Westministenders: A Year of Johnson

[RedToothBrush]

So having given the benefit of the doubt...

... whats your reflections?

Good (and yes do have some thoughts on the positive - challenge yourself on this one as its important) and the bad (and yes this is the easy bit but keep it within reason)?

DM had oesophageal cancer - again one you don't recover from. I went home when she was first diagnosed and saw her through her first chemo. It was brutal - one drug in particular gave her awful ruthless side effects . I was helping her take them the second morning, and she said to me - I can't do this, this is not living. She told her on oncologist she wasn't going to take them anymore. Fortunately he was able to re-jig her cocktail, which gave her v little side effects. It bought her a year of normal life..... then she went downhill v quickly.
I just remember feeling so devastated that that was the way she felt, but knowing she was right.

All my team at work are over 50. Two of us have heart disease. We’ve been told we have to teach up to 12 adults in inadequately ventilated rooms. We will refuse.

JeSuis for losing your mum so young and it being complicated. Life is just not easy. And you too MrsL . I can't see us making any more life expectancy gains. Rather, it feels like we might be losing them now.

Oh, and isn’t half the Cabinet over 50? How will that work?

DGM had oesophageal cancer too. Early 90s, she died due to unpleasant complications with her tracheostomy.

A friend's Mum was dx with pancreatic cancer. She was so insistent that her Mum as a fighter and she'd beat it - I couldn't tell her any different, and I didn't try more than once as it wasn't for me to interfere with how she was processing it. Her dear Mum died after about a year, utterly heartbreaking disease.

The Nazis in the 1930s successfully spread the gross slander in Germany that vaccinations were a conspiracy by Jews to poison the German people

Unfortunately it took hold, especially in the former East, where the Communists encouraged conspiracy theories about external enemies as a distraction.

BCF
We say 'Nazis' and 'Communists' - but they were all Germans who for reasons peculiar to each individual were inclined to believe in conspiracies and the existence of enemies of the people. Despite the fall of both regimes as institutions the delusions of ethno-nationalism live on.

Not that the tendency to collective delusion is a specifically German flaw - it's alive and kicking all over the world. America spawned McCarthyism after all, and I've seen with my own eyes what is taught under the heading of 'history' in American elementary schools.

See also: Donald Trump.

I absolutely understand that loved ones, and those diagnosed, do cling to that battle rhetoric for comfort. But it is divorced from the reality. And I think in wider society it is an insidious way of inoculating yourself from the uncertainty of a disease that has been made to be a villain. I won’t get it because I am fit, healthy, exercise, healthy diet, have a positive attitude etc etc As my oncologist said “You have done everything right, so have 9 out of 10 of the women I treat.” For instance only 5% of breast cancer risk is understood and most of that is genetic. All the media noise you hear about diet, alcohol etc is less than 1% of known risk. If that is the predominate narrative on Cancer, that we bring it on ourselves, mostly for being that Daily Mail villain, the independent woman, no surprise if it becomes the narrative on COVID, though without the misogyny overlay . You were old, male, obese, BME etc. so it was your fault not the fault of the young fit cyclist who went out to the pub and bought it home. Actually with slightly more reason. However certainly does. No doubt Dom is working hard on the narrative and luring is all into his diversionary trap ........

Although now I think about it people I know who have survived do seem to put it down to "fighting it"...

Interestingly, I knew a man with a form of cancer who was given six months to live. He decided to accept the diagnosis, but live his remaining time to his fullest. He lived another 40 years, and died of something else.

Obviously Dim got COVID because he was obese not because he ignored sensible infection control measures whilst working, even if shaking hands was not the vector of infection, and above all thought he was exceptional and entitled.

WIth terrible diseases, or even terrible crimes like rape, there is victim-blaming
because many people want to feel that horrible things don't happen to decent people who did the right things

• and particularly want to feel that hence it can't happen to them

My aunts cancer was "of unknown origin"
Quite rare apparently.
She was riddled with it. Lungs, stomach, genitourinary urinary tract and I think brain by the end.
She braved it all and NEVER once complained until about 5 hours before she died....she said to "oh, I do feel poorly.."
She was the most stoic, brave, pita woman and the idea she "lost" or "didn't fight hard enough" actually makes me shake with anger 🤬
I hate those fucking macmillan ads. Nauseating shit.

An oncologist I worked for years ago told me that 2/3 cancers are life style related and 1/3 are "just bloody bad luck".
But some cancers have a huge genetic component don't they?
It was a saying when I was young (I'm quite old!!) That "its not the cancer that kills you its the treatment".

Jesuis & MrsL 💐its a very cruel disease, both my parents died within six months of each other both only early sixties, neither of them wanted chemotherapy or cocktail of drugs, my dad had an horrific death I can’t even look at pictures of him still, as I all see is his suffering in his last few days, my mum thankfully died in a hospice virtually pain free & with dignity, that place saved my sanity.

Yy the McMillan ads I really fucking hate them.

@yoikes

An oncologist I worked for years ago told me that 2/3 cancers are life style related and 1/3 are "just bloody bad luck". But some cancers have a huge genetic component don't they? It was a saying when I was young (I'm quite old!!) That "its not the cancer that kills you its the treatment".

Choosing your parents is the single biggest effect you can have ...

Another (former ?) Republican with a book hitting out at Trump - strong stuff.

"A consultant for Bush and Romney laments the fate of his party and sees heavy defeat as the best medicine to hope for"

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/02/it-was-all-a-lie-review-trump-republican-party

In short, stripped “of any pretense of governing philosophy, a political party will default to being controlled by those who shout the loudest and are unhindered by any semblance of normalcy”.

The first casualty is the truth.
"Large elements of the Republican party have made a collective decision that there is no objective truth”
and that a cause or simple access to power is more important.
....
For Stevens, the GOP “rallied behind Donald Trump because if that was the deal needed to regain power, what was the problem?
Because it had always been about power.”

@borntobequiet, I was wondering about that too!

Johnson is 56, so if they do insist on an over 50's SAH order, does that mean we get a break from him for 6 months?

Silver linings and so forth....

"Choosing your parents is the single biggest effect you can have ..."

The wealth - or none - you are born into and inherit massively skew your chances of future income, heath, life expectancy etc

Yes, people can work very hard - and be lucky - to rise despite all that,
but it's like running a race wearing leg irons against Tim Nice But Dim

Thanks for the thoughts and to all who've had similar.
I think my dad was the worst for the "if she hadn't XYZ she would never have got cancer". I nearly stopped talking to him a couple of weeks after she died because he was constantly putting her down and telling me stories about her even told me to put all of her furniture in a skip. It wasn't what I needed while trying to plan her funeral. They divorced when I was small but the very reason I argued with mum was about her adopted sister who had brain cancer and had died the year before - she was being nasty about her and I told her off for speaking ill of the dead. To have my dad do the same thing weeks later was really weird. He still "accidentally" breaks her things when he stays. Very tiring.

Sorry, I seem to have gone off on a tangent!

On another AIBU thread, the OP was told by the polcie they won't come out to a shopful of people breaking SD & covering rules

• and she is being roundly told off by most posters for "snitching" -

.... so even if BJ wanted to make it a legal requirement for the over-50s to stay at home / work, it wouldn't be enforced

I suppose he could plan to give over 50s this MOT health check informing them that they could choose to stay home

• but it's pointless unless Rishi is going to foot the bill for those (millions ?) who can't WFH

unhindered by any semblance of normalcy

nice FDR callback there ...

@BigChocFrenzy

"Choosing your parents is the single biggest effect you can have ..."

The wealth - or none - you are born into and inherit massively skew your chances of future income, heath, life expectancy etc

Yes, people can work very hard - and be lucky - to rise despite all that,
but it's like running a race wearing leg irons against Tim Nice But Dim

I think it was more a reference to genes. The biggest single determinant in your health are your genes. Ideally my DM should have chosen a maternal line that didn't encompass dementia or breast cancer.

Why Boris Johnson is suddenly spooked by the spectre of a second spike

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/02/why-boris-johnson-is-suddenly-spooked-by-the-spectre-of-a-second-spike

Allies of the prime minister report that he believes many voters will ultimately forgive the government’s mistakes, numerous though they were,
on the way into the epidemic, when ministers were first confronted with a novel disease. < >

The fear swirling around Number 10 is that the public will be much less tolerant of a resurgence, especially if it looks like the result of incompetence and recklessness.

Hence the anxiety of Mr Johnson in recent days to try to deflect any culpability away from himself by emphasising that infection rates are on the rise in many parts of the globe.
It wasn’t me what done it, guv, the world is to blame.

@BigChocFrenzy

WIth terrible diseases, or even terrible crimes like rape, there is victim-blaming because many people want to feel that horrible things don't happen to decent people who did the right things - and particularly want to feel that hence it can't happen to them

Did you see the interesting discussion on FWR about this? That some victims chose to blame themselves, because the truth that it was just a random chance incident that they couldn't control or prevent is far scarier than thinking it's because it was dark/I was drunk/I wasn't careful enough.

No, I've given up on FWR