Lockdowns imposed in Britain, America and continental Europe may well go down as one of the worst policy failures in modern history. They derailed kids’ education, added billions to the national debt, and placed millions under arrest – all for practically no benefit (judging by comparison with those locations that eschewed them).
In a paper published in February 2021, two economists – Peter Boettke and Benjamin Powell – ask why lockdowns were adopted, given their enormous costs.
The authors begin by noting that lockdowns are not consistent with “recommendations from standard welfare economics”. This is a fancy way of saying that lockdowns are not the policy you’d choose if you were an economist trying to maximise societal well-being in the context of the pandemic.
Boettke and Powell acknowledge that there is “transmission externality” – people with Covid impose costs on others by inadvertently transmitting a deadly virus to them, which may lead to more transmission than is “socially optimal”. And while this kind of situation calls for some kind of government intervention, it does not call for blanket lockdowns.
Since catching Covid confers immunity (and this immunity appears to be better than what the vaccines provide), the “negative externality” associated with Covid transmission is partially offset by the “positive externality” associated with the build-up of population immunity.
As I’ve noted previously, it’s by no means clear that preventing Covid infections among very low-risk groups (such as healthy children) was the right policy. In fact, we probably should have encouraged young people to get the virus early on (while shielding those with underlying health conditions).
Boettke and Powell argue that Covid policy-making can be framed as a “dispute” between healthy, young people on the one hand and elderly or vulnerable people on the other.
Young people impose an externality on old people, who are at much higher risk, by taking less care to avoid transmission than is socially optimal. However, lockdowns impose an obvious and very large externality on the young. So what is to be done?
As Boettke and Powell note, the standard welfare economics approach would be to ask the “least cost mitigator” to bear the burden of adjusting to the externality. This is a fancy way of saying that, when deciding which of two groups should change its behaviour, you choose the one for which doing so is least costly.
Since it is much less costly for old people to engage in shielding than it is for young people to remain locked down, a focused protection strategy makes far more sense – from the perspective of welfare maximisation – than blanket lockdowns.
So why did most Western countries ignore this straightforward logic (as well as their own pandemic preparedness plans), and press ahead with lockdowns?
On this particular question, the authors fail to provide a satisfying answer. They correctly note that politicians and public health officials are just as self-interested as everyone else – that they look out for their own interests first, and only secondarily for the ‘public good’. Yet they don’t really explain why imposing lockdowns was in their interests.
One explanation that’s popular on social media – the so-called ‘Great Reset’ theory – is that lockdowns were adopted with the explicit aim of increasing government power, making it easier to adopt various other authoritarian policies in the future. And while they may end up having this effect, I don’t buy it as an explanation for their adoption.
Here I’m inclined to agree with Toby, who subscribes to the ‘cock-up theory of history’. What I suspect happened is that governments came under immense pressure to ‘do something’ as people became increasingly scared by what they were seeing on social media (much of it highly sensationalised and, in some cases, simply fake).
Meanwhile, scientists like Neil Ferguson and bloggers like Tomas Pueyo were saying that healthcare systems would be completely overwhelmed unless we locked down now. These pronouncements made people even more scared, heaping further pressure on governments.
Once Italy locked down, there was a precedent, allowing other Western governments to lock down without fear of being the first mover. This had a domino effect, where each successive country went into lockdown (apart from Sweden, of course) because no leader wanted to be the only one who ‘hadn’t acted’.
In the short-term, therefore, politicians and public health officials were pursuing their own interests when they decided to lock down. They didn’t want to be punished by the voters for ‘not acting’, and recognised that the costs of lockdown would come later, by which time they’d be out of office. A textbook case of government failure.
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Why? Because of hysteria feedback loops that develop when: 1. there is something like social media that can spread hysteria like wildfire 2. when the common-sense sceptics that tend to control hysteria, are repressed in that media by the likes of Google-youtube, twitter and facebook, who about five years ago started a policy of actively repressing sceptics (starting on climate).
The result is uncontrolled positive feedback of hysteria, as the policy makers start reading their own propaganda and lies regurgitated back to them by a compliant press, without the necessary negative feedback from the normal voice of scepticism which usually keeps hysteria from growing out of control.
And when you add in the psyops nudge units deliberately trying to push hysterical terror … how could it not happen?
That’s a great observation Mike. I would also add that the ‘conspiracy theory’ meme went from being something that was reasonably applied to some of the more alternative ways of thinking, such as flat earth theorists, to something that was applied to anybody who questioned the official narrative. The logic seemed to be that if every government is doing something it must be the right thing to do and to question it is to assert that governements were acting in concert as part of a plan. Of course as time went on and decisions became more and more illogical (such as vaccinating children or vaccine passporting), it has become easier to entertain the idea of a NWO-type plan in the background. This has created another feedback loop – the crazier governements get, the more people turn to conspiracy theories and the more those who try to hold on to the narrative push back against it. Given the breadth of information and unanswered questions we are trying to integrate (lab leaks, when the virus began to circulate, how transmissable it is, what is the impact of variants, which drug therapies work etc.) it is extremely difficult to walk the line between conspiracy and cock-up with opportunism in the middle ground.
It’s easy. Just go full conspiracy. Don’t look back. Face it, as time goes on, conspiracy theorists are looking more and more like the only grown-ups in the room. Hunter Biden laptop. Do cock-up theory on Hunter Biden laptop. Not going to get you very far is it. Russian disinformation. How they kept a straight face. The only cock-up is in the intelligentsia trying to hang on to relevance with their models of how the world works that they picked up in the 1980s.
Matt handcocks fake tears – just a cock-up
Miidazolam scandle – just a cock-up
Lying to the president. The Fauci emails, and the group phone call acknowledging the FCS, proving they knew it would be endemic within 3 days of China releasing the genetic sequence, and the subsiquent no mask/Mask BS – just, cock-up
The lab leak coverup – just a cock-up
a cytotoxic spike protein transfection with FCS, HIV, and sea snail toxin genetic inserts – just a cock-up
Codon Optimization (leading to prions release) just a cock-up
It just stays in the deltoid muscle – just a cock-up
The Corman-Drosden paper – just a cock-up
45 cycles PCR testing, just a cock-up
The junk in the vaccines, and heamaglobin stipped blood cells visible under a microscope – just a cock-up
The Klaus book, just a cock-up
2 weeks to flatten the curve – just a cock-up
the 10 year paper trail of WHO planning meetings and the agenda rewriting the global pandemic response, and the eventual global treaty binding us to it – just a cock-up
The IMF emergency funding with it’s pandemic response strings attached, just a cock-up
All the WEF ‘young global leaders’ just a conincidental hardest lockdown proponant ever cock-up.
Build Back Better – just a global chorus of cock-ups.
I agree with Toby – a monumental cock-up
even bukkake has fewer cockups
Sadly, anywhere other than here and similar, you’d need a huge sarc thingy or whatever for that lot.
Build back better/agenda 30.
Evil incarnate more like.
We’ve got the fight of everyone’s life on our hands to stop the Bastards.
Supporter “Oliver, how can you proceed when nine men in ten are against you?”
Cromwell :” If I disarm the nine and put a sword in the tenth mans’s hand, will that not do the business?”
Where are the 20,000 “New Police “Johnson promised?
Was chatting to an old man at the petrol Station, I said wait till they bring in the digital currencies, he said what are they. Public ignorance is how they’re getting away with this shit show.
I have tried to make that point to elderly relatives. They just cannot conceive of that so they dismiss it, and they dismiss me as a raving lunatic in the process.
Now that’s just plain mean-spirited of you, ImpObs. Let me help you to think correctly. All you need to know is this:
There is the possibility of a hybrid explanation.
Mediocre politicians screwing up while bad actors push to get what they want.
A bit like a defender under pressure making a bad pass, which results in the ball getting stolen and an open goal.
Interesting – is a conspiracy any less a conspiracy because its originators employ a bigger number of the gullible, the bribeable, the blackmailable and the hysterical?
Politicians with no convictions and no ideas, at the mercy of the prevailing ideas of the last few decades and the few who take them seriously enough to implement them.
This is what happened in the dying days of the Weimar Republic and the philosophy is essentially the same now with green ideology being German philosophy stripped of all pretence at man’s wellbeing.
and a compliant media – just a cock-up
Should’ve been you on the couch with Clare Fox on GB News.
She is horrific isn’t she? So patronising and dismissive. Well lets see how sanguine she is if it all does jump up and bite her on the backside.
Really makes you wonder what game GB News is playing having her on.
Ella Whelan from Sp!ked said much the same last summer on GBN.
She was like, ‘I don’t think they’re trying to crash the economy, that sounds ‘terrifying’. Yes it does love!
Brilliant ImpObs.
Perhaps I should have expressed it more clearly, but all of the things you list could be explained by a combination of governments responding to media pressure and opportunism from pharma and their stooges like Ferguson. My personal view (although I am open to other theories) is that the virus was man-made, the release may or may not have been deliberate, but there was not a master plan involving all the stakeholders, just governments behaving like rabbits in the headlights in the face of a storm of pressure from the media and the ‘groupthink’ that vaccines are safe and effective and NPIs work. We may never know the truth.
and the silencing of any and all enquiry by a sloth of experts = just a cock-up
You seem to be willfully misunderstanding me. I have said twice now that I believe opportunism, not cock-up was a key factor. The silencing and censoring fits that hypotheses.
But they had a paper in place for a pandemic with a ACM at 800k.
So they shouldn’t be like Rabbits.
All the conspiracy dots are joining up and what do we have……..” Gosh! An epic scale Conspiracy”!
Who could have guessed?
And if you have the means, these levers can be manipulated. Through media control (e.g. The Ofcom note), by amplifying the hysteria, cancelling the sceptics.
Thats where the conspiracy becomes reality. Who is able to control narratives in such ways? When Fauci and Farrar decide in their meeting that a smear campaign against Battachayra, Ionidiss and Kuldurf was required, how can they manage to implement it on a global scale without having access to these levers?
We have elites governing us. They have power. They use it daily. I think that is all we need to suggest that this is not cock up. There are people that need to be brought to book and we must rid ourselves of the kind of private networks they deploy to undermine democratic societies.
Who started the “hysteria”? Who distributed false information to fuel it?
Who suppressed the voices of reason? Why were they ignored or brushed aside by governments?
Who? Johnson, Hancock, Whitty and Vallance of course! ( aided by every Cabinet Minister set up to spiel the spiel the “Opposition” leaders and of course the entire Instructed MSM – print and A/V)
All just a ‘coincidence’ of course.
Excellent comment! Right on the nail!
That is exactly the way I saw it develop. Only I think it was the main stream media who started it & then it was picked up by bloggers on social media. The positive feedback of hysteria was added to by governments spending hundreds of millions & behavioral psyops to generate more fear so people would obey their covid rules. Was government manipulated? Why was a single solution of vaccine chosen instead of early treatment? There is now too much evidence that this was a natural occurrence.
It is the ‘something must be done!’ effect. Sometimes doing nothing is the right answer, but in politics ‘doing nothing’ is seen as a sign of failure, so they just did as many ‘somethings’ as they could.
as far as I can see, politicians have 2 potential roles
1 – change the laws within which society runs – this is their main job as far as I can see – and is basically democracy
2 – run things – I don’t know why they get this urge, but they shouldn’t ever do it ever. They should stick to (1) above. They had done their job by early March – the pandemic plan existed as did the various laws. As soon as they ripped up the plan and decided to run things day to day its going to be a catastrophe. Politicians can’t run car production factories, airports or pandemic responses. They don’t have the ability. Because Swedish politicians stuck to (1) above, they did well
I think it’s bureaucrats that run things.
Politicians are one problem.
But the bigger problem for me is the bureaucracy which seems to have a life of its own and just grows like a cancer.
The 2008 financial crisis was barely relevant to Australia, but Canberra – under Kevin Rudd at the time – said WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING! And so they started posting $900 cheques to Australians. Any Australians they could find, including the dead ones.
Under Kruddfuhrer’s successor, the unlamented Joooolya, the BER was launched. BER: officially, Building the Education Revolution. Unofficially, the Builder’s Excellent Rortfest. Grossly overpriced construction projects for anything that looked like a school. Even schools that were slated for closure due to low numbers.
Makes me think there might be an unwritten law in all of this. ‘The more dramatically a government responds to a crisis, the less likely that crisis is to be genuine.’
Only big Pharma and pushing CBDCs make any sense the way they pushed the mandates in the face of overwhelming evidence that the mandates were useless.
When do governments normally care so much about your health, unless there is profit of course.
I don’t think “doing nothing” was ever suggested by anyone, in or out of politics. The role of governments in situations of reports of danger is certainly to do something.
Here are “somethings” that could have been done, rather than the imposition of lockdowns, masks and coerced injections:
If it was the “something must be done” effect – why not the above?
Do remember that the ‘virus’ created by Daszac and his team – discussed for years at top tables- was manufactured to do exactly what it did/does – and they all most likely knew this beforehand!
Their “vaccines” must have been prepared beforehand too.
Moderna ( Mode RNA) have been playing with mRNA for years.
So many at the top tables were obviously in on the whole scheme from the very start.
Exactly. It’s straining credulity, to put it mildly, that nobody in government had any idea of any of this – and that they acted out of a sort of innocent confusion.
It is far more credible that actions were taken which would require “vaccines” and that it was understood and intended that hose “vaccines” would be used as widely as possible.
As I keep repeating on here, these “vaccines” have been brewed to a recipe.
Like burning down your house to get rid of some Rats.
‘Don’t just do something, stand there’, as was one perceptively said.
Maybe its their ‘Build Back Better’ plan. Can’t believe anyone into economics thought QE on this scale would ever work. Have they even explained what ‘Build Back Better’ really means, from beginning to end, what their intentions are.
So much of this rings true. Without social media, we might not even have known there was a pandemic. “Politician’s logic” as seen in “Yes Minister” was very much at play: you must be seen to do something, somebody whispered in Saint Boris’s ear, and so he danced like a puppet on strings. And absolutely that the current crop of clowns will be out of office by the time the real costs are felt (although I’m surprised that Saint Boris has hung on as long as he has): David Cameron ran and hid when he didn’t get the referendum result he wanted, and the Labour government disappeared leaving only a note “there’s no money left”.
Yes they will all be off stage by the time the harms hit home.
I would say God help whichever administration will be in charge by then – but it could be Labour, in which case I won’t say it, because they are as responsible as the current one for their lack of anything which resembled a democratic opposition when the restrictions were being considered and voted on. Harder, Faster, Longer.
I’m going to continue banging the drum.
At the end of WWII, the Nuremberg trials allowed the general population to cleanse themselves of the horror of Nazism by serving up their leaders for punishment.
It allowed them to sweep under the carpet the fact that Hitler was voted in, It allowed them to conveniently ignore the fact that every one of them witnessed if not participated in the gradual elimination of Jews from their society. They could all see the discrimination and they could all see Jewish families were taken off to ghettos.
In March of 2020, the majority of western populations were up for a staycation, watching Netflix and not having to go to work. They can claim they had no idea that people’s businesses would be ruined, that the government would have to print and give away money to keep things going, that children’s education would suffer, but they did. It was very convenient to be frightened of a virus that if anyone took the time to check would have realised how not dangerous it was.
People allowed themselves to be frightened because it suited them. Not all, but many. Most.
You can be sure of this: in a previous time, without Internet, Netflix, computer games to keep the kids occupied, lockdowns would never have happened because the population would have gone stir crazy.
We can blame Boris Johnson and Neil Ferguson all we like, but the blame is on us. If we can admit that, we have a fighting chance of some similar madness not occurring again.
Yes, I too was initially shocked and eventually disgusted by the number of so called “educated, middle class” friends and colleagues who – during the spring of 2020 – said words to the effect of: “well, I’m actually enjoying lockdowns a bit”, or “it isn’t really that bad anyway.”
Complete head-in-the-sand sentiments to support cognitive dissonance borne out of selfishness, thoughtlessness and indifference.
The irony was the same people were calling me “selfish” for protesting various mandates throughout that year.
Sigh …..
Indeed. Most weren’t the least bit frightened of the virus but said they were and were fully into the Covid theatre just to maintain WFH etc. In fairness many were saving thousands of pounds in commuting costs and as we know money is many people’s priority and not health …. although they claim it is.
Selfishness is a virtue, you correctly opposed the mandates.
Lockdown was entirely altruistic, all were sacrificed to all.
Blaming the many for the sins of the few is not the way forward. The cure is simple.
Blaming the few for the sins of the many is not the way forward either.
And it isn’t a question of blaming. It’s a question of owning up. Everyone knows deep down what they should be owning up to.
And that is not to say that everyone was an active or passive participant, but many, many were. Let’s just say it’s not just Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and Neil Ferguson.
I just think pretending a great mass of the population weren’t responsible in some way for what has happened is dishonest and will lead us to more of the same in the future.
I think you’re right.
It was all too easy for Germans to turn Hitler and the Nazis into a species of aliens from outer space, against whom they were powerless. Everyone has to accept personal responsibility – neither too much nor too little.
I know of people who were bullied into taking the jab by colleagues, in workplaces where that was not required, and suffered ill health as a result. The bullies must accept their part in that; and so must the bullied. That is what can happen to you, if you don’t stand up for yourself.
Mass passivity is not a virtue, and it is not harmless.
Yes, Hitler was the result of what was taught in Germany for centuries beforehand.
Well, he grew up in Austria. Not sure he spent long enough at school to learn anything much.
He certainly learnt virulent anti-Semitism, which was readily available in Austria – as it was in Germany.
Schools are not the only places where teaching and learning occurs.
Yes, Hitler absorbed the dominant philosophy of Germany and Austria. Germany was essentially destroyed by its philosophers.
He wasn’t an innovator in any way. He did, however, put the dominant ideas of German philosophy into practice.
What should I own up to? I saw it for what it was but how could I have fought back against it in March 2020?
It has already started.
That’s one of the best things I have ever read hats off to you
This is an excellent point and links to MikeHaseler’s idea of feedback loops – loathsome though many of our politicians and public servants are, we can’t pile all the blame at their feet. For instance, the Prime Minister would abseil off the Shard if he thought it would increase his poll ratings. We might not like to admit it, but lockdowns have been very popular with the public and this is likely to remain the case until the economic and social damage is more evident (which may be never, because it can always be blamed on ‘the next thing’). The one element missing from the analysis is the role of the supine and unquestioning media, cheerleading for lockdown. The positive feedback loop happens: politicians declare lockdown, press cheer lockdown, public approve, politicians lockdown again…etc. ad nauseam. Unfortunately positive feedback isn’t effective at maintaining equilibrium.
It allowed them to sweep under the carpet the fact that Hitler was voted in
Except that he wasn’t. The NSDAP never won an election in Germany. Hitler was appointed chancellor by Reichspräsident Hindenburg on behalf of Franz v. Papen after his own emergency cabinet and that of Kurt v. Schleicher had essentially failed. Or rather, appointing Hitler as chancellor was part of an intrigue of v. Papen against his successor v. Schleicher. Hitler became part of an DNVP-(ultra-conservative monarchists)dominated cabinet and the original plan was to utilize the popularity he had gained due to his election campaigns having been funded by DNVP press grandees (Alfred Hugenberg) to get rid of the unloved Weimar republic in favour of something more to the tastes of the DNVP.
Even after dissolving the Reichstag and outlawing the KPD (Moscow-oriented communists), the NSDAP failed to win enough seats in the next Reichstag to be able to change the constitution. The enablement act only became possible because the Zentrum (Rome-oriented Catholics) also supported it. By strange coincidence, the first chancellor of the FRG was Konrad Adenauer, a Zentrum-politician of 1933 who already wanted a west German state closely intertwined with France after the first world war.
The second world war ended after almost all of Germany had been occupied by allied troops who were being opposed by ferocious fighting on all fronts and only won because of their overwhelming numerical superiority. Nobody served anyone up to anyone else. Political and military leaders who didn’t kill themselves first were arrested by force.
Hitler was appointed, within the rules of Weimar Germany. Also, bear in mind, that every party in Germany was totalitarian, some openly, some by implication.
Also, bear in mind, that every party in Germany was totalitarian, some openly, some by implication.
This is wrong.
And you don’t say why.
Never mind, Leonard Peikoff, in Ominous Parallels, demonstrated that the opponents of the Nazis didn’t oppose them in essence, they were disarmed.
I leave you to your mindless fantasies, pretending that, for example, the Social Democrats weren’t Marxist and that the Nationalists weren’t anti-industrial.
‘One explanation that’s popular on social media – the so-called ‘Great Reset’ theory – is that lockdowns were adopted with the explicit aim of increasing government power, making it easier to adopt various other authoritarian policies in the future. And while they may end up having this effect, I don’t buy it as an explanation for their adoption.’
Hmmm. Whilst cock-up, ass-covering and copycat behaviours all could explain the chain reaction of governments implementing these measures, I don’t buy this interpretation. If I look at Event 201, or the SPARS exercise, it all looks a bit too convenient. You have coronavirus pandemic simulations going on in the years leading up to the event, all of which incorporated stay at home orders and travel restrictions, then you have the various plans and contracts to introduce health status checks which predate the pandemic, and when the virus appears, complex legislation suddenly starts appearing in the Spring of 2020 giving governments unprecedented powers. It doesn’t and has never felt spontaneous or reactionary to me.
Yes, it wasn’t just that the measures taken were unorthodox, it was that the unorthodox measures were rehearsed. Politicians in many countries were all chanting the WEF “build back better” slogan, so if it wasn’t a conspiracy it was a very good impression of one. The slew of non-COVID-specific new totalitarian legislation in the UK and other countries, brought in under cover of COVID, also points to conspiracy. And the otherwise unexplained assassinations by foreign mercenaries (successful in Haiti, failed in Madagascar) of heads of state who wouldn’t cooperate with inappropriate public health policies is difficult to explain as a “cock up”.
Also the gradually introduced and medically indefensible push to vaccinate the world with a non-sterilising and poorly tested vaccine. That wasn’t “cock up”, that was deliberate, as were the deceptions about introduction of digital ID.
Didn’t Toby do an article calling CBDCs “terrifying”, well this stuff is straight out from the WEF yet, according to Toby, it’s just a conspiracy. Not to worry then.
‘so if it wasn’t a conspiracy it was a very good impression of one.’
Spot on! And if Klaus Schwab is not a criminal mastermind, he’s doing a very good impression of one!
His father’s factory made large turbines for Hitler’s Heavy Water plants in Norway, working on the German nuclear weapon project.
He seems to have been well thought of in high places!
Must have had access to a copy of the A.Hitler playbook then.
There were a few heads of state in Africa whom I can’t recall their names but there was also Brandy Vaughn in the US who was an early critic of the vaccine.
Tanzania and Burundi??
Think you are correct.
Quite.
Noah Carl presents the evidence, shows the effects, then, negates the conclusions, which are obvious. So – the net effects of lockdowns were all coincidental? In March 2020, Joe Public could make the simple conclusion shutting down a country’s economy – it’s beating heart – was madness. And the government didn’t game this out beforehand? Seriously? A fine example of the limited hangout, if not, someone who can’t parse political reality.
I know you would think with all that brainpower and computer models they have access to in the Treasury that they couldn’t have formed some kind of civil service equivalent of a SWAT team to try to work out what the impacts might be
Also the amount of agreement among especially the G7 Nations. most countries hardly agree on anything yet with a few outliers, went in lockstep. WEF tell you what they intend to do, what is the conspiracy in that? why not just believe them or at least keep on eye on them?
Newly Released Pfizer Documents Reveal COVID Jab Dangers (greenmedinfo.com)
Pfizer was working with Alipay – A CCP social media technology company as far back as 2018.
Or, it was a deliberate policy designed to crash world economies and systems in order to bring in the NWO.
Or… a means of concealing a debt crisis and artificially suppressing economic activity, perhaps? I suspect many agendas were being followed by the various gangster factions running the world; there may not be a single room beneath a volcano where the entire plan was hatched..
…but if there was, I’d personally start with the CIA and work out from there.
I think you would be right!
See Schwab’s time at Harvard and the interesting origins and purpose of the EEF, later WEF.
‘In the short-term, therefore, politicians and public health officials were pursuing their own interests when they decided to lock down.’
Isn’t it true that BoJo in mid Mar-20 was not going to lock down but continue with Whitty’s then sensible policy of herd immunity, until the teaching unions said they were going to strike and close the schools anyway. That was the trigger for the 23-Mar-20 volt face. Ferguson’s ridiculous model was only then wheeled out.
The intriguing task for future historians will be to trace the segue in mid Apr-20 from ‘flatten the curve’ to ‘we can’t sacrifice what we’ve achieved’. I wrote in my diary at the time that a condition had emerged for ending the restrictions – no deaths, no cases – which those who had set it knew could never be met. It was therefore their intention that restrictions were permanent,
“True” and “Johnson” have no place in the same sentence.
What any politician says is utterly irrelevant, and what they really believe or intend is completely unknowable. All that matters are actions and outcomes.
I would just like to introduce then to some Piano Wire!
Ferguson also does modelling for GAVI a Gates owned company.
So none of the experts have any clue. Huh. Two years to think about it, all that brainpower, and whole thing’s a complete mystery. And the team here are ‘inclined’ to agree with Toby’s cock-up theory. The thing about an incline is it’s a slippery slope.
Sticking to the cock-up theory is just a temporary measure to retain dignity. If you still think that’s the way the world works in 2022, well, you need to read more. Start with RFK’s book on Fauci. You won’t be using the word cock-up after reading that, which is why it’s really easy to tell who hasn’t read it.
Toby’s been told how the world works, by Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair. There are seven rooms. And if you’re really lucky, and in the right place and the right time, you might make it into the first. But that’s as far as you’re going. Now, if you listen to all the chatter in that first room, it’s all about cock-up theory. But in the other rooms? What’s that sound? Hysterical laughter. Cock-up, that’s a good one.
Ooh, I can’t wait for the next article wheeling out the next bunch of professors, two years too late, with all their shiny data, expressing their cluelessness at wtf just happened.
Indeed, the “cock up theory” is being shackled to the oars in the slave ship and still asserting “I’m sure they’re just taking us on an involuntary pleasure cruise with a rigorous exercise regime for our own good.”
Remember Laurance Fox on GB News said straight up, “they lied” Mark Dolan was like, er, you what!
spot on loopy.
‘Start with RFK’s book on Fauci. You won’t be using the word cock-up after reading that, which is why it’s really easy to tell who hasn’t read it.’
Indeed.
So many still appear not even to have heard of this brilliant, comprehensive, fully detailed and substantiated, total exposure and take-down of Fauci and the whole rotten gang!
Should be required reading everywhere. In fact is a one stop shop, as you say. I’ve gifted it to stubborn family members (to no avail, they won’t read it because it’s written by him) -infuriating.
Pseudo Pandemic is meant to be a good book. The guy has detailed knowledge on the WEF Agenda 2030 etc.
This website argues it provides a friendly forum for alternative views. For this membership, my view is alternative, yours is the MSM. Let’s see how friendly everyone is.
A big French study reported some months ago that half of people who report ‘long covid’ have never had covid, they don’t pass the serum antibody test. 98% of sufferers in an earlier smaller UK study reported being fully back to normal in 13 weeks. Reporting then stopped.
A key motivation for lockdowns everywhere was the possibility of health services being overwhelmed, which in some countries led to patients receiving no treatment at all. Lockdown sceptics (who form the overwhelming proportion of this site’s membership) refuse to accept this happened.
Would you care to read this over and re-post, It reads as written as drivel.
I personally know a woman in her twenties who has been flattened by covid for over a year. She was a high achiever, now her life is on hold.
Figures are still hard to assess but ONS figures have been used for many arguments on this website.
Even if you halved the estimate, it’s still enormous and might have justified lockdown by itself, even if nobody had died.
Straight in there with the insult. I can’t say I’m surprised but it is against the ethos of this website.
I personally know a man in a wheelchair, therefore humans are not bipeds.
While I’m already certain about the answer, I feel compelled to ask whether these ONS figures for self-identified long coofs are broken down by those in the public and salaried sector with generous long term sickness plans, and those who actually work for a living.
The accusation that so many people are simply malingerers is disappointing and based on no evidence at all.
And while I don’t know of any statistics, most people are neither willing nor able to give up work, let alone in their twenties.
Please don’t accuse me of making an accusation when I instead asked a question.
If you don’t know the statistics, why are you asserting sweeping generalisations?
I’ve seen no stats on whether long covid sufferers are self employed, salaried, not working or anything else. It’s a medical condition that’s not related to what job you do.
long covid will disappear like dew in the morning sunshine
there will remain some genuine cases (as there are after other viral infections)
but the rest will be malingerers. Its no surprise how many ‘disabled’ people we have in the categories impossible to objectively test for (bad back and depression)
And these malingerers were called heroes in 2020 for staying at home, suppose that would come easy with people like that. You can bet they’ll be the ones who are in favour of further restrictions.
Terrifically insulting to many people whose lives have been ruined. The worst thing about it is that in many cases, there’s no sign of improvement at all, even after a year.
“I personally know a woman in her twenties who has been flattened by covid for over a year. She was a high achiever, now her life is on hold”
Any virus, including the flu, can do that to someone at any time. It is how people develop ME/CFS which bears a lot of similarities to what is described as “long covid”. It is believed to be caused by the virus damaging the hypothalamus.
I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who finds themselves in that boat, because the medical profession will have zero interest in trying to get to the bottom of what has caused the lingering illness, and at best, they will be left to their own devices to try to improve their health by themselves.
Yes, I have heard that suggested. At the moment it’s ruining her life. She is by nature a highly active, high achiever. But right now she can hardly get out of the house.
Has she been jabbed?
If you mean before she was infected, I don’t think so. It was a long time ago and she wasn’t in a priority group.
That’s not what I asked.
I don’t know if she’s been vaccinated since contracting Long Covid. She doesn’t get out much.
Then you can’t know that she has “long covid” rather than vaccine damage.
I guess there’s always another level of scepticism I hadn’t thought of.
Obviously, I don’t agree that vaccines cause Long Covid and neither does the overwhelming majority of the medical profession. But I’m sure you can find me some doctor with fringe views to support your cause.
I wasn’t arguing that vaccines cause “long covid”, but that vaccine damage is being misattributed.
The “vast majority of the medical profession” have not only to fear about their careers if they challenge the official narrative – as Dr Malcolm Kendrick recently and horrifyingly revealed – but also would have to live with themselves knowing how much harm they’ve co-operated with. They’re in denial.
If you genuinely want to help her then my best advice would be to look at some of the best ME/CFS websites, like Healthrising and Phoenixrising. There is a lot of excellent information on there from people who have already walked those hard yards and know what works and what does not.
The NHS formerly told people with ME/CFS that they would be helped by graded exercise therapy and CBT, both of which are known by patient groups to be very harmful to ME/CFS patients. From what I have seen, they are also applying this to people with “long covid” in the long covid clinics. I understand research is underway into the similarities between ME/CFS and long covid (the OpenResearch foundation might have had grant funding for this).
I would imagine that GET and CBT would similarly be harmful to long covid patients and would not recommend that anyone with long covid tries these. If they have sustained damage to the hypothalamus through viral injury then what they would likely need to do is try to reset the hypothalamus – there are programmes developed by other people who have recovered from ME/CFS in this way which might be able to help with this. Ashok Gupta has a programme, as does Dan Neuffer – both are based on this premise, are available online and can be done at home.
Your friend would also be advised to find some non-taxing relaxing activity they can undertake (like gentle gardening or art or some craft activity) and to optimise their nutrition, paying particular attention to their diet, eating quality foods, not junk, limiting sugar, and taking supps of Vits D, C, and a good B complex (look for Igennus SuperB complex) and magnesium. Meditation or yoga can also be helpful, provided the patient stays within their limits of functioning.
People with these illnesses are not malingerers, but it suits the NHS and others to label them as such, because they often “look” well, the tests which the NHS is prepared to do come back with “normal” results, and the NHS is unable to get to the bottom of what is causing their very real dysfunction, thereby doing them a disservice.
My advice would be for your friend to take her healthcare into her own hands and try to help herself – it is very unlikely any health professional will do that for her. I hope for her sake that you see this post.
Thanks for taking the time to write this, I appreciate it and I will share it. My wife is a nutritionist and has been helping, although I don’t know the details.
I do believe doctors have been taking her condition seriously. I can’t think of a person less inclined to be a malingerer than she is. If anything, she’s caused herself trouble by trying to shrug it off too soon.
The fact is that almost 18 months later it’s hard to say that there’s been any consistent improvement, just peaks and troughs.
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree that reasoned analysis and opinion should be encouraged and welcomed on this site! I have no issue with you stating the above.
I vehemently disagree with the UK’s lockdown policy.
In my humble opinion, lockdowns were bourn out of “cockup” mixed with conspiratorial tones. Our “government” U-turned on a sound and historically reasoned policy due to fear, panic and coercion (media and Europe). And widespread acceptance and support and compliance led to other convergent agendas being thrust down our throats: climate, health, vaccine, digital ID, governmental overreach.
But hey, each entitled to their own opinion …
Thank you for by far the most polite, and most thoroughly argued reply I have received on this website. While (unsurprisingly) I don’t agree with you, I respect your view.
I regard lockdown as just another version of quarantine, but taken to the state/whole society level. Yes, the cost benefit is hard to add up. But any calculation that wholly excludes all other health negatives besides death, is clearly not worth the paper it’s written on.
Similarly, it’s not reasonable to compare lockdown economic performance to normal economic performance. Even without an official lockdown, the economy was going to take very severe damage.
While I dislike our current government intensely, I sympathise with the policy makers everywhere who had to guess what was going to happen with a disease that no one had ever faced before.
A disease that no one had ever faced before
Hmm.
Three months after lockdown it was obvious to anyone with a brain that it was just a bad flu. Which we most certainly have experienced before. Many times.
In November 2019 we knew it was a coronavirus. November twenty NINETEEN.
COVID-19
Too many simply sucked up everything the BBC, SKY and C4 News threw at them!
And here you on a classic confirmation bias site, where you will only hear from people you already agree with (apart from me, of course).
SARS COV “2” is in the name. And don’t forget there was data from that Ship.
No, no, you misunderstand, Ron. The number is randomised, it doesn’t mean it was the second one. In this case, 2=1. The one before was called 1 because they, er… er…
Oh never mind me, I am just going back to my cave on Staffa
Absolutely, 100% disagree. It’s much worse than a bad flu.
But if you think that, then obviously lockdown would be unnecessary.
The fact that so many countries all round the world, of every political persuasion, clearly disagree, should IMO lead you to question that assumption.
Then why are all these “governments” abandoning it all? Is the “pandemic” over, or is not over? You’re tying yourself in knots.
As was hoped, the virus has mutated to become more transmissible but less dangerous. Milder versions push out toxic versions.
This changes the cost benefit equation two ways: a) measures which were sufficient to control early covid are not sufficient against omicron etc, and b) a much lower percentage of people are hospitalised, with less damage to society.
To summarise: it’s harder to do and less worth it.
They abandoned the existing, long-established policy, which could be summarised as “reassure the population and keep things running as normally as possible” with the opposite, “terrify people and shut things down”, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.
Lockdown is the experimental policy and it is for advocates to prove, as a starting point, that it reduced infections in the UK. As far as I can see they can’t do that: saying “it’s obvious it would” doesn’t count.
And they knew from the beginning it wasn’t a 21st century Black Death, which is why they changed the rules to make it easy to overcount deaths: that is what sparked my suspicions.
Turning to the point about economic costs, what was the fall in UK GDP durinng the nasty flu wave in the late 60s?What was the fall in Swedish GDP in 2020? It’s not obvious at all to me why a disease that overwhelmingly kills the old and multiply ill should cause”very severe damage” in the absence of government and MSM fear-mongering, without which I doubt we’d even have noticed a “pandemic” which resulted in total deaths in line with the first decade of this century.
I disagree with almost all the conspiracy theories around covid and I don’t agree that they deliberately overcomunted deaths, as you claim. The great majority of countries deliberately undercounted.
The 60s flu wave was not as drastic as covid. You have to go back to Spanish flu for that. That did lead to a serious economic hit although it started during WW1 so it was an abnormal period anyway.
In the absence of an official lockdown, many people took evasive action of their own. There’s also the risk (which I know isn’t accepted here but it was treated seriously by policy makers so you have to factor it in if you want to understand) that refusing to take protection measures would have led to higher numbers still, with even worse effects.
Spanish flu largely killed people of working age.
The flu in the late 60s was more dangerous to people of working age than Covid, which poses a trivial threat to most people..
The people killed by Covid in 2020, when the big drop in output took place,were overwhelmingly not economically active.
And it isn’t a “conspiracy theory” that Covid deaths were deliberately overcounted in the UK: it was there in the legislation for anyone to see.
The statement ‘covid poses a trivial threat to most people’ is flat out wrong. However, if you still think that after all this time, then clearly I’m not going to persuade of anything else either.
Thanks Fingal,
Surely folks, when face with points we disagree with, we need to respond with “science”, data and reasoned analytics?
There was some report by a US university (?) last year stating that lockdown sceptics generally argue with data and logic, whereas lockdown proponents argue with emotive sentiment: I’ve always believed that.
When forced to discuss (I rarely bring up my points of view without prompting) any Covid related policy I don’t agree with, I always try to separate the noise and argue each point individually and respectfully – quite difficult most times.
In the past, I’ve brought up kids disproportionate health risk to Covid and been simply told: “Don’t kill granny.” Or mentioned alternative methods to managing an epidemic and been told: “So, you wanna let it rip, eh?” or that the virus’ virulence is comparable to a bad flu season, been called a “Covid denier.”
It’s ironic that we dismiss opposing Covid / lockdown viewpoints with the same sentiment of logic.
Again, just my 2 pence, and certainly in my humble opinion only.
Cheers all!
Even without an official lockdown, the economy was going to take very severe damage.
What’s your evidence for that? In 2020 the UK government ran up extra debts of 12.4% of GDP. The corresponding figure for Sweden was 4%. https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/government-debt-to-gdp. The flu pandemics in the 1950s and 1960s barely affected the economy.
And they still had Woodstock!
As has been said by many people, Sweden did lockdown to a degree in its own way. So it’s not an either/or.
Service economies (like ours) tended to do worse than manufacturing economies.
Brexit happened at the same time.
Again, we were headed for a significant economic hit anyway, even with an optimistic effect of how people would have behaved without lockdown.
“Yes, the cost benefit is hard to add up.”
it is hard but it has been done multiple times and it always shows lockdown to be far worse. All this information was available before we did it. Remember 130,000 died of austerity (as parroted by the BBC and guardian endlessly)? Well what do you think a full scale mega depression is going to do? A recession takes 3 months off everyone’s life on average – that’s 15 million life years in the UK. Not even Ferguson’s ramblings had anything as bad as that from Covid.
That’s a really complicated sum, and at best requires massive assumptions, even if you were only looking at the economic effects and not the issue of lives. So no, I don’t agree it is as clear cut as you say.
Did they really U-turn, or did they pretend to be opposed to lockdown so Labour would support it, and then when they apparently changed their minds Labour had nowhere to go except towards harder and sooner lockdown?
Opposition neutralised.
This sounds like a possibility, calling the opposition’s bluff in this way, but if so, would it not be one of the oldest political tricks in the book? Or do the lessons of history repeating itself show that nobody ever learns from it?
Fingal 0 – 1 HaylingDave
Please do not feed and it will go back under its bridge.
Re-read first sentence
Wouldn’t a Fingal prefer a cave to a bridge?
“Almost all western governments, including the UK’s, showed great reluctance to lockdown. In the UK’s case, this led to a critical delay and a failure to take all necessary measures, such that the effect of the lockdown was greatly diluted compared to, say, China.”
Lol. Take your pick from (1) if you believe everything the Chinese tell you, I have a bridge to sell you and (2) actually things don’t seem to have turned out too well from China.
All your other arguments have been rubbished here, daily, since March 2020, both above and below the line. If you think covid was/is dangerous, you can get yourself filled with “vaccines”, wear a triple mask and stay at home for as long as you want, as long as you don’t expect me to and you don’t expect me to pay for you doing it.
If China had an infection rate anything like as high as ours, it would have been absolutely impossible to hide.
“Let’s see how friendly everyone is.” Well, why on earth would you expect anyone here to be friendly when you’re advocating for a position which involves us and our loved ones being locked in our homes, lied to, demonised, discriminated against, forced to be vaccinated, our livelihoods destroyed and our country wrecked for a generation?
He was only advocating for restriction of movement, and that for the benefit of the nation’s heath.
It is most fitting to politely explain why he is wrong.
It’s not clear exactly what he’s advocating for and frankly I don’t care much, but he sets out a number of arguments supporting the received covid narrative, which led to further folly and evil with “vaccines” and related nonsense.
I don’t feel the need to be polite to someone who wishes to imprison me, and as I said all of his arguments have been utterly demolished countless times on this site, so I can’t be arsed to rehash the whole thing.
True. Many of us are tired but we need to win yet more hearts and minds if we want to try and stop future insanity.
Indeed we do
It was of zero benefit to the nation’s health but inflicted massive damage and many silenced and “cancelled” Medics said just that – that is where you go irretrievably wrong in your delusion!
Yes..that isn’t exactly “friendly” or even humane is it?
Many people could say you, as a lockdown sceptic and possible vaccine sceptic, were being inhumane. I’m not sure that kind of comment gets us anywhere.
The lockdowns you support have caused anguish and suffering I hope you never experience.
I think of my friend, desperately fighting to save the life of her suicidal daughter – a life that had been reduced to tatters; of my colleague, exhausted by the struggles to save her child from utter despair. I have seen people – strong people – breaking down in sobs as yet another lockdown was announced.
Have you no capacity to imagine how this has hurt people? Have you ever tried to find out?
The article we’re discussing focuses on the economic effects, and so have I in my comments. Lockdown had horrible effects for many people, but death isn’t fun either.
Death can and does occur as a result of economic effects. The “horrible effects” I describe can and do result in deaths.
Do you know nothing of the additional millions of children’s lives lost as a result of the lockdowns you applaud (reported by Unicef, amongst others)?
I’m not applauding lockdown. It was a reluctant, drastic response to a crisis which I understand, particularly at the time. Very possibly not to lock down would have had an even worse outcome (but we’ll never know).
The Unicef comment presumably refers to children’s lives around the globe. Clearly, if lockdown meant lower vaccination for other diseases in a third world country, you might not want to use it there.
How are we being inhumane?
I’m happy for people to wear masks, avoid friends and family and get repeatedly injected if they choose to, and I suspect most who comment feel the same.
It’s the other side who believe in compulsion not based on real science.
Maybe we’re talking at cross purposes. I don’t think it’s productive for either side to talk about the other being inhumane.
Aren’t you supporting lockdowns because you think they save lives? Isn’t that an issue of humane or inhumane behaviour?
Or are you just telling us that you don’t want to hear what we have to say on inhumane behaviour?
Mainly, I’m criticising the article at the head of this column because it fails to take into account entire sections of relevant information, such as non-fatal negative health outcomes. You can’t make an assessment of whether lockdowns were worth it without it.
I’m also sympathising with policy makers at the time, who were faced with such difficult choices.
In my personal opinion (which isn’t really relevant to the argument but you’re asking) at the moment I think lockdown was probably necessary in the early stages. You only get to see one version of history so we may never know for sure.
However, the value of the UK lockdown was heavily diluted because it was applied too late and with too many loopholes. Whereas some countries (China,NZ, Singapore) got the full benefit in saved lives.
These countries have subsequently been too slow to understand the need to switch away from lockdown to other tactics. But that’s a separate issue.
a critical delay and a failure to take all necessary measures
What’s the evidence that this had any effect? The Czech Republic and Slovakia were praised for their COVID response, and ended up with some of the highest death rates. Peru came down very early and very hard and it’s had the highest death rate of all countries.
Those countries that succeeded in controlling the spread by lockdown alone (eg China, Singapore, NZ, Australia) all took action before the virus had seeded in too many places.
Every country has its own local factors and I don’t know enough about Peru to say why it didn’t work there.
You speak of Australia. Do you know anything of the nightmare that life became under Victoria’s lockdown?
That’s a different argument. The article is about the economic pros and cons.
An unfree life is irrelevant to a successful economy?
Of course it is. The reason the UK economy was hit worse than many in Europe, for example, is because we have a high service industry component, which was disproportionately affected.
The argument I’m making is that it could be worth taking the hit in order to a) save lives and b) avoid an economic crisis that might have happened anyway, as cases ballooned.
I know you and other members here don’t agree with that analysis. But it’s a perfectly logical response to the problem.
Members here won’t accept so many of the stats that we’re never going to get agreement. But I do think they ought to be able to accept that lockdown could be a logical response, if you accept the problems posed by covid are serious enough.
I’ve had so many stats, graphs etc thrown at me (from all sides of the debate) that I am tired of it all.
Try this for a stat:
Life expectancy, UK:
2019 : 81 years
2020 : 81 years
2021 : 81 years
Is there a pandemic in there somewhere?
Or am I “oversimplifying” things?
Up until that time it was improving, not flatlining.
As you say there are soooo many stats.
Perhaps it would have continued to improve were it not for the disastrous consequences of lockdowns.
But my point remains – where is the pandemic?
It defies all logic that a disease which spreads by social contact would be made worse by eliminating that social contact.
I don’t know how you expect me to answer that. Have a look at worldometer?
But social contact wasn’t eliminated – it was driven indoors. Check out New York, for a starter.
Are you also seriously suggesting the elimination of social contact is a good thing for any kind of health (including economic health)?
What happens to the health of those who live alone? Or are they also people who are of no interest to you?
The intention and effect of lockdowns was to reduce social contact. Some were too weak to make any difference, but none took it to the ultimate ambition (zero contact) for obvious reasons.
The distress caused by isolation is of course a factor which has to be weighed, mainly against lives saved.
The problem with the article we’re discussing is that ignores massive factors such as negative health effects besides actual death. It also ignores the fact that even without lockdown, there were serious economic impacts which would have got worse.
This makes the study of marginal interest.
And you have no interest in the ones that don’t suit your taste for lockdowns.
Oh come on. What do you think everyone’s doing here?
When a study such as the one we’re debating here entirely chooses to entirely leave out all negative heath impacts besides actual death, it should be the work of a moment to agree that it’s not good enough.
When this current ‘wave’ of the ‘highly transmissible Omicron BA.2 variant’ peaks and then falls precipitously, in the absence of any restrictions whatsoever, your argument about the necessity of lockdowns will likewise collapse, won’t it?
No. They made the same assumption about the original covid. The reason they switched from let it rip, herd immunity was because the figures suggested that the figures would rise too high, in too short a time, before they began to fall away.
With milder omicron, this doesn’t matter.
That nightmare includes the economic effects.
Yes, but the article is mainly about economic effects.
Reduction in death toll was a reasonable aim.
Like so many, you are simply aiming at the wrong target, with the wrong logic and without any apparent understanding of the reality of the planned “Covid Pandemic” and its real purpose.
“This is not a vaccine it is a poison” ( Luc Montagnier Nobel Laureate, virologist)
I don’t hold with conspiracy theories although I recognise that most members of this site do. To be fair, that’s no longer really an argument about covid, but something else.
Can you define conspiracy theory?
I think the term is well understood. A 9/11 example such as the ‘no planers’ (my favourite loony theory) would be a good example.
Or the QAnon paedophile network idea.
Have you considered the possibility that the more extreme conspiracy theories were invented by the authorities in order to discredit the ones that got near the truth?
Yes, I have seen that suggested. In fact I’ve seen some pretty severe arguments among 9/11 conspiracy theorists, accusing each other of being complicit.
What examples do you have of healthcare systems being overwhelmed?
It was reported in many countries, including advanced countries such as India: https://msf.org.uk/article/covid-19-india-health-facilities-are-completely-overwhelmed
When you see China building a new hospital in 10 days, there was a reason.
Lots of things are “reported”. Most of it is total BS.
Judging from the comments, a high proportion of members of this site a) reject anything from what they call MSM and b) are sympathetic to a range of conspiracy theories up and including the ‘secret elite’.
There’s no possibility of me persuading such a person to listen.
However, if they truly want to understand why policy makers take the actions they do, they need to imagine themselves into a world where such conspiracies do not exist, and where it’s not necessary to distrust any statement from any professional.
In that world, what’s happening become intelligible.
Well, you’ve got it all worked out Fingal. Well done, and sorry you’ve had to waste your time trying to reason with conspiracy theorists.
He’s sounding remarkably like a returned concrete: “if they want to understand why policy makers take the actions they do”
Ahhhh you sound like you are an insider, or at the very least, in the pay of those on the inside, and trying to ‘turn’ a few lockdown sceptics Fingal.
Well you can go back and report to your superiors that you gave it your best shot.
An insider to what? A secret elite?
If you’re offering, I’m interested.
Optics? Like those videos of people summarily collapsing in the street; and money being disinfected; and whole streets being industrially disinfected?
If you’re suggesting it’s fake (I’m not quite sure) then I disagree.
Dismissing anything that doesn’t suit you as fake is certainly an easy way to get round debating.
You think that people were genuinely collapsing because of covid while cameras just happened to be pointing in their direction?
There were reports in all kinds of media. I remember people outside hospitals being refused entrance and such like. Not sure why this is important.
Because nobody outside China has been filmed just walking along and suddenly collapsing in that theatrical matter.
Obviously faked.
I literally don’t know what you’re talking about.
You didn’t see the videos from China of people walking along normally than suddenlly dropping to the ground and twitching theatrically while somebody else for no apparent reason was filming the wall they walked in front of?
I don’t believe you.
I don’t remember that.
I don’t mean to be rude but you have fallen for the MSM crap – the hospital built in 10 days – is the same as the people dropping down dead in the street – it was to sell a narrative and get people to suck up the fear.
The claim came from China. That’s state controlled media, not MSM.
The MSM here aren’t state controlled media?
I thought the idea was that MSM was secretly influenced rather than state controlled. I mean, there is a difference.
But hey, it’s your theory so you can say it means whatever you like.
Didn’t a retired senior executive in the MSM admit a few days ago that the MSM were under instructions not to allow anything that contradicted the government line?
Do D-notices not exist?
Haven’t newspapers been dependent on government advertising revenue throughout the scam?
Not sure who you mean.
I’m going to point out the obvious. You would need for 10s of 1000s of journalists to be in on the act, with none of them ever whistleblowing about it.
Ironically the only state owned company in this country (the BBC) is precisely the one the government wants to close down….because it is too critical!
No – they only need to be “in on the act” to the extent that they want a job and know exactly how easily jobs can be lost.
There is no mechanism for this alleged influence.
It’s impossible to control so many journalists without whistleblowers.
In the west, the media occupies so many contrasting positions. In Russia, just the one.
Criticism of the government is routine – it’s the dominant story.
yep – on GB News interviewed by Dan Wooton in his covid inquiry – confirmed that MSM were engaged in propaganda.
Are you unaware of government advice and direction given to the MSM? This is in the public domain.
In the UK the media clearly occupies many different political viewpoints. Some support the government, some don’t.
Everyone understands that bias (eg the Telegraph is intelligent Tory, the Mail is stupid Tory) and can read media through that filter, if they choose. (I often consume media I don’t agree with – this website for example.)
When it comes to papers which are regarded as opinion setters (eg The Sun) it has been alleged that the newspaper has too much influence on government, not the other way round.
The one media outlet actually owned by the state (the BBC) is instead regarded as an enemy by the government and they’re trying to close it down.
While there is contact between Ministers and media at the top executive level, there is none at any level below that.
The wholesale dismissal of what is derivatively called ‘MSM’ is both wrong and extremely damaging in impact. Once someone takes up that position, it has serial consequences for every story that comes up.
It also frequently leads them to place extraordinary faith in any news source that contradicts MSM – even if that source is blatantly state controlled by an enemy, such as Putin.
Erm – the BBC is state funded and thereby state controlled. All MSM are subject to OFCOM regs and OFCOM issued guidance at the outset of the pandemic making clear the limits of the news organisations reporting of it. Who controls/funds OFCOM?
The BBC is state funded but not state controlled. However the government can exert influence via the license fee, as the Conservatives are currently doing. This is the opposite of government control as the government is trying to end the BBC as an effective institution.
The various regulators are all independent. Government can have some indirect influence, but it’s a long way short of control. And when you get a different government, their interests can change completely.
This is so radically better than, say, Russia. These constant attacks on key institutions in democracies are having a very destructive, unbeneficial effect.
It’s extraordinary to see members (in other threads) giving credibility to Putin Media, simply because it’s opposed to MSM.
I’m not saying it didn’t happen. If China wants to build a hospital in 10 days that is its business.
My point was it was reported in the UK by MSM in such a way as to programme people to be very fearful of the ‘deadly virus coming from china’.
Covid had barely reached the UK at the time. Everyone was sitting around thinking this would never be our problem (like SARS). We anything but scared. We were smug.
Building a hospital in 10 days is a remarkable event and wholly newsworthy. If anything the story could be accused of pandering to the image that China has been building for itself, as being fundamentally more capable and successful than democracies.
This was Chinese government propaganda aimed at both their own domestic audience and the west. Our media is very open to that kind of manipulation.
Okay – let’s go quickly through your points.
You’re astonishing.
1 is piling speculation on speculation.
2 is basing subjectivity upon more subjectivity.
3 is blatantly false A person experiencing a heart attack is less sick than a “covid patient” in the short term?
4 Okay, let me make it easier – there is more than one disease and more than health condition to consider.
5 How do you think you know this? You obviously know nothing about what happened in Australia, for a start.
6 Things are so simple in Fingal’s cave. Conferring encompasses agreement and disagreement – its an exchange of opinions. Check a dictionary.
7 Gosh – were you in the room?
8 Try checking the jurisdictions where this occurred.
You’re always going to misjudge the intentions of governments with regard to covid, because you are starting from a conspiracy position that they are in cahoots against us.
That’s a position I’m sure you reached before covid. And that’s what I didn’t understand when I first came on this site. It turns out that the great majority of members (but I stress, not all of them) were predetermined to be sceptical about covid because they were already serial sceptics/conspiracy theorists about a bunch of other things.
I and my family have all had covid. We are all healthy and avoid medicines, taking a natural approach where possible. I am pretty good at understanding what is happening with my body and its inner workings. I have had recurring mouth ulcers and bleeding gums since having had covid (not gum disease or plaque) not having had this previously. My daughter has asthma after exercise since having covid having not had any problems for several years. Do we have long covid? I wouldn’t say so, but we do have ongoing health issues that we did not have before.
Studies have shown that the spike protein adheres to the ACE receptors so I think just based on my experience and my contacts that there are people suffering from ongoing issues after having covid due to this effect and it depends on the person what symptoms they then have (if any).
There are multiple papers and meta analyses showing that lockdown did not do any good. I think governments had no other sensible options so did something rather than be accused later of doing nothing. I think decisions were impacted greatly when governments knowing that it was a lab leak and therefore classed as a bioweapon. Had it been a natural leak I am not sure the responses would have been the same.
Speaking of ignoring the obvious.
If you assume that the goal was to level the masses down, end the Western experiment with rational thinking and liberalism once and for all, and put us into generational debt slavery that we’ll never escape, then:
I see the article author doesn’t like that “theory”.
Except that it’s not a “theory”, and we certainly didn’t conspire to invent it. It’s a plan. It’s the literally published plan, in book form and explanatory videos, that explains exactly what the WEF / Davos cabal intend to do to us, and how happy we’ll be about it.
But, you know, the author doesn’t agree because muh feels. Surely this is all just a mistake. Our masters must love us, really they must, and I’m sure that they share our individualist views, despite explicitly telling us the opposite.
It’s just… well, it’s just too scary to believe that they really meant what they said, or that they were able to carry it out.
As I said, farewell rationalism, we barely knew ye.
I said in April 2020 that we had just entered a New Dark Age. I got a lot of funny looks.
I described it as a coup to my mother-in-law at around the same time and we fell out, only recently recovered the relationship.
Glad to hear it, CG.
The ‘Great Reset’ is not a theory. It is an admitted fact and agenda. Given the number of WEF YGL alumni in positions of power Occam would appear to apply here.
This is the Danes rocking up to York in 780 AD and saying “We’re going to pillage your wealth, kill those who oppose us, and enslave the survivors,” and the local hedge-priest saying “Oh, but I’m sure you don’t really mean it, because we’d never do anything so vile.”
A trailing cry of “It’s just a cock-uuuuup” can be heard as he’s shackled to the oars.
For 2 years I’ve been asking why are “they” doing this but really I should have asked why is this happening? It would be so nice to have a simple answer. I don’t think the cock-up theory is helpful because it doesn’t explain why most people seem happy to accept the scaremongering and ignore the facts, e.g. the useless, harmful jabs and the devastating effects on our economy and society of the last two years’ events. The WEF is undoubtedly a malign influence, encouraging technocratic behaviour. Corporate interests are too powerful and our ruling classes unwilling to challenge them. Mass formation is another big issue. How do we get out of it? Stay red-pilled.
Getting a bit fed up with these “after the event” intellectualized (transmission externality?) articles now (Boettke and Powell). Too many, too late.
I am enjoying it. We need everyone to admit it was a mistake and hang Ferguson et al out to dry. We aren’t close to ‘winning’ until the BBC asks whether it was a mistake and they are a long way from that.
That’s true.
Gosh – that’s so reassuring. We all make mistakes, after all.
So two years after this sort of accidentally started, can we stop urging the injection of small children? Can we allow the unvaxxed to live normal lives, and reassure them that this will never happen again? Can we restore the destroyed small and medium enterprises?
If it was all a mistake, you would have no problem A) admitting you had made a mistake (you can learn from them after all) and B) you wouldn’t keep repeating the same mistake over and over again.
govt has done neither of those 2 things nor will it
I see it as conspiracy (with a lot of opportunism bolted in)
You would hope so, wouldn’t you? Oh dear – got that wrong. Let’s try something else.
They saw Italy go hard with lockdowns and their inner totalitarians said ‘Oooh, that looks like fun!’
“do you think we could get away with it in UK?” (N Ferguson)
Can we all please stop conceding this point? I appreciate that it’s the authors of the paper, not DS, but it’s a point that people on ‘our side’ frequently accept without challenge.
It’s far from clear that the effect on the elderly would be a net benefit even with policymakers accepting the most pessimistic modelling at the time. Failing to dispute this ignores the suffering of those that were being ‘protected’, and it makes us look like we don’t care about the elderly. In fact, those of us who were actually involved in the day to day care of elderly relatives saw the effect it had on them (and were frequently called ‘granny killers’). Those of us whose relatives didn’t have long left saw them robbed of quality of life for the time they had left. We should be advocating for those people, and for their right to decide for themselves (if they have capacity, and if not, for those that know them best to decide) what living actually means – the possibility of a few more months, or being able to hug their families.
Lockdowns impose an externality on all age groups, and it’s not clear upon whom they impose the greater harm. While I absolutely agree that the impact on young people has been devastating, I don’t feel able to say whether it’s worse to have your development stunted, or to die alone without ever meeting your great-grandchildren because some politician wants to protect you from them infecting you with a virus that they don’t have. The former certainly affects a group that has longer to suffer the consequences, but the latter is inhumane.
Great post. The impact on my 80+ year old parents was one of the things that turned me most vehemently against lockdowns.
I interpreted the point you are having issue with slightly differently, with respect.
My view is that providing focused protection towards the elderly provides a better societal balance than :
I didn’t think anyone was trying to lessen or doubt the suffering that will be thrust upon the children or the elderly, only that – as unpalatable as this may sound – health economics must play a part in policy decisions. Just as a 999 operator decides who she should send a single ambulance to, or an A&E operator decides who gets the bed.
Just my 2 pence
False Dilemma. What about no ‘focused protection’ for the elderly?
Which is the point djmo is making here:
Government has no lawful business telling anyone they are to be targeted for ‘focused protection’.
Another question will the Covid Inquiry tell us the truth when it is completed in in 2063?
Covid Inquiry and a pandemic of procrastination
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/covid-inquiry-and-a-pandemic-of-procrastination/
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Nope, because health economics was binned as a field too. NICE, for example, did absolutely nothing that they are meant to do – all those decision trees to decide who gets treatment and who doesn’t all thrown out of the window. 70 years of best practice trashed.
“Cock up” does not cover this.
I agree. Lockdown would never have been done if we’d considered QALYs and NICE recommendations.
“So why did most Western countries ignore this straightforward logic (as well as their own pandemic preparedness plans), and press ahead with lockdowns?
On this particular question, the authors fail to provide a satisfying answer. They correctly note that politicians and public health officials are just as self-interested as everyone else – that they look out for their own interests first, and only secondarily for the ‘public good’. Yet they don’t really explain why imposing lockdowns was in their interests.”
Its very simple, you just have to look at it in psychological terms.
When covid hit, everyone was forced to contemplate their own mortality in a way that had never happened before in Western societies for 70+ years. Certainly any post war born person had never been faced with the idea that suddenly they could be dead inside a month or two. Now who is going to be worst hit by this? Not the very elderly, they have to contemplate death on a regular basis, its not that far away. The young are full of youthful enthusiasm and will think ‘It won’t happen to me!’ (and they’d be right in covid terms). No, those taking the biggest psychological hit will be the middle aged, especially those within striking distance of retirement. They would have been thinking about a long and fruitful retirement, at least 20 years plus. And now faced the possibility of that being snatched away from them. They were devastated by this potential loss and would be prepared to do anything to try and prevent it. And who happens to be the very people in charge of everything? People in their 50s and early 60s. You don’t get to be in a position of power if you are young, or over retirement age, you get there at a point in late middle age. And this class of people were the ones who faced losing everything, as they saw it. So they had the motive, the driving force and (crucially) the ability to do something about it, with the consequences we saw.
The entire response to covid was driven by late middle age people terrified out of their wits that everything they had worked their entire lives for was being snatched away from them, and they were prepared to throw anyone and everyone else under the bus to stop it happening. And they had control of the levers of power to make that happen.
Yes, I agree. I’m middle aged and every day I engage or do not engage in “risky” behaviors, the decision based on my own demographics, risk profile and risk analysis.
And I think most people do that, we may not quantify risks numerically (what’s riskier, driving to Gatwick on a Friday evening or then flying to Tenerife? They are both “risky” activities, but which provides a greater numerical chance of death? Most do not know), but we quantify them observationally and act in accordance. I have a friend who doesn’t drive at night, nor fly. That’s her risk avoidance behavior kicking in based on a plethora of factors.
When Covid came along, the MSN and government took away our right to quantify the risk – both observationally and numerically.
Hospitalization was on every surface, death from every chance encounter. Oh, how the BBC loved to graph the death porn.
This scared the hell out of people, and no one decided to actually look into the figures themselves.
Unfortunately, this fear is now endemic – a significant number of people will just not recover.
“Herd instinct” on the part of politicians and their “advisers”, swiftly followed by a campaign of terror against the people. As noted, fomented, encouraged and disseminated by “social” and mainstream media.
but the parties showed they knew that it was nowhere near as deadly as they were telling everyone it was – they weren’t terrified in the least, with all that drinking and no social distancing etc – which to me points to conspiracy and them acting on the orders of someone higher up in the chain who was telling all the other nation states to do the same
GLOBALIST RACKET – misdirection of policy to the benefit of a global clique. This is not how you do good government and the clowns know it.
Extraordinary presentation by Holocaust survivor Vera Sharav two days ago
https://rumble.com/vyw0r7-vera-sharav-presentation.html
Worry about the effects of the jabs on people.
AND they’re still forcing the stuff into kids.
Need convincing it’s toxic?
https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/03/20/new-spartacus-covid-19-deep-dive-part-ii-vaccine-complications/
Worry about the economy pales into insignificance.
That said, us refuseniks will be top dog soon….
It’s simply this: Fauci GAVI WHO BMGF Wellcome NIH NIAID and the rest of the Pharmafia Pfizer Moderna Circus have a dollar stranglehold on global public health, SAGE, JCVI, science journals, universities, professors, hospital admin, doctors, MSM and meanwhile conceal the putrescent corpse of real science in the attic of the
BatesGates’ Motel.What a shower!
Picture: Anthony
PerkinsFauci comfortshismotherthe dead putrescent corpse of Science. There are only so many bodies you can hide in the swamp.Why? Because the ‘people’ are the target of ongoing punitive measures to destabilise their lives, frighten them and bully them into the Green Fascist Zero Carbon melt-down nightmare and the Great Reset – I should have thought that was obvious by now – just look around you!
Policy makers were not policy makers at all. They were prostitutes following the mantras of the WEF, Bill Gates and other non-medical fascists who all were going to make tens of billions from shutting down the global economy.
There are only two questions currently:
There is of course the option of murdering Gates if he refuses to respect legal due process, which will be completed within 24 months. Including appeals…
Cock up, my arse (Oh matron!!!).Lockdown is the precursor to vaccine.How many would have taken the clotshot if the threat to civil liberties and no travel had`nt been there .
Lockdown was and is an end in itself to the Branch Covidian so lockdown wasn’t a failure.
Only mass indoctrination, over the course of many decades, can achieve this near-universal mediaevalist response to a pandemic.
‘people with Covid impose costs on others by inadvertently transmitting a deadly virus to them’
Covid was only deadly if the medics rammed a ventilator tube down your throat and or poisoned you with midazolam or remdesivir.
Apart from that it was a cold with a different brand name.
They wanted it dead and they wanted European cities to burn last autumn. They will burn one way or another. It is a crazy agenda that we let build and flourish. Now we see the picture.
Don’t go down the wrong road. Easy to long for death but we should fight for the persistence of pesky human life.It will all be brought into combat now but the real battle is the battle to hold onto civilisation.
Boettke and Powell acknowledge that there is “transmission externality” – people with Covid impose costs on others by inadvertently transmitting a deadly virus to them,
One of the most persistent COVID lies. A virus is a cell parasite moving from host body to host body with the help of unpredictable, external forces (as far as we know), eg, air turbulence. People have no sensory organs capable of detecting viruses and no way to actively limit their movements once their bodies get infected with them as these happen as side effects of necessary bodily functions (like breathing, sweating or defecating). Consequently, nobody is responsible for either getting infected with Sars-CoV2 virus or for Sars-CoV2 viruses being shed from his body infecting somebody else.
Virus infections are an inherent risk of living on this planet together with other animals. There’s no way anyone can safely avoid them.
That or viral disease is a massive con supported only by fraudulent science.
I see that 77 prick Fingal is back and too many are silly enough to argue with him.
Thread ruined.
I know – and I apologise. I got up, turned on my computer, read Fingal, and lost my cool.
It’s a circular argument to claim the government bowed to pressure from the media demanding action when we know full well OfCom banned any dissent and BigTech censor counter-narratives. The government made these decisions before the public had any chance to assess the situation. Fear was used as a method to exact compliance- any demands from he public for “action” were clearly manipulated.
Moreover, this was co-ordinated globally through the Gates/CCP controlled WHO.
it is patently absurd to continue to claim this was all a cock-up even now. It was obviously to increase government power and push vaccines and push everyone online. This isn’t even the first time it’s been tried- the swine flu was a trial run, but stopped much earlier because the press was still partly free. They learned their lessons and have since bought up nearly every major media outlet across the world- this is simply a fact.
Snake Oil the book by Michael Senger explains how the lockdown and resulting chaos was engineered by the CCP
I have never subscribed to the cock-up theory – it doesn’t make the slightest sense. The media are controlled by the government, who, throughout the past two years, have been its biggest client/customer. How is it that Boris et al (and other world leaders) keep using Great Reset-type phrases (eg Build Back Better)? No one was afraid until they pushed us into fear – and Laura Dodsworth’s book, A State of Fear, shows that they purposely used fear to subdue the population. None of this fits with cock-up!
Conspiracy vs cock-up: I suspect that it was both. But i think cock-ups enabled the conspiracies not the other way round.
Role of social media in feeding hysteria: I believe it is easy to overstate this. Everyone I know who was/is “terrified” was terrorised by the BBC and knows nothing of social media. I stopped being a licence fee payer in 2020 so don’t know if they are justified but I understand until very recently the BBC was still intoning the death and infection stats on the 6pm news. Certainly my elderly neighbours are still terrified.
Proposal for “targeted shielding”: yes, it sounds like common sense, but please please consider the unintended consequences. If you don’t know what they are consider the current state of care homes where the elderly continue locked in their rooms for weeks at a time, deprived of visitors and their gifts quarantined out of their reach. In the case of Mother’s Day flowers – quarantined until they are dead. What exactly are we shielding them from? I thought Habeas Corpus was supposed to protect us from this incredible cruelty.
Why did politicians ignore standard welfare economics?
Because they don’t know ANY economics.
Why do you ask?
Sheer panic when they realised that it had come from a lab and that the lab was not based in China? To distract those locked down from looking more into where the virus arose from and who developed it?
BJ It’s a bio weapon and we can’t treat it
Sage Yes we can, we can give ivermectin we know that works
BJ But we will not make any money out of that. Can we do some trials to show ivermectin doesn’t work, give it too late or in wrong dose or something.
NF Ok let’s make it seem even worse then lock everyone up and say they have to have an injection to get out
BJ hmm yes that would make us a lot of money, and we could say we did everything we could to stop the spread so we look good.
MH If we make them wear masks all the time that will make them even more willing to have injections
SJ We can use it as a reason to get digital ID’s in place as well!
BJ But it is not that deadly will they believe us?
Nudge Unit leave that with us
BJ excellent sounds like a plan what can possibly go wrong
The virus came from China and the conversation above only happened in your head. And BJ was against lockdowns.
“One explanation that’s popular on social media – the so-called ‘Great Reset’ theory – is that lockdowns were adopted with the explicit aim of increasing government power, making it easier to adopt various other authoritarian policies in the future.”
Klaus Schwab’s WEF book on this subject does not hide his desire to increase government power and says that Covid-19 has provided that opportunity, or words to that effect.
Here are some examples from that book:
Page 3 – “Since it made its entry on the world stage, COVID-19 has dramatically torn up the existing script of how to govern countries, live with others and take part in the global economy”
page 33 – “Just to provide a broad and oversimplified example, the containment of the coronavirus pandemic will necessitate a global surveillance network capable of identifying new outbreaks as soon a s they arise…”
Page 94 – “As advocated by Joseph Stiglitz: The first priority is to (…) provide more funding for the public sector. especially for those parts of it that are designed to protect against the multitude of risks that a complex society faces, and to fund the advances in science and higher education, on which our future prosperity depends. These are areas in which productive jobs – researchers, teachers, and those who help run the institutions that support them -can be created quickly. Even as we emerge from this crisis, we should be aware that some other crisis surely lurks around the corner. We can’t predict what the next one will look like – other than it will look different from the last”
Page 102 – Youth activism is increasing worldwide, being revolutionized by social media that increases mobilization to an extent that would have been impossible before. It takes many different forms, ranging from non-institutionalized political participation to demonstrations and protests, and addresses issues as divers as climate change, economic reforms, gender equality and LGBTQ rights. The young generation is firmly at the vanguard of social change. There is little doubt that it will be the catalysts for change and a source of critical momentum for the Great Reset.”
Page 173 – “In short, a return to business as usual. This won’t happen because it can’t happen. For the most part “Business as usual” died from (or at the very least was infected by) COVID-19.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/wsj-misleads-public-ivermectin/
Interesting source there ∆