Here we go again. It’s the middle of summer and the leading opinion piece in the Guardian today calls for the return of restrictions in response to rising infections and hospitalisations. In a piece introduced with, “a few small changes would make a big difference to millions of vulnerable people”, journalist Frances Ryan writes:
If you’re reading this in the U.K., odds are that by now you’ve had coronavirus: seven in 10 of us have watched the dreaded red line appear. You may have been stuck in bed with it twice or even three times by now; by April 2022, England alone had recorded almost 900,000 reinfections. When the public asked to “return to normal”, I’m not sure a regular hacking cough was what they had in mind.
Almost 900,000 reinfections? How will 1.6% of the population have coped with getting another cold?
Ryan continues:
It is an odd situation. Last week, Covid infections were reported to have soared by 43%, while hospitalisation from the virus rose by 23%. An estimated 1.7 million people in the U.K. tested positive over those seven days. Two million of us now have long Covid, with about two in five of those – or 826,000 people – having symptoms for at least a year.
What Ryan fails to mention is that Long Covid studies frequently find small to negligible numbers of additional symptoms compared to a control group, meaning the quoted figure is unlikely to be an accurate picture of the real impact of COVID-19.
Ryan again:
Back in February, Johnson said the Government had created a plan to start “living with Covid”, but what it really did was form a plan to catch and spread Covid. After all coronavirus prevention measures were dropped on April 1st – from the legal obligation to isolate if you had Covid, to the end of most free testing – the public were left wide open to mass infection. Even hospitals were told by ministers to ditch mask mandates, though some worried trusts have defied the rules and kept them. That all precautions were pulled back just when most people’s vaccine immunity was beginning to fade, and the virus was evolving to be more transmissible, gives a hint at how little logic ministers applied.
Since Ryan accepts that vaccine protection wanes, she evidently intends restrictions, sorry, precautions to continue indefinitely. Indeed, the plummeting of the infection fatality rate makes no difference to her argument, as “excessive focus” has been placed on deaths, she says.
One of the biggest problems facing Britain’s attempts to quell the virus is that this Government doesn’t really want to. There is hope – the number of people dying from Covid has reduced since its peak – but excessive focus on this has long hidden the fact that loss of life has never been the only thing that matters: how many people are infected with the virus matters too. A strategy that lets the virus rip through the population increases the risk we all face, be it from surges, new dangerous variants, or in developing long Covid. Fundamentally, it means accepting a reality where it is deemed normal for many of us to be (possibly severely) sick, from a virus whose long-term effects – and the effects of repeated reinfection – we still know little about.
Once again, the plight of the vulnerable is deployed to justify indefinite restrictions on everyone – a logic which would destroy most freedoms given the opportunity, as we have seen in the last two and a half years.
There will be few greater casualties though than the 3.7 million clinically extremely vulnerable people, especially the 500,000 who are immunocompromised and can’t get much or any benefit from a booster jab. Trying to avoid the virus in a country that has forgone all safety measures means risking your life when you pop to the shops. Ministers who are content for repeated coronavirus infection to just become part of British life are content for isolation to be part of clinically vulnerable people’s.
What does Ryan propose? The reinstatement of free lateral flow tests – as though there isn’t an economic crisis on, and we haven’t spent enough over-testing ourselves for colds; the return of the legal requirement to isolate for those with a positive test – a measure extremely disruptive to education, employment, health care and everything else; and financial help such as sick pay for those isolating – more magical money. Plus more of the vaccines she has acknowledged don’t work for long.
And, inevitably, masks: “Wearing masks in busy and enclosed spaces again is the right thing to do; just under half of Britons (48%) reported wearing a face covering when outside their home last month, down from about 95% during the January Omicron wave.”
From a sceptical point of view, it’s depressing that nearly half of people still say they’re wearing a mask – though since far fewer than half the people I see out and about are actually wearing a mask, this poll probably reveals more about the biases of polls (and what people say to them) than the reality on the ground.
Then Ryan lays it on thick:
Unless we wish to sign up to getting repeatedly sick for the foreseeable future, and to the risk of long-term disability from long Covid, we are going to have to bring back low-effort protective measures to curb it. A recent public health campaign in Ireland, which encourages people to think of clinically vulnerable people in their daily interactions, shows how easy it is to do things differently.
Former Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam recently said the rise in infections was nothing to worry about and that even he had stopped wearing his face mask. But will he think again now, if respectable opinion starts to shift in the direction Frances Ryan and others would like?
Let’s hope this is just an anomalous op-ed and not the start of a trend. After all, if this is what they’re saying in June, what will they be saying in December?
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Whilst I applaud what seem like Mr Dingwall’s good intentions, I am once again left underwhelmed at the calibre of the thinking of people that advise the government.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing things without evidence and not applying the precautionary principle BUT only when individuals are left to make their choices.
There is no instance where I would accept coercion by the state as acceptable, but if there is going to be any coercion, of course the precautionary principle must apply.
it just stuns me that the thinking of a government adviser, and presumably a highly educated man, can be so completely muddled and fails to make a critical distinction between forced collective action and free choice.
The world advances on adventurous innovation. That is precisely how entrepreneurs operate. And it’s fine as long as people are free to make their choices.
Let people grow GMO crops and let those who want to try them try them. Just don’t force anyone to consume them, keep the state’s heavy fingers off the scales and let people make their choices.
We don’t want a centrally planned society run by cautious bureaucrats. We want a free society, thanks very much.
I largely agree with you Stewart with the exception of:
“Let people grow GMO crops and let those who want to try them try them. Just don’t force anyone to consume them…”
Nope. There are enough problems being created in this world by rogue scientists as it is. The last thing we should be doing is giving them the nod to keep buggering about with nature. Fraudci would have a field day.
GMO is cod science and has NO place on this planet.
The crook Fauci. After the gain of function research scandal, I tend to agree. Besides there is plenty of resources without it. Ethiopia in the 1980s wasn’t because of a lack of food, but rather an engineered failure of distribution logistics (remind you of anything?).
Thanks Hugh.
As Michael Schellenberger points out in his book ‘Apocalypse Never’ the planet can feed everybody, the problems are caused by failures of distribution.
Indeed, recklessly tinkering with the genetic code itself to create novel organisms that could never have possibly existed otherwise? What could possibly go wrong?
Mother Nature really does NOT like to be effed with!
Spot on TSoAP.
The following is anecdotical but sounds plausible to me: The commercially mainly interesting thing about GMO crops is – hahaha – that they can be patented. Further, once they’re actually grown somewhere, the patented gene sequences will eventually migrate (via crosspollination) to the original, unmodified species, thereby enabling more royalty extraction as even farmers who didn’t originally grow GMO crops are now liable for patent infringement.
Gene engineering in any shape, size or colour is still nothing but a solution desparately in search of a problem, no matter if it’s applied to plants, viruses or vaccines.
You’ve reminded me of the chatter I’m hearing online atm about how these mRNA injections are effectively mutating people into becoming a different species and do they become the chattel property of whoever owns the patent for this nanotech? Katherine Watt, a paralegal and writer, wrote this piece about it. Sounds extremely far-fetched but it’s interesting;
… “On the legal side, homo borgiensis relates to the June 13, 2013 US Supreme Court ruling in Association for Molecular Pathology et al v. Myriad Genetics Inc.
In the Myriad case, SCOTUS affirmed that genetically-altered living organisms become the legal property of the holders of the gene-tech patents used to do the alteration. For the mRNA/DNA/nanotech injections, the patent holders are some combination of US government/Department of Defense and globalist pharmaceutical corporations.”
https://canadahealthalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Homo-borg-genesis_borgiensis-by-Katherine-Watt.pdf
That’s something very much different: GMO crops have their genome altered in order to grow into becoming somewhat different kinds of plans than the species they originally were. As (most) plants reproduces sexually, just with the help of pollen carrier species (insects), these genetically modified plants than have sex (so to say) with unmodified ones and the outcome is a cross of the modified and unmodified plant. That’s a real problem and it implies that even people (farmers growing corn) in the USA who didn’t originally use Monsanto corn end up having to pay royalties to the company. That’s the interesting effect of GMO crops. Anything beyond that is just window dressing to talk people into growing Monsanto corn.
The active ingredient in the so-called mRNA vaccines is just an artificially designed, defective virus (defective because it can’t reprogram cells to create complete copies of it). That’s bad enough, especially given the more than dubious benefits of them, because it means This injection is supposed to kill your cells (indirectly, by marking them as targets for elimination by T-cells). As usual for anything-COVID, the direct effects are known and intended to be harmful. And to which degree the indirect effects claimed to exist are actually beneficial is anybody’s guess.
Indeed, it’s actually and correctly called genetic pollution.
All I can say is let’s hope Pfizer tries to claim property over everyone that has had a Pfizer mRNA injection.
I think that would be too much even for the sheeple.
I triple dog dare them….
They sort-of already did that: As the nice theory goes, everybody who ever had a Pfizer injection is supposed to need another every three to six months until his death. That’s a form of serfdom: You’re required to put in a certain amount work and endure a little hardship to contribute to keeping the Pfizer franchise (still a very telling term) profitable.
Would I become chattel if subjected to spike protein shed?
“The commercially mainly interesting thing about GMO crops is – hahaha – that they can be patented.”
This is actually just what that world famous and genuine saint, saviour of humanity, Lord Bill of the Gates of Hell is doing.
India is one of his initial laboratories. Genuinely heritage seeds are effectively being stolen by Billy Boy goons, taken back to his labs for a bit of GMO monkey business and then sold back to farmers on the basis they increase yields, which they don’t.
The process is horrific. For the farmers.
Along with Bayer-Monsatan, et al.
Correct.
https://off-guardian.org/2022/11/03/indias-gmos-a-30-year-pathway-to-food-tyranny/
Indeed. Monsatan’s ultimate dream.
Here you go:
https://off-guardian.org/2022/11/03/indias-gmos-a-30-year-pathway-to-food-tyranny/
Politicians, bureaucrats and their advisers and experts etc. aka ‘the deep state’ are all ideologues, interventionists, zealous regulators of the plebs and power lusting control freaks benefitting directly from and all-in on that, now corporatist, system.
Their fear of loss of control correlates with their hubristic conviction that something is doable and will be successful- hence their ever more crazy and harmful policies, advise and actions and, above all, their tech-drunkenness, as well as their total inability to accept reality when it runs counter to their convictions and to apologize or change course then.
Sadly, that has also now led to the situation that Freedom has to be protected and often even regained from them and as such from our current, by them badly abused, mutilated and now clearly only fake, democracies.
But how and by whom?!
The sheep.
The wolves.
The sheepdogs.
Choose your poison.
So we just allow any whacko scientist to try whatever they like, encouraged by a system without rules, and hope that balance of potential benefit/harm is communicated fairly and equally to the general population, so everyone can do their research and make an informed choice? Yep, that’ll definitely work.
Except there were no “emergency conditions”, unless he’s speaking generally here. The best thing to do if evidence is absent is to do nothing. Adhere to the flipping WHO pandemic flu guidelines from 2019 that got thrown out of the window. Behave as we did every winter that we’ve all managed to survive by virtue of having a functional immune system.
But this is all moot isn’t it, and regurgitating the same old words, stressing the same tedious points over and over changes nothing. We all know now why most of the world ditched their pandemic preparedness plans and followed China ( land of communist psychopaths who revel in terrorising and dehumanising their citizens ) and became the WHOs bitches. They needed the scamdemic to generate fear and abusive restrictions to dehumanise and control so we’d be eager enough to take an untested, novel pseudo-vaccine. Anything to just get back to normal. And the muppets all fell for this utter crapola, hook, line and sinker. Talk about a social experiment..🤯😖
The made up coronavirus crisis is not the problem it’s the symptom.
It’s the symptom of decades of erosion of the idea of individualism and free choice and the ascendancy of a collectivist, centrally planned order, geared to solve made up and engineered problems.
The solution the person who wrote this article offers is to be very very careful with the central planning decisions. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that the solution is to just let people figure out how much risk they want to take in their lives and make their own decisions.
I don’t need any pandemic plan, good or bad, to be made and executed. I’m fine thanks.
If left to themselves, people will quickly figure out whether they are at risk or not and what to do if they think they are. And if there are dangers, in the market place of solutions the best will win out. It will certainly lead to better outcomes than some technocrat, bureaucrats micro managing the lives of 68 million people, just in this country.
Yes I agree. I’ve never sought guidance from authority, let alone the government, to decide for me if I’m fit and well enough to go into work or leave the house. To outsource your decision-making and allow the diktats of bureaucrats to trump your own common sense is just idiotic in my opinion. The only people who would do that are the people who completely fell for the PsyOp. They would have functioned perfectly fine using their autonomy until 2020 and then were manipulated into becoming mere automatons. It was pathetic, but famous experiments, such as Ash and Milgrim, ( not to mention the rise of the Nazi party ) have shown us repeatedly just how much of a push-over and highly malleable people are.
A fine comment Mogs. 👌
Seconded.
There were emergency conditions in care homes after the criminal government restrictions. But perhaps after all that was the point, to reduce demand for care-homes by putting people off (and maybe by killing some of the residents) in order to reduce the costs…
BINGO
Perhaps, but it’s far more likely that officials and medics made stupid decisions through panic, really badly thought out policy left unquestioned, hive-mindedness and circular reasoning.
Sedatives in a dose likely to be fatal for the elderly were recommended in ‘Covid end of life’ guidelines resembling the Liverpool Care Pathway (still available from various NHS trusts online), but one of the main side effects of midazolam and morphine is respiratory depression.
Very likely a substantial number of people had developed pneumonia as a result of infection (not necessarily just from Covid) and the decision was made – with no clinical evidence available outside of a hospital critical care ward – to ease their suffering. Some might have gone on to die from pneumonia, but it’s likely we’ll never know how many others might have survived. This would at least explain the vastly disproportionate number of people who died in hospitals and care homes, and the sudden, steep step change in the IFR with age.
Indeed, truly following the precautionary principle would be to follow the time-tested 2019 pandemic flu guidelines, and eschew any sort of lockdowns, quarantines, closures, masks, or novel experimental gene therapy “vaccines”.
“Pandemic policies would have looked very different if the precautionary principle had been applied correctly, especially to non-pharmaceutical interventions”
Sorry but exactly the same applies in spades to the pharmaceutical & medical interventions – the “vaccines” that are nothing of the sort, paxlovid which seems to make you iller, ventilators.
“Emergency conditions do not justify the abandonment of the precautionary principle.”
There was no emergency.
BANG!
“If action is urgent, but benefits and harms are uncertain, then the actions or innovations must be temporary, provisional and closely monitored with a view to withdrawing or halting them if their benefits are not proportionate to their harms.”
You’re living in a fantasy world if you think politicians, “experts” and “public health” officials will introduce stuff under the guise of “urgency” then withdraw it when they find it doesn’t work. They will double down. What % of covid lockdown and vaccine fanatics have admitted they were wrong? 1%?
ANY coercion is off the table, regardless of “urgency”. It has to be morally and it has to be practically because if it’s regarded as sometimes justified then it will be used sooner or later, as it has been with covid.
If action was urgent then the rational course would have been to encourage doctors to treat their patients with combinations of cheap and safe existing treatments and share the results, rather than wait several months for “vaccines” the longer term consequences of which couldn’t possibly be known, even if the trials had been carried out by conscientious, non-corrupt proper scientists.
Instead, people were effectively told to bugger off, only come back if they thought they were about to die, then be put on ventilators to make sure they did.
The government and health authorities couldn’t possibly have known that no existing treatments would help. However, they did know that effective treatments would prevent emergency use authorisation for the experimental gunks.
This was very clearly always about jabbing as many people as possible as many times as possible, not about protecting them from a virus that was known to pose a trivial threat to most.
And if the gunk jabs aren’t about protecting people from the trivial virus, what are they about? I can’t think of a benign explanation
“And if the gunk jabs aren’t about protecting people from the trivial virus, what are they about? I can’t think of a benign explanation.”
There is no benign explanation.
“Depopulation?”
Don’t be silly. Tssch, that’s one of those silly conspiracy thingies.
The term ‘precautionary principle’ is in the same category as ‘sustainability’, ‘global climate’, ‘theory’, ‘equity’, ‘diversity’, ‘intersectional’ and the rest. They mean only what the politically driven buffoons uttering them want them to mean – no more, no less.
The only difference between these and any other variety of common or garden horseshit is they are imbued with a moral weight through false conceptual association, intended to protect those who wield them from any scrutiny and providing them with a rhetorical cudgel to beat the impressionable into submission.
“The only difference between these and any other variety of common or garden horseshit is they are imbued with a moral weight through false conceptual association.”
Tip o’ the hat.
Just as Humpty Dumpty said to Alice
” It tells the advocates for innovation that they have to look just as hard for harms as for benefits.”
Whilst I believe in forgiveness, I also believe that those who failed to look for harms as well as benefits (i.e. a thorough cost-benefit analysis) with regard to the lockdowns shambles and experimental “covid” medication should be properly held to account (which by the way clearly includes the anti-truther Times muppets).
Could you not inject a bit more venom Hugh?
The precautionary principle is simply a fancy version of “first, do no harm” with some “look before you leap” thrown in for good measure. Until the Covidians turned it on its head to mean the complete opposite of what it originally meant, that is.
Reading through this article, I immediately thought “primum no nocere”.
Half way through the article the concept is discussed.
As a doctor who started training 42 years ago, this principle was instilled into my cohort from day 1.
It seemed sound, philosophically at the time, and nothing has caused me to change my mind on that.
To have that principle essentially consigned to the rubbish bin by technocrats and politicians, then have the majority of the profession offer no resistance, has been the most egregious part of the whole Covid debacle to my mind.
Thanks Dr G.
Dr G, thank you for this. Like you I cannot believe the medical profession offered no challenges to ‘The Science’. Given that evidence based medicine is still a thing; what can be the explanation?
Oh, they understand perfectly well what The Precautionary Principle is: They applied it zealously and enthusiastically during Covid … to existing off-patent medicines with stellar safety records.
Is Dr. Dingwall saying that his advice as explained in this article was over-ridden or was it not given at the time? It seems there are many people who claim to have been against almost all of the failed drugs and restrictions during Covid, so how did we finish up in the mess we are in now? Is it because leaders of governments ignored this advice or are poor badly science educated to understand it. It seems to me that politicians in general are poorly educated in what really matters in the world to be allowed to control people’s lives. We need to grade politicians by at least a minimum level of scientific knowledge, which Maggie Thatcher had, but none of our PM’s since have had. Perhaps that is why they have all been so useless.
Doing things without evidence though is often not just a case of acting “just in case”. It is often because governments cannot wait for evidence which may take years or never come at all, in their determination to put public policy in place. A good example is “climate change” where the precautionary principle is used where they always talk of the risk of using fossil fuels. But what they never do is talk about the risks of not using them, and since 90% of the worlds energy comes from fossil fuels, that risk is huge. The precautionary principle is used in one way only in order to justify preferred policies. Doing this kind of thing can lead to serious unintended consequences. On the issue of climate, it has led to huge sums of money diverted to turbines, solar panels, and all manner of assorted save the planet schemes costing hundreds of billions that could have been put to better use, and we wouldn’t be coerced into getting rid of energy that works and is cost effective. We are currently about to spend between one and two trillion eg on NET ZERO. If the assumptions that the precautionary principle is based on are wrong or not nearly as serious as anticipated then we will have squandered vast sums for no good reason. But then the politicians will say that they were only “listening to the scientists” and acting “just in case”. —A cautionary tale