Some people oppose lockdown on principle, arguing that the government should never infringe on fundamental liberties like the freedom to leave our home or open our business, regardless of the impact this may have on disease transmission.
It’s a reasonable position, but I’m more drawn to the consequentialist case against lockdowns. This can be summed up as “benefits small, costs large”. In other words, even if lockdowns do reduce mortality from COVID-19 (under some circumstances), they don’t do so by anywhere near enough to justify their costs.
As I noted recently, several cost-benefit analyses of the U.K.’s lockdowns have been published, and each one concluded that the costs almost certainly outweighed the benefits. (Which may explain why the Government has thus far refrained from publishing any estimates itself.)
A rather elegant demonstration of the consequentialist case against lockdown was provided back in May, in the form of a Twitter thread by the data scientist Youyang Gu.
Comparing the 50 U.S. states, Gu obtained data on the COVID-19 death rate, the change in unemployment rate, and the average Government Stringency Index. The latter is a measure of the number and severity of restrictions imposed during the course of the pandemic (school closures, stay-at-home orders, etc.). Gu’s two main charts are shown below:
He found that the Stringency Index was not associated with the COVID-19 death rate (left-hand chart), but was strongly associated with an increase in unemployment (right-hand chart). In other words, U.S. states with longer and more stringent lockdowns haven’t had fewer COVID-19 deaths, but they have seen higher unemployment.
In the replies to Gu’s thread, some critics argued that restrictions were often imposed in response to large outbreaks, so you can’t assume that causation only goes from restrictions to deaths and unemployment. However, Gu points out that the relative ordering of restriction levels is fairly constant over time, so this is unlikely to be a major issue.
His analysis adds to a large body of evidence indicating that – for the vast majority of Western states – the benefits of lockdown were small, but the costs were very large. Gu’s thread is worth reading in full.
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Very true. But as Richard Eldred’s interview this morning remarked, there was a lot less actual rioting than is commonly mentioned in the obligatory, “Of course, violent rioters need to be in jail, but…” caveats.
In fact the narrative is a bit like COVID – there was quite a lot of minor dis-ease in the form of people on the streets, and much hype about violent rioting which, on close examination, was pretty exaggerated, and in many cases entirely engineered by heavy-handed policing.
Furthermore, even at the time it looked as though rent-a-mob in balaclavas was bussed in to turn over cars in full view of news cameras, but well away from risk of arrest. Agents provocateurs was written all over them. As we saw in the Downing Street affair, the protesters were mostly remarkably well-behaved, given their outrage at the Southport massacre and its cover-up.
Since many amongst the public are well aware of the gaslighting, that outrage has become even more deep-seated, widespread, and quite liable to erupt at some stage in civil unrest the nudge units and riot police will no longer be able to crush.
This cauldron must be added to the background in this article of economic vandalism, poverty and hopelessness. The description of “a very poor country attached to a very rich city” is perceptive, but usually disguised by reassuring GDP figures. The very rich suppressing the increasingly poor is never a good recipe for civil order.
I agree. The picture depicted by media, establishment or independent, of riots and violence is a distortion of a much more mundane reality.
What I see much more of is a demoralised, beaten down public that doesn’t really understand why things are done the way they are but feel there’s no point even complaining about it because it’s not going to make a blind bit of difference.
Exercise for the reader: Assuming that, in a certain state, a party is in government because about ⅕ of the electorate voted for it and then sets forth to ruin the lives of the other ⅘ as hard as it can, oftentimes claiming that these ⅘ deserve nothing better because they’re all right-wing extremists, can this country realistically be considered a democracy? Or should it perhaps rather be called a dictatorship of the post-marxist quangoriat?
That’s pretty good, except the fifth that is voted in doesn’t set about doing anything.
The post-marxist quangoriat, as you name it, run the show regardless of who a fifth, a quarter, half, or a majority of the population vote into so called “power”.
All people are voting in are the people who are going to do the PR for the quangoriat. The elected have the power to sell us the crap that has been prepared for us, or get replaced.
Our institutions are corrupted by systemic anti-racism.
Excellent analysis Jon.
Kisin is way off the mark in stating that increased lawlessness is simply down to the economy not growing, there are multiple factors not least of which is the deliberate destruction of our patriotism. Too many people simply have negative views of this country and therefore our old values have been lost.
Jobs have been lost and with them aspirations.
Education has been practically inverted with wokeness, trans this that and the other and our evil British Empire. Pride has been shattered.
Our institutions have grown into monolithic monsters – NHS, pretty much every department of the Civil Service, even our once venerated RNLI is now nothing more than a laughing stock.
The police forces make the Keystone Cops look like serious crime fighters.
Our Christian religions have been made to give way to the heathens of Islam and we wonder why the country is rapidly approaching Turd World shit hole status?
I could go on but the bottom line is that governments these last fifty or so years have deliberately sought to undermine all that combines to make Britain great and the final destruction is to occur in this decade ending 2030.
Just one contentious response, Hux: at least the “heathens of Islam” are Muslims, for better or worse. But the population of our country had, for the most part, already succumbed to a previous ideological usurper – secularism – and abandoned actual Christianity.
It seems to me that, so far, many who perceive the collapse of the country are trying to wave the flag for “Christian values” whilst hanging on to the secularist illusion of “the view from nowhere.” In other words, they think Christianity is useful, whilst regretfully remaining uncommitted themselves.
But Christianity is Christ, or it is as toothless as “conservatism” or “common sense.” Islam just requires submission to praxis: Christianity is exclusively fuelled by faith in a Saviour-King.
Net Zerotard is part of the collapse agenda. It is just one program of many designed to ruin us.
etc. etc.
If anything, the EU is the French Empire¹. The Germans are just ‘allowed’ to pay for it.
¹ That’s probably a bit beyond the horizon of the average US politard, but a French Empire encompassing all of continental Europe proper up to the eastern border of Poland composed of French provinces (including large parts of Germany), French vassal states (like the kingdom of Westfalia) and states forced to an alliance dominated by France by a series of military defeats inflicted onto them actually existed under Napoleon I. During its heyday, just before his Russian campaign, only Austria and Russia were still really independent states although both had suffered humiliating defeats as well.
Von der Leyen – unelected – German.
EU Central Bank – Frankfurt.
Terms of Trade – all in Germany’s favour.
Euro = a devalued DM.
It is the German empire with the French used as a beard.
I happen to know this better than you because I’m more familiar with actual circumstances in Germany and don’t just have my prejudices played to by politics people.
The biggest part of the EU is the common agricultural policy. It’s purpose mostly to subsidize the otherwise hopelessly loss-making traditional French rural economy.
Accepting the Euro with the inevitable consequence of ending up underwriting the sovereign debts of all of Europe was a condition imposed on Germany in exchange for the so-called re-unification. Maggie Thatcher was a driving force behind that (who would personally have preferred for this to never happen, the quote by [from memory]: We did our best to conquer the Germans. And now, they want to come back!).
The reason why the AfD is so vitriolically opposed by the German establishment parties is that it either wants to reform the EU such that the Germans stop paying its bills or get rid of it altogether. That’s why they’re accused of being reckless German nationalists and closet-nazis.
The EU grew out of the European Coal and Steel Union, a project by Adenauer and Schuman with the goal to intertwine the French and German steel and coal industries to such a degree that Germany would never again be able to go to war against France.
To this date, the so-called UN treaties contain a clause which states that Britain, Russia, the USA or France may chose to invade Germany whenever they’re unhappy with German domestic politics.
I could continue this for a while but it’s probably pointless. You’ve been drilled to hate Germans from early childhood on. And the people who want to control you just need to say “German!” to trigger the reflexes which enable them to do.
Agenda 2030 Riots you mean. Maybe the transition to Stakeholder Capitalism that they are at a halfway point, might have something to do with it. That could also explain the attacks on private LTD businesses:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CAiTHWBM18&t=2695s
One bit of good news. All the big American investment companies have ditched ESG funds. The $130 trillion promised by them in Glasgow is not going to happen. A final realisation that they will loose money and anti trust lawsuits in the US have finally done for this particular cartel.
As pointed out by Ben Pile earlier today.
Spending on policing has not slowed all that much. One problem is that the whole public sector is spending vast amounts on pensions for people who stopped working years ago.
But a big issue needs to be addrssed on efficiency. The public sector never seems to be able to reduce its costs or improve performance using tech. It is only ever an additional cost.
In the private sector things are very different. Not only does investment (and current spending) on tech enable costs to be reduced and efficiency improved but the entire business is often re-engineered with almost an order of magnitude of cost are taken out.
“One problem is that the whole public sector is spending vast amounts on pensions for people who stopped working years ago.”
The problem with public sector pensions is the same as with the Old Age Pension – contributions have never been invested. Successive governments have spent money that they didn’t have and wasn’t theirs in the first place for political ends. And this crisis is now in its death throes.
It makes me wonder what state public services/pensions would be like if government had never been allowed to borrow money, and to invest pension contributions. It would have been short term pain for very long term gain.
The Establishment is delivering the UN’s objective of “levelling down” the UK; the WEF’s Agenda of transferring what wealth we have from “the peasants” to Corporations and the EU’s objective of keeping the UK trapped within its regulatory orbit.
The solution to all three is to destroy the power of the Establishment, starting with their Uni-Party in Westminster and the MSM.
Why are there no people like Konstantin Kisin, Douglas Murray and Andrew Doyle in UK politics?
Because politics in Britain is utterly corrupt, and any “non-receiver” is instantly cancelled by very dubious means. Do you notice how rich all our “alleged politicians” have become? Very strange. The WEF hardly noticed to accounting error!
And yet we still pay their council tax on their second homes, even after the media scandal in 2009.
A friend of my wife went to Oxford Street a couple of days ago. It was very crowded, particularly by a jostling crowd around her. Her purse was stolen from her “safe” handbag, carefully mounted in front of her and the purse and money stolen, including her cards. She called the bank within 2 minutes and they said that £2500 had been stolen from a card! It was recovered but the speed says “organised crime” in no uncertain terms, because such a withdraw without pin, 2 factor authorisation etc. is surely not possible? Don’t mention the Police, they basically said don’t come too London, the streets are very unsafe! Eh Khant??? The crowd were your “friends”!
That’s why I don’t see the point of going abroad to do the shopping. She should have stayed in England.
They warn when traveling to any third world country don’t wear any fancy watches or bling, but now you can’t in the so called developed West.
Williamson “describes how last summer’s riots weren’t really about immigration.”
FALSE! They were ENTIRELY about Third World Immigration destroying Britain.
They were about the Globalist Importation of a Muslim Army raping and murdering children.