Chronic Stress, Anxiety, and Depression
many of the casualties from the coronavirus will be from preventable chronic stress
the torment of chronic stress can kill you
It’s very difficult for me to write this. I’m confused, fatigued, and fearful. Who would know that 475 days of enforced isolation could do this to an otherwise healthy person?
For more than a year I’ve been prevented from seeing my friends, going anywhere, or enjoying myself in a normal human manner. For more than a year I’ve angry, anxious, and distressed, and for most of the time I wouldn’t admit that to myself or to another person.
Although I knew I wasn’t ‘right’ nor ‘healthy’, I didn’t know just how bad it was until I booked a (perfectly permissible), short break in the Mediterranean sunshine of Gibraltar. Just booking the trip filled me with apprehension, but then it got worse. I had a severe panic attack; insomnia, nausea, confusion, sweating, headaches, and memory loss.
All of those and more physical symptoms can be attributed to chronic low-level stress and anxiety. What I had done in merely booking a short trip to get me out of this place was to allow my mind to write a cheque my body wouldn’t cash.
I need help to recover, and I know that with some support I can get over this whole coronavirus insanity.
Of course, if I tell our National Health Service any of this I will be instructed to go into strict self-isolation for 10 days.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
it’s Catch-22
you are damned in you do
and damned if you don’t
Covid Travel Uncertainties
a litany of mistakes, fudges, and cock-ups
Ford Edsel, not a big hit either
The British Government has just announced a new list of places they will kindly allow us mere mortals to travel to on vacation. It’s called the Green List and consists of; Anguila, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Balearic Islands, Barbados, Bermuda, British Antarctic Territory, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Cayman Is, Dominica, Falkland Is, Faroe Is, Gibraltar, Grenada, Iceland, Israel, Maderia, Malta, Monserrat, New Zealand, Pitcairn Is, South Georgia, Saint Helena, Turks and Caicos Is.
And thank you very much for bugger all. Neither Australia nor New Zealand will admit tourists, half of the list are remote islands in the middle of empty oceans, (Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena) ~ getting flights to these places is difficult verging on impossible, and most of the rest have stringent entry requirements. Maybe I could go to Gibraltar, or perhaps Madeira. BTW, it’s not a good idea to travel to the Caribbean in June, July, August, or September.
This list is about as well thought out as was the Ford Edsel and pleases nobody at all, except maybe Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, and several times disgraced adulterer Grant Schapps, (Minister for Transport). Travellers are warned that the Green List is subject to change with no notice whatsoever, meaning that wherever you are you may need to get back to the UK pretty damn quickly. What Fun.
Maybe the country is in such a complete mess because government ministers, bureaucrats, and health officials are too busy boffing their assistants, aides, and mistresses to do their job properly. The latest culprit is the ‘fucking useless’ Health Minister Matt Hancock, (married with 3 children), who is having an affair with his ‘advisor’ Gina Coladangelo, (also married with 3 children). Who can blame him when his Prime Minister Boris Johnson is himself a serial adulterer.
I have it on very good authority, from a very close friend, that no sane woman would find either man remotely attractive. Personally, I wouldn’t trust either of them to flip burgers at a truck stop on the I-15.
You couldn’t make it up.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Matt & Gina
not an elegant couple
Prisoner of Covid
the summer solstice
day 455 of coronavirus house arrest
Today, June 21st 2021, was supposed to be the end of lockdown, the day on which all Covid-19 restrictions were to have been removed and we English would be free to live normal lives again. Instead, our imprisonment stretches into the future, with a new release date set for the 19th of July, perhaps, maybe, if you can believe Prime Minister Boris Johnson, which I don’t because he’s a proven philandering, lying, cheat.
Why is lockdown set to go on and on and on when it’s all a gross perversion of the natural duties of doctors, politicians, and government officials? The whole sorry saga provides a chilling example of how a taste of almost unlimited power and prestige, wielded through secret committees, can distort the judgement of supposedly moral and intelligent people.
Those now in power justify their needlessly cruel rules, regulations and laws as necessary to help mankind at large, and specifically to protect our National Health Service. In reality they are feeding their own egos and pockets at the expense of the people.
There is no one with sufficient courage and morals to let go of the power they have stolen over us ~ besides they like it too much. They have all sat there too long for any good they have been doing. They will not likely be forgiven, if ever. The people are angry.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
another angry day in the dungeon of my own home
Freedom
’emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which individual liberty has been eroded
the only casual sex allowed is phone sex
Here in England it’s Day 380 of the national coronavirus lockdown, and now that there may be some signs that some of the restrictions may be lifted in the foreseeable future, it is worth remembering just what has been taken away from us.
Just to focus on three of our inalienable rights;
- Freedom of Association. All through this lockdown we have been prohibited from meeting our friends and families. Two women sharing walk and a cup of coffee were arrested for ‘breaking the spirit of lockdown’. A lady was arrested just for being outside the care home of her elderly father. And while the Black Lives Matter ‘protests’ were allowed to go ahead, every other public gathering of more than six people was treated as a riot by our increasingly heavy handed police. Schools, Universities, and Churches have been closed, as have all other possible meeting places. Extramarital sex is out of the question unless you are part of the ‘governing elite.’
- Freedom of Movement. We have been told not to to go anywhere unless it was absolutely essential, not to leave home, not to travel more than a dozen miles from home, not to go to work unless you couldn’t possibly work from home….., and our increasingly Gestapo-like police force have happily arrested anyone seemingly breaking the rules. Airlines have been grounded, Wales and Scotland closed their borders, and do not even think about attempting to travel to the USA.
- Freedom of Trade. Apart from some ‘essential’ food stores and pharmacies, everything has been shut. Factories have been lying idle because nobody could buy anything they made. Agriculture has been badly hit because farm workers were told to stay at home, or in the case of ‘foreign casual labourers’ weren’t even allowed into the UK. And, of course, any business where people could gather together has been closed for the duration. Forget getting a pint with your mates down the pub.
Some say that losing our freedom was a necessary part of staying safe and protecting the Health Service. And that those who complained should be gagged. (Well, there goes Freedom of Speech.) All I know is that we have all lost more than just our basic liberties to combat a mild ‘flu epidemic.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
all doors have been firmly closed
by order of some power-mad unelected officials
Lockdown Day 365
23 March 2021 ~ my birthday ~ one year of lockdown
trust me; howling at the moon doesn’t help
The British Government’s draconian response to the coronavirus crisis starts its second year today. We begin another year of lockdown. None of the numbers surrounding COVID-19 are either real and nor do they make any sense. In particular the alleged 126 thousand people who are said to have died of this virus in the United Kingdom in the last year is a completely false statistic.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. ~ Mark Twain
Here, as in most countries, anyone who has tested positive for the coronavirus in the 28 days before their death is deemed to have died from COVID-19, no matter the true and real cause of death. Even using the false statistics fewer than 2 in 1,000 who have caught the disease have died from it, (0.2%), and of those who have allegedly died from coronavirus, the vast majority have been over 82 years old, (which is older than the median age of death here).
A real statistic is that because of the coronavirus lockdown the UK is broke, and getting deeper into penury with every day that passes. The cost to the UK economy of this lockdown is said to be £521 million a day, ($730 million), although our government is actually borrowing a billion pounds a day, every single damn day.
And the lockdown just gets more and more severe. From next Monday, March 29th, taking a foreign holiday is illegal ~ in fact I would be fined £5,000 for just turning up at an airport. It’s like living in East Germany under the yoke of communism.
All I can do is wish myself a happy birthday ~ hoping and praying that things get better for us all very soon.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
after we’ve been vaccinated
why do we still have to wear a mask?
Lockdown Day 300
the end of civilisation as we know it?
Here in England it’s the 300th day of lockdown, quarantine, and self-isolation. The economy has tanked, officially there are 1.9 million unemployed, and about 5.5 million are on unproductive furlough. About half the UK workforce, some 14 million people, are ‘working from home’. You can’t get a non-coronavirus doctor’s appointment for love nor money, some 4.6 million people are waiting for ‘non-emergency’ surgical procedures, 600,000 cervical smears have been cancelled, and our National Health Service is said to be close to meltdown.
I have no faith in any of these numbers, just as I have no faith in the ability of the British Government to act sensibly in the face of the ‘COVID-19 pandemic’.
If you’re interested, I’ve been feeling like crap for weeks.
Mind how you go.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk,net
immunisation, the great hope for freedom?
It’s a Mad, Mad World
it’s a crazy world out there ~ be a rational anarchist
how long before we see these scenes again?
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse along comes the penultimate act of the presidential election in the United States. Depending on who you want to believe the ‘occupation of the capitol’ was either a peaceful protest gone wrong, or a violent insurrection presaging another American Civil War. Patriots or Anarchists?
The best thing I’ve heard is that President Trump has been banned from twitter. The truth of it is that nobody with even half a brain should ever use twitter in any way, shape, or form. Twitter is merely the modern equivalent of the washroom wall.
Here in Blighty our parliament has approved the latest tranche in our never-ending lockdown ~ to last until the end of March. Today, England is now in lockdown day 290.
The compulsory wearing of face masks, lockdowns, and now mass vaccinations ~ any student of history who has even so much as glanced at the literature on the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 knows that nothing governments and the medical professions do is going to make much difference to the numbers infected, and the people who sadly get very sick and die. However, here in England the over-zealous police are gleefully throwing their not inconsiderable weight around as though they alone know how to control the coronavirus. Woe betide you if you leave home without a very good reason, or you get caught without a face-nappy, try to drive to McDonald’s, or have a visitor in your home.
It’s always the way that if you grant someone in uniform a little authority they will tend to abuse it. Give someone in uniform an inch and they will try to recreate George Orwell’s 1984.
The insane saga surrounding the mass vaccination programme here goes grimly on. It seems that each consignment of vaccination doses has to be approved by some bureaucratic nonsense called the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency, and that approval process takes three bloody weeks per batch. Those first in line for the jab are the over 70s, but there are only 7 mass vaccination centres around England. How many over 70s do you know who still drive? Madness.
Some say that Boris Johnson is doing a marvelous Job. And that our Health Service is the best in the world. All I know is that I’ve stopped believing most of what I see and hear in the news.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Marmaduke doesn’t want to get arrested
No End In Sight
England will be closed down for months to come
some would say that’s being flown the wrong way up
Despite flashes of official optimism following the first vaccinations against the coronavirus, it would seem that there is no end in sight to the manifold miseries of lockdown, self-isolation, and national shutdown. Scotland faces a national shutdown from midnight tonight, and there is no doubt that Prime Minister Boris Johnson will very soon follow suit for England. He is making a televised statement at 8 p.m. this evening, and Parliament is being recalled on Wednesday this week, presumably to ratify whatever draconian new measures are announced.
Even harsher coronavirus measures than before will mean that UK borders will be closed, international travel stopped, all stores except food stores and pharmacies will be shut, all schools closed, any and all household mixing will be banned, and people will only be allowed to leave their homes for one of a specified list of essential reasons, such as food shopping.
Despite these draconian emergency measures the numbers infected with COVID-19 will keep on rising, and more and more people will die. There is nothing politicians, health officials, or medical science can do about it. The coronavirus will mutate faster than vaccines can be developed to prevent each new strain. Once a virus is loose in the general population there is no way short of Divine Intervention of controlling it. And, who’s to say that God didn’t inflict this on the world?
The virus will eventually burn itself out, as all pandemics do. But, this could take months or even years. Until then we will all just have to suffer.
Good luck to us all.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
best to bar your door and fort-up ’til spring
Random Jottings ~ Covid Christmas
in England it’s always winter now, but never Christmas
~
Christmas is a special day of meaning and traditions
spent in the warm circle of family and friends
unless you’re a Londoner in lockdown
~
and, one by one, all our freedoms were taken away
~
whatever draconian laws governments pass
the virus will always have the last word
~
The singing of Christmas carols is verboten
and all the churches are closed
~
have yourself a merry little Christmas
and I do mean little
~
silent nights have come to stay
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
and on Christmas Eve, the clock struck thirteen
Christmas is Cancelled
no Christmas please, we’re British
Here in England the government has become infested with a militant scrooge mentality, with a lot of the grinch thrown in. Eighteen million people in London and the South East are now forbidden to see anyone outside of their own households ~ no family Christmas for them.
In London and the South East of England; travel is not allowed, pubs, bars, restaurants, shops, and churches are closed, Christmas fun is forbidden.
Obviously face masks and all the previous lockdowns haven’t worked.
Look forward to a very Merry Christmas Everyone.
Unless you’re English ~ ashes are our lot.
It’ll be lonely this Christmas.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Christmas? Bah Humbug
JackCollier7 
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