LOCKDOWN UK CITIZEN NO. 63,567,109 writes:

Covid-19 is not alone.
This deadly virus emerged in 2012
from melting Arctic permafrost.

Update 7 April 2020

UK LOCKDOWN - FUEL SAVED		07/04/2020		NCH Oxford
01-Jan-20	FROM
07-Apr-20	TO
97	lockdown days
7	days per week
14	weeks
5	usual weekly commute
69	commute days lockdown
65	average journey time of 65 minutes each day
57%	commute by car
27,000,000	workers
33,600,000	drivers
7,900	average miles p.a. (assume energy for all travellers)
42	average mpg (assume energy for all travellers)
4.5	litres per UK gallon
365	driving days. Assume distance equally spread
22	miles per day
4.8	litres per day
161,607,306	all drivers litres per day
15,675,908,676	litres all drivers - all lockdown days
112	pence per litre - pump price
£        17,557,017,717	Cash saved by travellers		£          17.56	Billion
180	Exhaust multiple as fuel burns
2,821,663,561,644	Exhaust litres saved		28,217	Billion litres
£                           33.50	BRENT CRUDE per barrel			07/04/2020
159	litres per barrel
98,590,621	Barrels
£     3,302,785,790.18	Saved - imported?		£            3.30	Billion

Update 3 April 2020 
Trump keeps the gun-shops open. Americans will seek out and shoot the virus. Or, shoot the unemployed. Or, shoot all the 10M infected. Civil War will fix Covid-19. 

CNBC - April 2nd

Initial jobless claims surged to more 6.6 million last week, the Labor Department said Thursday. That brings the two-week total to about 10 million due to the coronavirus-induced economic shutdown.

_________________________

The Guardian.

Americans have responded to the coronavirus epidemic with a record-breaking number of gun purchases, according to new government data on the number of background checks conducted in March.

More than 3.7m total firearm background checks were conducted through the FBI’s background check system in March, the highest number on record in more than 20 years. An estimated 2.4m of those background checks were conducted for gun sales, according to adjusted statistics from a leading firearms industry trade group. That’s an 80% increase compared with the same month last year, the trade group said.

________________________________

TESTING TIMES - update 2nd April 2020
Nothing new under the sun.

THE BLACK DEATH - 200 YEARS OF PLAGUE
The beak contained herb filters to protect medics.
2/3rds of the population died.

From the Spectator

Dr John Lee

How deadly is the coronavirus? It’s still far from clear

There is room for different interpretations of the data

(READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE) From magazine issue: 28 March 2020

In announcing the most far-reaching restrictions on personal freedom in the history of our nation, (UNITED KINGDOM) Boris Johnson resolutely followed the scientific advice that he had been given. The advisers to the government seem calm and collected, with a solid consensus among them. In the face of a new viral threat, with numbers of cases surging daily, I’m not sure that any prime minister would have acted very differently.

But I’d like to raise some perspectives that have hardly been aired in the past weeks, and which point to an interpretation of the figures rather different from that which the government is acting on. I’m a recently-retired Professor of Pathology and NHS consultant pathologist, and have spent most of my adult life in healthcare and science – fields which, all too often, are characterised by doubt rather than certainty. There is room for different interpretations of the current data. If some of these other interpretations are correct, or at least nearer to the truth, then conclusions about the actions required will change correspondingly.

The simplest way to judge whether we have an exceptionally lethal disease is to look at the death rates. Are more people dying than we would expect to die anyway in a given week or month? Statistically, we would expect about 51,000 to die in Britain this month. At the time of writing, 422 deaths are linked to Covid-19 — so 0.8 per cent of that expected total. On a global basis, we’d expect 14 million to die over the first three months of the year. The world’s 18,944 coronavirus deaths represent 0.14 per cent of that total. These figures might shoot up but they are, right now, lower than other infectious diseases that we live with (such as flu). Not figures that would, in and of themselves, cause drastic global reactions.

______________________________________________________________

1st April 2020

APRIL FOOLS

London’s “Nightingale” 4,000 bed new hospital in a Conference Centre by The Thames, is not ready. It’s reassuring that our traditional CAN’T- DO managers are still empowered to cull thousands of the sick and elderly by simply applying inertia. If we wait long enough, problems solve themselves.

Ditto, the massive funding package to rescue our small businesses. HM Gov have (tongue in cheek) announced immense grants/loans. The banks are blocking it by insisting on mortgaging the business owners’ homes. “You will not only lose your business and livelihood, you and your feckless family will also be homeless.” 

This morning the BBC say that 800,000 of our SMEs will rapidly go bust. SMEs employ 60% of our workforce. The medics and MPs need a lot more justification than Covid-19 for the redundant millions who will die in despair, due to the lock-down.

NOW is the time to develop a better national strategy. 1^st – ditch this dopey useless government and the NHS senior managers. It is significant that both Boris and his strange familiar, Dominic Cummings, have disappeared; hoping to re-enter, blameless, after the current cock-ups, conspiracies and gross-stupidities have run their course.

Noel Hodson, Business Expansion Expert,

_____________________________________________________________

27th March 2020 - 3 pm - London.

Subject: DAILY EXPRESS - DOMINIC CUMMINGS NOT TO TAKE OVER GOVERNMENT

Dominic Cummings 'does a runner' from No10 as Boris Johnson says he has coronavirus

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1261272/Dominic-Cummings-coronavirus-uk-boris-johnson-latest-video-covid-19-update-death-toll

DOMINIC CUMMINGS has "done a runner" from Downing Street after both Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced they have tested positive for coronavirus.

By CLAIRE ANDERSON

PUBLISHED: 14:26, Fri, Mar 27, 2020 | UPDATED: 14:26, Fri, Mar 27, 2020

___________________________________________________________________

26th March 2020

“Do we need food?”

My body type - until I hit 60..
by Alberto Giacometti

Locked-down under Coronavirus-home-arrest, aged 77 and a quarter, I find that when I crouch down and bend to tie my shoelaces (I spurn Velcro fasteners and Trainers), I can no longer breathe easily. In-depth critical-analysis has tracked this disability, having dismissed dozens of blame-worthy external culprits, to the fact that I am simply too fat. 

Not noticeably overweight, viewed from the front or back, I don’t yet need two airline seats, but my profile reveals a distinct and persistent paunch. A layer of quite solid fat on my belly. It is this unsightly, useless, heavy, stubborn lump that as I bend double presses upwards into the territory of my lungs – and makes me breathless. I have never before been fat. For much of my younger life I was distinctly a Giacometti figure; unfailingly gaunt rather than tubby. This has changed. 

Further analysis, recently informed by our listing and stock-piling 2020 Coronavirus food supplies, demonstrates that what is causing these unwanted deposits of strangely firm blubber, is food! My dear wife speculates that it might come from an excess of alcohol in my now regular glasses of evening wine; and urges urgent, Puritan and total temperance. However, three of my brothers considerably shortened their lives with vast excesses of alcohol – which had the reverse effect; they each wasted away with each drink, losing body-mass month by month, until they were thin enough to pass through The Eye of a Needle, and Meet our Maker in the realm of the Heavenly Jerusalem. No; the paunch is definitely caused by excess, unabsorbed foodstuffs.

Which leads me to the Big-Question: Do we, hi-tech 21^st century mankind and womankind, person-kind, politically-correct “guys” need food?

We spend vast amounts of energy, money, anticipation, preparation, pleasure and risk ill-health consuming food. All of us, or our agents, grow, breed, shepherd, harvest, cull, seek, kill and cook food. Half of the food never makes it from farm to plate. It is prodigiously wasted. The half that we do eat is disassembled and dissolved in our hundred metres of guts; inner-tubes that extract trace chemicals to refresh our cells and power our needs and desires. 

Ninety-percent of what we consume is excreted as waste – that revolts us and has to be washed away in sewers. The sewers, blocked with fatbergs, need constant cleaning and maintenance – that takes human energy – that requires food – that creates waste – and requires endless amounts of work to repetitively replace. We are slaves to the thrice daily process of creation, consumption, extraction and excretion of – food! Pause the process and our active battery-life is at best 20 days, before we start eating each-other. But we rarely pause. Then, as the body balancing mechanisms start to malfunction, as we age, we, many of us, get fat.

Including children, there are seven-billion folk, averaging 10 stones, 140 pounds, wobbling around on the Earth’s surface – 70 billion stones of humanity – three-and-a-half billion tons of flesh. If we all congregated on say, the Isle of Wight, or Manhattan, would our combined mass give the Earth a wobble, create an imbalance that could distort the planet’s orbit round the Sun – and plunge us into that fiery orb? It doesn’t bear thinking about. It is too awful.

We spend, arguably we waste, a lot of our short lives, our three-score-years-and-ten on this business of feeding. Farming, shopping, mealtimes, abluting, cleaning up, gyms, jogging, visiting the dentist, going to the doctor. Do we really need it?

Let’s get down to basics. We now have the capability of creating and mass-producing a single daily pill that would feed us all the nutrients we require. A pill that we would absorb and burn-off entirely as energy, without waste. No more toilet-breaks. Think of the impact on GDP (gross-domestic-product). In fact, we probably don’t even need a pill. Science can calculate the precise amount, the quantum, and form of electromagnetic energy needed to replenish the chemicals of our cells. We could plug into the central electricity generating board supply while we sleep – and recharge our cellular-batteries.

The daily Pill or E-Charge would do away the need for teeth, most internal plumbing, bowels, spare-tyres, paunches, subcutaneous-fat, and a whole mess of troublesome inter-testine organs. I mean, who needs them? Where airlines now squeeze three overweight paying passengers in a cramped row – they could cram in six guys. Think of the profits.

We don’t need to wait for Darwinian Evolution to adapt our bodies to the new regime; the super-rich can immediately have super-rich-person-surgery to remove all the stuff we no longer need or want. The middle-class and struggling-poor will have to wait – and weight – for nature to confer on them fashionable Giacometti figures.

“You can never be too rich or too thin.” Said Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, wife of Edward the Eighth. And it didn’t do her, or her career, any harm.    

Duchess & Duke of Windsor.
"You can never be too rich or too thin."

CORONAVIRUS - IS THE CURE WORSE THAN THE VIRUS? - WORK AT HOME

TELEWORKING EXPLAINED

MARCH 2020: CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

"Killing the global economy will cost many more lives than hysterical measures to curb Coronavirus. 19 March 2020." NCH 

UPDATE 31 MARCH 2020

Time Magazine 

The coronavirus has collided with a troubling economic trend. Even before the pandemic, a majority of Americans—59%, according to a 2019 Charles Schwab survey—were living paycheck to paycheck, barely able to keep up. The ability to prepare for an unplanned loss of income was out of the question. Which is why this crisis has hit so many people so hard. Businesses are closing their doors indefinitely, no one knows what’s next, and everyone’s just trying to keep the bills paid and their family fed and healthy as circumstances outside of their control shape the structure of their lives. The result will be economic dislocation for tens of millions of people.

How many days can families survive without income and food, before they turn to crime to feed their children? The medics have to find an alternative to economic shutdown.

UPDATE 25th March 2020 - Saviours of the Human Race?

Warrington lab is charging £125 for a '15 minute coronavirus ...

A  WARRINGTON, UK lab is claiming it can test for coronavirus in as quick as 15 minutes with a four-step home kit. ... AlphaBiolabs, based in Westbrook, says a 'simple finger-prick' can detect whether you have the ... rapid immunoassay-based test can detect the presence of a Covid-19 infection without using ...  https://www.alphabiolabs.co.uk/ 

AlphaBiolabs claim to have offices in Manchester, Preston, Liverpool, London, Leeds and other cities in England. Website says ALL Covid-19 test-kits are pledged to HM Government "At cost price". AlphaBiolabs Ltd - 14 Webster Court Carina Park Warrington Cheshire WA5 8WD 

The above Warrington-Guardian article does give a price for their Covid Tests - of £125. 

At the same Warrington address are: 
Alpha Biolaboratories Ltd 09987941 - NIL assets; £2 of Share Capital.  Directors David Thomas - Sarah Davenport   
Also: 
ALPHA BIOLABORATORIES ANALYTICAL LTD - 09807843 - SAME address & directors. £200,000 of assets. £100 share capital.
ALPHA BIOLABORATORIES CORPORATE LIMITED 09414132 - Inc on 30 January 2015, £58K assets
ALPHA BIOLABORATORIES LEGAL LIMITED 08269816 - Inc 26 Oct 2012 £55K Assets
ALPHA BIOLABORATORIES RETAIL LIMITED 07936081 - Inc 3 Feb 2012 £18K  Asset

UPDATE 24th March 2020

Total		338307	14602	232378
Region	Places reporting cases	Cases	Deaths	Confirmed cases in the last 15 days

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/geographical-distribution-2019-ncov-cases

At the bottom of the page is a table detailing all countries as at 23^rd March 2020.

My Calculation: World Population 7.53 billion 7,530,000,000. Deaths to date 14,602 is 0.00019 % or 1.9 deaths per million. Say, 2 deaths per million people.

Global 23 Mar 20
7,530,000,000	Population 7.5B	percent of pop.	Rounded
14,602	deaths	0.00019%	2 persons per million
338,307	cases	0.0045%	45 people per million

While each fatality is personally tragic;

I do not think these numbers of deaths warrant shutting the global economy, which is costing $ trillions.

The cure is worse than the disease. Give the Health Services as many billions as they need and re-open for business. Noel Hodson

Noel Hodson - Director

Tax Reconciliations, Oxford UK,

From Tax-Havens to Safe Havens

Tel +44 1865 (0)760994 Mobile 07713 681216

UPDATE 23 March 2020 - FREE MARKETS.

Los Angeles Times: This is a well-balanced attempt to make sense of the statistics.

“Michael Levitt, a Nobel laureate and Stanford biophysicist, began analyzing the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide in January and correctly calculated that China would get through the worst of its coronavirus outbreak long before many health experts had predicted.”

I (not a medic) believe that the global "cure" is for each person to gain immunity and build anti-bodies. Social-Distancing helps by rationing the numbers being hospitalised.

As my shares (my vital pension) are now below 50% of the January values: I strongly advocate short-sellers being hung-drawn-and-quartered at Traitors Gate**. I've argued for 20 years that Stock and Commodity Exchanges should not be gambling casinos - they should be reliable investment channels. Best achieved by a global law requiring a 3 months gap between buying and selling ; And delivery of the commodities to the gambler's home - or vice-versa for short-sellers.  

** (Short-Sellers; choose a stock or commodity they think will fall in value, and make a contract to SELL, even though they have none of it. When or if the stock falls, they BUY it at a lower price. So, simply: Sell first, BUY later. The gamble goes wrong if the price increases. The gambler HAS  to buy to complete the contract - at a higher price than the prior sale. Such transactions make sense in market-smoothing of commodities - e.g. for, say, farmers waiting for crops to grow, who need the sales cash to harvest and then deliver the crops.)

Have you tried to sell a house this month?  

As Covid-19 is seen to be waning, the rush to buy back into real assets, as we all crowd into pubs, clubs and theatres - and re-start manufacturing - will be a tsunami. "Buy now to avoid disappointment."

• Nils Pratley observes that, as a result of measures to suppress the pandemic, a global recession is now almost certain (Chancellor’s £330bn package is big – but not big enough given the size of the threat, 18 March). We now know that austerity kills. What will be the cost in terms of human life of the economic downturn? Spending constraints on health and social care since 2010 are linked to an estimated 152,141 additional deaths, according to research published in BMJ Open. Will mortality from the self-inflicted economic downturn exceed the Covid-19 deaths averted?
Dr John Doherty
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

• Health experts are correct in predicting that lives will be saved from death by coronavirus if social interaction is reduced, and that the greater the reduction, the more lives saved (Scientific modelling: Italy’s hospital data changed everything, 17 March). It is comparatively easy to calculate lives lost due to a virus; it will take longer to calculate the effects of a worldwide economic recession caused by the shutdown – the lives lost due to unemployment, despair, homelessness, famine, suicide, neglected non-virus illness, etc. I predict that a future analysis will show that more lives will be lost as a consequence of the current modelling than will be saved; and that it will have disproportionately targeted the health and wellbeing of the poorest and most vulnerable.
Robert Silman
Former senior lecturer, Barts and the Royal London hospitals

18MAR20 - My non-medical opinion is that if “they” (the medical profession) persist in stopping the entire economic machine to “save-lives” from Covid-19, they will cause many more deaths than they save. People suddenly without income, unable to buy food, pay rent, fill up the car etc. etc. – will despair and kill themselves – or over time will simply die of stress. There are already millions facing redundancy or business liquidation. 

In the UK these draconian measures are triggered by less than 100 Covid-19 UK deaths. Insane or what?

“Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.” Euripides.

The most extreme global odds on dying from this virus are 7 to 1,000,000 against. Unless “they” are not telling it all. - Noel

Noel HODSON 

GLOBAL - Latest 4 pm 17th Mar 2020
Infected 190k - Deaths 7.5k (3.8%) - Cured 80k
World percent infections (190k / 7,200,000k) = 0.0026%

It is very silly to panic and shutdown the global economy.
Who is making these decisions? 

The stalled economy will kill many more than Covid-19 will. 

Most OECD countries or regions are advising people to travel as little as possible; to wash our hands; and where possible to work from home. We were among the pioneers from 1986 to 2000 who made Telework or Telecommuting possible and commonplace. We wrote the book on it - and wrote many papers that explained all the practical problems and solutions - from advice to Trade Unions to equipping a home office, to avoiding divorce - and to getting the maximum tax-relief on the costs. 

If you are now planning to start or expand homeworking by wire, using advanced telecoms to get your work done; if you need advice to navigate the red-tape and maximise benefits - contact for Europe, Noel Hodson, noel@noelhodson.com. or for America contact, Gil Gordon, gil@gilgordon.com. 

We have advised some of the largest global employers, incl IBM, World Bank, BT, WHO, EU - and dozens of new-start SME's - and saved them thousands of dollars.   

 EUROPE - NOEL HODSON email to noel@noelhodson.com

http://www.noelhodson.com/SW2000/Take-the-Plunge-NH-CV.pdf 

AMERICA - GIL GORDON

SW2000 Telework-advice and projects for large employers include:

BT Sales, Chiswick; BT Marketing; BT Martlesham Laboratories; BT Services, Bristol; Fujitsu – London; Nat-West Bank, London; Lombard Bank, UK; World Bank, Washington DC; Prudential Insurance; Royal Insurance; Walls-Birds-Eye; HM Customs and Excise, London; Highways Agency, London; Post Office Accounts, UK Midlands; Yorkshire Water; Central Electricity Generating Board, Birmingham UK; Surrey County Council, UK; Grampian Region, Scotland (Aberdeen City); Hewlett Packard, Brussels; Burgher King; Laura Ashley; GUS Catalogues; Southern Electricity; WH Smith; and others. 

SME’s - Small Firms

We have advised many small employers and we have ourselves established two small teleworked virtual companies from start-up, the first from 1983-87 being Morton Hodson & Co Limited which we built to 60 people in 38 home-locations across the UK; the second being Experts UK Limited, currently being established out of an EC project Experts Unlimited, that will telework professional advisers such as tax-experts, legal-experts, health-experts etc. We established a project team of teleworkers and when the company has new capital, we will advise on rolling out across the UK and the EU with hundreds of teleworkers based at local offices and at home. In addition to these two examples we have advised more than fifty SME’s to act as virtual organisations.

Reports, Publications and Presentations

Telework Publications & Interviews:-

Economics of Telework, 1992, BT Labs.Martlesham

Teleworking Explained, with BT, 1993 Wiley & Sons, Chichester & New York

Telework & Employment, 1995 for EC, DGV, Expert Group on Employment

Jobs Work and Employment, Information Society Guidelines, 1996, EC GATChain

Telework Tax Guidelines, 1996 for DIPLOMAT, ACTS, EC

Teleworking, 1996, Institute of Directors UK

Taxing Internet and Telework, 1997, Tax Faculty, Institute of Chartered Accountants

UK Traffic Decongestion 2007 & 2017 from IT and Flexible Work Methods, 1997, UK anon.

The Future of Telework and the Information Society – Chapter for a Bank Dresdner book 1998.

Articles in Telecommuting Review (New Jersey, USA)

Articles in the European Journal of Teleworking, EU

Articles in Home Run magazine, UK

Telework Promotions:-

Teleworking Today - Video for Major Customers, BT 1995

Telework Training Video for managers, BT 1997

Swiss TV Telework Programme, Arbeisort Internet, 1996

Interviews for numerous UK radio stations, newspapers and for The Times Magazine

Noel Hodson has delivered papers in several European countries, including Austria, and in the USA.

Director of ITAC (USA) from January 2000 and Treasurer in 2001.

PERSONAL INDIVIDUAL COSTS & BENEFITS CALCULATOR.
http://www.noelhodson.com/index_files/twrk_indv.xls 

SW2000 Teleworking Studies was founded in 1988. It conducted Flexible Working seminars from 1988-992 attended by over 120 HRM and Personnel directors from major UK employers. SW2000 was retained to survey UK employers and telework in 1992 and conducted telework statistical surveys in 1990 and 1991. It published Working Environment News in 1990 and was retained by BT to assist major customers to calculate the Costs and Benefits of Teleworking from 1992-1995. SW2000 led the EC supported project Experts Unlimited which initiated higher telephone tariffs in the UK, now used by over 500 professional advice services. SW2000 co-authored and was Fiscal Issues partner in the EC, DGXIII, ACTS project DIPLOMAT. SW2000 published "Bringing Home the Electronic Baby" 1995, Pauline Hodson, (available via a WEB search). SW2000 specialises in promoting, advising on and creating products for telework and flexible work in the Information Society.

(March 2000) The Author, Noel Hodson, has 30 years accountancy experience, was an employer and entrepreneur, specialising in long term tax-planning. He has advised more than 5,000 SME's and has been a telework consultant to British Telecom and the European Commission for ten years. He wrote the Economics of Teleworking (BT Labs 1992) and Teleworking Explained (Wiley & Sons 1993) and is known for his seminal work on the Costs & Benefits & Ecological Impact of telework. His WEB Site is Http://www.NoelHodson.com . He is a director of ITAC the International Telework Association and Council in Washington DC. He makes forecasts about the transformations that the Information Society will bring:

Email : noel@noelhodson.com

Tel - UK 09913 681216