dilemma. He could evacuate Coventry and save hundreds of lives, but unfortunately, that would tip off the Germans who would have changed their codes.
The result would have been a far greater loss of life and possibly even the defeat of the nation by the Nazis.
Alternatively, he could do nothing and allow innocent citizens in Coventry die in a firestorm of conventional and incendiary bombing, thus shortening the war and saving many lives in the future.
Whilst the story is not actually true, it does give an inkling of the sort of decisions which politicians are frequently forced to make.
Many decisions are not about whether to build a kid’s playground or not. Oftentimes, whichever decision is taken, people will die.
Building a hospital means less money for road blackspots or police funding. Buying more ambulances means buying fewer fire trucks.
In an ideal world, politicians would be making the decisions that result in the least deaths, rather than the ones which played best on the 6 O’clock News. In the real world, they often don’t.
The Covid pandemic has been a classic example of this. There is little doubt that this Coronavirus can kill people and needs to be taken seriously.
Unfortunately, eradicating the disease entirely is pretty much out of the question since it would require completely sealing the borders indefinitely and locking down everyone.
The result would probably kill far more people than Covid19.
Consider the situation in the UK which has been hit far harder than Australia so far.
There have been more than 44,000 recorded deaths in Britain from (or possibly just with) COVID-19 (though these figures are themselves somewhat suspect).
Most of these fatalities have been of people aged 80 and above with existing serious health conditions.
When we look at “excess’’ deaths (above the normal figure) in the UK over the past few months, however, there were more than 65,000.
The extra 21,000 deaths have been attributed to causes such as people dying from strokes and heart attacks because they were too frightened to go to hospital.
Elderly people in nursing homes have also been “giving up.” Many of these have been dementia patients who are confused and broken hearted after loved ones have stopped visiting them due to regulations.
And now, death rates in the UK are well below average and are expected to stay that way for around 6 months.
The reason is assumed to be that many Covid19 victims died 6 months earlier than they would have normally, had the pandemic not taken them out.
In other words, it is now fairly clear that most Covid deaths were of people already at death’s door.
Also, at best, one third of the excess deaths in the UK were directly attributed to the lockdown and the ensuing, media stoked panic.
But it may have been much worse. Cancer patients were unable to get hospital care in many cases. And who knows how many have suicided as their businesses and livelihoods were destroyed.
Those grim statistics will never be reported, but they should be.
And talking of statistics, if we look at the tables of infections and deaths, things just don’t really add up.
Death rates as a percentage of cases were wildly different. In Sweden 7.79% of cases resulted in death while In Rwanda it was 0.2%.
Does anyone in their right minds think that Rwanda has a better health system than Sweden?
Even given the much younger population in Rwanda than Sweden, something smells fishy.
Only a couple of hundred Swedes under 60 died from coronavirus out of a total of almost five and a half thousand total deaths.
Those figures are from a nation of 10 million people that did not lock down and did not destroy its economy. Today, the curve has definitely flattened with just a few deaths each day, most of whom we can assume will be in the 80+ age bracket.
Balance that against the business owners and workers who will not commit suicide due to financial ruin and the cancer patients who will get proper treatment.
Then, think about the strong economy which will allow them to build hospitals, fix road black spots and provide essential services for their citizens in the future.
It has been a tough decision for the Swedes to make, but it is looking like it was the right one, because as their curve flattens off, there is little likelihood of a second wave.
Meanwhile, Australia, which has a shattered economy, is now being hit with an inevitable second wave which started in Victoria, but which will probably spread to the rest of the country sooner rather than later.
Yet the press continues to hound President Trump in the USA and Bolsonaro in Brazil for opposing lockdown restrictions. They point to the high number of deaths in Brazil, even though Ecuador had much higher per capita death rates.
The press also delight in pointing out that the USA has had more virus related deaths than any other country, forgetting to mention that per capita deaths are less than many European countries.
And If we left out New York, with its ludicrously incompetent Democrat politicians, the USA would have had a far lower death rate.
No one is blaming Scott Morrison for Victoria’s explosion of cases. He is not responsible for that state’s incompetent management.
So why is Donald Trump blamed for the clusterflip that saw Covid patients forced into New York nursing homes and other crazy policies which meant that New York was responsible for half of America’s death toll?
It’s clear that the mainstream media are more interested in demonising any politician who won’t ‘take a knee’ and grovel before the ‘only Black Lives Matter’ special interest groups.
Trump, in particular, is despised because he refuses to demonise Whites, Whiteness and White privilege.
This infuriates the extreme Left who are determined to stoke ethnic and ethno-religious resentment of Whites in order to cement control of all of our commercial, cultural and political institutions.
In particular, they seem determined to use Coronavirus to destroy Trumps economic miracle and paint him as incompetent for not wanting to lock down the economy.
Thankfully, these days we have independent news media like The Richardson Post to keep us all informed.
We don’t depend on George Soros, big pharma or giant banking conglomerations for funding.
We continue to operate thanks to the generosity of those of you who make small, regular contributions. Many of you are not wealthy and we deeply appreciate the contributions you make.
If you haven’t yet made any contributions recently, please consider it as we are currently working on a new and exciting project and every little helps.
Please stay safe, particularly those of you in Victoria and thanks once more for staying with us in these turbulent times
Harry Richardson.
