It was, I admit, gratifying to see a recent report in the Mail refer pejoratively to “lockdown lovers” and “Covid-restriction enthusiasts”. It was one of the first times I can recall that mainstream media have used such dismissive terms of those once confusingly labelled Covid “doves”. (Why is it dove-like to forcibly close schools and businesses and incarcerate people in their homes? I was glad to see a recent article in the Atlantic get it the right way round.)
It’s not, of course, constructive to use such dismissive labels of one’s ideological opponents. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t nice to think there might be a time coming soon when it’s the fans of restrictions who will have to defend themselves against such dismissive epithets rather than us, who have opposed lockdowns throughout.
This is all part of a recent narrative shift in the U.K. that has seen leading Government figures like Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Grant Shapps actively distance themselves from the restrictions they and their colleagues imposed, claiming either that they were actually opposed to them at the time or they wouldn’t do it again.
It’s been welcome, too, to see the lack of any pushback against this from politicians keen to defend lockdowns or burnish their pro-restriction credentials. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer notably did not try to make any political capital out of it by taking against the sceptical position, and it was left to out-going Prime Minister Boris Johnson to offer any kind of defence of what his Government did.
However, among journalists and former Government advisers there are still a few ready to speak up in support of lockdowns. Former members of Johnson’s No. 10 team Lee Cain, his Communications Director and Dominic Cummings, his Chief of Staff have launched public defences of their actions, mostly based on the false premise that infections were growing exponentially at the time of the first lockdown and would have continued to do so had drastic action not been taken.
The Sunak interview is dangerous rubbish, reads like a man whose epicly bad campaign has melted his brain & he’s about to quit politics. Also pins blame *unfairly* on
— Dominic Cummings (@Dominic2306) August 25, 2022& others. Will blog laterhttps://t.co/PG0YLZq5cZ
Such defences fall flat, of course, because it’s now well-established that new daily infections were already falling several days before the first lockdown was imposed.
Some of the more hardcore pro-lockdown journalists have also sallied forth in defence of the old cause. Tom Chivers at the i is still clinging to the discredited claim that the U.K. lockdown saved 200,000 lives, even though there have only been 150,000 excess deaths in total over the past two and a half years (many of which are not due to Covid) and countries such as Sweden and states such as Florida which eschewed lockdown never saw anything like the predicted level of deaths.
Chivers mentions Sweden, but only to dismiss it. People in Sweden were “hiding in their homes anyway out of fear of a deadly virus” he claims, so not locking down made little difference. This claim is demonstrable nonsense, as Chivers should know as he was covering the pandemic at the time. The images of life continuing as normal in Stockholm were beamed round the world that spring. Here are two, one from April 1st 2020 and one from May.
The data back up the impression given by the pictures. Google mobility data for Sweden show that footfall in workplaces and retail and recreation dropped by just 15-20% in April and May 2020 before largely returning to normal. In the U.K., these indicators dropped by 55-75% and stayed well below normal levels for months afterwards. Sweden also never closed schools for under-16s.
Chivers next claims that because of this supposed voluntary cowering in homes, Sweden’s economy had a “gigantic economic dip” anyway. Well, it’s true it did suffer a dip in 2020, owing largely to the international situation, but according to the Economic Observatory it fared comparatively well.
According to the IMF, the Swedish economy in 2020 contracted 2.9%, similar to Denmark (2.3%) and Finland (2.1%), and much better than the overall European contraction of 5.6%.
Chivers also claims Sweden had “much worse public health outcomes than its neighbours”, yet as Dr. Noah Carl has argued, this is unlikely to be to do with lockdowns:
It’s true that Denmark has had fewer COVID-19 deaths. However, it’s unlikely that lockdowns account for this difference. During the first wave, Denmark had zero days of mandatory stay-at-home orders, and did not introduce mandatory business closures until March 18th. But the country did introduce border screening on March 4th, followed by a total border closure on March 14th. Hence its success during the first wave is more plausibly due to border controls.
During the second wave, Denmark had about the same level of restrictions as Sweden, and in any case saw a moderate number of deaths.
More importantly, the argument that “we have to compare Sweden to its neighbours” isn’t very convincing. Sweden’s age-adjusted excess mortality up to week 51 of 2020 was just 1.7% – below the European average…
What’s more, the Baltics are similar to the Nordics in terms of climate and population density, and once you include them in the comparison [with neighbours], Sweden no longer stands out.
It’s also no longer true that Sweden has higher excess deaths than Finland.
The latest attempt to dismiss the lessons of Sweden appeared in the Times this week, with Louise Callaghan implying that Sweden’s strategy was fine for ethnic Swedes but a “disaster” for ethnic minorities, who had much higher death rates:
“For ethnic Swedes the strategy was good,” said Nuri Kino, a Swedish investigative journalist and human rights advocate with Middle Eastern Christian roots. He grew up in Sodertalje and lost several family members to the pandemic. “But for the immigrant groups, for our communities, it was a disaster. That’s what we try to make the Swedish authorities understand.”
The argument seems to be that you have to lock down for the sake of your ethnic minorities (otherwise you’re racist?). Pretty desperate stuff. And also false. As the Times article itself shows, among the minorities with higher death rates in Sweden, top of the league are Finns, with Norwegians and Germans up there too. Poles on the other hand fare much better than the natives. Whatever lies behind these curious trends, racism it ain’t.
An opinion piece in Nature last week also made the case for lockdowns. The author, Dyani Lewis tells the story of a retracted paper that claimed to show stay-at-home orders don’t work. She adds:
The retracted paper is not the only one to contend that lockdowns failed to save lives. But these analyses are out of step with the majority of studies. Most scientists agree that lockdowns did curb COVID-19 deaths and that governments had little option but to restrict people’s social contacts in early 2020, to stem SARS-CoV-2’s spread and avert the collapse of health-care systems.
These assertions, which are made without evidence, are false: it’s simply not true that the “majority of studies” show that lockdowns curbed Covid deaths, particularly if you limit it to those based on data not speculative, self-fulfilling modelling. Apart from anything else, the original theory of lockdowns as presented by governments themselves was merely to ‘flatten the curve’ to spread out deaths, not to reduce the total number. It was generally understood that the virus was going to spread to the whole population either during the wave or once restrictions were eased.
Lewis approvingly cites “epidemiologist Edward Knock and other members of the Imperial College COVID-19 response team”, who “concluded that nationwide lockdown was the only measure that consistently took R below 1 in England. And the earlier that strict measures were imposed, the better”. Knock is said to have “estimated that had England introduced a nationwide lockdown one week earlier in March 2020, it would have halved deaths during the first wave”.
This is of course fantasy epidemiology: even Chief Medical Officer Sir Chris Whitty acknowledged the mountain of evidence that daily new infections were falling ahead of the March lockdown. It’s abundantly clear that Covid waves peak and fall by themselves, while restrictions (such as the local lockdowns, ‘circuit breakers’ and tiers of 2020 in the U.K.) never prevented a wave.
Lewis’s article showcases the work of Peter Klimek, a data scientist at the Medical University of Vienna, who with his team in December 2020 published a study purporting to “quantify the impact of 6,068 hierarchically coded NPIs [non-pharmaceutical interventions] implemented in 79 territories on the effective reproduction number, Rt, of COVID-19″. However, far from an empirically-grounded comparison of outcomes in similar places using different policies, Klimek and colleagues used a “modelling approach that combines four computational techniques merging statistical, inference and artificial intelligence tools”. Is it any wonder then that their “results indicate that a suitable combination of NPIs is necessary to curb the spread of the virus”? More fantasy epidemiology, where the models used to push lockdowns are then validated by yet more models.
For her main conclusion, Lewis goes to Klimek:
One lesson that Klimek takes from lockdown studies is that there was an early window of opportunity when the virus could have been eliminated – as it was, in effect, in countries such as China, Australia and New Zealand. Had harsher measures been adopted sooner, and more widely, the pandemic might have played out very differently. “I think this is the big learning that we need to take away,” he says.
Eliminated? How utterly bonkers. Nature should be ashamed to have published this nonsense, even in its news section.
Yet the danger from these lockdown fanatics is real. The political winds may have shifted in the U.K. of late, but in other countries such as Canada and Germany the winds are blowing in the other direction, and they could quickly change among the fickle British public and our political class were some new variant or virus to appear.
Publications like the i, the Times, the Spectator and Nature are still publishing articles pushing the case for lockdowns based on discredited claims and fantasy modelling. We are not out of the woods yet. The lockdown zealots may not currently be in the ascendancy, but they have not gone away.
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It’s important to understand we are dealing with two types of people here 1) the incredibly childish who are not capable of admitting they made a mistake 2) the incredibly stupid who are not capable of understanding they made a mistake. Couple this with a third element 3) a largely trusting, naive, sheep-like public who unquestioningly bow to authority, and you easily repeat previous, obviously net-damaging, actions e.g. lockdown. The key to the never-ending madness is to sow those seeds of doubt in the minds of the public. No small task, but one that is happening I believe. I think if they tried again to lockdown, the pushback would be far bigger and more forceful. Maybe that’s what they want, so they can impose martial law. We’re in a chess game and every possibility has to be considered.
There’s a fourth category: those who knew lockdowns would be very destructive in a variety of ways and wanted them precisely because of that.
Unfortunately, they’re the ones in power.
A fifth category would be those who know they screwed up and are now covering their backsides lest they be found out. I think there are many in that category in every major institution.
No shortage of those in many professional institutions, unfortunately. Not limited to the current issue, but if you know a bit about the aftermath of major industrial problems – transport accidents, the odd explosion here and there, some split oil at sea and so on – you will have noticed that there is a tendency to “cover their backsides”, as you say, and protect their reputation going forward. Perhaps we’re all like that, but some will not admit it.
And just round the corner, there are often a few opportunists to boot, in many walks of life.
Indeed. It’s a natural reaction. However in general if the collective error is not too widespread then there will be other forces that will want to see the error exposed, not necessarily for virtuous reasons, but nevertheless they provide a counterbalance. In the case of covid, they were all on board – the media, political “opposition”, professional bodies, academia, unions, medical establishment, big business.
As you mentioned political parties, it’s true that there was little serious opposition. Might be the reason why the Labour Party lost around 90,000 members, according to their latest annual report. They’ll be short of cash after that, with around £50 a pop. A few in-house redundancies, more than likely.
Add to that the people who knew what was going on in these ‘research labs’ and were likely worried that COVID-19 wasn’t the only thing that had escaped in mid- to late-2019. China’s response to me implies they thought something worse had got out (and perhaps it did and was ultimately contained.) After COVID-19, it makes you look back and reconsider where HIV-AIDS came from…
The absolutely worst thing which came out of China since 2019 has been COVID propaganda.
I don’t think so. What we’re dealing with here is the same people who got the shitshow initially started still pumping out the same old lies in the hope that they’ll be able to restart it soon when circumstances are more in their favour. Until there’s some kind of reckoning for the many services they did to the general public, they’ll probably keep doing this, at least for the not-so-distant future, ie, certainly until next spring. As certainly, all kinds of lockdown-favouring lobby groups, eg, the unions, NHS management representatives etc have certainly already again started backroom lobbying for restriction in October/ November, especially, reintroduction of mask mandates.
One need to remember here that these are the people who – in October 2020 – publically smeared the GBD as strawman because Nobody wants another lockdown! while they had already been secretly pressing for a second lockdown for about a fortnight.
There are those people as well, yes. My list wasn’t intended to be exhaustive, but these people are the useful idiots that others can exploit.
The point was supposed to be that COVID was a political project from the start – Mache[*] as this would be called in German – by a fairly small, globally well-connected band of ruthless liars who have by no means abandoned this fight already. That the larger population either fell for it or didn’t actively oppose it because of its usual inertia is far less noteworthy. That’s how such projects always work out if they can get off the ground at all.
[*] A noun derived from the verb machen roughly, do something, the meaning is something which was fabricated because of ulterior motives.
The politicians and their acolytes were/are supporting the hysterical narrative are a combination of both 1) and 2) above. They are totally lacking in any emotional intelligence and thus unaware that they are fallible. They get surrounded by sycophants who reinforce the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ fallacy because their own progress depends on sucking up to those above them. Generally these people only exist in the state apparatus as competence is not needed to waste public money; in fact it is a contraindication. Look at how the recent sacking of the Treasury’s top civil serpent caused so much outrage amongst the twatterati.
I’m convince there’s more to it than that. Someone like Oliver Wright at The Times muppets (who has previously written on big pharma corruption pre-lockdowns) must know some dubious stuff is going on. The only plausible explanation is that he is now being instructed not to explore this topic. Of course, if the Times muppets would care to offer us a compelling alternative explanation…
There are still tales of some people who never see their elderly parents, because said parents are still imposing lockdowns on themselves, forbidding their own family from visiting without vx, masks and negative tests, only meeting outdoors, insisting on social distancing, with their own families; and quarantining their shopping. For some, the campaign of fear led by Saint Boris and his merry men has left a lasting legacy.
It’s notable that with the recent massive event, not a word has been said in the media about Covid, and there will be mass gatherings, just as there were for Platty Joobs. Will this then be followed by a “wave of infections”, conjured up by the government’s spin doctors, being planned as we speak?
Agreed. I commented along those lines yesterday, given that it is obvious that no-one is following the daft restrictions. Most of the broadcast footage is almost the polar opposite of what would have been shown a couple of years ago, at a mass gathering, even in the street, let alone in Church!
And they still have the audacity to speak of ‘experts’ and ‘The Science’.
China, Australia and NZ eliminated the virus? News to me and apparently China as well, which as we know has been engaging in never-ending waves of lockdowns. Odd, for a virus it apparently eliminated. Australia and NZ had far more corona infections and deaths after their lockdowns and after their vaxx roll-out, but if that’s what counts as ‘eliminated’ these days…
As for that absurd claim of ‘should have locked down earlier’, do people really have such short memories? I remember Wales’ ‘firebreak’ lockdown at the end of October 2020, when England got a lot of stick for not following Wales’ example. A fine example indeed. I just looked up the figures on the BBC website, so lockdown fanatics should be happy with the source. As I remembered correctly, the firebreak did result in a decline in infections by the end of the firebreak – only to result in a doubling of infections compared to end of October, 4 weeks after the firebreak ended. How well that worked, it brought tears to my eyes at the time (of laughter, obvs).
Now let us look at the autumn roll-out of the poison poke, to start on 19 September here in NL, people already invited to make an appointment for their booster in the UK. Let us give the poison the benefit of the doubt (and ignore the actual data) and assume that it does provide temporary protection against infection and transmission (when informing parliament of his decision to stab more people, the Dutch health minister himself says the apparent protection from infection/transmission is temporary). This then means a reprieve of 4 – 8 weeks, during which we know the virus will continue circulating, meaning all we’ve done is ensured that it will bloom 2 months from now – right as we head into the coldest, darkest days of winter. Either that is intentionally to precipitate a new surge in illness among the elderly/vulnerable, or the authorities are absolute morons (not that one excludes the other).
Covid has outlived its usefulness in the UK. We now have our CCP-style Track and Trace system backed up by digital QR code traffic light up and running. They could never have got this through otherwise.
Add in the police and crime bill (bye-bye protestors)
Add in the soon arriving Online Harms Bill
Add in the soon arriving Digital Currency
I for one would like to welcome our new digital overlords in the hope that they cart off you lot first and me last. Now how do I erase my posting history….
The Spectator! Can’t be easy for half sentient journalists who are having to keep the fantasy going when the dogs in the street have an informed view on Sweden’s pandemic outcomes. Is it their Gates funding?
Anti-lockdowners lost the narrative during the pandemic because they weren’t able to occupy mass messaging bites. Message bites are messages on a mass scale that are short enough for the public ingest. They are coveted and, because they are coveted, high value. The occupy headline spaces, adverts and the top of algorithmically arranged social media feeds. There is a sponsorship or simple paid advertising financial ecosystem supporting and driving them. They drive the narrative and cause weightier information sources like academic journals, to fall in behind.
One of the frustrations I had with the daily sceptic is the tendency for (the completely valid) arguments provided to be presented in a desnse wall of text. 1, 2, 3 or four page arguments every time and no well maintained graphical summary of the anti lockdown arguments (I criticise myself also for not volunteering to provide such). Of course detailed articles are important for establishing a foundational root argument, but much more is then required. It was the memes that were most effective in tipping the balance.
This Bret Weinstein quote is an example of the most effective kind of digestible messaging – and it’s a lot shorter than a two page article:
“If “effective” means you need four doses in less than two years and it still doesn’t control infection or contraction of the disease, what does “safe” mean?”
Next time we need to be more effective in organising a counter propaganda campaign, backed up by the longer comprehensively justified articles and papers. This did happen far more as the pandemic progressed, through Telegram groups and memes. And these were effective and, from the ground up, began to cut through. You could see it in the comments against newspaper articles. The financial resources of the pro lockdown message can’t be matched, but the wit and intelligence can be completely outperformed.
Such people never, ever go away.
And freedom-loving people always face a dilemma: we are totally opposed to having to push our ideas into the faces of anyone, preferring to let people be free to live how they choose, yet we know that to keep freedom alive for ourselves and our children (and everyone else), we must always be ready to fight for our ideas.
It becomes necessary to push our ideas even harder precisely at the time they are least welcomed by the masses.
Italy is lovely right now. No masks anywhere, aside from those worn symbolically by employees of supermarkets. A small but significant proportion of these employees wear them only their elbows or under their chins. Bits of paper stating that the “Green Pass” is obligatory are still taped to restaurant doors, but nobody cares.
Will it all come screaming back when the order comes? Probably, but compliance will be a lot lower.
The real problem with the Lockdown zealots is not just the continued pushing of lockdowns and NPI’s it is that they are perpetuating the ‘pandemic’ myth.
We have not been through anything remotely resembling a pandemic. This consistent mythology continues to stoke the fear. Even now I have a volunteer colleague who still persists with:
“As far as I am concerned we are still in a pandemic.”
We have to do our bit and drop this mythology.
If yr colleague was a dog hed be put down for his own well being.
These days, I never use the term “pandemic” in any correspondence. Instead I refer to it as “panic” or “official panic”, which is a bit more accurate.
Induced panic.
Everything is a rich man’s trick.
Great panic I call it.
I’ve occasionally used panicdemic.
Authority never expresses remorse or admits error. Can anyone see an apology from the ruling class to the dead on ww1 war memorials? No, it’s tiresome nonsense about a worthy sacrifice, totally insulting to anyone who died. The same applies with lockdown although the error is slightly less catastrophic, we are met that our sacrifice was worthy by the likes of pound shop commies like Cummings.
Hear, hear.
If History is to teach us anything, it is that those in power are almost never there through merit and that they use their power to bring about their crackpot ideas, which they then run around “fixing” with the money and blood of the little people.
It’s just the way it is.
There are exceptions. Take the Fitzwilliam family of Wentworth Woodhouse. I still have not managed to finish reading Black Diamonds, it was just too harrowing…
An apt comparison. From 1915 – 1918, Entente infantry battle tactics were essentially so-called human wave attacks, ie Let them run into machine gun fire until the enemy’s out of ammunition! (or out of soldiers capable of firing machine guns)[*]. These soldiers didn’t sacrifice themselves for their countries, they were sacrificed by them.
[*] Something more intelligent was reportedly planned for a final push in 1919 which wasn’t necessary (hence, this migt or might not be true).
The lasting legacy of lockdowns may not be future lockdowns, but rather a more general sense by those in authority that they can impose all manner of controls and indignities on the population without hearing so much as a peep.
Exhibit A is the wilful destruction of energy markets which is resulting in enormous economic damage and probably misery for quite a few. But our establishment autocrats have no doubt that they will be able to ram this down our throats and continue with their geopolitical reorganisation basically unhindered.
The weakness of all dictatorships is that they are vast bureaucracies: what does not exist on paper, does not exist.
This quote needs a little modification for the current age, but it’s timeless. Go off grid. Find the commodities. So-called “civilisation”, on the other hand, is nothing more than a security offering by governments, and safety is a very, very expensive illusion.
Exactly that. The idiots running asylum have just cut a 170bn cheque for wrecking the energy grid.
I recognise that correlation does not prove causation but if you’re a ‘Lockdown zealot’ are you also more likely to be a ‘mask zealot’? What’s the betting masks make a re-emergence this autumn once more, especially for our kids at school? Told my kiddo that in no uncertain terms will she ever be wearing a mask, ever, as I will not ( daddy can do what he wants! ) consent to it and the school cannot over-ride my lack of consent. If they want to make it a condition of education then I’m willing to seek legal advice. Showed her a couple vids with Dr Bridle and Dr Ted Noel, demonstrating how masks do not work and she seems to have clocked it. Previously she’s said, “Mammy are you manipulating me?” and wanting to ignore my explanation due to her dad getting to her first. This is the reality when parents are at loggerheads.
“Don’t listen to mammy”, is what she’s told me. Most likely based off of the recent NHS experience. 
A very sombre look at masking kids, inc a rather shocking insight into the harms that kids can expect due to masking and ostracizing them from school ( because you could kill granny if you don’t comply ), but just the thing that jumps out at me is that it’s the scientists that are demonstrating masks do not have efficacy but its the politicians that are pushing them. Speaks volumes. Excellent, if troubling, video;
https://nzdsos.com/2022/08/20/watch-masks-in-schools/
MEGA DEMO IN WIEN – 10.09.22
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es8dNwCYLtY
PEDRO MORAGO – I FATTI DEL GIORNO
Yellow Boards By The Road …. for the love of humanity … … we have to keep fighting the Covid lies …
Wednesday 14th September 11am to 12pm
Yellow Boards
Junction A4 Bath Road &
Pound Lane Sonning
Wokingham RG4 6TB
Thursday 15th September 11am to 12pm
Yellow Boards
Junction B3408 London Road &
Wokingham Road
Bracknell RG42 4FH
Stand in the Park Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am – make friends & keep sane
Wokingham
Howard Palmer Gardens Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Bracknell
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
The Times muppets are muppets shock…
When’s Oliver Wright getting his chance then?