“Never forget that making Britain into a broke, repressive dystopia was a deliberate choice”, writes Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph.
The article starts by repeating a familiar refrain about the unprecedented loss of civil liberties during the pandemic.
As we approach the fifth anniversary, we don’t like to admit that we destroyed our economy, took away part of our kids’ childhoods, permanently aggrandised the state and indebted ourselves for a generation – all for nothing.
All true, but the real meat is here:
Five years ago this Tuesday, Jenny Harries, then the deputy chief medical officer, gave an illuminating, though now neglected, interview. It was not neglected at the time. On the contrary, it took place in No 10, and the interviewer was the prime minister himself, Boris Johnson.
Dr Harries – who has since become Dame Jenny, and been put in charge of the UK Health Security Agency – was impressively level-headed. She explained that, “for most people, it really is going to be quite a mild disease”.
She advised against wearing facemasks unless told otherwise by your doctor. She explained why Britain, unlike many countries in Europe, was not banning large meetings or sporting events. There was, she reminded us, a plan in place, and it provided for the gradual spread of the disease through the population in a way that would not overwhelm hospitals. Try to suppress the spread too vigorously, she said, and there would be a peak later on (which, indeed, is exactly what happened).
Dr Harries was absolutely right, but she was only repeating the global consensus. A little earlier, the WHO had looked at lockdowns and concluded that they were “not demonstrably effective in urban areas”. Its researchers had carried out a study of 120 US military camps during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, and found “no statistical difference” between the 99 camps that had confined men to quarters and the 21 that had not.
As recently as 2019, the WHO had declared that lockdowns as a response to respiratory diseases were “not recommended because there is no obvious rationale for this measure, and there would be considerable difficulties in implementing it”.
Dr Harries knew all this. And so did Boris, who spoke what was, in retrospect, the most telling line of the entire interview: “Politicians and governments around the world are under a lot of pressure to be seen to act, so they may do things that are not necessarily dictated by the science,” he said.
If was capable of having that thought, he was capable of acting on it, or rather of continuing to act on it. He was not, as I once thought, a man in a panic who, pathetically but understandably, followed the the united voice of “the experts” because he could not imagine doing anything else. As a successful politician he knew the political nature of the pressure he was under and chose to give into it. He switched which expert to follow – switched from the expert who was right to the “expert” who was wrong – on political grounds. Oh, no doubt his decision was influenced by which expert shouted the loudest (it was not Jenny Harries) and said the scariest things, but a refusal to be moved from a rationally-decided course by emotional displays is the very definition of a leader. I wonder, does he ever think now about how near he came to being the second Churchill he dreamed of being? All he had to do was stay firm.
Dr Harries responded that she was proud that Britain’s response had remained scientific.
Five days later, Boris took to the airwaves to tell people “to stop non-essential contact and travel”. A week after that, we were in lockdown (a term borrowed from prison, which I held out against using for as long as I could). What changed? Well, on March 16, Neil Ferguson and the team at Imperial College published an apocalyptic report based on modelling that estimated that if no measures were put in place deaths over the following two years could reach more than half a million.
And it was popular. Very popular.
Although we sometimes now imagine that Boris wrenched our freedoms from our unwilling hands, it was the other way around. We have forgotten the “Go Home Covidiots” banners, the terrified phone-ins, the YouGov poll showing that 93 per cent of voters wanted a lockdown.
Persuading people that they have been badly treated is easy. Persuading them that they themselves have behaved badly and stupidly is not easy at all. How do we do it? A cynic would say there is no need to try. Just publicly blame everything on “the politicians” (in this case Boris Johnson, who certainly deserves plenty of blame but not all of it) in the same way that the Greens publicly blame all the environmental damage they believe comes from humanity’s reliance on oil on “the oil companies” rather than the people who use the oil, namely all of us. But I do not believe that any strategy of persuasion that relies on a conscious lie can succeed in the long run.
This is a wonderful illustration of the ineptness of the ruling elites and the sheep like behaviour of the masses world wide. The internet has enabled those few, who saw or came to see the reality of the situation, the opportunity to convince a growing number of people of the propensity of elites and masses to descend into irrationality. Perhaps, in the future, this lesson will prevent a repetition of such stupidity.
I can’t say for certain, but I doubt that was the only “expert evidence” he received. Any PM or minister would be remiss if they asked a single person.
The fact that countries like Belarus and Nicaragua seemed to have the least mad policies towards COVID (speaking at national level, aware some US states didn’t go overboard) kind of reflects how fucking insane the world went.
Lockdown was quickly accepted (hence the 93% approval which no politician could resist, let alone a narcissistic man of straw – but I repeat myself) by the masses before relenting of it at their leisure. It went on anyway.
The public approval of net zero and mass immigration is only a small fraction of that figure yet governments of both alleged political hues have plowed on regardless with these far more ruinous policies.
The majority surely don’t believe the conscious lies they are being told but it doesn’t matter. The initial support for lockdown certainly helped, driven by a mixture of genuine and stoked-up fear of the unknown, free money and a flattering sense of “doing the right thing” but it would have gone ahead regardless.
Because of previous pandemics or possible pandemics consideration was given to what course of action should be taken. Basically, very little.
When covid struck the politicians panicked.
“Something must be done” and this was something.
Doing nothing may not have led to more deaths but the politicians would have been blamed for the deaths that did occur.
Versus
The second quote from Natalie is far closer to the truth.
Ineptitude was not a key driver behind the actions of politicians during COVID. Malicious cowardice is a more accurate descriptor of the main driver behind the actions of politicians during COVID. The people who stood up against the mass delusion were not particularly not inept, for the most part we were brave and we genuinely cared about the wellbeing of our fellow man.
I think there is a missing piece here. Lockdowns were only possible because technology — the pervasiveness of high speed internet and zoom — made it possible. If people went home and just simply stopped getting paid for the work they were not doing it would have been a whole different story.
Covid was not the first modern pandemic. It was just the first one to occur after ubiquitous Zoom.
Absolutely nailed it with that comment.
This lockdown was overwhelmingly supported by the white collar, “laptop class”. I tend to be wary of class analysis but I think it applies a lot here.
Builders, lorry drivers, farmers, cargo ship crews and supermarket staff didn’t have the same experience as the “laptop class”.
Isn’t that the truth!
And I note the frenzy of fibre broadband installation in the preceding years, all suggesting to those that join the dots that the whole thing was waiting to be put in place.
No one else seems to have asked how the long and complicated Coronavirus Act 2020 was drafted in such quick time if it hadn’t been waiting for a ‘Change all’ for ‘Scary disease’ to ‘Coronavirus’ and presto.
At least 400 Billion Pounds, “not much if you say it quick”, were spent on insane policies – such as the lockdowns. This (not “Liz Truss”) “crashed the economy”.
Meanwhile Early Treatments were neglected indeed smeared – people who could have been saved by Early Treatment were not saved, they DIED.
Lastly came the injections – with the death and injury they caused.
No one will be punished for any of the above.
“How do we get back from this?”
Read my previous comment – in a political culture where no one is held responsible for blunders (if they were blunders – and not deliberately seeking to do harm) on this scale, indeed when there is no admission that Early Treatments (that could have saved so many lives) were unjustly smeared, that the “lockdowns” were medically useless (and did massive societal harm), and the injections did NOT “save millions of lives” (as the computer models say – because that is what they are programmed to say), but, in fact, did terrible harm…..
There is no “back from this” – we can not get “back from this” whilst the political culture, the culture of governance, remains as it is.
If officials, “experts” and others do not have to admit terrible blunders – if they can pretend that their terrible blunders were good decisions, for which the deserve their Knighthoods and so on, then there is no “back from this”.
I wonder if in the small hours Boris ever ponders upon the fact that if he had stayed the course like Sweden did (assuming of course Gove the snake and others would let him), and also not made the mistake of opening our borders to the ‘legal but shit’ immigration (realistically the small boats crisis is more than one man can solve given that you’d be fighting the entire left wing legal establishment), not only might he still be Prime Minister, but he might be though of as a fairly good one.
So true, Jon. He actually started out right on COVID (“We’ll have to take it on the chin”) but he soon folded like a cheap suit. Such a disappointment.
For Libertarians lockdown was a dystopian nightmare of rampant State authoritarianism.
For everyone else, lockdown was a period when the middle classes got to stay home while the working classes brought them things.
Jon and Perry – yes indeed, yes indeed.
And the general insanity continues.
For example, the county “Fire and Rescue Service” (what used to be called the Fire Brigade) has announced its priority – not putting out fires, not rescuing people from fires (so they are not burned alive or choked by smoke), no the priority is “Gender Parity”.
“Gender Parity” is what they are interested in.
In short the British establishment has observed the insanity in places such as Los Angeles California and decided – “Yes that what we should do here” – regardless of how many people die because such “Critical Theory” policy is their priority.
People such as Robert Lowe may think there is a “way back from this” – but I do not see it.
On Covid deaths it is sometimes said that nonlockdown Belarus and Nicaragua were lying when they reported very low numbers of Covid deaths – but was nonlockdown Uruguay lying? was nonlockdown Sweden lying? they also had a LOWER Covid death rate than Britain did – indeed EVERY country on Earth that did NOT lockdown had a lower (lower – not higher) Covid death rate than lockdown Britain.
But Knighthoods all round – and a Covid “inquiry” that will be pro lockdown, anti Early Treatment (if it mentions the smeared Early Treatments at all), and, of course, pro injections.
“way back from this” – how?
Non Covid medical treatment.
In the last week, two colleagues have had experience of non Covid medical treatment from the National Health Service.
One colleague lost a finger, and got a serious infection, because of the incompetence of the local hospital.
The other colleague was told (quite some time ago) that he had leukaemia (blood cancer) which was likely to kill him – and was given extreme treatment, he was then (in the last week) told “oh we got you muddled up with someone else” – in short the treatment, and its side effects, were pointless (he never had leukaemia) – and another person (who needed the treatment) did not get it.
This is just in the last week.
When Beksrus is in the sane camp, it’s time to seriously consider a Mars colony.
Another thing: this whole business proved what a twat Dominic Cummings was. He, as far as I understand, was for lockdown.
“it’s time to seriously consider a Mars colony” – we will make you MAGA yet Johnathan Peace – JUST KIDDING.
Yes, Johnathan Peace, Dominic Cummings was pro lockdown (and then broke his own rules – by driving all the way to County Durham, from London, whilst he had Covid – with his family in the car, “if I died I wanted my children to be with their grandparents” was his defense).
I watched an interview with Mr Cummings – he patted himself on the back for breaking through the “group think of herd immunity” – in reality the “group think” internationally was for lockdowns, and said that it was “Bill Gates” who set him (Mr Cummings) straight on the subject – explaining to him that lockdowns (and so on) were the correct policy.
Mr Gates has no medical qualifications – although I have seen him imply that he is a medical expert “myself and other medial experts” does imply that Mr Gates is a “medical expert” in spite of his total lack of medical qualifications.
Indeed Mr Gates has no qualifications in any subject (“period” as the Americans say) – other than being born to wealthy parents who had very strong connections with IBM – hence the sweet heart treatment that IBM gave Mr Gates, basically handing him the personal computer system market (for an operating system that Mr Gates bought – rather than created).
Mr Cummings appears to have taken the “advice” (orders?) of the unqualified Mr Gates on medical policy because Mr Gates is very rich – and, therefore, Mr Cummings believes, must be very wise.
“I wonder, does he ever think now about how near he came to being the second Churchill he dreamed of being? All he had to do was stay firm.”
If he’d stayed firm he’d have soon been crushed by the popular demand for ‘something to be done’, and replaced by someone who would give the masses what they wanted. Lockdowns et al happened because the people demanded it. They demanded to be ‘protected’ from something that it is not within the State’s grasp to protect them from. It is also crucial that the State Blob was never going to let a good crisis go to waste in advancing its own interests. Put those two together and no politician could have stood against it.
That is why politicians can oppose the public on mass immigration and Net Zero, the State Blob have their backs on those issues. On covid it would have been the politicians standing alone, against a public united as never before (utterly wrongly of course) and a State apparatus whose DNA is encoded with the need for more State power over everything. Boris was faced with the choice of go along and keep his job, or fight on two fronts and be deposed. He chose the former, and still got the latter, ironically.
‘The people’ demanded it after almost uniform and universal scaremongering from the media and state. Especially in a state of so much uncertainty as it was in March 2020, that kind of media coverage and public propaganda was bound to yield support for whoever could sound most hardline. This ‘public opinion’ was a top down creation though. Had the media and state had uniform coverage in favour of something less drastic, I’m pretty sure the public would have gone along with that. Look at how fast the public dropped lockdown when the government stopped bothering with them come 2022.
Such a disingenuous and fallacious rewriting of the history.
The fake media, “public health” bureaucracy, and scumbag politicians conspired to impose lockdowns on the people by implementing an orchestrated campaign of emotional terrorism, fabricated lies, and malicious propaganda to horrify the people and instill fear in the people wildly disproportionate to the actual threat of COVID so that the people would accept all manner of human rights violations and crimes against humanity, including the lockdowns. The lockdowns were in place for far longer than most people wanted them in place for. And one of the main reasons the lockdowns were lifted was because TPTB realized that people were not accepting the crimes against humanity anymore so they had to lift the lockdowns.
Fuck anyone who says that the lockdowns happened because the people demanded them. Fuck you
Being ruled by the people who tell the scariest stories. This is what happened then, and continues to happen, now.
It is called “The Precautionary Principle”.
One principle to rule us all.