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Samizdata quote of the day See how strong governmentalist ideology is in both the principal covid narratives:
(a) the surge is because of the failure of the public to obey; and
(b) the surge is because of the failure of govt to act.
That some things may be beyond state control is not considered.
– Guy Herbert
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Well, if they ever admit that some things are outside of government control, people might start to wonder if other things are, too.
Well journalists exist to proselyte the Political Religion to the masses. The Totalitarian belief that Politics can fix everything. You can see WW2 as a religious war, the religion being the mystical belief in Politics.
A journalist is a priest, the media as the church since they are who makes the morals of today. CNN is one Church, The Times is another church, BBC is another church. When you go to see the news you are going to the church, the mass.
All of them exist to serve Political Mysticism.
When economy goes up is never the hard work of people, or some cycle, it is always some Prime Minister or President. People are already brainwashed to think this. Who made the brainwash: the journalist.
Sweden is not considered either. No attempt at State control, reliance on individual responsibility produced an outcome no worse in terms of mortality, but significantly better, in Human, social and economic terms.
What has happened to ‘lessons will be learned’?
Yep, (c) …
The surge is a result of the utter ineptitude, incompetence and ovine stupidity of government actions.
… is my favorite.
IT Is an attack by ccp to destroy the western world economically and it is working!!!!
APL.
Point ‘c’ seems plausible in so far as there is nothing that government action cannot make worse.
Alas, casting light at the incompetence of government (when assessed on the govt’s own terms) seems to do nothing to break the cargo cult of rampant statism.
Now, I suppose I had better do my patriotic duty and die without bothering the wonderful ‘health'(?) system that might be supposed to assist in keeping me alive – after all, it seems more likely to kill me than anything else I know. Bangs pot on head repeatedly.
The point of the piece is of course, the latent wisdom as Burke might have put it, found in the tale of King Canute, (a tale often turned against him personally as if he didn’t know what he was doing) in his getting his advisers down by the sea (or the Thames) and bidding the tide to stop, ending up with him and his courtiers getting wet feet. Here is a piece noting this point from Jeffrey Tucker and the American Institute for Economic Research, PBUT, which I have just found looking for an illustration of my point about Canute.
Of course, what is also not said, but implicit, is that with central planning, we can plan our way out of disease. Funny how, in the good old days, Finland kept getting rabies from reservoirs in the USSR.
Saying something is beyond government control is heresy.
I was going to say “they might as well try to control the weather”, but then I remembered that they actually do think they can control the weather – that’s what all those windmills are for – so the analogy loses its force and I won’t bother saying it.
Indeed, Politics is the only religion that claims to be able to control Climate.
Every idea has its day. This one is about 9 months overdue.
Had this petition been just a little more successful than it was in 2012 (and, no, it wasn’t mine) HM Secretary of State for Health would have had to require his learned advisors to fill in the gaps to: “Lockdown will have been a failure if….”
Sir Humphrey didn’t stand for Failure Criteria back in the day, and I doubt Failure Criteria will form part of any New Governmental Normal any time soon.
The surge is because, like other coronaviruses and most respiratory viruses, Covid19 is seasonal.
I was listening on the radio to an expert of some description, possibly from SAGE or a university professor with a relevant expertise of one kind or another, talking as if lockdowns were a carefully calibrated means of controlling the spread of the virus. On the surface he sounded confident, solid and sensible but what he was saying was actually delusional to the point of insanity.
Yes John B – we now know that whilst Swedish deaths are higher in 2020 than they were in 2019 they are not higher than other recent years – in short the idea that not locking down would lead to the “Spanish Flu” level of deaths was false. Indeed the death rate in lockdown Britain is higher (not lower) than ANY of the nations that did not lock down.
Not just the raw number of deaths from Covid 19 in the United Kingdom (according to the government over 86 thousand people) – but the death RATE, i.e. in relation to the size of the population.
Anyone who still defends the policy of lockdowns and restrictions followed in the United Kingdom from March 2019 onwards is, therefore, ignoring “the science”.
Early Treatment for Covid 19 is also still being smeared and suppressed in most Western countries. It has been known since March 2019 that Early Treatment with well known and established medications can save many lives – but Early Treatment has been systematically smeared and suppressed, not just in the United Kingdom, but in many countries.
When “Nullius” was here he trotted out the line that Early Treatment did not work – and when study after study showed that Early Treatment did work (reducing hospitalisation rates by 80%) he never apologised.
I do not expect Western governments to apologise either – certainly not the British government (who gave an Earldom to Charles Trevelyan for being a total failure in Irish famine relief in the 1840s and gave another Earldom to Douglas Haig for using battle tactics in the First World War that had failed at the Battle of New Orleans a century before). And even President Trump can not escape some blame for this – YES he did mention Early Treatment several times (and was quick to get it himself when he got Covid 19), but the man directly put in charge of the Covid Taskforce (and directly put in charge of the effort by order of President Trump himself) was Vice President Michael “Mike” Pence – a man who is an establishmentarian to his fingertips, Vice President Pence just went along with the establishment line whilst Americans died in vast numbers.
It is no good to say “well I said …..” if the person you yourself put in charge of the challenge is a waste-of-space.
If Vice President Pence was hear he would say “I followed the science” – thus showing he did not understand what the word “science” means. Science is about free enquiry and open debate – if you just follow the line officials tell you to follow, you are NOT engaging in science. It is your duty, even as a layman, to seek out DISSENTING OPINIONS from medical doctors and academic scientists (of which there were and are many) – especially if it is clear a policy is failing. If a doctor tells you “your child is dying – nothing can be done” you go-to-another-doctor. What have you got to lose by doing that? How do you know the first doctor was correct if you never seek a second opinion?
Some politicians did that – for example Senator Johnson from Wisconsin, but they were not in charge. The American bureaucracy, like the British bureaucracy, strangled dissent.
Even if the bureaucracy had some personal grudge against the makers of hydroxychloroquine, zinc sulphate and azithromycin (or doxycycline), or any of the other medications that have been argued for – what about Vitamin D?
There has been endless Western government “lockdown” and “social distancing” and mask wearing propaganda – but very little government advertising urging people to increase Vitamin D levels.
It now turns out that Doctor Fauci, the head of the medical bureaucracy in the United States, was taking very high dozes of Vitamin D every day – to help ward off the disease.
Yet when interviewed he just trotted out the tap dance of lockdowns, masks and social distancing – things that, as soon as the cameras were off, he ignored himself.
Dr Fauci “New York has done everything right” – and these words are in context (I am not trying to distort what he said). This is talking about the place which has perhaps the highest death rate on the planet – some 40 thousand people have died in New York State from this disease (the population of the State is barely 19 million people – and that was before many people fled).
“done everything right” – that can only be true if the objective was to maximise (maximise – not minimise) the number of deaths. And Governor Cuomo did indeed ORDER nursing homes to accept infected people – then he locked them down knowing the disease would spread and kill vast numbers of elderly and sick people.
No one will be punished for this – and the people who ordered it will be fine. They took large amounts of Vitamin D every day (not telling anyone else to do so – why not?) and if they themselves got sick they went straight to the well established medicines that they discouraged with regulations (and smeared) for the general population.
Like the massive Election Fraud in November, the efforts to increase Covid deaths will never be punished – indeed people such as Governor Cuomo are praised to the skies (including by Dr Fauci).
We live in the world were evil is rewarded – it is that brutally simple.
an expert of some description
What one should remember is that for these (mostly) academics this is their 15 minutes in the sun. Sadly they generally lack common sense and, in an effort to stay in the sun, stray way out of their sphere of expertise.
Here is an unusually sensible blog post, linking to an eminently sensible peer-reviewed paper.
The basic message is Paretian: some mild measures achieve most, if not all, the mitigation that can be achieved. Harsh measures achieve little mitigation, if any, and are not worth the expense (not even the strictly financial expense).
Please don’t tell me that governments cannot be trusted to get the message, because the government over here did, as far back as March 2020.
If governments had wanted to reduce deaths they would have ……
Urged people to take Vitamin D3 each day – and, if people got sick, there would have be urgent (EARLY) treatment with hydroxychloroquine, zinc and azithromycin or doxycycline – yes THERE ARE other treatments, but this treatment has been known since March 2020 and will reduce hospitalisations by at least 80%
Did governments do that? Not in most Western countries they did NOT.
Are they doing it now? Again mostly NO.
So whatever the objective of policy was – the objective was NOT “reducing deaths”.
That is not what the lockdowns (and so on) in various countries have been about.
Ignorance may have been the cause of policy blunders in March – but it is now almost a year later, and the same crushing of society is continuning.
Make no mistake……
This “New Normal” (Build Back Better, Corporate State, Stakeholder Capitalism, Sustainable Development) of domination of every aspect of society by a vast governments and a few vast corporations will-not-work.
This Klaus Schwab world of Puppet Biden and co will lead to economic breakdown and terrible suffering.
Of Western leaders…..
The only one (with the exception of President Trump – who is gone on Wednesday, say goodbye to the United States IT IS FINISHED) who has said, at least said in English, that he is against the Great Reset is the Prime Minister of Australia.
And how can a nation of only about 25 million people defend itself in a world dominated by evil?