“The EU, and often its member states, doggedly follows the ‘precautionary principle’,” writes Matthew Lesh in CapX, blaming this principle for the suspension of the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine in various EU countries. But hang on a minute. Is this the same Matthew Lesh who has been an enthusiastic cheer leader for the British lockdowns? He goes on to say about this rationale for erring on the side of caution: “To pass the precautionary principle challenge requires doing the impossible: proving something is completely safe. Based on this logic, if stairs or pools were invented today they would be forbidden because of the risks of falling and drowning.”
Well quite. In case it’s escaped your attention, Matthew, this is precisely the argument that lockdown sceptics have been making for the past year. It was the rigid application of the precautionary principle that led governments across the world to lock their citizens in their homes last year because the dangers posed by SARS-CoV-2 were still largely unknown. Or, more precisely, it was the combination of the precautionary principle and short-termism that led to the embrace of the lockdown policy, with the priority of political leaders being to prevent immediate harm befalling their populations even if the excessive precautions they took ended up causing far greater harm in the long-term. And this, surely, is exactly the combination that’s behind the AstraZeneca ban in continental Europe. Better to avoid the immediate political fallout caused by a handful of adverse events apparently caused by the vaccine than provide their populations with lasting protection from infection.
If people like Matthew Lesh can see how disastrous the application of this principle is to the vaccine rollout, how can they not see how disastrous it was when applied to managing the pandemic last year? And, of course, it isn’t just Matthew, but vast numbers of pro-vaxxers who were gripped by the same panic European leaders are now gripped by this time last year.
The senior financial journalist who’s been a longtime contributor to Lockdown Sceptics had this to say about the double-standards of the lockdown zealots.
It’s half amusing to see commentators decrying the Europeans for the the misuse of the ‘precautionary principle’ when suspending the Astra-Zeneca vaccination (e.g. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writing in the Telegraph that the “French Precautionary Principle is literally killing Europe”. Also the Economist’s Health Correspondent said on BBC radio today that it is folly to apply the precautionary principle during a pandemic. But it is the same precautionary principle that was invoked 12 months ago to justify lockdowns in the first place – on the grounds that we didn’t know the covid infection fatality rate, its reproduction number and because hospitals might possibly be overwhelmed. The same precautionary principle was later invoked to justify two-metre social distancing, face masks, school closures, further lockdowns, etc. It seems that almost every day for 12 months we have had to endure some member of SAGE, notably Chris Whitty, appealing to the precautionary principle to justify some repressive measure unsupported by reliable data. Not only does the extreme risk aversion of the precautionary principle ignore costs (as LS has noted many times over the last year), but it returns to bite its advocates. One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
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But this is the real problem:
February 2024
More than 700 Nigerian nurses under investigation for taking part in ‘industrial-scale’ qualifications fraud could be working in the NHS | Daily Mail Online
May 2024
500 NHS nurses from Nigeria could be struck off over ‘fraudulent or incorrect’ exam results | Daily Mail Online
Some DM comments from the public:
— “And yet you show a photo of a white woman lol”
— “They are the most dishonest people I have come across, they get these false documents as nurses and go and work in care homes exploiting them I have seen them all it’s time someone did some investigation on these care home nurses.”
— “I asked this question 8 years ago and my shifts were cancelled. The hospital know this happens but ignores it, not exactly patient centred care.”
— “It’s obvious when you have to work with them!”
For me the question would be purely an economic one. What is the extra cost to the nation of the training involved, and what cost savings does that drive for the NHS?
But there is the problem : When you have a Communist Health Service, the first thing they do is break all relationship to free market pricing. So answering my question is impossible. And that, of course, is deliberate.
What really happened in Amsterdam…
https://youtu.be/DvTyg1kJGzM?si=-PwR6ncKHSl9utD3
We must be extremely careful what we believe in media in this modern age of misinformation..
Question absolutely everything..
I wont bother saying it…….. Yes i will… I told you so..
Astounding. That confirms what I read about a few days ago, but couldn’t find the link again: that Israeli youths actually started shouting insults and attacking first.
Yep, we seem to now be living in a true post-truth world.
I have a theory, where I spin everything in the msm on its head…. It’s served me well over these years…
Once one accepts that all the msm is one big lie.. You start to think about what was the reason for the lie….
https://youtu.be/LJxBnSyH0T4?si=_rI1AGoLZMb2FYK0
The media is lying to us… Eric Weinstein, what a brain this guy has..
I “checked out” decades ago…
There is so much you could say about this you could write volumes on every avenue and people have done so for those who are interested. I read a study in the Nursing Times a while back, before the recent exacerbation of the crisis, and if I remember correctly a survey found that within two years of working something like eighty percent of nurses reported feeling that they had lost all of their compassion. There was some speculation about the reasons and an acknowledgement that this detoeriotation would inevitable affect patiernt well-being. It is a hard job even under the best of circumstances ie good funding, low patient numbers, high staffing levels. But if you have someone who needs to go to the toilet and you know that they are about number six in your list of priorities because of the workload then perhaps a defensive numbness develops. People from overseas, especially America, often remark when working or receiving treatment within the NHS that it has a military feel which is understandable given its roots. The armed forced send their nursing students to the same lectures and placements as civilian nurses and this works seamlessly. Regardless of the sociopaths and psychopaths the cream of British society work in these institutions. The rot is the deep rot that pervades everything. The Jeremiad stuff is just jive talk which is sometimes disingenuous and more often just naive.
I don’t understand why it is not possible to have both graduate and non-graduate nurses. That would open up more opportunities for people to nurse and deal both with shortages and importing nurses from countries which no doubt need their own.
The problem is that getting well from a substantial illness requires nursing: not just getting the necessary tasks done, but being reconnected with the living: a little TLC, even if it’s ‘tough love’.
When school leavers, aged 16?, went straight into nursing, and on the wards soon after, it was an apprenticeship that included strengthening this connection to other human beings. Now, with the greater emphasis on knowledge and technology, this connection is, in fact, weakened: life becomes driven by theory: yes, a medical theory, but it is still an ideology, impersonal, and not helpful to nursing the sick. It why there are separate doctors and nurses, and patients can tell there’s a difference, even if they are not conscious of it. And once the connections to the rest of humanity, or even the community, are lost, it’s so hard to reconnect. Just look at the current Cabinet, lost in their political bubble, being bewildered by aliens, like farmers, manufacturers, shop keepers, and anyone running a small to medium sized business.
Of course, you can have traditional nursing skills with technical skills, (both nurses and doctors with both are usually outstanding), but emphasising the technical, at the expense of traditional nursing for all entrants, discards so many with the skills lacking in the NHS, and turns it into a regimented outfit, whether Military or Marxist, who cares?
You missed out that the current Cabinet also struggle to define what a ‘working person’ is let alone whether or not they have a penis.
People don’t know and they don’t even make the effort to understand and yet they simultaneously feel entitled to comment on a situation. Nothing new there. It is just intellectual laziness. They wonder why they are so disenfranchised. Maybe if you dig your finger out of your arsehole you might gain some understanding.
Hi standards are what matters. But the mindset of many graduate nurses is of climbing the management ladder ro get out of day to day nursing. We need good front line people to stay in nursing , not ro bugger off to damagement the first chance they get. And the demand foe all nurses to be graduates and for all management candidates to be so, is utterly foolish and quite spiteful by the graduate class.
And, get most of the immigrant nurses out of our NHS
Obviously there are some distinct benefits in training nurses to degree level, but not at the cost of provision of excellent nursing care. The patient essentially depends upon the doctors to determine the treatment and the nurses to administer it safely in a caring and competent manner.
There has been a definite shift in this situation since nurse graduates became the norm.
My own personal experience is that many nurses now regard themselves as too well trained to care for the holistic care of the patient. My own experience of nursing care bordered on what I and the Care Quality Commission considered gross negligence because the nurses mostly ignored the doctors’ instructions choosing to determine their own preferences without any consideration of the considerable medical needs of me the patient. They acted as neither competent nor caring nurses, doctors or health care assistants.
I’ve just written a supporting past, but under another post. But I would like to add that there was a nurse who came into my ward and briskly tidied up anything not in it’s place. She did so, slightly blaming those who had gone before, not vinductively, but to clear the air. It only took a couple of minutes, but I did feel more at ease. She knew what was acceptable, and what wasn’t really tolerable, for long, anyway.
I gather she had been at least a senior sister, and had come back to work, possibly part time, though she could have been like those ‘secret shoppers’ that provide feedback to management.
Whatever, I knew she had been trained in traditional nursing, because she exuded it. In a similar manner, I was, in my youth, a silver service waiter, and those subtle skills learnt were so useful in my career, which was always very technical. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king, or at least he’s less confused than most.
Surely the answer is multiple routes to training.
those that want to be ward nurses only could train in the job and those that wish to specialise, such as theatre or paediatric nurses should do the degree first followed by specialist top up training like the doctors do.
So two heads of university nursing units say that educating nurses at universities is a great idea…..
The problem is a State-run, Socialist health care system. Until people come to terms with that instead of writing about what’s wrong – we know! – and offer solutions to solve the insoluble, nothing will change.
Remove the State monopoly, restore healthcare to the competitive, private sector whence it came before Government nationalised it… starting in 1911 by the way.
Am I right in believing that nurses used to be trained completely on the job but received a small salary and accommodation in a nurses home; then entered the profession as qualified but without any debt? If so, what was wrong with that? If more academic study is required then with day release it could be provided and, if necessary, the course lengthened.