Back in March of 2020, there was a reasonable case for lockdown. A new, highly contagious virus was spreading through the population, and while the death rate for young people was low, the death rate for elderly people was quite high. Early data pointed to an IFR of about 1%. We were told that – in the absence of drastic measures – the virus would continue to spread until about two-thirds of the population had been infected. A simple back-of-the envelope calculation suggested that, if we did not take drastic measures, the death toll would be enormous.
The UK’s population is 66.7 million. Two-thirds of that is about 44.5 million. Applying a 1% IFR yields 445,000 deaths. And that was if the NHS didn’t become overwhelmed. If it did become overwhelmed, we were told, the IFR might rise to 2 or even 3%. Hence we were looking at a worst-case scenario of around 1.3 million deaths. (Note: this is about ten times the official death toll, which is itself a slight overestimate.)
Although lockdowns would come with massive costs, I reasoned, it was worth having one to prevent hundreds of thousands – or even a million – people dying. Hence I supported the first lockdown. Though it may have been a reasonable thing to do given the information available at the time, I now believe that locking down was the wrong decision.
There are many elements in the case against lockdowns, as I have outlined in an article on this website. But – outside a few specific countries like Australia and New Zealand – the case for lockdowns basically collapsed in May of 2020, when Sweden’s epidemic began to retreat.
Sweden, of course, was the only major Western country that didn’t lock down in 2020. And the argument for lockdowns made a clear prediction concerning what would happen there: since the country hadn’t taken drastic measures, it would see substantially more deaths (relative to its population) than the countries that had locked down. Using a model “based on work by” Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial College, researchers at Uppsala University predicted there would be 96,000 deaths by July 1st.
Fortunately, that isn’t what happened. The number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths by July 1st was only 5,370. And up to week 51, the country saw age-adjusted excess mortality of just 1.7% – below the UK and below the European average.
Now of course, Sweden isn’t identical to the UK. It’s more trusting, less densely populated, and has fewer multi-generational households. However, it isn’t dramatically different from the UK in these respects. So even if one might have expected fewer deaths in Sweden than in the UK, given the same policies, the fact that Sweden didn’t lock down should have massively increased its death toll. But it didn’t.
One reply to the argument I’ve just made is that Sweden did much worse than its neighbours. This reply has been extensively addressed by other commentators, and in any case the point remains that Sweden did not do catastrophically. Both its first and second epidemics retreated long before the herd immunity threshold was reached, and far less than 1% of the population has died.
The evidence from Sweden does not imply that the correct approach to COVID-19 was “do nothing”. As I’ve argued previously, a focused protection strategy like the one recommended in the Great Barrington Declaration would have been much less costly, and might have saved more lives, than the Government’s actual policy of intermittent lockdowns.
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Pointless law. Unenforceable without creating all sorts of knock on problems. Like driving even more support for the religious martyrs they will create.
We’re stuck with the problem. Shouldn’t have let all those Muslims in in the first place if they didn’t want them to have political influence.
It’s one thing to let Muslims have political influence over worldly affairs which concern them, eg, regulations for mosques in resdential neighbourhoods. But Imams claiming that Allah requires people to ‘vote’ for a certain foreign policy is something entirely different, as they’re not formally speaking in their own capacity as fallible and opinionated humans in this case. An atheist would claim that they obviously do because this cannot possibly be different. But not all people are atheists.
Does it really matter what the method of coercion is?
What’s the difference between an Imam saying God will be angry with you or a BBC appartchik telling you you’re a facist if you think certain things?
To me both act with coercive intent.
To believers I guess there would be a huge difference
Not even the most ardent admirers of the BBC believe that life is a temporary trial to prove yourself worthy in the eyes of the BBC and that – after death – a council of former BBC directors general, Dr Who actors and Chris Packham as climate expert will judge your eternal soul to either be worthy of joining the ranks of the blessedly carbon free in paradise or spend an eternity being tortured among the other damned in hell.
Two historical examples:
In Mein Kampf, Hitler made a dedicated effort to show that what he believed to be his political mission was grounded in a positive vision of lived Christanity and that he was really doing (or rather, panning to do) the true work of God on earth.
From January to September 1915, divisons of the German 5th army under crown prince William of Prussia conquered most of the forest of Argonne in a series of bloody, close-combat trench fighting actions from the French. This involved weeks of digging saps while constantly being shelled until the sap heads where sufficiently close to the French trenches. After preparatory artillery barrage, the German infantrists would climb out into the open, work their way accross the devasted forest of no man’s land as good as they could and finally, break into the enemy trenches and kill those who didn’t surrender with hand grenades and bayonets. After each major success, a field church service the crown prince attended would be held where the exact same people, now in as good a dress uniform as they could muster, would listen to a sermon and sing hymns to thank the Lord Almighty that he had granted victory to them.
Religion used to mean a lot more to people than us modern moral relativists and spiritually lazy agnosticists can imagine. It sill means a lot to people who aren’t.
Hardly a problematic law if it has been applied only once.
Useful else otherwise churches will have to register as campaign organisations and account for their expenditure; more seriously it would facilitate religion based politics which we got rid of a long long time ago in GB.
It’s nice to see Mr Tucker apply his considerable writing skills to a serious topic instead of just trying to be funny.
Giles Fraser, a left-wing Anglican priest, or, worded in another way, Giles Fraser, a professional Christian preacher who just doesn’t believe in God, is making a fallacious argument, either knowingly or because he simply can’t imagine that religion could be more than going through some traditional motions: 500 British business leaders arguing for a certain economic policy they believe to be necessary is them talking about a topic people can legitimately have different opinions about. Eg, is a policy 500 British business leaders favour really good for everyone or mainly for themselves and could 500 British business leader not as well live with policies favoring them a little less and other people somewhat more? This is not true for a Vote for Rufur Lameun’ or your soul will be damned for eternity! statement by some set of religious leaders. These deal with absolute truths. They’re not absolutely truths to non-believers, like one Giles Fraser, but to believers, they are.
The very concept of elections requires that voters are free to make up their own mind, ie, that elections are part of the way humans organize their own worldy affairs with God tacitly tolerating whatever folly comes from this. People who claim otherwise seek to abolish them.
The spiritual influence law should definitely not be repealed, but I would not be at all surprised if it was being broken behind closed doors and in a language other than English.
In some constituencies the Imams instruct the ‘bruvvers’ to apply for postal votes and when received the Imam sends his troops out to collect the unmarked slips which are then filled in at the local mosque.
George Galloway won the Rochdale by-election with a postal vote amounting to 42 % of votes cast. Fraud? Heavens know. Move along now.
Seems pretty clearly to be a free speech issue. The imam should be free to make his statement about who should be voted for. The person who votes has the autonomy to follow the imam’s directive or not. Any other organisation or person can mount a campaign against the imam’s directive if they think it is wrong. The best counter to misinformation is information, not suppression.
“The person who votes has the autonomy to follow the imam’s directive or not.”
🙂
Our idea of democracy relies fundamentally on the protestant notion that man is the arbiter of his own conscience. Religions which deny that can only coexist peacefully with it when the religious leaders refrain from making political statements in their capacity as such. The Imam is free to speak his opinion. But he must not claim that it would be the will of God instead of just his opinion.
Freedom of speech refers to the freedom to inform others and not to the freedom of giving illegal or illegitimate orders to them.
I suppose Blair will be kicking himself fo not revoking that law as he revoked so many other useful laws. No doubt hiw protege Starmer will do it instead.
Our Jess only won her seat by 600 votes.
On the other hand, Dr Alin-Khan who has done medical service for charities in Gaza and Israel increased her majority by some thousands.
On the Gaza issue itself, as a start-up party with little funding, the Workers Party secured 200,000 votes.
And these Labour MPs try to deflect attention from all this by claiming that people from all diverse backgrounds voted for Labour.
Shouldn’t Steven Tucker be concluding that we ought to discriminate against Moslems for some or all of … entry to the country/right to reside/right to vote/citizenship?
I’m sure he left that to us. And I have long thought as much.
Although I hate to say to, and I’d love to think I am wrong, but as our present governments, including those of the future, will not see a problem until it is far too late, there is a high probability of a civil war of religion within the next fourty years.
Yes, I do fear for my grandchildren.
But why leave it at all? Why not follow what he thinks to where it takes him? Is he, for all his outspokeness, afraid to take that last step?
The British Establishment, particularly Labour, currently has the tiger they imported by the tail but their grip is visibly slipping.
They are now terrified of what they have done, since it has started to impact on “their people.” The widely publicised pictures of Angela Rayner, wearing a cover-all dress, pleading with a group of Muslim “Community Leaders (all men, no women permitted) for their votes demonstrates that Labour is now awake to the threat but thinks that appeasement will work.
It won’t.
We are rapidly heading towards large-scale civil unrest.
What of the ‘spiritual influence’ of political activist college tutors sending out e mails to their students to get up and vote Labour? That certainly happened and no doubt happens.