Tag Archives: coronavirus

Have these people never heard of Thalidomide?

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These political nongs who run our Parliaments, and who seem never to have run across the concept of personal freedom, have boxed themselves into quite a problem. They have no idea how to call off the Covid dogs. Even with the media exaggerating its dangers, most people are no longer really frightened by it. If we were bringing out the dead on a daily basis, lockdown would happen without a quibble. That the issue is we are not allowed to go away on holidays or in the formerly free state of Victoria, leave home after 8:00 pm is an insanity that exists because without the full force of the law, we would be acting as if there is nothing going on, which is pretty close to the reality. The suppressed news on Sweden and other places is quite a revelation. The media do not report, but have an agenda of their own, and it is virtually all to the hard left. Joe Biden, after all, promised from Day One to enforce the compulsory wearing of masks if he is elected.

Andrew Bolt at least does what he can to keep them honest: Voters pressured to blindly trust blundering governments. There we find:

Take Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

He claimed last week to have signed a deal (actually just a letter of intent) to distribute a new vaccine (actually not proven) to every Australian to protect them from this virus.

Then he took out his big stick. He would force us to take this vaccine — make it “as mandatory as you can possibly make that” — as soon as it passed its trials.

True, by Wednesday afternoon, Morrison realised he sounded awful, and supposedly “back-pedalled” on forcing us: “I mean, we can’t hold someone down and make them take it.”

But by the next day, Health Minister Greg Hunt was suggesting many other ways Morrison could indeed force you to take it. By holding back welfare payments, for instance. Stopping your kids from going to school.

Hunt wouldn’t even rule out stopping you from going on planes or to restaurants if you refused your jab.

Sounds like this alleged vaccine will be “mandatory”, after all.

There is then, of course, this bit of a rider.

The Australian Medical Association’s president warns we “have to acknowledge it is a rushed approval process and even if the phase three trials on this Oxford vaccine go really well, it’s still not absolutely proven that it is safe, not as proven as is normally the case”.

Can I really trust Morrison’s vaccine, when even the manufacturer he’s lined up to produce it, AstraZeneca, says it wants a guarantee it won’t be sued if it goes horribly wrong: “This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk if in … four years the vaccine is showing side-effects.”

But you can take the risk, because it is the only way these political nongs can manufacture a process in which they can call of these devastating lockdowns. And of course, when it comes to proven medications, Andrew ends with this:

Just let them inject you with their vaccine, and try to forget these politicians are meanwhile so blind they even refuse to examine cheap drugs which some experts claim could save lives right now — hydroxychloroquine with zinc, or ivermectin with zinc, or almost any other safe ionophore that can get zinc through the lipid surface of the virus.

The reality is we are not dealing with a policy of every life counts, but a political reality where every vote counts. Daniel Andrews is the worst of them, getting all these Brownie points for saving us from a problem he is largely responsible for. And even then, the death rate per head of population in Australia is something like 0.002%.

Tense scenes in Melbourne

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Among all of the many other failings Daniel Andrews has, he is also a bad liar.

There are tense scenes in Melbourne, as Daniel Andrews answers questions about him claiming one in four people weren’t at home when they were doorknocked.

Victoria Police found that less than one per cent were breaking the rules.

Mr Andrews was asked whether or not he regrets going so hard on Victorians and making it appear that so many were doing the wrong thing.

It led to a tense back-and-forth lasting almost eight minutes.

Here’s some of the exchange;

Andrews; I indicated they weren’t at home. They weren’t at home. We didn’t issue on-the-spot fines. We referred it to Victoria Police. It is their job to determine and investigate whether people had a lawful excuse not to be at home.

Just as I foreshadowed, we didn’t assume that they weren’t all doing the wrong thing. There was, as I said the time, it could be you choose not to answer the door.

You might be isolating at another house. The address for you might be wrong. It might be as [the police] put it yesterday, you might be out the back in a shed. There are lots of different reasons.

Reporter; I suppose it is misleading because a lot of Victorians assumed so many more people were breaching isolation when it is less than 1 per cent.

Andrews; Again, I’m not here to ask you questions but if I might be permitted to do that, how is it misleading to inform the community that when somebody from the army and somebody from the health department knocked on the door, there was no no-one who answered it? How is that misleading?
Reporter; I suppose it is misleading because actually less than one per cent of people were not doing the wrong thing? That’s a massive part of it?

Andrews; Well, that might be a fair point if we had said that it was our view that every single one of those people were doing the wrong thing.

Reporter; This was three days before stage 4 was announced. It was a big part of the announcement on stage 4 lockdown that – in fact, in the media release it says, “I know Victorians are with me when I say too many people are not taking this seriously and too many people are not taking this seriously means too many other people are having to plan funerals for those they love.”

Andrews; Yes.

Reporter; So I suppose that points the finger at Victorians doing the wrong thing and we now know it is far less Victorians doing the wrong thing? :We thought it could have been as high as one-in-four were breaching self-isolation. We now know it was less than one per cent. Why did you make that such a big part of your announcement during stage 4 lockdown instead of, say, that your Government’s failures in hotel quarantine?

Andrews; So, that’s the real question. I’m sorry, we were building up to that. I’ve acknowledged there have been mistakes made. I’ve set up an inquiry to give us the answers that we need. I – I think we’ve now got to the real question. And I think what I’ve done, what I’ve said all the way along is consistent…

Reporter; OK. I won’t ask about hotel quarantine…

Andrews; You can.

Reporter; Why did you blame Victorians on the day you were announcing stage 4 lockdown?

Andrews; I didn’t do any such thing

Reporter; You did use the words you were frustrated that such a large majority of people weren’t following the rules. I understand you don’t like the question but it is a valid point

Andrews; No, it is not a question of whether I like the question or not. That’s completely irrelevant, and not necessarily accurate.

Mr Andrews finished by saying; “I don’t accept the conclusion that you’re drawing about blame. I don’t accept any of those – they’re not – they’re not factual, in that they are your view.

“You’re entitled to your view, I don’t share that view. I try to be as frank and direct as I can.”

But admitting he screwed up will never be part of anything he ever says, as big a screw-up as he actually and undoubtedly is. Not to mention: Melbourne’s coronavirus testing centres idle as state records 240 cases, 13 deaths. This is how the article begins:

Thousands of Victorians have recovered from coronavirus, with the state’s active cases dropping by 2291.

There were 7155 active cases on Wednesday, but the number dropped to 4864 on Thursday.

Good news, no doubt, which only emphasises the incompetence in which CV-19 has been handled at pretty well every level. Surely someone was arguing for a more moderate approach, because if not, the whole lot of them should be replaced.

We are governed by political morons and hysterics

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We have seen for ourselves how fragile our freedoms are. The question is what should we do to build in restraints?

My own thoughts on this are that a lockdown of this kind should trigger an automatic election within three months, and if the lockdown continues, that elections should be held every twelve months after that until the lockdowns end.

In the meantime, we are being governed by hysterics and fools without even a hint of sense and judgment.

HCQ – an immorality tale

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A fascinating discussion of the politicisation of HCQ with this as part of a very long story told here: Hydroxychloroquine: A Morality Tale by Dr Norman Doige.

No one wants to enter cancel-culture territory but this brings him close. He nevertheless describes what happens after Trump stated that HCQ might be beneficial in treating Covid.

Trump’s political base cheered for HCQ and his opponents booed and accused him of practicing medicine without a license—and began dredging up any evidence, or “experts,” they could find, who might emphasize that HCQ was dangerous, or useless, or both, and thus they responded to his hyperbole with their own, and then some. As Risch observed in Newsweek, for many HCQ became “viewed as a marker of political identity, on both sides of the political spectrum.”

CNN began a nonstop campaign criticizing the safety of the drug, holding Trump responsible for three people who overdosed on it in Nigeria. Rivals went after Raoult, now tainted because Trump had mentioned his work. A New York Times profile depicted the scholar-physician as a Trump doppelganger, with his, “funny hair” and, being a man “who thinks almost everyone else is stupid,” who “is beloved by the angry and the conspiracy-minded.” Headlines such as, “Why does Trump call an 86-year-old unproven drug a game-changer against coronavirus?” were common. Stories began equating HCQ with Trump (“Trump’s drug”) and emphasized not only that it was dangerous, but that HCQ was old. And old was definitely not good. The implication was that far better than old was some new drug—that wasn’t yet invented, never mind tested—that might be in the utopian “pipeline” to the always better medical future.

What the media, and public health officials, did not report at the time was how poor people’s chances were should they go to hospital and need intensive care for the illness. Hospitals were finding that 80% of people put on mechanical ventilators died. All the commentators who railed that HCQ was “unproven” because there had been no randomized control trials (RCTs) didn’t mention that standard ventilation treatment for COVID-19, which had become treatment-as-usual overnight for severe cases, had no RCTs supporting it either. There was a double standard as far as HCQ was concerned.

Our poor protagonist, HCQ, could now go nowhere in a hyperpoliticized America without being hectored and called “Trump’s drug.” In the media, HCQ was now “touted,” “hyped,” and not “recommended” or “prescribed,” by the physicians who advocated for it. If someone took the do-it-yourself approach, as in the sad story of the Arizona man who, terrified out of his wits of the coronavirus, along with his wife, drank fish tank cleaner mixed with soda, because she had noticed it had among its ingredients, “chloroquine phosphate.” His death was blamed on “a chemical that has been hailed recently by President Trump …”

This was all happening at a moment when clinicians working 12- to 15-hour shifts, seven days a week with COVID patients, probably had more knowledge of the disease and its treatment than any studies could yet provide. During this first-wave HCQ-chastisement by the American media, a survey study of 6,200 frontline physicians in 30 countries showed that, worldwide, HCQ was chosen by the physicians, from among 15 options, as what they thought was the most effective treatment for patients (37% chose HCQ). The other drug the physicians thought highly of was azithromycin.

But in the United States, HCQ was embroiled in the Republican-Democratic rivalry. On March 12, Michigan State Representative Karen Whitsett, a Democrat representing the 9th Michigan House District in Detroit, went into quarantine for cornavirus symptoms, and by March 31 got her test results and was diagnosed with such a serious case of COVID-19 that she thought she was dying. She and her physician, Dr. Mohammed Arsiwala, sought permission to use HCQ but could not get it, because the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, under Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, had issued an order prohibiting the use of HCQ for COVID-19.

The politics of HCQ are a tale of such sordid malevolence (see Daniel Andrews for a local example). Read the article if you have the time. As I say, it’s long, but this is what you find at the end.

A public health establishment, showing extraordinary risk aversion to medications and treatments that are extremely well-known, and had been used by billions, suddenly throwing caution to the wind and endorsing the roll-out of treatments that are entirely novel—and about which we literally can’t possibly know anything, as regards to their long-term effects. Their manufacturers know this well themselves, which is why they have aimed for, insisted on, and have already been granted indemnification—guaranteed, by those same public health officials and government that they will not be held legally accountable should their product cause injury.

From unheard of extremes of caution and “unwishful thinking,” to unheard of extremes of risk-taking, and recklessly wishful thinking, this double standard, this about-face, is not happening because this issue of public safety is really so complex a problem that only our experts can understand it; it is happening because there is, right now, a much bigger problem: with our experts, and with the institutions that we had trusted to help solve our most pressing scientific and medical problems. Unless these are attended to, HCQ won’t be remembered simply as that major medical issue that no one could agree on, and which left overwhelming controversy, confusion, and possibly unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands in its wake; it will be one of many in a chain of such disasters.

You do know it’s almost entirely about Trump and about almost nothing else.

Gender differences in the concern about the Chinese flu

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It is something I have long-suspected, that the Covid hoax is aimed at women, and this is the first inkling I have had.

Majority of Republican Men Don’t Believe Coronavirus is a ‘Real Threat’ Despite 170,000 American Deaths.

And it’s not that Democrat men are more concerned about the virus but that they understand perfectly well that the massive over-reaction to CV-1984 is about the presidential election and not public health.

Melbourne no longer as liveable as it used to be

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UPDATE: More information from The Australian:

Victoria Police have arrested a young woman not wearing a mask who refused to reveal her name and address.

Video emerged on Monday of an altercation between the woman, 21, refusing to wear a mask and a Victoria Police protective service officer on Wellington Street in Collingwood at about 5pm on Monday.

A Victoria Police spokeswoman said the woman was not fined because she has a condition exempting her from wearing a face covering, which she did not say to the PSO.

The whole world is watching

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It is astonishing that Victoria, and Daniel Andrews specifically, is now internationally famous for the approach taken to deal with CV-19: Australian State Goes Full Coronafascist. When this is all finally over Victoria will be remembered as the international low point, not just for its incompetence but for the political viciousness that was applied. While Sweden may be remembered for its light-handed approach, Victoria will be remembered for its totalitarian methods, not to mention its failures at every turn. The writer of the article is English and his article is featured on a major American website. It was also sent to me by a Canadian friend so the word is getting out. This is how the article opens which goes downhill from there.

https://twitter.com/MaherRonan/status/1291028291063885827?

From this, we come to this comment:

No, this is not a scene from a prequel to Mad Max where Australia gets taken over by fascists. This is actually happening right now in the Australian state of Victoria, under the regime of power-crazed, hard left premier Daniel Andrews. (Or ‘Kim Jong Dan’, as he is known locally.

Victoria has adopted some of the strictest coronavirus rules anywhere in the world, including an 8 p.m. curfew and police roadblocks to discourage any citizens with pesky notions about personal freedom.

Police are even allowed into your home to carry out spot checks — without a warrant and without your permission.

I’ll end with this, but do go to the link to see it all:

Here — courtesy of Lockdown Sceptics — are the new rules imposed on Victoria’s state capitol of Melbourne, to be enforced for at least the next six weeks:

  • The “state of emergency” in Victoria has been upgraded to a “state of disaster”, meaning police can now enter your home to carry out spot checks even if you don’t give them permission and they don’t have a warrant.
  • Between the hours of 8 p.m. and 5 a.m., you’re not allowed to leave your homes except for work, medical care and caregiving.
  • Outside those hours, you may only leave your home for four reasons: shopping for food and essential items, care and caregiving, daily exercise and work. “We can no longer have people simply out and about for no good reason whatsoever,” said Kim Jong Dan.
  • Daily exercise can only take place within a 5km radius of your home and cannot last longer than an hour.
  • You cannot exercise in groups of more than two, even if they’re members of the same household.
  • Apart from daily exercise, you are only allowed to leave your home once a day for essential supplies and food.
  • In the whole of Victoria, you cannot buy more than two of certain essential items, including dairy, meat, vegetables, fish and toilet paper.
  • Schools have closed again, with all Victoria school students returning to remote learning from Wednesday (except for vulnerable children and children of permitted workers). Childcare and kindergarten will be closed from Thursday.
  • Golf and tennis venues, which were open, have now been closed.
  • Weddings will no longer be allowed from Thursday, and funerals will be limited to 10 people.
  • Face nappies anywhere outside your home have been mandatory for people in metropolitan Melbourne since July 22nd, but that rule has now been extended to the entire state of Victoria.
  • You cannot have visitors or go to another person’s house unless it is for the purpose of giving or receiving care. However, you can leave your house to visit a person if you are in an “intimate personal relationship” with them, even during curfew hours. So no “bonk ban”.
  • If you have a holiday home or were planning a holiday outside Melbourne, tough cheese. You must remain in the city for the next six weeks.
  • The maximum fine for breaching a health order currently stands at $1,652, but Kim Jong Dan said he would have more to say about penalties later today, i.e. he’s going to increase them.

We’re just used to it because we live in the middle of it all. The saddest part is that others can recognise Victoria and Dan Andrews for what they are, but we for the most part cannot.

The Melbourne Syndrome

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The Covid pandemic has brought on our modern version of The Stockholm Syndrome: “feelings of trust or affection felt in many cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim towards a captor.” We now have the Melbourne Syndrome, which I come across versions of every day:

Feelings of trust or affection felt during a lockdown by its victims towards their most authoritarian political leaders.

Since Melbourne has now implemented the hardest lockdown at the hands of the dumbest and most incompetent political leader in the world, I believe that Melbourne should have the honour of bearing the name of this widely observed form of insanity.

And just for contrast, let me note what is simultaneously going on in Stockholm: Destroying Western Media’s “Swedish Public Health Disaster” Narrative In Two Simple Charts

In the top chart, when we compare the mortality rates of covid19 in Sweden v. the US, including all data until the end of July, the US’s mortality rate of covid 19 in the age group of less than 39 years of age was 0.58%, more than 1,230 times greater than the 0.00047% mortality rate of Sweden. Furthermore, in the age demographics of 40-59 and 59-69, the death rate in the US from covid19 versus Sweden was respectively 215 times and 211 times greater than Sweden.

In the bottom chart, I compared Sweden’s mortality rate for different age demographics compared to the US mortality rate for the common flu. For the comprehensive age group of all ages less than 60 years of age, the Swedish mortality rate of covid19 is less than 1/3rd of the American mortality rate for the common flu. Clearly, as can be easily observed in the bottom chart, the overall covid19 mortality rate forSweden’s population was greatly skewed by nearly all covid19 deaths occurring in the above 70 year old demographic, with the majority of Sweden’s covid19 deaths occurring in those older than 80 and 90 years of age!

Go to the link and have a closer look. [THE LINK HAS BEEN FIXED.]

Only when it’s all over and years from now will we reach some kind of consensus on what ought to have been the right approach. As for the worst approach, we here in Melbourne have been able to observe it for ourselves. But the thanks Daniel Andrews and the rest of them are getting for this disgusting botch needs to be memorialised even as so many amongst us bless him for his efforts.

Was it worth it? How many lives did we save?

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Letters from friends.

Of the first one, I can see how that might be true if things are looked at from within the United States. Looking at things from within Victoria, it doesn’t stand up, mostly because I think Daniel Andrews is too stupid to get to that conclusion. And I mean really dumb, not just that he is a fool. There are plenty of fools everywhere. The universities are filled with people who are high-IQ morons. They can reason and read. They can research and write. They can do a crossword and a sudoku. That is the kind of conclusion one of them might reach. But not DA. He is a union thug who just likes to push people around. He never discusses. He never debates. He never explains. And I think it’s because he works on some low-grade principle of capitalists-bad, workers-good. Lockdowns simply reflect his nature and intellect. Force is something he understands.

I will, however, say now that he has postponed the results of his Inquiry to November 6, I am beginning to see some reason to believe what you see below may be true, since the results of the Inquiry will be released following the end of the election in the United States. After that, according to this note, what happens to the Corona Virus will no longer matter. Almost certainly just a coincidence.

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Speaking for myself, from very early on I have entirely thought of the Covid-19 “pandemic” as a hoax that has been seized upon by the left in the United States as a means to engineer the Democrats to a win in the election in November. The origins were in China and occurred either by chance or design, but once it had occurred, the dangers were seized on and amplified by the left to create the panic we now see. Everything else the left has tried had come up a bust, the American economy has performed better than possibly at any time in anyone’s memory, the Deep State and its media cohort have been exposed, and at long last there has been some kind of border protection put in place. Trump was in an unloseable position whereas now it is no better than 50-50.

As for conspiracy theories, that is all there are in politics. Every political strategy requires all kinds of people to do their part with no scripting or instructions required. Every so often there are lone players, such as Lee Harvey Oswald. The rest of the time, however, there is a general theme that is played out where everyone on both sides understand the agenda, with those promoting the agenda all making up their own means of contributing towards its fulfilment, and those on the other side doing what they can to push back. So the theme on the left was – We must do everything we can to limit the spread of death and destruction from this deadly virus. For Trump, there was no serious choice but to take this hysteria seriously, and whatever he may have personally believed, to do all he could to limit the spread of the virus. So he stopped the borders, supported lockdowns and put Dr Fauci out in front to call the shots. The rest of the world, either because they too had no choice but to play along, which in all cases required them to do something, or because they were on the left and understood the game in play, amplified the horrors by working out their own response to highlight how bad things were and how Donald Trump had screwed up the response. Meanwhile in Democrat states, everything was done to make the pandemic appear as dangerous as possible. The actions taken in New York by Andrew Cuomo were not errors of judgement but undertaken to raise as much concern as possible.

In Australia, for whatever reason, nothing happened. No major pandemic, no deaths beyond the normal seasonal total for the flu, and no real contribution to add to the hysteria other than to suggest there was no need for it.

Which brings me to Daniel Andrews who has not for nothing been called the Andrew Cuomo of Australia. It’s not as if he blundered. Everything he has done has been deliberately aimed at creating as much media-driven alarm as possible in the midst of absolutely nothing statistically of significance. But the media are also playing along to the fullest extent they can as one would expect so you would think we were back to the Spanish flu once again.

I cannot therefore promise you that you will survive the Covid panic without some kind of damage to yourselves or families, but that is far far more likely than that you or anyone you know should come to any serious harm. The harm you should worry about, and this is much more serious than anything else that might happen, is that Joe Biden should become President. That you have had the possibility you might die within the next twelve months raised by 0.005% is hardly worthy of a moment’s thought.

And this is the second letter. This is about the cost and benefits of the efforts made to contain the CV-19. Was it worth it? he asks. How will we even be able to tell and by what date can we know? Lives interrupted everywhere.

Most of the decline in output from COVID is from shutting down the economy, not from the disease itself. What would have been the economic impact of C0VID if governments had not shut down our economies? Well, we have to make some simplifying assumptions – lets try …

  • With no government shutdowns, half the population gets covid over a period of about a year, half of those are asymptomatic. I’ve seen the asymptomatic ratio ranging from 40% to 80%.
  • Of the symptomatic quarter of the population, assume mortality is 5% (Worldometer.info estimates New York State mortality rate from verified and estimated infection is only about 1.4%. It was higher in Europe).
  • Of those deaths, most occur in the elderly cohorts. So labour force mortality (18-65 years) is less, lets say 2.5% (18-65 years). (New York State estimate would make labour force mortality under 2%). Impact on labour input is 50% infection rate x 2.5%mortality = 1.3%.
  • The symptomatic but recovered portion of the labour force, is off work for a month on average, worth 1/12 x 50% infection rate x 50% symptomatic ratio = 2.1%  of labour input.
  • So total reduction in labour input is only about 2.1 +1.3 = 3.4% for a year (assuming full employment).
  • There would be some substitution of capital for labour – about 0.5 elasticity in the long run (Knoblach et al, Oxford 2019) and less but still positive in the short run. Also some overtime and informal work accommodation.
  • On a micro/sectorial level, high mortality among the elderly would generate actuarial gains for defined benefit pension funds and actuarial losses for life insurance companies. For health plans there would be short-term losses and long term gains. Hard to say what the overall impact would be. There would be stress (even higher output) on health systems.
  • Another imponderable would be the impact on risk premia and liquidity in financial markets if there was a pandemic panic.

Bottom line: its hard to see an impact on global GDP of more than about -3% from the disease itself (-3.4% labour input with some capital and technology offsets). The forecast decline in world GDP of –5.2% this year (World Bank) means a total gap of about 8.5% (+3.3% potential growth less WB’s –5.2% forecast 2020). The global GDP decline is mostly the result of shutting down much of the global economy. Was it worth it? How many lives did we save?

The political consequences of CV-1984

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From These Two Charts Should Land Dr. Fauci in Prison. And if that doesn’t, this definitely should if it’s even remotely true: In New Interview Bobby Kennedy Jr. Claims Dr. Fauci will Make Millions on Coronavirus Vaccine and Owns Half the Patent. Not to mention this as well: CDC director acknowledges hospitals have a monetary incentive to overcount coronavirus deaths.

But it is this bit of common sense that really does get to me: from Rush Limbaugh.

I’ll tell you there’s something else. There is something else about this, folks. The people who are telling you what you have to do to shut down your business, to not send your kid back to school, to not go back to work, these are people that have not lost a paycheck during this crisis. Have you noticed? There’s not a single [Victorian] worker that’s been fired. Not a single one. This is crucially important. The people that have not lost a paycheck are the ones telling you that you need to give up your livelihood, shut down your business, don’t go back to your job.

This used to be an issue when this began, but has for some reason gone away. This is the socialist ideal; income security exists only in the public sector. But after a while, and it does take a while, the money you get will buy you only a fraction of what it used to buy as the economy caves inwards. And at the same time your personal freedom and independence disappears in ways you never dreamed might happen. This is from The Wall Street Journal which is as mainstream as it is possible to be: The Pandemic Is a Dress Rehearsal. This is what you can see before the story cuts out:

Eight months after the novel coronavirus burst out of Wuhan, China, it has created unprecedented economic and social disruption, with economies cratering across the globe and more destruction to come. Tens of millions have lost their jobs, and millions more have seen their life savings disappear as governments forced restaurants, bars and other small businesses to shut their doors.

Wealthy societies are able, for now, to print and pump money in hope of limiting the social and economic damage, but such measures cannot be extended…

And then, eventually, what happens after that?