Thread by @HZiauddeen

🧵COVID-19: how do you convince people that the people in power actually want them to die?

This may seem dramatic but it isn't & given that we* have lost the war against COVID to the GBD & Co, we can't cushion this.

*Everyone trying to control the pandemic & save lives.
(1/25)

In fact looking back, I am not sure if ever came close at any point to a temporary draw, let alone a win but now there is no doubt.
The GBDers, the 'herd immunity through natural infection' proponents, the individual freedom fighters, the eugenicists, they've won.
(2/25)

Their misinformation and disinformation campaigns have so muddied the situation that despite the huge amounts of evidence (and deaths and illness), the basic realities of COVID-19 and controlling it remain somehow contentious.
(3/25)

Despite having facilitated the emergence of the more transmissible and more fatal delta variant through their actions, several govts have rolled back the few measures they had put in place to control transmission and are actively pursuing policies that will increase it.
(4/25)

The UK is good example here (indeed it is increasingly only when it comes to disasters that the UK is a good example). We're up to 1000 cases a day, 1000 deaths a week and there is effectively no strategy to control transmission apart from 'personal responsibility'.
(5/25)

In fact we have an active policy of pursuing herd immunity through infecting the young. We have no mitigations in schools, no contact tracing in schools, no need to isolate if you are a contact & insisting schools go back to normal & become stricter with attendance.
(6/25)

Vaccinating 12-15 year-olds was resisted for mths, only approved recently & will only be rolled out several weeks after children have returned to school. The JCVI & the RCPCH have been strongly opposed to vaccinating kids, both bodies we would expect to look after kids.
(7/25)

It is hard to emphasise how horrendous this is. The only thing the UK is doing at the moment to fight COVID is vaccination and with children we are not even doing that. It would be one thing if we were making schools safer and then arguing against vaccinating kids.
(8/25)

But we are actually making schools more dangerous and refusing to vaccinate children & the same people/groups are advocating for both of these.
When we've reached the point where even children falling ill with a novel virus and dying does not shift course, you've lost.
(9/25)

For some time now the fight has only been about trying to get some protections and support for people and about not giving up and letting GBD & Co have free rein.
And one of the ways in which the GBD & Co have truly won is in making those still fighting the bad guys.
(10/25)

It's the 'alarmist' scientists, the 'heartless' pro-lockdowners, the 'anxious' parents and the 'lazy' teachers and healthcare workers who just won't shut up and do the job 'we' pay them to do. They're the selfish ones who won't let the rest of us have our lives back.
(11/25)

'The govt and the media are telling us that it's all opening up, life is getting back to normal, we can go on holidays and clubs and shows and these bloody killjoys are ruining it for us. Because they're scared. Bet you they'll try and force another lockdown.'
(12/25)

In this excellent 🧵 @GYamey talks about how the GBD went from herd immunity and to anti-vaxx.
My take on this: the goal of the GBD and it's backers was always the pursuit of mass infection and the death, illness & destabilisation it would bring.

(13/25)

Indeed these aspects of the plan have been articulated by many and the GBD, AIER, HART and the like have been actively involved in efforts to stop any govts controlling the pandemic. Of course it is likely that in govts like ours they have found like-minded allies.
(14/25)

The people most severely affected by this pandemic are the already disadvantaged and marginalised (the poor, the ethnic minorities, the disabled, the very elderly, the clinically extremely vulnerable) and the children, groups the govt does not care about.
(15/25)

Of course some others will go under the bus along with them but that is a sacrifice the govt and the disaster capitalists behind this concerted movement are willing to make.
The profound destabilisation that widespread death and morbidity will bring will serve them well.
(16/25)

It will destabilise govts and opposition, allow them to reduce regulation and taxation, seize control of more assets and reconfigure systems as they have always imagined they should be i.e. serving them.
(17/25)

This may seem like hyperbole but just take a look at what the UK govt has done over the last 18 months. Destabilisation in poorer countries will make them ripe for resource exploitation.

So to come back to my initial point, the people in power do want people to die.
(18/25)

This can be hard for people to believe especially if they are not from a marginalised or discriminated against group (e.g. disabled folk know this is very much the case). People can live with the idea that the govt (and people in power) may not care what happens to them.
(19/25)

It is a small step from there to wanting people to die, but it feels too much. Wonder if it might be easier if it was more personal i.e. the govt wants you specifically to die as opposed to it doesn't matter who dies, you're irrelevant it's the numbers that matter.
(20/25)

The reactions to this are likely:
1. It can't be, I can believe a lot of horrible stuff about the people in power but I can't believe they do this.
2. You must be lying or making this up/ you are upsetting me and this is making me angry with you.
(21/25)

3. Well maybe but it's not going to be people like me or my kids dying.
4. It's going to be other people who die, like those with pre-existing conditions.
5. Various forms of denial.
6. Overwhelming despair and helplessness leads to apathy and disconnection.

(22/25)

I haven't included the reactions of those who for various reasons favour other people dying.

It is vital that we recognise this because if we don't we'll keep squabbling about small specific and trivial points and ignore the big picture.
(23/25)

And that kind of apathy and disconnection from the wider reality is exactly what is wanted from us.

As for my original question: how do you convince people that the people in power actually want them to die?
(24/25)

I don't have any great answers.

Ask them to think about what their govt is actually doing to protect them from a serious novel virus.
Keep repeating the numbers: cases, Long COVID, Deaths.

In short, don't let this become normalised. Because then we have truly lost.
(25/25)

Apologies I need to make 2 corrections to this thread:
1. Tweet 4: the collective actions and inaction have facilitated the development of many serious variants, not just delta.
2. Tweet 5: the UK is at 1000 hospitalisations a day, not 1000 cases per day.