by Kaatje van der Gaarden
Albuquerque Mayor Keller, like most politicians, is mistaken. In emails to his denizens, he declares “We’re in this together, because… we are One Albuquerque.” Uh, no. Those with mental or physical disabilities too young to benefit from Senior Resources will find no help at the city’s website. When my caregivers stopped showing up I lied to the non-profit Mutual Aid that I was a senior citizen, just so they’d pity me and drop off a roll of toilet paper and two packages of ramen noodles. Which is more than migrant and day labourers in India have, so I’m grateful.
Yet at this point, no-one can deny the long-term effects of lockdown: domestic violence, suicide, child abuse, poverty and despair. Hundreds of thousands of special needs children require in-person education and socialization: online learning is not an option, neither is it for those in an unstable family without laptops, tablets or a reliable internet connection. As a (disabled) Dutch-American Physician Assistant I was already alarmed at the state of US mental health – in the last twenty years, our suicide rate has increased by 35% to an exceptional annual total of 48,000 deaths.
We must acknowledge the poor in Level 3 and 4 countries are experiencing a massive decline in maternal health care, TB, pneumonia, malaria medications and children’s vaccinations, while facing increased police brutality and hunger. Even a Level 1 country like the United States sees the secondary effects of the lockdown via untreated cardiovascular emergencies such as strokes and heart attacks. US preventive health care has always been problematic, but lack of cancer treatment and diagnoses? Not acceptable, even in a greatly exaggerated pandemic.
The lockdown causes unprecedented brain drain: medical clinics with providers nearing retirement will choose to close, other clinics will simply shut down. And we are losing experienced mechanics, welders, electricians, event organizers, suppliers and small business owners – the backbone of US society and GDP. Annually, 35–40 million Americans are infected with the flu, requiring up to 800,000 hospitalizations. The case fatality rate (CFR) of 0.1% leads to tens of thousands of deaths, mostly the elderly and the very young. Yet only 45% of adults obtain a yearly flu shot. What ought to really scare politicians is that a yearly flu vaccine is not mandatory for US health care providers – not even for home carers and nursing aides, who provide extensive personal care such as bathing and dressing.
How is it that my friend’s mom isn’t allowed to visit her dying husband in a nursing home due to COVID-19 orders, while many of his nursing aides and carers don’t even have a flu shot? And why did my boyfriend’s grandmother die alone on the Navajo Reservation (of non-COVID-19 causes) without his mum – a nurse – being able to say goodbye, despite wearing PPE? Meanwhile, research showed a CFR of 0.03% for 14,000 COVID-19-positive health care workers in the Netherlands. Six of the nine who died were between 45 and 69 and had existing health conditions, and they are still investigating the remaining three. Incidentally, thanks to a targeted Dutch public health campaign, healthcare workers now have a 70–80% annual flu and H1N1 vaccination rate.
My own lockdown saga has a mixed happy ending: I did receive that “One Albuquerque” kindness our Mayor brags about, albeit through personal connections, not my city’s website. But not everyone with severe disabilities or pre-COVID-19 isolation is that lucky. Because of the extra help and caregiving by neighbors and friends I ended up with a little excess energy. So despite a neuroinflammatory disease I volunteered at a COVID-19 test site where pharmacists, volunteers and nurses sat around picnic tables chatting amicably, without masks, during breakfast and lunch. As someone who has been mostly bed-bound the last few years I know how cruel and demoralizing isolation, despair and poverty are, so I urge our politicians to do the right thing: end the lockdown now, without nonsensical measures such as plastic shields in stores, face masks and mandatory six-feet distancing.
Studies show that prolonged stay-at-home orders aggravate mental health disorders, decrease our immune systems, and may prevent herd immunity. Most worryingly, the lockdown is destroying our societal and global fabric. Segregate and protect the elderly and those at risk, maintain voluntary distancing and use masks and gloves as needed, and let people decide whether or not they want to risk going to a store. Being alive comes with all sorts of risks that we normally accept, yet COVID-19 scared politicians and the media into a panic which they turned into propaganda. According to Professor Hans Rosling, M.D. – instrumental in the Ebola epidemic – panic and hysteria never lead to good decision making. Mentally, I’ve only been able to make it through by following Reddit/lockdownskepticism and subscribing to Lockdown Sceptics.
The lockdown did end up affecting me badly: I haven’t been able to use my hydrotherapy pool for weeks, which worsens my severe spinal cord inflammation, and I’m now denied access to pain medication. My father passed away on March 9th and my mother isn’t allowed to fly in from overseas – a cruel and bad decision, since air travel and commerce ought to resume immediately. I’m not an expert, but I graduated from a technical college and am blessed with an abundance of common sense and compassion. By the end of March, I’d tweeted that Dr John Ioannides’ views ought to be considered, and I correctly predicted this inhumane global tragedy. So why didn’t our politicians and journalists see the truth, and, why is this security theatre still going on? Could it be that our leaders know, but refuse to admit they were wrong?
Sadly, history will prove that politicians, experts, social media companies and journalists were directly responsible for the deaths, suffering and censorships caused by the lockdown. I have nightmares from waking up in a world where no one understands the difference between linear expansion and the natural Bell curve, or Farr’s Law, or percentages. To me, this year and this coming decade will always be known as “COVID-1984” and the destruction of our world.
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No costly massive grid up-grade needed for the 24/7/365 coal-fired cathedrals of power, that up to 25 years ago were located in close proximity to centres of population and coal fields.
Transmission losses and costs minimised, fuel transportation costs minimised – an elegant and definitive solution available across all parts of the country.
Blown to smithereens by planet-saving energy philistines, in favour of a dog’s breakfast grid that burdens Britain with the highest unit electricity prices in the world.
Non-existent problem, reaction. non-solution. Go figure, Kommissar for Energy Insecurity, Edward Samuel Miliband.
The Kommissar Must Fall.
Exactly.
What Millibrain is doing is providing the blueprint for how to run a National power grid into the ground and provide societal upheaval as a supplementary topping.
It’s enough to make people like me believe that this is being deliberately orchestrated.
No, surely not.
It’s almost like it was all originally planned by expert engineers, who knew what they were doing and were thinking long term… fancy that
With coal, gas, nuclear supply could be planned to match anticipated demand, forecast from historic data of demand patterns round the Country dependent on time of day, season and weather. And, as you say, generation took place close to zones of high demand.
Intermittency. This cannot be done with wind and solar, which are situated where conditions are optimal, not where there is demand.
There is no solution to this, except the lunacy of paying to keep a second dispatchable system operational in parallel as back-up to plug the gaps.
So how does this work at the boundaries between zones?
Two houses in different postcodes supplied from the same substation charged different prices?
Yes. Intended to foster social cohesion. The boundaries will probably fall along sectarian lines because as we all know…
…diversity is our strength.
I think the zones would be based on Grid Connection Points; the demarcation from the (national) HV transmission network (“The Grid”) and the (local) Distribution Networks.
You are already assigned a grid number so that when the rolling blackouts start you will know when it is your turn to sit in the dark and freeze.
Net Zero moves in mysterious ways its wonders to perform.
When I seek a quote to change tariff, I’m always asked for my postcode, which to me implies that there’s already some kind of differential pricing from one area to another. Perhaps that’s for gas? Does anyone know?
So they can identify you?
So they know where to send the bill?
What, when you’re only comparing quotes on one of those price comparison websites?
So they can sell the additional ‘insight’ to their ‘partners’… everything has a value
That makes sense. Thanks.
Supporters say the change will cut household electricity bills overall by reducing the need for grid upgrades
The only viable explanation for this statement is that demand will reduce in the South due to a lack of affordability, as prices increase beyond the ability to pay. Yet more evil treatment of the lower income population. Also, the last time I visited the Kent coast, the sea was covered by his spinning follies, the same as the Cornish moors. The seas off East Anglia and the vast fen lands are covered by the bleeding things as well as across the whole of Wales. So the question must be asked, where is this South that doesn’t have these mechanical monstrosities, or is the reality that there are enough of them, it’s just the wind to spin them that is lacking?
Maybe the real intention is to empty London of its newly accumulated rubbish and spread it round the country.
There is NOT a “North/South” divide.
There IS a South East/Rest of the country divide
The rural South West has a lot of poverty
If this bastard treats us as this suggests, there are going to be a lot of freezing people in the winter.
Basically the UK is a Poor country strapped to a wealthy city called London. All the jobs and industry that used to be in England have been given to people in India, China, Phillipnes etc so that they can bulid all the things we used to with cheap energy, which our elites then buy back into this country, so that they can tick their little box of Net zero and those of us outside London can look on whilst our jobs and communities are destroyed in order to reduce the worlds C02 by less than 1%.
I’d rather be poor in rural Somerset than rich in London.
Where we live – a small rural village – we are resolutely monocultural (culture is by definition MONO, as it pertains to a specific group of people) and so we have to use that ghastly phrase (remember Hazel Blears?
) real community cohesion, fresh air, and superb food.
Hear hear.
I presume your village is safely distanced from Bristol
Down here in rural Dorset – resolutely monocultural when I moved here almost a decade ago – we are starting to be “enriched.”
Fortunately it’s some distance from the “heavily diversified” Bournemouth …. and the resulting violent crime-wave which has wrecked what used to be a genteel seaside town.
So the Southerners who are outside of London but south of the Midlands are mostly dyed in the wool Conservative voters, wheras the Midlands upwards is now a battle between Labour and Reform. So Labour have decided to buy its votes in the North at the expense of the Conservatives in the South. (i do not live in the South) I disagree with this Socialist approach. Better to dump Net Zero and Milliband and drill baby drill, that way we can all prosper.
Milliband poised? Distinctly unbalanced, I’d say.
Since HMG and their acolytes started interfering in the UK energy markets all that has happened, after a very long period of fairly steady energy prices, is that the cost of energy has risen much faster than inflation. They have literally achieved nothing else, no greater energy security, no greater source diversity, no new technology, nothing; just higher bills.
Absolutely right you are, and it extends to all previously nationalized industries and public utilities, including water and transport, after they were chopped up, privatised and sold to foreigners. It was a huge mistake on Margaret Thatcher’s part. A total disaster for the British People.
Anyone believe this will make our bills lower? Anyone?? No takers?? Thought not.
So the windmills in Scotland that oversupply to the few users they have will not receive any constraint payments – yeah that will go down well. And then in the South East where there is a lack of supply so that we rely on the interconnectors – what then?
I think the Daily Sceptic ought to win a prize for funniest pictures of Ed Millipede.
If zonal pricing is introduced then every MPs’ house should be automatically rated as if it were in the top price zone, even after they leave Parliament and do not get re-imbursed.
Share the pain.
The real scam is that 100% of energy cost is based on the most expensive (back up to support so-called cheap renewables) which inevitably is the ever-more expensive imported gas!
The con is becoming ever-more transparent, yet even more unacceptable.
Perhaps an analogy:
You need to buy 12 bottles of prosecco @ £5 each
The shop has 11 bottles, so you add a bottle of champagne @ £50
In our dystopian world, you will be charged the price for 12 bottles of champagne!
It really is a con.
More lunacy from the Department for Energy Lunacy.
However, on the plus side it will wipe out the Labour Party from everywhere in the south, including London, where it won’t be long before we have Muslim Party MPs being elected.
Miliband is a blithering idiot, but a very dangerous blithering idiot. The idiot goes from ridiculous to absurd then back again and it almost as if he gets off on being a complete moron. You cannot run Industrial Society on the wind and sun, and as we add more and more wind the cost can only go one way —-UP. You will realise this is true by looking at your electric bills back to 2008 when the moron gave us the climate change act, and you should also realise it is true because whatever the imbecile says, the opposite will be true. So when he says bills will fall, you will know that the very opposite is what is going to happen. Miliband actually knows this as well, but he is a climate change grifter so is trying to deceive you for Political and Ideological reasons. ——So as you use more and more renewables you reach the boundaries of the energy reserve margin and we are all going to have a huge price to pay once the temporary government subsidies inevitably have to stop. We will also be suffering blackouts and the astronomical cost of storage, which will be many times more than the cost of the actual energy itself. —–This what you get when you put a UN lackey moron like Miliband anywhere near energy policy.
Another source of unfairness
How does charging me more because I live in the South where power used to be generated, lower my bills. Fxxxxxg lunatics, also in other news the Government has approved experiments to block out the Sun Mr Burns style, just as Billy no mates wanted. So we will be installing Endless Solar arrays and blocking out the sun simultaneously.
It doesn’t make sense.
How can charging more for something encourage increased demand for it?
The whole problem is there is an oversupply of electricity from wind installations that cannot be sold because either the oversupply occurs when overall demand is low, and/or cannot be sold locally.
The solution would be to lower prices everywhere to encourage use of the excess wind power in high demand areas, charging higher rates in those areas is counter-productive.
But there are technical problems. The oversupply cannot be fed into sectors of low demand to transmit to areas of high demand. Hence the recently proposed building of new HT transmission lines direct from remote wind installations to high demand areas – costly. Even then it won’t be possible to plan supply to match demand.
It is an intractable problem because of intermittency which cannot be solved by trying to defy physics and economics.
Claims it will overall reduce bills everywhere cannot possibly be true.