Day: 1 December 2020

by Ramesh Thakur The evidence for the effectiveness of lockdowns is underwhelming; for the harm they cause to lives, livelihoods, mental health and civil liberties is overwhelming. Neither claim needs further substantiation for readers of this site. Still the relentless march of lockdown folly continues, causing a growing sense of helplessness and despair. What has become clear over the course of the year is just how impervious the lockdownistas are to data, evidence, reason and – yes – even science. Part of the explanation, I suspect, is that Western democracy has been captured by self-absorbed careerists who occupy all key positions in political parties. They have no interest in using power to advance any particular vision or achieve lofty social purposes, which is why the Australian prime minister can reject calls to defend free speech with the dismissive comment that it never created a single job. Nor do many have any experience outside of politics, putting comprehension of the real-world consequences of their decisions beyond them. Even so, the ease with which so many well-established democracies have succumbed to pandemic fearmongering, and surrendered freedoms hard-won over centuries, is astonishing. The sickening video of a pregnant Mum handcuffed in the presence of her child for posting on Facebook about a peaceful, socially-distanced protest in a regional town in Victoria, produced victim-shaming ...

Tories Rebel and Labour Abstains Blower's cartoon in today's Telegraph Parliament will vote today on the Government's new tier system and Labour will abstain. The Independent has more. Labour will abstain in a key vote on Boris Johnson's new COVID-19 tiers. Speaking on Monday night, Sir Keir Starmer said his party was "acting in the national interest" by not opposing the regulations but he said that he had reservations about them. The move is significant because it represents the first time the opposition has failed to back the Government in a vote on COVID-19 regulations. "Coronavirus remains a serious threat to the public's health and that's why Labour accept the need for continued restrictions. We will always act in the national interest, so we will not vote against these restrictions in Parliament tomorrow... However, I remain deeply concerned that Boris Johnson's Government has failed to use this latest lockdown to put a credible health and economic plan in place. We still don't have a functioning testing system, public health messaging is confused, and businesses across the country are crying out for more effective economic support to get them through the winter months. It is short-term Government incompetence that is causing long-term damage to the British economy." Don't get too excited. With the Labour party abstaining, rather than voting no, the ...

To laugh or to cry. It is difficult to know which response is more appropriate to the Government’s attempt to quantify the impact of lockdown, published last night with the title "Analysis of the health, economic and social effects of COVID-19 and the approach to tiering". If you wanted a chuckle, then imagine you had the job of the unfortunate civil servant who had been given the job of cobbling together this strange hotch-potch of information. The document is clearly a rushed job, published with the political aim of persuading the growing number of Conservative MPs who are sceptical about the need for tighter restrictions that they are, in fact, necessary. (There was once a time, not so long ago, when the Civil Service would have demurred from being involved in such a blatantly political operation.) A futile effort, for no self-respecting MP could be persuaded by such a flimsy document. Take its estimates of additional deaths from other diseases. Table 9 of the report looks at the effect on morbidity and mortality of certain conditions – alcohol misuse, road injuries, depressive disorders, and the like. But instead of trying to estimate the actual numbers, the report simply uses up and down arrows to describe the general direction of change that social distancing measures might produce. Is that really the ...