More At Risk From Reducing Risk?

People put at risk by the lockdown, arguably more so than they are at risk from coronavirus (Covid-19)
Examples are chosen from a variety of sources and contexts - no single issue is exclusive to any one nation or group of society, many more examples exist.

At Risk Children
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-52370968
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/opinion/coronavirus-child-abuse.html
The Very Poor 
And the soon-to-be very poor - businesses are already collapsing, entire sectors will be decimated
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/09/coronavirus-could-push-half-a-billion-people-into-poverty-oxfam-warns
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-uk-lockdown-pubs-hotels-restaurants-industry-closures-a9475921.html
https://www.ft.com/content/5d198135-b38f-4512-b611-9f017f76929d
People Suffering Domestic Abuse 
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/apr/21/domestic-abuse-women-in-herat-afghanistan-may-survive-coronavirus-but-not-lockdown
People With Cancer 
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/04/coronavirus-crisis-is-stopping-vital-cancer-care-doctors-say
People With Other Health Issues
Due to the cancellation of just about every service people are suffering needlessly. For some this means no monitoring of low risk conditions, but others will permanently lose mobility due to lack of physiotherapy, for example. Meanwhile, others will die awaiting diagnosis, treatment or surgery. It's like people's lives don't matter unless they have the 'right' illness!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-nhs-operations-cancelled-cases-deaths-hospital-a9464726.html
https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/19/dad-pulls-tooth-cant-get-dentist-lockdown-12579357/
People With EXISTING* Mental Health Issues
* no one seems to have clocked that the pandemic and lockdown will be triggering mental disturbances in the previously mentally well
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-52302066
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8192449/Coronavirus-lockdown-led-increase-suicides-police-chiefs-say.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-suicide-rates-uk-mental-health-support-a9451086.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52295894
People With Addictions 
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-suicide-rates-uk-mental-health-support-a9451086.html
People with Eating Disorders
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-52365945
Future Generations
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/22/we-do-not-have-to-worry-about-paying-off-the-coronavirus-debt-for-generations

I have my doubts whether history will look kindly on the lockdown. I think the fact that we shut GPs / community centres / schools is bad enough, took away community support from those most in need, and hid away in our homes from a disease in selfish fear rather than helping each other is going to be received poorly by future generations. For me, the closure of the churches and other places of worship has been the most brutal thing - in the face of death so many people look for spiritual solace. Saints of past plagues were those who went forth, ministering to the sick and dying with no thought of their own safety; the 21st century 'faithful' chained the doors shut. Personally I think that has a lot to say about the kind of people we've become.

I also have my doubts as to whether it will actually achieve anything. They talk of 'flattening the curve' but they might just be extending the duration of the pandemic rather than actually saving lives. They talk of creating a vaccine but viruses are notoriously hard to vaccinate against - even if it is possible chances are it'll mutate...

So what we have here is that people are suffering and dying, perhaps entirely needlessly, of treatable conditions; people are suffering and dying needlessly because of isolation and anxiety; people will CONTINUE to suffer and die from being terminally separated from their families by being denied the chance to say goodbye or attend funerals; people will suffer and die from poverty and financial hardship, unemployment and the destruction of their livelihoods for MANY YEARS TO COME.

Of course it sucks that people are dying of Covid-19* but people are mortal and communicable diseases exist; it's a normal and natural occurrence. What is not normal and natural is allowing - or more accurately - causing others to suffer and die for the sake of a disease they don't have! Nor is it normal or natural to throw the entire planet into a financial crisis that will take generations to pay off.
*Current thinking is that most people who get Covid-19 are asymptomatic, most people who get symptoms get better without medical interference so still only a small proportion of those affected are actually dying and most of those were either sick already or had massive viral loads!

A lot has been said of the inaccuracy of comparing Covid-19 deaths with those from seasonal flu... but now this virus is here chances are it'll stay (unlike SARS or MERS) and seasonal flu - even outside of its pandemic forms - claims millions of lives yet NOTHING is ever shut down or limited during flu season. Those 'at risk' just have to take their chances while life continues on as usual. Why is it okay to put immuno-compromised people at risk of one disease and not another? It makes very little sense.

Personal pet peeves:

• Someone I was at school with is currently in danger because her essential surgery was cancelled - so she's in hospital for 'pain management' and being put at risk of rupture, sepsis AND of contracting Covid-19 (or other hospital-acquired infections)! Ludicrous! 
• I have seen a company produce a t-shirt calling people who are outside their homes 'dicks'... You cannot tell if someone is a key-worker by looking at them. You don't know if they're shopping, getting exercise or our for their mental heath. Whether they're out for the first time that day or the first time that month. 
• I don't buy into this whole idea that people breaching lockdown are putting the NHS at risk. The NHS is already at risk from decades of gross mismanagement (not underfunding) and as Covid-19 has no treatment they're just using (non consenting) humans as guinea pigs. Chances are the cure (if there is one) will come from people developing antibodies...but they don't want us developing antibodies?! Also, the more people who contract it the more chance it has to mutate to something less deadly. Not to mention that most people who contract Covid-19 recover spontaneously without any medical assistance.
• My youngest is at uni having her education fucked over [yet again] and incurring a huge debt for the privilege. Meanwhile other young people are being granted or denied qualifications based on predicted grades...when I was at school the biggest factor in a predicted grade was whether a teacher LIKED you or not! I fear for their future cos employers will know that the class of 2020 didn't sit their exams.
• My mum has been having a crisis the last few weeks - we honestly thought she was about to die (and in all honesty she still might) and we had to face it all knowing there was no outside help to be had - no care, no equipment, no support. We've coped...heaven knows what others have done! I reckon there are currently a lot of people dead in their homes that no one knows about yet...
• I lost my 20s to child-raising, my 30s to working minimum wage to get off welfare while putting myself through uni, now I'm losing my 40s to caring for my stroke-survivor mum...only now the world is gonna be completely decimated so there's literally no chance of my ever being able to rebuild my life. Imagine being in the current climate, out of work, in poor health and / or approaching retirement age... imagine knowing full well you'll probably never get hired again, you've used your savings to survive lock down and now you face an old age of poverty through no fault of your own? This is BLEAK. Money may not be everything but it helps put a roof over your head and food in your belly.

Additionally it's not just people suffering. Animal charities have been severely affected - rescue centres still caring for animals without being able to claim re-homing fees, stables caring for horses when the income has dried up, zoos threatening to cull their animals... https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/20/zoos-may-cull-animals-lockdown-continues-12582877/ Yet another reason why vegans can't support zoos imho!

A couple of months ago we were in an eco boom - reuseable, recyclable, repurposing were key watch words - now people are buying immense quantities of single-use face masks (with no one asking why the CDC has suddenly decided to endorse them after YEARS of saying all evidence showed them to be ineffective and might increase your chances of respiratory infection). Streets are littered with masks, many more will go straight to landfill...and don't get me started on the NHS PPE plastic face shields! People literally only care about the environment when it's convenient to them.

There's people simultaneously cooing over goats roaming Llandudno or Venice's canals running clear... and then demanding PPE for medical staff despite it's straight-to-landfill nature. Completely oblivious to the hypocrisy. Hopefully I'm not a hypocrite - in general terms I dislike my species and the planet would do well to be shot of us.

Save the planet, not homo sapiens!

Further Ranting About A Twitter Rant

Today I got blocked on Twitter by some dumb c*** who accused me of defending Jimmy Savile. NOT what I was doing. I was defending, as usual, the principles of due process and 'innocent until proven guilty' - pointing out that there can't be a case against Savile because he is dead as the dead cannot present a defence.

More to the point, the row started because of nasty allegations calling Prince Andrew a proven sex offender.
1. He had an acquaintanceship with a man who was later convicted of sexual offences - which is not a crime
2. He has since also been accused - which does not make him guilty
3. He has not even yet been questioned

I have tweeted at length about this too.
An ordinary person will spend time with hundreds of people in a lifetime, a person in Prince Andrew's role will encounter thousands. If you think you KNOW the people around you, you're an idiot. Every rapist, murderer, child molester, whatever was someone's relative, friend, co-worker. If you think that "they must have known" you have got to be crazy.
I've lived a fairly sheltered life - I have spent years stuck at home as a full-time mum and now as a carer. When I have worked it has never been with lots and lots of people. But can I say I have never associated with a person who has groped, molested or raped? Of course I can't! I knew fairly little about most people I worked with. I didn't know if they were married or had kids or spent their weekends in babygros and adult diapers.
I've never done well with friendships but the few people I would count as true friends I know only a little better. I am aware I know what each person CHOOSES to present to me, that I only see the tip of the iceberg about another person's personality.
As for relationships I've done even worse but the fact I ended up as a single mother, twice over, is pretty indicative that you can be fully intimate with someone and still not know them.
There are allegations that Prince Andrew has failed to co-operate with the FBI...there are also counter claims that the FBI has not attempted to contact him. Either way, his co-operation is entirely voluntary at this point. Who knows where the truth lies?
Meanwhile, it's hard for the US to take the high ground after refusing to extradite Anne Sacoolas, wanted in connection with the death by dangerous driving of 19 year old Harry Dunn. Nations have a tendency to protect their own - just the way things are. Briton's expect the nation to come to their aid when they're jailed abroad or whatever - and I've tweeted at length about how dumb I think that is too.

The fact that Prince Andrew knew someone who turned out to be a sex offender is, imho, not particularly meaningful. You honestly expect any of the royal family to know everything about everyone they know?! That's not even a thing that regular people with far smaller circles of acquaintance can be expected to know.
As yet there's no proof he knew of any wrongdoing or committed any crimes himself, only allegations - hence my arguing for due process. The other tweeter brought Savile into it and I pointed out that the two cases are entirely unalike as Savile is dead and there can be no case brought against him...and that is where it all started - with the assertion that a complaint filed does not equal proof of guilt "that's what courts are for, not social media" - mind you, you can't argue with the type of idiot who actually believes 'there's no smoke without fire' (probably thinks they sank a real ship for the film Titanic an' all...)

My tweets on this read as follows (copied & pasted direct):

• I'm blocking you for defending witch-hunt and thinking due process is an optional extra. Moron.
• I have no sympathy for Savile but we have a legal process for a damn good reason. THAT is what I am defending.
• If YOU would expect a fair trial, a weight on evidence rather than hearsay, DEMAND that principle is applied for others
• Every person who supports trial by media deserves (IMHO) to be accused of heinous crimes they didn't commit.
• I think my abhorrence of this comes of being bullied at school. Especially by teachers whose word was law.
• My daughter too got punished for being in fights... as the victim of a persistent bullying campaign.
• [This tweet is edited as it involves an allegation of child sexual abuse as told to me but turned out to be false] I reported it, as you do. Police got back to me: Kid didn't have a stepfather. Kid had a history of not knowing fact from fiction, and a psychiatrist.
• I blocked the kid. But I know others who believed them.

"In the year to the end of March 2017, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated:

• 20% of women and 4% of men have experienced some type of sexual assault since the age of 16, equivalent to 3.4 million female and 631,000 male victims
• 3.1% of women (510,000) and 0.8% of men (138,000) aged 16 to 59 had experienced a sexual assault in the last year."

(Source: https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/about-sexual-violence/statistics-sexual-violence/)

So if one in five WOMEN will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime how likely do you think it is that those acts were perpetrated by just a handful of 'monsters' you personally will never encounter? I'm not going to go so far as to suggest each victim has a separate assailant but we're still not talking about a small group of serial rapist and gropers. We're talking about a significant number of people here - do you even know which of the women you know have been sexually assaulted? Do you even think they would share with you? An awful lot of people never tell their nearest and dearest such things. If you don't know the victims in your life how do you expect to know the perps? Do you think they're easily spotted by their sinister moustaches and black hats or what?!

I am an exceedingly opinionated potato and I believe a lot of things about a lot of people, usually based on little more than intuition. I try to be careful about how I express those opinions, if I even do.

I don't even have much faith in due process. But it's the best we have - we all deserve a fair hearing and assuming someone's guilt based on social media bullshit and the tabloid press is just DUMB.