Matthew Syed’s latest article in the Sunday Times is titled “Now we know our ministers did OK against Covid, but I hear no apologies”. And while Syed may not have chosen the title (that was probably his editor), he did write this: “The truth is that on the whole, and with only a few exceptions, ministers did their best in unenviable circumstances.”
Syed’s basic argument is as follows. The recent WHO report reveals that, in terms of excess deaths, Britain “is roughly in the middle of the bunch when compared with similar nations”. Therefore, those who slammed the Government for its handling of the pandemic were wrong, and really ought to apologise.
The article isn’t all bad. For example, Syed skewers those unhinged left-wing commentators who accused the Government of pursuing ‘eugenics’ for not locking down sooner, and chides his fellow journalists for asking ‘gotcha’ questions, rather than trying to get useful information out of politicians.
Yet for every swipe he takes at those who say the Government didn’t do enough, he also takes a swipe at those who say the Government did too much. And his basic argument – the one I outlined above – doesn’t work.
Syed writes: “Websites such as Lockdown Sceptics rose up like cancers, metastasising across the internet, sucking rationality from the debate like intergalactic debris into a black hole.” This rather lurid comparison is ironic coming from Syed, who spends much of his article lamenting the “shocking decline” in standards of public discourse.
Hint: if you’re concerned about declining standards of public discourse, you may wish to avoid comparing your opponents to metastasising cancers.
Anyway, why doesn’t Syed’s argument work? To begin with, his premise that the WHO report tells us something we didn’t already know – that it provides “new evidence” – is false. Decent estimates of excess deaths in various rich countries have been available for months.
Ariel Karlinsky and Dmitry Kobak’s estimates were published as far back as January of 2021, and they’ve been continually updated ever since. Likewise, the ONS published estimates for most of the countries in Europe in November of last year; and the rank order of countries hasn’t changed drastically in the interim.
Okay, that’s a minor point. And it’s true that Britain winds up somewhere in the middle when you compare rich countries on excess mortality. But this doesn’t mean our ministers “did their best in unenviable circumstances” – not by a long shot.
Excess mortality is only one metric you can use to evaluate government performance. And on other metrics, Britain did much worse than average.
According to the latest figures published by the ONS, Britain saw the second largest increase in government debt out of all European countries. From Q4 of 2019 to Q4 of 2021, the U.K.’s general government gross debt (as a percentage of GDP) ballooned by 19 percentage points.
Likewise, when the Economist ranked 23 rich countries for overall economic performance during the pandemic, Britain finished second from bottom.
From the very beginning, lockdown sceptics have argued that we can’t just look at Covid outcomes; we have to consider things like the economy, education and civil liberties as well. And this still applies today.
Saying that Britain “did OK” in the pandemic, while ignoring everything other than Covid deaths, would be like saying the U.S. “did OK” in the Iraq war, while ignoring everything other than U.S. military deaths. (Although America lost fewer than 5,000 troops, the war ended up costing almost $2 trillion, and sparked a decades-long insurgency.)
It’s also worth pointing out that our ministers threw the Government’s own pandemic preparedness plan out the window. As you’ll recall, the plan states that attempting to “halt the spread of a new pandemic influenza virus” would be a “waste of public health resources”.
A genuinely praiseworthy pandemic strategy is the one followed by Sweden – which boasts lower excess mortality than Britain, and far better economic outcomes (not to mention greater respect for civil liberties).
If our ministers did “their best”, I’d hate to see what their worst looks like.
Discussion
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The performance of the govt was and is a disgrace. Lies. Fear-mongering. Still pushing a medical product they know is potentially deadly for some with little benefit for the vast majority. If Johnson were Japanese he’d have committed suicide by now given his abject failure.
Syed destroyed his reputation in my eyes with this article. It was a lazy defence of the ruling class. I noted his cheap shot at the lock down sceptics web sight, I think it is actually a backhanded compliment if it managed to annoy him that much. He has written some good articles in the past but I am not sure I will bother with him very much in future. The Sunday Times has lost any ability it might once have had to hold the govt to account. It is very much pro Establishment anti Boris, a sort of slightly central version of the Guardian.
Syed is just practising his response to the Public Inquiry.
By ANY measure ….. economic; public health in its wider sense, not just Covid; mental health; deaths; debt; public services such as education …….
Ministers did appallingly bad.
Lockdown sceptics was a rare case of sanity in a Media which, collectively, went mad.
Actually I don’t blame ministers. They got no help at all from the universities, the medical profession or the press.. In Sweden an authoritative, believable and likable leader emerged, in the rest of the world the commentariat lined up with the political left saying that if you do not spend every penny you nave on this and one pensioner dies you will go to hell. If Imperial College had been hit by a meteorite at the beginning of the pandemic it would all have been so different.
Bloody cheek if it wasn’t for the likes of Toby we’d still be locked down now. Does this A hole think it’s okay not to question? As for the Sunday Times like the BBC I gave up with them a long time ago.
I am happy to read this article. I read the original in The Sunday Times and it seriously annoyed me. I usually like what Matthew Syed writes but he lost me as a fan when he described Lockdown Sceptics as an example of a ‘cancerous’ site and praised the government highly. I was extremely disappointed in him although he did make some interesting points.
Interestingly, there are quite a few columnists in various publications that I read and enjoyed before lockdown but I’ve gone off quite a few of them as they virtue signalled and tried to coerce us into vaccines and wrote appalling stuff about people who chose not to be vaccinated.
The Daily Sceptic is my first read of the day.
“The Daily Sceptic is my first read of the day.”
Hear hear!! I’d be lost without it nowadays.
Because of poor articles by the limp likes of Matthew Syed. This is the reason today’s news is NOT even tomorrow’s chip paper anymore.
A metastasising cancer indeed. This site sounds even worse than Covid-19! There are undoubtedly some mischievous sites but perhaps Mr Syed has not actually been here. Anyway he is wrong. The government did not do OK. It relied on the wrong experts and refused to take advice from the clinicians who knew what they were talking about. Whether that advice was always right (and I would be the first to admit that mine was not, though most was) that does not justify the total refusal to listen.
it failed on too many levels for it to be judged “not bad”. I look forward to explaining my reasoning to the Hallett inquiry.
It’s amazing what a journalist will write whem promised a ‘gong’ by a corrupt government
Never mind their view. They made a complete mess of our economy and the lives of many. If they had set out to do harm then they succeeded and no doubt praised for it by the globalists who seem to influence / control most government policy now.
Surely not Matthew Syed, the author of Rebel Ideas and advocate of disruptive thinking.
“Websites such as Lockdown Sceptics rose up like cancers, metastasising across the internet, sucking rationality from the debate like intergalactic debris into a black hole.”
You know, I find it incredible how often during the last two years that it feels like i’m living in a parallel universe.
I sought out and found LS because it was injecting rationality into the debate, which the MSM clearly wasn’t.
I stopped buying The Times during the scamdemic and thank Syed for justifying my decision.
I’m prepared to accept that ‘ministers did their best’.
The problem was that the ministers weren’t very good, so their ‘best’ was unacceptable. The fact that none have resigned that weren’t obliged to is proof that they’re shameless and unfit for purpose.
I reckon if you’d thrown the requisite number of sticks into a general crowd and put those who were struck in charge of the various ministries, things may well have gone better than they did. They could hardly have done worse. And yes, I do mean especially you, Sunak.
If you ‘do your best’ when you are incompetent then the outcome is a failure; as the past 2 years+ of government decision making shows all too clearly. ‘Doing what you are best at’ is the appropriate phrase and as all the decisions were made by individuals who had no idea what they were talking about we cannot be surprised at the mess they created.
And as has been mentioned previousy 10K upticks to LS/DS 👍
And we can also look across to Florida, that didn’t lock up its citizens past summer 2020, didn’t destroy its local economy, schooling, mental health, etc, and did better than New York and California.
So are “they” looking after our wellbeing? If not, why not?
An Abstract in 4 Key Points:
-Dr. Fauci and a few other senior scientists knew instantly that the discovery of HIV spike inserts within the SAR-CoV-2 viral genome made it almost impossible for the virus to be natural.
-They knew about the Furin cleavage site [FCS], the single biggest genomic contributor to SARS-CoV-2’s ability to become a pandemic virus.
– They suppressed treatments that were already available – including the very fusion inhibitors implicated by the existence of the HIV inserts.
-Much of what has been done to combat the pandemic – especially here in the United States – has been the opposite of what would’ve been recommended, had all of the information been publicly known in early 2020.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359855384_The_Myth_of_the_Blind_Watchmaker
https://twitter.com/CharlesRixey/status/1513000646311649282
All I’ve heard overwhelmingly, from those who lapped up the narrative from day one, is “They were only doing their best!!!” No critical thought employed, what’s so-ever, even when you point out the blindingly bloody obvious! Baa Baa!
I can’t believe Matthew Syed is the same guy that wrote “Black Box Thinking” – one of the most inspiring books I have ever read. The book about learning from mistakes and being open minded. Instead of following his own advice he has become one of many government propagandists. Will he become chief of “Ministry of Truth” as a reward? Disgraceful.
I don’t know anything about him, but I will take your word for it that the book was inspiring. I think if you manage to convince someone that they are “doing good” then they often become very uncritical in their thinking, regardless of their level of intelligence.
The book is really interesting, starts with showing how aviation has evolved so far in terms of safety because people had to learn from mistakes or else there would be death including pilot…. on contrary in Healthcare there is a culture of cognitive dissonance, hiding mistakes and following strict hierarchy where medical errors are swept under the carpet….. He either had a ghost writer or is being used as well known author to push government lies like many other useful idiots / celebrities.
Is there anything we can do to prevent the UK signing up for WHO membership to allow them to dictate what happens in the next so called pandemic? Not long to go now
“Is there anything we can do to prevent the UK signing up for WHO membership”
There’s a petition going around that you could sign.
I don’t know Dan.
Mercola had an article on the issue yesterday.
“The WHO will accept two more days of public comment on the treaty, June 16 and 17, 2022, so prepare your statements now. The World Health Assembly will also vote on amendments to the International Health Regulations, May 22-28, 2022, which may also strip away more individual rights and liberties”
“It seems far more likely that the WHO is being installed as a de facto governing body for the global Deep State.7 Through the WHO, under the guise of biosecurity, the globalist cabal who seek to own everything and control everyone, will then be able to implement their wishes across the whole world in one fell swoop.”
“With this treaty in place, all member nations will be subject to the WHO’s dictates. If the WHO says every person on the planet needs to have a vaccine passport and digital identity to ensure vaccination compliance, then that’s what every country will be forced to implement, even if the people have rejected such plans using local democratic processes.
As noted by Corbett, these negotiations are already well underway,8 and the treaty is expected to be fully implemented in 2024 — that… Read more »
Thanks, have signed the petition, but agree, will it make any difference at all, if there is any decency and democracy left it should……..
Unfortunately I think that signing the petition will have little effect – there is a cadre of people out there who actively say we should not sign the petition.
I think that the more effective thing [altho it is debatable] is to contact whoever the UK delegation is and register an objection or to lodge a personal objection with WHO public submissions in June.
I think the whole thing is deliberately complicated and nothing more than pure window dressing – “but we consulted (kind of half heartedly)….”
I would like to think that the big battle with this might be in the USA. How will this sit with the Red states? How would a Ron deSantis feel about being dictated to by WHO about how to handle what WHO declare is a pandemic in his state? especially if they are forcing measures he doesn’t want to implement, after all they will impact people voting for him.
I’m wondering if the Red states might push for secession as this is a fundamental sovereignty issue.
If, and it is a big if, Trump gets the nomination for 2024, and if he manages to avoid the sabotage that there was for 2022 and… Read more »
The president in the US cannot sign any binding treatys with foreign powers.Biden’s submission for go ahead with the treaty has no legal binding unless the Senate approves.president Wilson never got US to sign and joing NF.Truman had to have Senate’s blessing to join UN.
In reality most signing this treaty won’t take it seriously as with human rights conventions etc (Saudi Arabia signing) Only stupid European countries would take it seriously.
Doing their best would have been following the Pandemic Plan compiled and updated over decades from experience and knowledge, ready so that a Government could react quickly and manage the situation.
They didn’t. They completely rejected it, made it up as they went along, lied to cover their mistakes, and failed to learn from observation and adjust policy accordingly because it would have revealed their reckless, careless, incompetent action.
The excess mortality includes non-CoVid deaths caused by policy, and death displacement. CoVid selects those who are about to die anyway, so this year’s excess is next year’s shortfall.
They caused countless deaths and great misery, fear and suffering. They should not be excused.
That’s why we need to insist that planning for worst case scenario, national catastrophes are made and passed into law that they must be regularly updated and adhered to.
That’s the only chance we have of holding the bastards to account and allow them to be hunted down and swing for their crimes.
The ‘wonderful’ Democratic, parliamentary system we exported around the world has one fatal, and deliberately included flaw – politicians never answer for their incompetence, greed, over ambition or malice.
It’s interesting how there seems to have never been an article on The Daily Sceptic naming and shaming the companies and people who have profited from ‘Covid’.
Isn’t this what we should be concentrating on? Going after the people running the scam?
What’s with Faisal Shoukat of the scamming company RT Diagnostics (of Halifax, UK) these days – has no-one been able to hunt him down and shake all those ill-gotten gains out of his pockets?
Here’s one:
https://eastdevonwatch.org/2022/02/15/private-eye-profits-of-doom-how-to-make-600m-disappear/
“So Faisal Shoukat, a Labour Councillor runs a Covid testing company and issues Fit-to-Fly certificates. Gotta love all that capitalism.
Anyway – it turns out it’s all a complete fraud – he charges people whatever it is – £80 or so, doesn’t check the result- in fact all the tests just get chucked in the bin, and he issues everyone a negative test cert meaning they can fly.
Can you imagine the scandal if this were anyone other than a Labour politician? If it were – heaven forbid – a Tory, there would be absolute wall-to-wall coverage on TV with demands of life imprisonment, war crimes, you name it.
But this happened 4 days ago – and absolutely nothing, in fact the media are doing absolutely everything they can to be utterly silent and disinterested in it. Dominic Cummings drove himself around and it was the end of the world. The BBC would have had you believe that a seven horned monster had risen out of the sea with angels pouring bowls of blood from the sky – but here a Labour councillor is fraudulently faking tests and absolute silence from the media.”
https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7062025
You need to stop prowling obscure chat rooms and check the information you select from them which fuels your natural bigotry – from 9 months ago!
“A Halifax Covid testing facility has hit back at ‘ludicrous and defamatory’ accusations made by The Sun about the way the firm is handling Covid tests.”
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/halifax-covid-test-firm-furious-21092153
Perhaps you should focus on the fact that a public official is allowed to run a business or have a second job.
If he’s not being paid for his public duties, then it’s high time we began paying these people so they can be held to account for the decisions they make on our behalf. That’s proper capitalism. A fair days pay for a fair days work. It’s left wing cretins like you who expect these people to work for nothing and are then shocked when they rob us blind.
The Student Room…..FFS
‘ministers did their best in unenviable circumstances’
Yes indeed, Boris and his chums spent the best part of two years nursing massive hangovers, these lockdowns weren’t easy for them at all.
The best bit is that when you look into the issue of how a new virus was identified you find that the methods used are a joke.
They never proved that there was a new virusthat caused disease.
From there you learn that the Chinese scientists used the standard virology methods to shows sars-cov-2 exists, the problem being the standard methods are bogus.
Under the existing orthodoxy those in power can calim that there is a new super deadly respiratory virus flloating around, (whose symptoms are exactly the same as previous seasonal illness) knock out a PCR that will spew out false positives in a multitude of different ways and hey presto you have a pandemic and your excuse for lockdowns, vaccinations and all the rest.
Came across this – leaked documents exposing the gain of function research on coronaviruses funded by Ecohealth alliance and US.
DRASTIC recently became aware of documents which show that EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) in concert wIth the WIV were looking towards implementing an advanced human pathogenicity BatCoV research project that clearly qualifies as GoF, in a grant proposal submitted to a funding proposal call by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the spring of 2018.
The EHA / WIV proposal (named ‘DEFUSE’) was ultimately rejected for full funding (but leaving open the door for partial funding), in part because it skirted the GOF guidelines.
In other words, a branch of the federal government had already judged aspects of EHA’s research, and the corresponding shared research plan with the WIV, as falling under the definition of GOF, only for HHS to approve similar work without P3CO review in 2018 and 2019.
https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/preempt_hr00111880017_notes_v1_b-1.pdf
Some extracts from the document to show what GOF research on bat coronaviruses Ecohealth alliance was carrying out.
THE PROPOSAL INCLUDES THE INTRODUCTION OF “HUMAN-SPECIFIC CLEAVAGE SITES
”Human protease-specific site insertion was proposed.
The proposal does not specify exactly which protease, but does discuss Furin in the preceding text.
“We will analyze all SARSr-CoV S gene sequences for appropriately conserved proteolytic cleavage sites in S2 and for the presence of potential Furin cleavage sites74,75” . SARSr-CoV S with mismatches in proteolytic cleavage sites can be activated by exogenous Trypsin or Cathepsin L.
Where clear mismatches occur, we will introduce appropriate human-specific cleavage sites and evaluate growth potential in Vero cells and HAE cultures.”
https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/preempt_hr00111880017_notes_v1_b-1.pdf
That document also mentions Ecohealth’s proposal to attach to DC-SIGN which is a mechanism used by HIV to attack T cells, and it just happens that SARS-COV-2 has a suitable gp120 site for that as well, nicely “evolved” right at the end of the spike: https://arkmedic.substack.com/p/absolute-proof-the-gp-120-sequences
Boris ‘I’m sticking with the existing pandemic plan, there is no need for all this fuss and fear over a bit of a cold’
Dominic Cummings ‘If you declare an emergency all the usual rules and safeguards for contract integrity will be suspended and you will be able to tip as much cash as you can into your chums pockets’.
Boris ‘Good God man, there are grannies to save, lock those fuc[kers down’.
Dommunist Dictator, the man who tests his eyesight by driving to County Durham.
Yes,LD sceptics has its share fair of nutters but you could read in LD skeptics from April 2020 the following, which was not in MSM ( but now slowly changing)
LD was wrong and never evidence based/ folly to throw away established flu pandemic plans
Masks were wrong not evidence based
Early treatment was lunacy not at least trying with safe medicines early in the pandemic together with vitamin D
Modelling of the disease spread in the population impossible as unknown amount of at least temporary innate immunity in the population
Hope-Simpson observation that lots of non-immune escape infection in a wave but might be infected in the next wave
Seasonality of infections and waves coming back until endemic (Yeadon was wrong on that)
Caution of using the new vaccines outside risk groups as we already had excellent real-world data who was at most risk
Much more rigid safety follow-up of vaccinations from the beginning
Achieving herd immunity with vaccines ludicrous idea and never happened before in humanity against a respiratory virus, enormous risks for scant benefit in healthy populations
The total disgrace and folly of vaccine passports/hinders of international travel
Where could you read this in real time during the pandemic? In LD sceptics but never in MSM.… Read more »
‘Much more rigid safety follow-up of vaccinations from the beginning’
Don’t be silly, if the sleepy sheepy general public become aware of the harms these injections do many won’t roll up their sleeve again.
I think it is very easy with the benefit of the hindsight to call this a silly statement. Let us remind ourselves how we were in Dec 2020. There were excessive deaths in the elderly and especially in LCH. To think that any responsible government would not use vaccines in that situation is unrealistic.
We all knew that the vaccines were new, untested for long time effects, incl.sterilty etc etc.Better traditional vaccines were in the making but not ready.
A rigid safety follow up much better than Yellow card could have been set up quickly. The selection of a subset of population with high risk could be easily spotted and concentrated efforts. The risk benefit could be acceptable starting the campaign but any intelligent system would have in built break-pedals.
The whole disaster was starting vaccination outside these risk groups and also not stopping in time when clear negative risk benefits was found in some of the selected vaccinated.
“ To think that any responsible government would not use vaccines in that situation is unrealistic.” I agree there would be a strong political temptation to “do something” but not necessarily that this was “responsible”. There is some evidence of correlation between increased excess deaths and the vaxx rollout in vulnerable age groups. Once they’d started rolling it out, stopping it would have been politically impossible, so better not to start, arguably.
I honestly thought we’d end up being wrong about more on this, but on every issue LD sceptics got there first.
Correct IFR/CFR, ventilators, PPE, masks, seasonality, old/young risk ratios, vaccine efficacy… the list goes on and we’ve been vindicated on every single point.
Big question is who is really pulling the strings. That is what interests me, the fact that Lockdowns cause more harm than good is self evident.
My impression of our rulers during the pandemic was that they spent nearly all their time running round like headless chickens desperately trying to keep the published numbers down by throwing money at every new initiative that would reward their chums.
They didn’t see past the next day’s headlines.
Yes, they ran around like headless chickens, but I don’t think they ever really wanted to keep the numbers down. If they wanted that the could have reduced the PCR cycle threshold, recommended using a 2000 IU+ dose of D3, let people enjoy the amazing weather of May 2020, counted “cases” only with symptoms, not given incentive to put COVID on every death certificate they could get away with, not counted deaths within any timeframe after a dodgy positive test, not given out midazolam and morpheme to every care home resident having a positive test, etc, etc, etc. They did none of that because they were under instructions to make it last in perpetuity.
They did none of that because they were under instructions to make it last in perpetuity.
Or at least until Pfizer had developed the vaccine, rushed it through testing and got firm contracts for vast numbers of shots…
ministers did their best in unenviable circumstances… …to cover their own arses.
Our old friend groupthink was the biggest factor driving our politicians. Why stick with your pandemic preparedness plan when the noisy Twitter and Facebook mob is screaming at you to care as much as the politicians in other countries. Do you hold your nerve and risk getting unfairly blamed for letting people die? Or do you go along with the baying mob?
Our government took the Pontius Pilate route – releasing Barabas rather than doing what’s right.
As I remarked on Sunday, I attempted to make similar points on the Times comments under Syed’s article. They were deleted. So much for public discourse.
One of my points to Syed was the continuing lack of critical analysis from the MSM and lobbing insults at ‘Lockdown Sceptics’ was the opposite of what he should be writing.
A critical question is –
Why did Boris Johnson impose a CCP style lockdown when our existing pandemic preparedness plan did not support this policy and SAGE (The Science) were not speaking in favour of a lockdown prior to the fat one implementing lockdown?
Why did our wheelie bin PM decide to ignore the long standing pandemic plans that had been put together by experts over decades?
Why did fat worzel gummage implement this CCP style policy when SAGE were not proposing it?
Who was Boris serving when he did this to us and and what did Jabba the Johnson get out of it?
He doesn’t think for himself. He copied the Italians, who copied the Chinese. He shut schools because the Irish closed their schools. He imposed mask mandates because that was done in other countries.
Yes. He’s a second-hander, essentially.
Bruce
It begins with W and ends in EF
Because he’s Kim Jong Johnson.
In fact, the real reason is he has no convictions and is a parasite, entirely dependent on others. He wants to be liked and does what he believes will be popular or what he believes not doing will make him unpopular.
As such, it was easy to terrify him and, with his green wife, he soon became a green in every way.
If ministers did their best, their best is the work of Satan and Baldrick.
Their best was woeful and, if they had purposefully tried to do the maximum damage with every policy, I don’t see what they would have done differently.
The pandemic was but one example.
The green agenda, mass immigration, Islamisaton, all things transgender (especially directed at children), the endless wars, the ever increasing censorship, the Tories are hell bent on destroying the British people.
Lockdown is green ideology and derived from German philosophy, as is multiculturalism, multiculturalism is repackaged Marxism.
The left have taken some commendable ambitions for humanity, (naturally evolving multiculturalism, living with the environment and reducing mankind’s impact, anti-racism, bodily autonomy, religion etc.) and weaponised them, destroying everything good about them in the process.
They don’t care for people, they only want their globalist, one government, redistributive, fantasy utopia to succeed, which it never will, as it never has.
They have no desire or ability to learn from history, they delude themselves and lie to everyone else about everything, and they never, ever give up or volunteer for their own eradication to demonstrate their eugenicist ambitions are practical.
Those aren’t really their aims, those are what they pretend they want but their actions prove otherwise.