The Necessity of Zero Covid

by David Archibald

18 May 2022

 

According to this tweet, Bank of England officials have told the UK Treasury Committee that they are very worried about long covid:

Falling participation in the labour market is not a lack of job opportunities, but a rise in long term sickness linked to the pandemic. The issue of Long Covid is very serious.

The basis of that view is these two graphs from a Bank of England speech:

 

 

The graph above shows the percentage of the UK population who do not want a job due to long term sickness. It started rising rapidly from the onset of the covid pandemic. The effect on employment has been considerable:

 

 

The working population in the UK is now in downtrend, and about 700,000 bodies short of what it was predicted to be. Which also means that an increasing dependent population is being supported by a shrinking workforce. And in turn that means the system will ultimately collapse if these trends continue.

So will they continue? The proportion of people infected by covid and who subsequently have long covid is said to range between 10% and 80%, depending upon how symptoms are classified. The chance of becoming long covid increases with each infection, and people are being reinfected faster than their long covid symptoms are resolving. So the trends will continue.

Apparently the UK economy and society is headed for collapse. System outages have started due to lack of staff as a result of covid.

Every country that has also opted for ‘let her rip’ with respect to covid management will suffer the same fate. That includes Australia. The UK is two years ahead of Australia and we should be closely watching their situation.

China has rightly judged that countries that keep their populations covid-free will enjoy a substantial long term competitive advantage. China has started cutting up the passports of Chinese attempting to leave the country for travel or study. The cost of covid outbreaks when those people return is likely to be too high.

Similar to competitive advantage between nations, competitive advantage between firms in a tightening labour market due to long covid could be developed by keeping staff healthy. That means prophylaxis using ivermectin, vitamin D, selenium, zinc, berberine, cannabidiol and thymoquinone. And irradiation of the workplace with UV light at 222 nm, which kills covid virions but does not harm human eyes or skin. And upgrading face masks to the FFP2 standard.

 

David Archibald is the author of The Anticancer Garden in Australia.