Second wave sweeping Europe?

It seems the latest analysis was on 9th October.

Here's the link:

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending9october2020

I don't have time to read it properly and we know that the rate of deaths has increased significantly over the last two weeks.

Just because China is an authoritarian state doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t look at aspects of their lifestyle that are helping to control the virus.

sharon103
Boris can't be blamed for ignorant people. I agree. BUT he can be blamed for:

* Locking down too late the first time.

* Wasting the 2 months notice we had and not preparing.

*For giving contracts to friends instead of using the expert NHS services we already have.

*For allowing his SPAD to publicly and very visibly to break the lockdown with zero consequences and therefore encourage others to do the same.

*To fail to support those who are out of work due to Covid.

*For opening schools and universities leading to a 2nd wave of infection.

Thank you MawB for sharing that information.
No country in Europe is doing well ( or anywhere else) no matter what they do.

Added to that, The Netherlands - small country, very large number of cases.

Meanwhile the Mail on Sunday has revealed that NHS staff are to be given the covid vaccine before Christmas !

The game changer we have been waiting for!

We aren't long for this world even in the best of times so during the worst of times some people choose to preserve life and comply while others choose to live as they see fit with a sense of entitlement- Some will survive and some will die, both as a direct result of someone else's decision- We are not only trying to protect ourselves from a virus, we are also protecting ourselves from each other-

I can't look at China, the geographical land, without being awed by its beauty- But I also can't look at its populace without seeing its ages old ignorance in play-

The only solution is a global embargo and travel ban against them until their gonvernment, as a whole, is willing to comply and be held accountable- And the only way that could happen would be for every other country to hold themselves accountable for agreeing to do shady business with them to begin with-

Gagajo
locking down too late the first time
The Czech Republic locked down on the same day as us. Not just a lockdown but a curfew and borders closed.
Look at them now, one of the highest rates. It didn't work, did it.

JenniferEccles

Meanwhile the Mail on Sunday has revealed that NHS staff are to be given the covid vaccine before Christmas !

The game changer we have been waiting for!

I agree. And I am delighted for them. To be able to go to work everyday without fearing for their lives is great.

Rosecarmel
I couldn't agree more Re an embargo.
I've also been to china and agree that some parts are truly stunning.

petra

Gagajo
locking down too late the first time
The Czech Republic locked down on the same day as us. Not just a lockdown but a curfew and borders closed.
Look at them now, one of the highest rates. It didn't work, did it.

No, it hasn't got one of the highest rates. Which figures are you using?

rosecarmel

We aren't long for this world even in the best of times so during the worst of times some people choose to preserve life and comply while others choose to live as they see fit with a sense of entitlement- Some will survive and some will die, both as a direct result of someone else's decision- We are not only trying to protect ourselves from a virus, we are also protecting ourselves from each other-

I can't look at China, the geographical land, without being awed by its beauty- But I also can't look at its populace without seeing its ages old ignorance in play-

The only solution is a global embargo and travel ban against them until their gonvernment, as a whole, is willing to comply and be held accountable- And the only way that could happen would be for every other country to hold themselves accountable for agreeing to do shady business with them to begin with-

It would be wise for all other countries to embargo the US, as it's the country with just about the worst record.

JenniferEccles

Meanwhile the Mail on Sunday has revealed that NHS staff are to be given the covid vaccine before Christmas !

The game changer we have been waiting for!

Frontline NHS staff could receive Covid-19 jabs within weeks under plans being drawn up to speed out the rollout of a vaccine.

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-vaccine-nhs-staff-england-oxford-b1295880.html

Please note the use of the word "could" not "will".

growstuff

rosecarmel

We aren't long for this world even in the best of times so during the worst of times some people choose to preserve life and comply while others choose to live as they see fit with a sense of entitlement- Some will survive and some will die, both as a direct result of someone else's decision- We are not only trying to protect ourselves from a virus, we are also protecting ourselves from each other-

I can't look at China, the geographical land, without being awed by its beauty- But I also can't look at its populace without seeing its ages old ignorance in play-

The only solution is a global embargo and travel ban against them until their gonvernment, as a whole, is willing to comply and be held accountable- And the only way that could happen would be for every other country to hold themselves accountable for agreeing to do shady business with them to begin with-

It would be wise for all other countries to embargo the US, as it's the country with just about the worst record.

To repeat:

And the only way that could happen would be for every other country to hold themselves accountable for agreeing to do shady business with them to begin with-

Saw a photo today of an airport in Greece absolutely packed solid with British tourists returning to UK after half term- unbelievable. And they won't have to self isolate, will they?

Dr Johns blog today is about the Czech Republic so it will be interesting to see what he says about it.....

Ok point taken. Could rather than will, but it’s enormously encouraging even if the timing is a little bit optimistic.

After the most severe 9 week lockdown in Spain, the worst in all Europe, for March & April, we now have a State of Emergency curfew - 11pm till 6am.

France has one 9pm till 6am.

Much good those lockdowns did! And the streets were empty with police cars patrolling.

Chinese police beat their citizens around the head with batons for any non-compliance regarding lockdown.

Different world.

And I don’t believe their figures for one moment. They portray everything in the best light. Hmm. Human life there is expendable. Remember Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’?
60 MILLION citizens died. Beyond shocking. And that was only the end of the 1950’s.
☹️

So what is going to happen in a couple of weeks when the ski season is upon us in Europe? People will hardly want to accept an alternative winter holiday in Greece. The snowy places like France, Italy, Swizerland are where they want to go.

"They portray everything in the best light."

True that, they do attempt to- While those who attempt to present the truth mysteriously disappear and/or end up in prison and such-

From Amnesty International:

The human rights situation continued to be marked by a systematic crackdown on dissent. The justice system remained plagued by unfair trials and torture and other ill-treatment in detention. China still classified information on its extensive use of the death penalty as a state secret.

Repression conducted under the guise of “anti-separatism” or “counter-terrorism” remained particularly severe in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang) and Tibetan-populated areas (Tibet). Authorities subjected Uighurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in Xinjiang to intrusive surveillance, arbitrary detention and forced indoctrination.

LGBTI people faced widespread discrimination and stigma in society. Due to inadequate medical services, they took serious risks by seeking unregulated and improper gender-affirming treatments. LGBTI people also faced abuses in the form of "conversion therapy”.

The government continued to intimidate, harass, and prosecute human rights defenders and independent NGOs, including raids on their homes and offices. Human rights defenders’ family members were subjected to police surveillance, harassment, detention and restrictions on their freedom of movement.

Amid huge setbacks for human rights, China made some progress in its environmental protection efforts, both by closing and upgrading polluting factories and passing new restrictions to tackle emissions. According to data prepared by Greenpeace Southeast Asia and IQAir AirVisual, Beijing was no longer among the top 100 most polluted cities in the world.

Justice system
In February, President Xi Jinping emphasized that the legal system should be under the Chinese Communist Party's absolute leadership. Law enforcement and the judicial system remained largely under the control of the party. China legalized arbitrary and secret detention, such as “residential surveillance in a designated location” and an extra-judicial system of detention (liuzhi). These procedures allowed for prolonged incommunicado detention and increased the risk of torture and other ill-treatment and forced “confessions”. The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances sought information on 20 new cases of enforced disappearances in China from February to May alone. A new regulation, implemented since February, increased the powers of law enforcement and security agencies by exempting police officers from legal responsibility for any damage they might cause to the property or interests of individuals or organizations while carrying out their duties.

Freedom of expression – the internet
The government strengthened its restrictions to the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly. The authorities rigorously censored all media, from print media to online games. With the assistance of private technology and internet companies, officials mastered the use of facial recognition, real-name registration systems and big data to keep people under indiscriminate mass surveillance and control. In July, a draft regulation on China's social credit system proposed punishing citizens for disseminating information that "violates social morality" or causes "adverse social impacts". In January, Chinese users reported that they had been threatened, detained or warned for being active on Twitter – a social media platform officially banned in the country. China also extended its control of cyberspace beyond its “Great Firewall” by launching powerful malware and denial of service attacks against overseas servers, websites and messaging apps deemed problematic.

Freedom of religion and belief
Beijing continued to tighten its grip on Christians and Muslims as China pushed ahead with the “sinicization of religion”, which Premier Li Keqiang reiterated at the National People's Congress in March. Many Buddhist and Taoist temples and statues, along with mosques and churches, were damaged or destroyed on the direction of the government. The authorities jailed religious leaders who were not recognized by the party for “endangering state security”. On 30 December 2019, pastor Wang Yi of the Early Rain Covenant Church was sentenced to nine years for “illegal business operation” and “inciting subversion of state power”.

Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
Reports about the detention of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups continued in Xinjiang despite the government’s claim that it may eventually phase out purported “vocational training centres”, also known as “transformation-through-education” centres. From early 2017, after the Xinjiang government had enacted a regulation enforcing so-called “de-extremification”, an estimated up to one million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minority people were sent to these internment camps.[1] Many religious figures, intellectuals and academics were detained in Xinjiang merely for exercising their rights to freedom of religion and expression. This includes Ilham Tohti, a Uyghur economist, writer and professor who was sentenced to life in prison in 2014 and Tashpolat Teyip, former president of Xinjiang University who was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve in 2017, both on charges of “separatism”.[2]

In March the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that her office sought to engage the Chinese government “for full access to carry out an independent assessment of the continuing reports pointing to wide patterns of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions, particularly in Xinjiang”.[3]

In July, 25 countries issued a joint statement on Xinjiang at the UN Human Rights Council.[4] In September, Amnesty International, together with four other human rights organizations published a joint letter to the UN Secretary General, urging the UN to step up pressure on China to end the mass detentions in Xinjiang.[5]

In November, the New York Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists disclosed two sets of leaked documents from unidentified Chinese officials detailing the crackdown in Xinjiang and the framework for facilities where hundreds of thousands of predominantly Muslim ethnic groups are being subjected to brainwashing and other ill-treatment. The descriptions in these documents matched the testimonies Amnesty International received from former detainees and overseas relatives of those sent to the camps or who went missing in Xinjiang. The documents also further disproved the Chinese government’s claims that these facilities were merely “vocational training facilities”.

Rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people (LGBTI)
LGBTI people continued to face discrimination at home, at work, in schools and in public. The authorities accepted and claimed to have implemented all recommendations on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression at the end of the country’s review process in the third cycle of the UN Universal Periodic Review in 2018. Two recommendations requested prohibition against discrimination in legislation, but there is no law that explicitly protects LGBTI people from discrimination.

Following last year’s alleged attempt to remove content related to gay issues, Weibo, one of the biggest social media platforms, took down content on lesbian topics in April. Activists feared that online censorship of LGBTI-related content would intensify.

After an online campaign for legal recognition of same-sex marriage, Yue Zhongming, the spokesperson for the National People’s Congress Legislative Affairs Commission, publicly acknowledged public opinion supporting the recognition of same-sex marriage in the Civil Code. Same-sex couples in China were denied equal partnership rights because of their sexual orientation.

Transgender people were classed as having a “mental illness”, and gender-affirming surgeries required the consent of families. Other criteria to qualify for such surgeries - such as being unmarried or having a clean criminal record - created further barriers to accessing this treatment. Prevalent discrimination and stigma, restrictive eligibility requirements, and a lack of information resulted in transgender people seeking unregulated and unsafe gender-affirming treatments.[6]

Transgender people told Amnesty International that they did not receive any advice or guidance on gender-affirming treatments from their doctors when they first started taking hormones. Instead, they learned about treatment options from friends and by searching the internet for information.

Transgender people who had an urgent need to align their body with their gender identity told Amnesty International that due to the lack of accessible and credible health-related information, they had had little choice but to resort to the unsafe and risky black market to obtain hormone medication. Some even attempted to perform surgeries on themselves as they believed that accessing gender-affirming treatments at a hospital was not possible.

Amnesty International also received reports of LGBTI individuals being forced by their families to undergo “conversion therapies” that claim to change their sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, in the belief that being LGBTI is a mental disorder requiring treatment. Despite a landmark judgment in 2014 which declared that homosexuality was not a disease and required no treatment, the government did not take any action to ban conversion therapy.

Human Rights Defenders
The space for human rights defenders (HRDs) to freely carry out their work continued to shrink. The authorities systematically subjected HRDs to surveillance, harassment, intimidation, detention and imprisonment. Many activists and HRDs continued to be prosecuted on vague and overly broad charges such as “subverting state power”, “inciting subversion of state power" and "picking quarrels and provoking trouble". Many were held in "residential surveillance in a designated location" on suspicion of involvement in state security crimes. This form of detention allowed the police to detain individuals suspected of such crimes for up to six months in an unknown location outside the formal detention system, with suspects denied access to legal counsel and families.

The authorities sustained a crackdown on dissent and independent voices. Prominent human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who launched a memoir detailing his experience of enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment, and illegal house arrest, was again forcibly disappeared in August 2017. His whereabouts are unknown. In February Beijing human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng was indicted on charges of “inciting subversion of state power” and “obstructing the duties of public officers” after he had circulated an open letter calling for five reforms to China’s constitution. Chen Jianfang, a grassroots civil and political rights advocate, was formally arrested for “inciting subversion of state power” in June 2019.[7] Activist Chen Bing was sentenced to three and a half years’ imprisonment on 4 April after he and three others were convicted of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for commemorating the 27th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown in 2016.

Authorities retaliated against citizen journalists and NGO workers reporting on human rights violations. Early in the year they detained Wei Zhili, Ke Changbing and Yang Zhengjun, editors of a China labour rights website in Guangzhou.[8] Huang Qi, the co-founder of 64tianwang.com, a website that reports on and documents protests in China, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for “leaking state secrets” and “providing state secrets to foreign entities”. Liu Feiyue, the founder of human rights website Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, was detained in late 2016 and sentenced to five years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power” on 29 January. Anti-discrimination NGO workers Cheng Yuan, Liu Yongze, and Wu Gejianxiong were held in incommunicado detention since 22 July on suspicion of “subversion of state power”.[9] For the first time, authorities publicly criticized a foreign NGO, Asia Catalyst, for breaching the Foreign NGO Management Law.

Family members of human rights defenders were also subject to police surveillance, harassment and restrictions on their freedom of movement. Li Wenzu, the wife of imprisoned human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang, said that, for a long time, she had difficulty finding a place to live because police threatened landlords not to sign leases with her. Their six-year-old son Quanquan could not go to school, as police threatened the school’s administrators.[10]

www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/china/report-china/

Growstuff
What figures am I using. I'm quoting from Maws cut and paste from The Gaudian

Ashcombe

Interesting graph.

Ashcombe. Do the figures shown include those which amnesty’s?
Between 2 March and 12 June this year 28,186 “excess deaths” were recorded in care homes in England, with over 18,500 care home residents confirmed to have died with COVID-19 during this period.

from Amnesty’s report

I don’t believe China’s figures either.

The coronavirus has added to the growing, global pushback against the kid-glove treatment that China demands and has received-

The US could create a new mountain range from the absolute junk imported from China that ends up in landfills- Ton upon ton of non-biodegradable, single use crap-

Enough is enough-