In a post written back in August, I said the following: “To my knowledge, no Western government has published a cost-benefit analysis of lockdown (presumably due to what it might show).”
While this may have been technically correct – since I said “published” – it appears that at least one Western country did carry out a cost-benefit analysis (though that analysis was never published).
According to Dutch newspaper Het Parool, documents obtained via freedom of information request show that the Ministry of Economic Affairs carried out a cost-benefit analysis in March/April of 2020. (Hat tip to Michael Senger for bringing the Dutch newspaper article to my attention.)
The FOI request was apparently made by a 66 year old lockdown sceptic by the name of Jan van der Zanden, who just assumed the Ministry of Economic Affairs would have tried to gauge the costs and benefits.
What did the Ministry conclude? In short, that the costs of lockdown far outweighed the benefits.
They assumed that one year of lockdown would prevent the loss of about 100,000 QALYs (quality-adjusted life years). And they attached a value of €80,000 to each QALY, which is the typical upper limit applied in analyses of this kind. Hence the expected benefits of lockdown were €8 billion.
As to costs, they projected an economic contraction of €40 billion, a loss of €25 billion due to the cessation of regular healthcare, plus a loss of €5 billion due to the “psychological consequences” of lockdown. Total expected costs were therefore €70 billion – almost nine times greater than the benefits.
The authors concluded that the “costs are disproportionately high”. They also said that “a one sided focus on mortality should be avoided” and the “health of the elderly should not be given an indisputable priority”.
The authors even proposed an alternative to lockdown, which involved expanding care and testing capacity to “get society going again”. Widespread testing would mean that infectious people could be isolated “in a targeted manner” and those who had “built up immunity” could return to work.
In the end, of course, the analysis by the Ministry of Economic Affairs was ignored. To date, the Dutch have endured 144 days of curfews and stay-at-home orders, along with assorted other restrictions. And the country has just entered another “partial lockdown” in response to rising infections.
Het Parool contacted Eric Wiebes, who served as Dutch finance minister through January 2021. However, he “declined to respond to questions” about the cost-benefit analysis. This suggests the original probably conclusion probably hasn’t been overturned.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Partial lockdown. The new euphemism for removing the unjabbed from the population. If you’re going to do something brutal, you definitely want to give it an innocuous sounding name.
2G/3G, HFS, Social Distancing, Vaccine instead of Gene Therapy, Quarantine or Self Isolation instead of Imprisonment of a Healthy, Not Guilty Person, Lockdown instead of Deliberate Destruction of lesser worthy deemed Livelihoods, Imprisonment and Manslaughter, Covid Status Certificate instead of Total Control Tool etc.
The list of such deliberately disguising euphemisms is long.
It’s punishment for being an independent thinker and not believing their lies.
Another indication that this whole ongoing escapade was nudged into action over all rational thought, planned to go ahead just like Event 201 gamed and not how the decades old pandemic responses advised.
Its not a cockup.
The only place where it’s been a cockup was Florida.
Only DeSantis did what one does after a cockup if one isn’t a psychopath: take responsibility, change course and fight for your own principles and convictions.
I have no idea what the Johnson is up to, whether he is responsible for some more leeway for the people in England, as Corbyn, Starmer, Hunt or Javid would undoubtedly been more Nazi, or whether this is all stage-managed, addressing and incorporating England’s more libertarian laws and biases, meaning the frog needs to be boiled a bit more slowly and for longer.
The Johnson’s ‘you need three shots to be considered fully vaccinated’ statement yesterday implies the latter.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/brits-will-need-3-jabs-be-considered-fully-vaccinated-uk-pm-johnson
Just a few days after Remembrance Sunday and Flop26 they decide to bring in Apartheid. My response is they can get stuffed.
It was also all set down in the 2010 Rockefeller Lockstep Document.
They downgraded the severity level of Covid19 on 19th March 2020, before the first lockdown. They did that and stated in writing that the rationale for the downgrade was because C19 is a low mortality rate virus. Then they proceeded to ruin the western world. They are waging war against their own people, under the direction of the over-arching power structure which is really running things who all the leaders serve. The banksters are very much part of that over-arching power structure.
This from Edward Curtin looks interesting:
WATCH: “There is a Direct Link Between JFK, 9/11 & Covid-19” Edward Curtin on the Geopolitics and Empire podcast
https://off-guardian.org/2021/11/15/watch-there-is-a-direct-link-between-jfk-9-11-covid-19/
Guidance High consequence infectious diseases (HCID)
Status of COVID-19
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19
Nice to see some figures attached to this. I dread to think what the U.K. looks like.
Of course when it comes to covid logic and rational thought go out the window, making it incredibly easy to conclude something higher is at play.
Of course if you worship the MSM and trust government then there’s no issue. Sadly I think there are more of them than us.
The lockdown zealots are one thing but I’m mostly annoyed at the majority of my friends and acquaintances who have just shrugged. Even when presented with evidence that lockdown policies and associated restrictions don’t work they just say, ‘but what can we do?’.
Worrier or Warrior?
Spelling mistake and I couldn’t go back to correct it. But in truth, neither. 😉
Covid logic failed immediately last year when every government took china’s lockdown as a good example. Meanwhile everyone knew that China infection and death numbers are purely fictional propaganda numbers.
Lockdowns are are lethal and can’t stop the virus. But there is a narrative of lies that must be maintained to keep the politicians and their mandarins out of the dock. Above, Chris Whitty lies about the correlation between vax rates and infection. It’s an outright lie. Many of the highest vaxxed countries such as Ireland and Singapore have the highest infection rates. Waterford in Ireland is the highest vaxxed county and has the highest rate of infection in Ireland. Other African countries have very low vax rates and low rates of infection. Germany and Sweden have the same vax rate but Germany is massively worse for infections. Et cetera.
Germany and Austria now want 90%+.
Swedenborg sent us the Iceland chart yesterday, showing what happens when you are at 92%.
Will they notice, question themselves or change anything?
Of course not.
It’s a cult running towards a cliff which is now in plain sight, a bit like Nazi Germany in 1944. What kept them going was constant talk about the Wunderwaffe the Fuehrer still must have up his sleeve.
Plus ça change….
Hands up anyone who knows where Adolf Hitler was born and raised…
I mentioned Waterford the other day, the Irish media are blaming high infection rates on locals behaving irresponsibly because they think they are safe and because
“Waterford is being overwhelmed by infected English tourists” 😂
The English are the virus, Ryanair is the sneeze!
Dr Byram Bridle, a Canadian viral immunologist, has said that the highest vaxxed countries have the highest rates of infection currently. Apparently only 3% of Egypt’s population are double jabbed and they only have around 14 cases per 100,000 people per day. You can see more in the following video – https://www.bitchute.com/video/7XXmStI8VINb/?list=notifications&randomize=false
I like Freddy Sayers writing and video publications. However, when he says “trying to work out how the most nominally liberal governments became the most illiberal of the new era:” in his tweet I do feel he has not been keeping up.
Gradually, bit by bit, that liberal view was being eroded, way before the virus.
The aretcile in Het maybe ebhind a paywall. And online translators may not work for you because of this.
Here isa copy of the article from Het translated on line with a few errors corrected. (Unlike my spell checking in the above post). There maybe a few more!
This looks more like it is about finding a way to destroy the strict employment protections laws. People will be able to work from home – indeed, Mark, tell us how that works for people who work in shops, restaurants, public transport, etc.? Employers can’t afford to pay people to stay home, will cry and whine to the government, who will then give them leave to fire people for refusing to do their job, even though they have the option – i.e. by taking the poison.
It took that bint from GreenLeft long enough to see Rutte’s modus operandi – announce something as a fait accompli in the media, then push and push and slime until the caretaker PM, who deliberately removed his cabinet from accountability by resigning before the election, making it difficult to get rid of them because they already resigned (his own words), gets his own way.
I read yesterday in a newspaper that VVD, CDA and D66 had no objections to the apartheid approach in principle. Of course they don’t, that in fact requires that you have principles in the first place. VVD is a money-centred party, CDA has turned itself into a modern-day equivalent of the nazi party (got rid of objectors in the past year) and every action D66 takes is openly in direct contrast to their actual political manifesto.
Division in society? What like when that prick De Jonge said “naturally businesses and vaccinated would rightly wonder why they were having to make sacrifices because of other people” (all but pointing a big arrow straight at the unvaxed). Shame on the OMT for not standing up and pointing out that the statement that unvaxxed spread the lurgi faster is patent nonsense, to wit the UK figures. Shame on them.
RE Netherlands.
Sone in law cannot work from home. He has had his first jab. That is aganist his thoughts. The couple cannot afford to loose one wage.
Duaghter can work from home and did so ealeir. However, there will be meetings to attnd to So going to teh office will be required at some point. That raises teh question will she ahve to take teh vaxx too?
This couple’s daughter has just started school. She has a class mate who has teh virus. That is age 4. Neither the school or class has been suspended.
I also understand that all teh time this helth situation has been on going the government/caretaker government has cut back on spending for the hospitals. If that is correct then they certainly do not have any write to suspend work for those who have taken a choice not to be vaccinated.
Another addition: I wrote an explanation on the use of 2G and 3G here.
https://dailysceptic.org/2021/11/13/news-round-up-249/#comment-633206
And most people think this is to do with a virus. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Is vaccine efficacy a statistical illusion?
https://probabilityandlaw.blogspot.com/2021/11/is-vaccine-efficacy-statistical-illusion.html
fascinating analysis
‘You are about five times as likely to die of the vaccine than you are to take your risks with COVID-19,’ McCullough said. Therefore, those who ‘chose not to get the vaccine,’ in fact ‘made a smarter choice.’ – Dr. Peter McCullough
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/covid-jabs-came-from-bioterrorism/
Breaking news!!!!!
Belgium is going oblige health workers to be required to be vaccinated. Date this has to be done is April 2022
#lockstep
coincidence seems to be wearing thin eh?
Try putting ‘schindlers list euthanasia’ into YouTube to see how the Austrians can create more empty beds in their hospitals with ‘just a few shots’.
https://corona-diskurs.de/
The German economist Bernd Raffelhueschen calculated the total negative QALY impact alone of lockdowns early on and came ro the conclusion that it is at least 21x as high as the possible benefit.
And that is before monetary impacts and was known before the politicians and public death officials and promoters instituted a second round of them.
One thing lost by the Dutch partly as a result of their overall tax policies is Royal Dutch Shell which is ceasing its joint listing on the Dutch stock exchange and moving entirely to London as ‘Shell’.
Which is a bit funny really since the UK ‘government’ seems to be the most hostile in the world to all things fossil-fuel related!
Perhaps! The green nonsense was so obviously hypocritical maybe it’s someone rebelling in the only way they know, by turning the volume of these looters to 11.
Oh yeah? And backing a third runway for Heathrow and massive expansion of regional airports?
Stansted Airport, BTW, has declared itself carbon neutral. That’s if you cut out all reference to those inconvenient little gadgets known as aeroplanes.
It’s not really the Dutch government or its taxes (it’s long been targeted because it offers all sorts of gets outs for multinationals) that caused Shell to move.
It is the activist courts who think it is their job to make policy based on human rights laws. They decided at the highest instance in the Urgenda case to protect the human rights of people decades from now based on the ECHR, ordering the government to implement policies made up by the courts. That in itself is bad enough, but to see them sit back and pick their noses while human rights protected by the Dutch constitution and the ECHR of citizens living right now are abused – smug pricks.
The same lawyers that brought the Urgenda case won a case on the same grounds at first instance last year against Shell, whereby Shell was considered bound by government treaties to which Shell was not even a party and that considered Shell was in breach of the ECHR, even though it was in compliance with all actual laws in its field. It is the hostile judicial environment that led to this. When people realise the financial loss to the country they may be less inclined to fete the lawyers involved than they have been up to now. Especially if they spend the winter freezing.
I’m happy to be corrected by your greater grasp of the details.
Does the same apply to chemical giant Unilever who have recently made the same move together with the publisher better known as Reed-Elsivera?
I wasn’t trying to correct you, only pointing out that Shell has other motivations besides tax. I also suspect BoJo made them a fine offer to sweeten the deal.
The Unilever thing happend a few years back. Unilever had 2 head offices and wanted to downsize to 1. It was originally supposed to be in NL, Rutte (former Unilever employee) was bending over backward to abolish the dividend tax (to the tune of 4 billion euros, which the rest of us would have had to pick up) to make that happen. Parliament here was fighting that, but the final decision came because the shareholders in the UK refused to let it go ahead. As they wanted 1 head office, they gave up the fight and decided to let it be the UK.
No idea about Reed-Elsevier.
‘Happy to be corrected’ is intended as a neutral term.
“Especially if they spend the winter freezing.”
No need to freeze – just pop round to your MPs house to stay nice and toasty. I’m sure they have some spare bedrooms.
Genetic modification has many different areas, for example in medicine, and Britain is at the leading edge of this new technology. I don’t know, but people tell me, it could indeed by the leading science of the 21st century. All I say to people is: ‘Just keep an open mind and let us proceed according to genuine scientific evidence.’ Tony Blair
“a loss of €25 billion due to the cessation of regular healthcare.”
I assume this must be measured in QALYs rather than an economic cost. Therefore ignoring “real” economics the cost to Dutch health of the lockdown was three times worse than if they had not locked down.
On my “pandemic browser” I have about 40 open tabs (I should really store all the links somewhere else) one of which is a story from The Metro from July 2020 whose headline reads:
and it goes on to say:
So even if we ignore the enormous economic damage caused by the government’s interventions, the cost to human life was expected, even last July, to massively exceed even the largest estimates of “death with COVID”, and that is without including the deaths caused by vaccine injury.
Governments throughout the world have known that lockdowns and all of the other interventions were the wrong policies, but have ploughed ahead regardless.
I am sorry Toby, but this was not a cock-up. There was clearly a plan to make use of this “pandemic” for malign purposes. At worst, the politicians were in on the plan and fully behind it. At best, they were behaving merely as puppets of the people behind the scenes whose plan this actually is.
Either way, the politicians (and the media who protect them) are culpable.
https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/20/coronavirus-lockdown-cause-200000-extra-deaths-13014848/
What we are seeing is Evil on a global scale. They are becoming ever more confident and therefore dangerous to us. The government is our Enemy.
Just the sort of article destined for Winston Smith’s memory hole.
But Winston, unlike the sheeples of Airstrip One, had a memory of his own.
So do all of us here.
Given the attachment of 80,000 Euro to the cost of a life lost through Covid, which according to UK stats is +80y/o for a covid death, seems rather generous if you ask me – I think a person above that age (with the usual co-morbidities covid deaths have) would be a net drain on the economy by this point and the value of life for those dying would be way less than 80k.
I also doubt the sliding scale was applied to any death in the same period due to suicide or the cost to the state of the drink/drug/mental health problems caused by Government forced NPIs – a truly thorough analysis would cover these points. Probably an economics thesis in waiting, which appeals to me to write but I am short of the time to do it.
That would seem to be the lives they believe they saved. One wonders if they balanced that against the lives shortened by missing early diagnoses and treatment, plus those lost to despair and, of course, those dying while locked away in ‘care homes’. Probably not.
And all this to conquer a ‘pandemic’ against which some 99% of us are proof.
Adding in only 5 billion for “psychological consequences” is woefully inadequate. We’ve lost getting on for two years of our lives.
One suspects the reason that not many governments did, or admitted to doing, such an analysis is because they knew very well what the answer would be and it wasn’t the answer they were looking for.
Gibraltar has just cancelled Christmas because of rocketing covvie rates.
Gibraltar is 100% gibjabbed..
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1521786/Gibraltar-news-covid-cases-rise-Christmas-lockdown
While the MSM condemns the use of ivermectin, the most populated state in India just declared they are officially COVID free after promoting widespread use of the safe, proven medicine. In addition to this, Ivermectin attaches to covid spikes and prevents them from binding to ACE2. Get your Ivermectin today while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
Some rough numbers from down under… https://quadrant.org.au/the-damage-done-and-yet-to-come/
Also results of a recent FOI request for the Cost Benefit Analysis that was used to justify last round of NSW lockdowns (there wasn’t one!)… https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/11/all-cost-no-known-benefit/
Didn’t stop them doing it again! But then we know this has never been for our benefit
And yet they’re back in semi lockdown? What do any of these studies help? Just so us lot can have a good old rant.
“health of the elderly should not be given an indisputable priority”! With the right response policies and tools (targeted protection, known effective medicines, Vitamin D supplements, etc.), the health of the elderly could have been given sufficient priority. The problem is, any zero-covid policy is fundamentally unworkable, you can only minimise the effects of it being endemic, essentially via herd immunity, same as flu.
No fuxxing shit Sherlock! Haven’t we on here and anyone with even a modicum of self-awareness/sentience been screaming it out from the rooftops for over a year now? Do they hear us? NO! Why? Will they hear it now? NO! Why? I think we know the answer to those questions.
I’m gonna unashamedly post the below once again, cos Remembrance Sunday was only a couple of days ago… lest we forget.
Remembering those who gave their lives and so much more for our freedoms….! Fuxxing hell. The Cnuts, Boris, and his gang will be stood in front of the Cenotaph, pretending to give a shite, wringing their hands, looking grateful for the freedoms won with the blood guts and lives of my and my friend’s Grandparents. Yet they will stand there the Cnuts having blatantly removed each and every one of those unbelievably and unimaginably hard-won blood and thunder freedoms we took for granted, one by one by one. This is the sickest of sick jokes played on the human race in human history. And it’s being allowed to happen through sheer can’t be assed to do anythingness from far too many of us. We reap what we sow I’m afraid.
The trouble is, the rest of them might, but I don’t fukxing deserve this bollox.
I’ll fight with every last breath in my body to stop this from happening. For my grandchildren who won’t have a clue what it was like back in those halcyon days, I grew up in. All thanks to those heroic men and women who made it possible, that band of brothers and sisters who made it possible: that this bunch of grabby Demondim Spawn is sticking two fingers up to.
Boris, respectful admirer of Churchill? You’re ‘avin’ a feckin’ giraffe. That creature along with the rest of his ilk are self-serving pieces of detritus. Shame on you, you are despicable!
“THEY GAVE THE MOST THAT
MAN CAN GIVE
LIFE ITSELF
FOR GOD
FOR KING AND COUNTRY
FOR LOVED ONES HOME AND EMPIRE
FOR THE SACRED CAUSE OF JUSTICE AND
THE FREEDOM OF THE WORLD”
‘I’ll say it again, lest we forget.
Well, the lockdowners have forgotten and they haven’t got a fuxxing clue where this is all headed.
We’ve already arrived at this bus stop.
And is this where we’re headed?
By locking down the unvaxed, they have it totally wrong and going AGAINST the evidence.
See also this: https://aaronsiri.substack.com/p/cdc-admits-crushing-rights-of-naturally – CDC have ZERO evidence of anyone with naturally acquired immunity transmitting, NONE. Naturally immune people are asymptomatic, hence probably why there’s no recorded cases either of asymptomatic people, naturally immune or not, transmitting.