I. Isegorians and Parrhesians
Freedom of speech seems to have got into a tangle. There are two obvious extreme positions:
- Free Speech Absolutism: which seems to mean “the freedom to speak, no matter what the subject or what the opinion, as long as it is not against the law”.
- Cancel Culture: which seems to mean “the freedom to speak on certain subjects and with certain opinions, as long as these subjects and opinions satisfy the canons of political correctness”.
The word ‘absolutism’ in the phrase ‘free speech absolutism’ sounds grandiose and imperial: as if we are talking about absolute truths; but, of course, opponents of this sort of freedom of speech point out, reasonably enough, that many of the opinions expressed by free speech absolutists are simply impolite, obscene, offensive, incorrect, misleading, or conspiratorial. I think a bit of clarification of the issues involved here would not come amiss. And with that in mind I have raided those perennial contemporaries of ours, the ancient Greeks.
There were two words for ‘free speech’ in ancient Greece. One was isegoria; the other was parrhesia. The distinction between the two is, even taken by itself, quite instructive. For isegoria was political, ‘of the polis’; whereas parrhesia was not only extra-political but potentially subversive of the polis. This distinction is highly relevant to our situation.
The best discussion of the distinction can be found on p. 129 of Paul Cartledge’s book, Democracy: A Life (2016), where he writes:
The Athenians had two words both of which we might translate as ‘freedom of speech’: isegoria and parrhesia. Their semantic space overlapped, but their core meanings were significantly different. Whereas isegoria, exact equality of public political speech, had a particular application to speech made in a political assembly, and could indeed serve as a synecdoche for democratic equality and democracy as such, parrhesia had a broader scope and reference. This was just the kind of free speech that the theatrical comedy could have been invented to exploit.
Cartledge goes on to say that no one believed in absolute freedom of speech. Even the dramatists were careful to avoid abusing democracy. And of course Socrates was put on trial. But he leaves the subject there. We need to think about it a bit further.
Isegoria is literally “equal speech in the agora”: derived from agoreuein, to speak, and agora, the public space in the centre of the city. So we should call this sort of freedom of speech a PUBLIC FREEDOM OF SPEECH. It belongs to rulers and citizens in so far as they are engaging in responsible speech: so it is speech which works within the established standards and assumptions of the time. In effect, isegoria is the sort of freedom of speech which the cancel culturalists want. It is exactly what ‘politically correct’ means: it means placing a limit on what can be said. Anything else is subversive.
Now, there is obviously nothing wrong with this politically. It is a political necessity. Every political system has its own standards, its own correctness. But it is only our civilisation which after a long history of liberty and liberalism has gone so far in assuming the opposite – has come so much to believe that liberty should extend as far as parrhesia – that we have given the name ‘political correctness’ to the current censorious form of isegoria. Ironically, this isegoria is threatening the existence of the very parrhesia which spawned it in the first place.
Parrhesia is what we could call PRIVATE FREEDOM OF SPEECH. It is the freedom of speech one expects to have with friends. But it is, interestingly, a private freedom of speech brought into the public sphere. It is, as Cartledge pointed out, the freedom associated with the subversions of the theatre; and it is also the freedom associated with philosophers. It has the atmosphere or carnival or symposium about it. If isegoria is the freedom of the politicians, then parrhesia is, at its best, the freedom of the philosophers. And in this sense parrhesia is even more important than isegoria: for it is the freedom which enables us to criticise the current regime. It is just as responsible as isegoria, but more profound.
A regime which allows both isegoria and parrhesia is a regime which has two circles. The first circle is an inner circle, within the framework of established assumptions and political correctness, within which the established elites operate. This is where we find the language of published and broadcast media, and of politicians in their public speeches. But there is also an outer circle, from which we may scrutinise or subvert or support the framework of established assumptions. Here it is by standing outside the order that we can put the order to the question.
The point is that there is no point thoughtlessly using the phrase ‘free speech’ as if it means something simple. For there are two types of free speech. One is political: it is the free speech of the court party. It is conducted in the established language, and with established limits. The other is in a sense outside politics: but of course in our current politics of government-and-opposition it is also within politics, though it is always found on the margins of politics and carries echoes of a reality far away from politics: it is the free speech of the country party, the excluded, the eccentric – the sceptical.
But, alas, this does not exhaust the subject. For it is not only that we have the isegorian and the parrhesian. We also have two types of parrhesian.
II. Two types of Parrhesian
The ‘free speech absolutists’ may sometimes suppose that everything has become simple: that the battle lines are clear, now that the isegorians have become hysterical and paranoid and tyrannical. But there is a difficulty. One reason why the isegorians have lost their minds is because they are objecting to something which is objectionable. (Another reason is, of course, that they think their beliefs are wholly justified.) Both ‘free speech absolutists’ and ‘cancel culturalists’ may tend to assume that there is only the figure of the parrhesian heroically or unheroically opposing the isegorian. But this is not so. There are two types of parrhesian. Let me go step by step:
Isegorians, first of all, include everyone established, from Monarch down through Prime Minister, counsellors and advisors, ministers, civil servants, academics, and almost all journalists. They are the crew responsible for the politics we keep writing about here, the politics of COVID-19, Climate Crisis and Wokery.
They are not against freedom of speech, but like to assume the existence of limits of propriety: and, in the face of the threat from parrhesians, they became strident and punitive defenders of moral order, and proponents of ‘cancel culture’.
Parrhesians come in two types:
- Vulgar parrhesians include anyone who assumes that ‘freedom of speech’ licenses every form of utterance. This is about opinion rather than truth. Here we find all manner of unconscientious utterance reaching down to defamation and even threat: it is here we find a Bosch’s hell of twitter trolls belching out opinions far below the rainbow bridge of respectability.
- Elite parrhesians include anyone who believes that ‘freedom of speech’ is only necessary when it is the truth that is stake. Opinion is here at most a side concern. The truth which is most relevant here is the sort of truth which is excluded or ignored by the isegorians.
Almost everyone – both ‘free speech absolutists’ and ‘cancel culturalists’ – tend to assume that there is only one type of parrhesian: except they disagree about what sort of creature he is. Free speech absolutists assimilate the vulgar category into the elite category (and die defending everyone’s right to say everything), while the cancel culturalists do the reverse: they assimilate the elite category into the vulgar category (and try to get everyone beyond the pale cancelled). So where the free speech absolutists justify their freedom by appealing to the rare occasions when ‘opinion’ coincides with ‘truth’, the cancel culturalists justify their censorship and cancellation with words like ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’, ‘abuse’, ‘harassment’, ‘hate speech’, etc.
Shortly before his death, Michel Foucault – who, despite the dismissals of Roger Scruton and Jordan Peterson was more friend than enemy – gave some lectures on parrhesia which were later collected in a book entitled Fearless Speech (2001). Oddly, Foucault ignored isegoria completely. But he obviously saw parrhesia as something extremely important. He characterised it as the phenomenon whereby someone says everything in his mind; says it because it is the truth; says it because he has courage; and says it because he is less powerful than those to whom he says it. “The problem,” he says on p.73, “is one of recognising who is capable of speaking the truth.” In effect, though Foucault did not quite say this, the point about the parrhesian is that though he may have less power than the isegorian, he has more authority, the authority which comes from possessing the truth.
Parrhesia, I have said, is private freedom of speech: but it is private freedom of speech brought into the public sphere – where most people only usually employ a public freedom of speech, the politically correct isegoria. But parrhesia is not politically correct. It is therefore a threat. It may be an empty threat (empty of truth): but, if so, then it is vulgar parrhesia, full of fury, signifying nothing much. I would not say I am a ‘free speech absolutist’, because I don’t care very much about the parrhesia of opinion. (I do not believe in suppressing opinion. But we should probably ignore quite a lot of opinion: there is far too much opinion, too much noise, nowadays; and too much opinion gets in the way of any serious attempt to establish the truth.) But I do care about the other sort of parrhesia, which has something to do with the truth.
This raises an obvious question.
III. What is Truth?
In one of the most famous exchanges recorded in human history, Jesus, when explaining to Pilate that he was not a king, that is, not a ruler of the earth (“My kingdom is not of this earth”), said: “I was born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.” To this, Pilate offered the immortal response: “What is truth?”
Usually, the fact that Pilate leaves the room is taken to be significant: the ancient equivalent of a ‘mic drop’. But what we have here is two different versions of what truth is. There is a truth of the inner circle, of the Establishment, of the earthly king, of law, compliance and mandation: this is the ‘truth’, in our time, of Climate Change, COVID-19, and Wokery). It is the sort of truth Pilate could have understood. It is the sort of truth which is now hijacked by radicals, by the young, by bureaucrats and by translogicians. But then there is a truth of the outer circle, or the great beyond, ‘not of this earth’: a truth which though ultimate cannot be acknowledged within the law or logic of the established, limited, drawn system.
The first truth, the truth of ‘this earth’, is the truth of the isegorians. It is political truth.
The second truth, the truth ‘not of this earth’, is the truth of the parrhesians. It is absolute truth.
I think that the combination of these two rival forms of truth gives us something like a paradoxical system. It resembles Gödel’s theory about mathematics. For those who cannot remember it, Gödel found that a complete mathematical system would always depend on postulates that were not part of that system: if it lacked those postulates, which we could say were ‘not of this earth’, it could never be complete. So let us define truth, or higher truth, or absolute truth, as the truth of a system which cannot be demonstrated from within that system. Isegoria is the gate-kept truth of the system: the truth which has power at its service. Parrhesia, or, at least, elite parrhesia, is the truth that the system cannot admit. The problem is that modern scientists and moralists are trying to deny that such truth exists.
George Orwell understood the dangers of modern politics when he wrote about a ‘Ministry of Truth’ in his novel 1984. For, of course, the whole point about political orders is that their truths are instrumental, not intrinsic: that is, their truths are not actually true, except in so far as they serve the purpose of the rulers and their supporters to say so. What a totalitarian regime is, in short, is a regime in which the only truth is the truth within the regime, within the system, within the inner circle. If all our institutions are now captured, if elite parrhesia is dying of EU funding and HR edicts, then it is no wonder that our culture is coming more and more to depend on the belches and head-buttings of the vulgar parrhesians, who, in their noisy, quarrelsome way, are keeping English liberty alive. (Someone should commission Bob Moran to draw a cartoon of Toby Young as Don Quixote in knight’s armour, defending the medieval trolls from the wind turbines of a faceless state.)
Be that as it may, I think it is essential to think about freedom of speech not simply, in terms of ‘freedom of speech’ versus ‘cancel culture’: but, instead, in terms of two circles. What we have is, in effect, at any point, battles between two types of truth, and, on the greatest possible scale, a war between these two types of truth, in which the grave danger facing us is that the BBC, WHO, PRC, WEF, FBI and similar entities might manage to destroy the truth of the parrhesians once and for all: eliminate the mere possibility of it: and thus leave behind only the political truths of the isegorians.
Dr. James Alexander is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
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Toby correct, for me, on the appeal of the “Team James/Team Toby” dynamic. That is one of the main appeals of London Calling imo:
“That seems to be what interests people more than anything else, I think partly because a lot of people are struggling with that very issue themselves, and can’t work out the extent to which it’s an organised conspiracy and the extent to which it’s just an endless series of cockups“.
Frankly I think anybody who thinks he knows with any certainty what the whole truth is on this issue is deluding himself.
I read a novel years ago, published before 2001, about a fictionalised New World Order takeover. What’s striking about it is that the world imagined in the dystopian nightmare they portray seems to me to be in some ways not as bad as some of the horrors that have happened in the last couple of years. (and worse to come if Dr. Mike Yeadon is correct). There was more of a resistance in this book for a start. Of course I don’t know the whole truth of what is happening now, and perhaps never will, but I am fairly sure that some of the things that are happening have been warned about in the past.
What happened to Mike Yeadon? Established his paradise for the unvaccinated in Zanzibar? Somewhere off the coast of East Africa?
I expect it’s a bit boring there – palm trees, waves crashing on the beach, fish for supper. Fish for breakfast. Fish for lunch.
Somali pirates. No trips by train. No walking in the English countryside along footpaths, no walking along canal towpaths. Weather always hot and sticky. No old pubs, ancient churches and cathedrals, or steam railways to visit. Airport five days ride along rough roads in a jeep.
Nothing to read, nothing on the television. No Waitrose. No Christmas turkey, just another coconut.
“What happened to Mike Yeadon?”
I believe he didn’t feel it was safe for him and his family in the UK any more, so he moved to the US.
Florida, I would guess, where he is able to continue to warn.
Dr Yeadon, at the expense of income, a quiet, easy life and unstressed leisure, stood up and spoke up – and still speaks up – for what he believes to be true. He might not have it all right, but he took a stand despite damage to himself for principle.
And you, Emerald Fox, haven’t even the guts to post under your own name.
You silly little sausage.
He posts multiple times daily on Telegram for starters.
He & Monotti have a dedicated channel with over 50,000 fol
Obviously he’s shadowbanned / blocked from low information channels like You’re a Tube etc.
https://t.me/robinmg
Oh he might find steam railways if he makes it to Eritrea.
Of course no-one knows the whole truth but to me “cock up” implies that the people driving this in the main sincerely believe the measures they are taking are going to help, and that just doesn’t wash with me.
“The people driving this” rather begs the question, though, doesn’t it?
Many of the people actually driving this – the scientists who push fearful studies and give over-cautious advice, and who viciously attack their colleagues personally and professionally on social media if they step out of fearmongering line, the administrators and managers who enthusiastically impose and enforce totalitarian policies, the media journalists and editors who push scare propaganda and the celebrities who provide them with appropriate virtue signalling advice, etc, surely in many if not most cases have convinced themselves that they are the good guys.
And if you say “ah but they aren’t the prime movers” – your Gates and your big money corporates etc, then you are into precisely the kind of speculation I was referring to. You can make plausible arguments based on cui bono and on stated plans and wishes, but little of it adds up to certainty, imo, and what does, does not amount to sufficient evidence to claim proof of a world-controlling organised conspiracy (the “conspiracy” end equivalent of claiming “it’s all cockup and there is nothing at all nefarious going on” at the cockup end).
The truth is still most likely in the middle somewhere, and certainty about it is still elusive, is all I’m saying.
I was mainly thinking about the senior politicians and SAGE. I struggle to believe they don’t know they are lying.
The conspiracy IMO is mainly one of knowingly prolonging the “pandemic” in an opportunist power grab.
There are certainly things that many powerful people will collaborate on and are known to do so – eugenics, population control and such like. (And Charles Dicken’s warning about it in A Christmas Carol remains as relevant as ever.
If anyone still thinks this is a series of cockups isn’t thinking at all.
The main appeal for me are the cover images that accompany the podcasts. This one is a prime example. The trouble they’ve gone to in order to create that image – the hiring of the period costumes, paying all the extras in the background etc., it’s really impressive!
“We have to keep it fairly PG. So no incitement of mob violence, no comparisons to Nazis. That’s too X-rated James.”
Avoiding direct incitements to violence is clearly necessary, but the “calling people Nazis” taboo is another social taboo that seems a little overplayed these days. Anybody over a certain age who was not a raging socialist most likely grew up being regularly accused of being a “Nazi” or a “Fascist” by some shallow, immature leftist, just for not agreeing with him or her over some arcane detail of class warfare, and many of the people on the left objecting to the use of Nazi comparisons for “vaccine” totalitarians were perfectly happy for Trump to be called a Nazi basically for, again, disagreeing with their holy writs.
For sure it is controversial. But plenty of opponents of lockdown and of “vaccine” coercion believe and quite cogently argue that the perpetrators of the nastier aspects of these policies – especially the active, public discrimination against and scapegoating of dissidents in the most vituperative and demonising terms – are comparable with Nazi behaviours and attitudes. Bearing in mind that when people voted for the Nazi Party in the 1920s and early 1930s there were no death camps, and allowing for the fact that post-WW1 Germany was a far more generally violent and socially and politically turbulent society, many if not most Nazi voters would probably have had similar attitudes towards minorities that zero covid zealots have today towards “vaccine” and lockdown dissenters. And many of the apparatchiks and functionaries who managed early Nazi governance would have had similar attitudes to their current equivalents, that they were merely enforcing the law and doing what was necessary to people they saw as recalcitrant enemies of the German people.
Does it enable dissenters to be painted as “extremists” to the gullible majority? Undoubtedly. Is that a reason not to do it? Not necessarily. There are real parallels between the power grab enabled by the manufactured covid panic and past descents into totalitarian rule, including the Nazi rise to power in Germany, and if a score of people who are gullible mainstream cyphers anyway are persuaded to cluck with disapproval, but one such is inspired to think things through, that’s probably a long term gain.
All of the now dominant radical social movements – feminists, homosexual behaviour promoters, antiracists etc – were full of extremists who screeched at those who disagreed with them in the most intemperate and immoderate ways. Shock and controversy doesn’t seem to have prevented them from becoming socially, culturally and politically dominant forces today.
Yes indeed. One of my work colleagues compared me to Hitler fairly recently.
But I’d guess you don’t think too highly of Marx and that basically means you cannot be a National Socialist.
I don’t know much about Marx, TBH, though the results of supposedly applied Marxism have not been all that appealing. But no, I wouldn’t consider myself a Nazi. Very much a moderate, or I was before the supposedly “moderate” centre got hijacked by what seem like crazed extremist views to me….
We need to resist the Covid nonsense with the following events
https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/svg/1f978.svg Friday 8th October 11amhttps://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/svg/1f978.svg
Parade through Wokingham Town Centre with signs and strange masks like in Edinburgh above
– please bring your carnival/Guy Fawkes/Fancy Dress masks and overalls if you have them
Meet in the Cockpit Path car park in the centre of the town RG40 2HD
https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/svg/2764.svg Saturday 16th October 1pmhttps://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/svg/2764.svg
MEGA Hold the Line Stand by the Road event
– followed by walk to the Town Centre
Combined Berks/Bucks/Oxon/Surrey/Hants
Bring your Yellow Boards and other banners –
Stafferton Way Maidenhead SL6 1AY
https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/svg/1f388.svgSaturday 30th October 2pm https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/svg/1f388.svg
SPECIAL STAND IN THE PARK WINDSOR
Alexander Park (near Bandstand) Stand in the Park
Barry Rd/Goswell Rd
Windsor SL4 1QY
Stand in the Park 2pm followed by walk to
Stand in the Town Centre around 3pm
About 2 hours in total.
https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/svg/1f1ee-1f1f9.svg Saturday 13th November 2pm https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/svg/1f1ee-1f1f9.svg
NEW EVENT – we enjoyed it so much Reading its happening again!!
BERKSHIRE RALLY FOR FREEDOM – rain not guaranteed
Forbury Gardens Reading
Super Stand in the Park 2pm
followed by walk to Reading town centre around 3pm
About 2 hours in total.
https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/svg/1f1ee-1f1f9.svg No Green Pass https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/svg/1f1ee-1f1f9.svg
Stand in the Park Make friends – keep sane – talk freedom and have a laugh
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens RG40 2HD Sundays 10am
behind the Cockpit Path car park in the centre of the town
Bracknell South Hill Park
Sundays 10am & Wednesdays 2pm
Join our Telegram group http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Reading River Promenade Sundays 10am
Join our Telegram group https://t.me/standindparkreading
We need to resist the COVID nonsense with the following events
Friday 8th October 11am
Parade through Wokingham Town Centre with signs and strange masks like in Edinburgh above
– please bring your carnival/Guy Fawkes/Fancy Dress masks and overalls if you have them
Meet in the Cockpit Path car park in the centre of the town RG40 2HD
Saturday 16th October 1pm
MEGA Hold the Line Stand by the Road event
– followed by walk to the Town Centre
Combined Berks/Bucks/Oxon/Surrey/Hants
Bring your Yellow Boards and other banners –
Stafferton Way Maidenhead SL6 1AY
Saturday 30th October 2pm
SPECIAL STAND IN THE PARK WINDSOR
Alexander Park (near Bandstand) Stand in the Park
Barry Rd/Goswell Rd
Windsor SL4 1QY
Stand in the Park 2pm followed by walk to
Stand in the Town Centre around 3pm
About 2 hours in total.
Saturday 13th November 2pm
NEW EVENT – we enjoyed it so much Reading its happening again!!
BERKSHIRE RALLY FOR FREEDOM – rain not guaranteed
Forbury Gardens Reading
Super Stand in the Park 2pm
followed by walk to Reading town centre around 3pm
About 2 hours in total.
Stand in the Park Make friends – keep sane – talk freedom and have a laugh
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens RG40 2HD Sundays 10am
behind the Cockpit Path car park in the centre of the town
Bracknell South Hill Park
Sundays 10am & Wednesdays 2pm
Join our Telegram group http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Reading River Promenade Sundays 10am
Join our Telegram group https://t.me/standindparkreading
“please bring your carnival/Guy Fawkes/Fancy Dress masks and overalls if you have them”
Why? So that you look more like a ‘conspiracy nutter’? Meanwhile, the Welsh Parliament votes Yes to Vaccine Passes, and then Boris says “Well, if Scotland and Wales have them, we should also, for ‘long term safety’ of our citizens”.
Today is the twelfth day of jabbing kids in schools in the UK.
. . .”– please bring your carnival/Guy Fawkes/Fancy Dress masks and overalls if you have them. . .”
LS,
I’m inclined to agree with Emerald Fox’s comment. Think of the protest groups that routinely use fancy dress: top of the list is Extinction Rebellion. In the minds of the public, you risk being associated with their antics and being dismissed as a bunch of nutters. I admire hugely all that you’re doing to organise, promote and attend these events – but if you’re to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of Joe Public – then fancy dress is an absolute no-no. Just my £0.02p worth! 😉
The UK’s COVID Testing Extremism
Testing in the UK is a serious industry. And some people are making a lot of money from it. There are about 250,000 positive tests a week in the UK, according to Worldometer’s reporting*. This level was reached in July 2021, and it has fluctuated around this figure since then.
The proportion of tests which are positive is currently about 4.5%, according to the Office of National Statistics. That means, in round terms, there are around 5 million tests carried out each week.
Typically, tests cost around £65, even if carried out at home. (The Government’s list of providers shows some as low as £20, but in my experience, when you ‘click through’ to those providers, only more expensive tests are available.) The most expensive can be as much as £500.
Using the figure of £65, this means that perhaps £325 million is paid out each week for tests, around £1.4 billion per month. £16.9 billion annualised.
This is paid by us – the ordinary people, and businesses. It is not paid from taxes. It is not tax-deductible, and as far as I know, it’s subject to VAT. (There are very few medical costs which are not VATable.)
That is an awful lot of money. Some people are making fortunes.
Denmark has been the most dedicated tester in the world. They have conducted 14.4 per person. Their population is just 5.82 million. Of the more populous nations, the UK clearly the most committed to testing, with 4.5 tests per person. The test hit parade for countries with populations above 10 million is as follows:
Country population Tests pp Deaths per
millions per person million
1 UAE 10.04 8.5 209
2 UK 68.33 4.5 2,005
3 Czechia 10.73 3.6 2,839
4 France 65.45 2.2 1,785
5 Greece 10.36 2.0 1,444
6 USA 333.44 1.9 2.159
7 Portugal 10.16 1.8 1.772
8 Belgium 11.65 1.7 2,198
9 Italy 60.35 1.5 2,172
10 Australia 25.87 1.5 52
11 Spain 46.78 1.4 1,850
12 Russia 146.01 1.3 1,444
13 Sweden 10.18 1.2 1,457
14 Chile 19.32 1.1 1,941
15 Canada 38.16 1.1 733
16 Turkey 85.48 1.0 759
17 Nederland 17.18 1.0 1,058
18 Jordan 10.33 1.0 1,041
19 Malaysia 32.89 0.9 814
20 Germany 84.12 0.9 1,122
(It should be noted that these are the figures from those nations which participate in the Worldometer’s reporting, which is some way short of the whole world The total population included is 6.4 billion, compared to an official estimate of the global population of 7.9 billion. It should also be borne in mind that deaths attributed to COVID have been measured very differently in different countries. So the comparisons can only be indicative, not conclusive.)
There is no particular correlation between tests carried out and COVID deaths (per million of population, the correlation measured for the whole of the epidemic is 0.135)
A further puzzle is the number of positive tests for each country – referred to as ‘Cases’.
The UK is an outlier by this measure, with 7-day ‘Cases’ totalling around 250,000. This is the highest figure in the world on an absolute basis, as well as relative to the size of the population.
Why is this?
It must to some extent have something to do with the level of testing. The more you test, the more positives you’re likely to get. Does this mean that countries that test less than the UK (almost everywhere) have lots of infected people wandering around the countries? That has to be true to an extent, but it does not seem to be influencing the mortality figures to any significant degree. I would speculate that the UK’s strong emphasis on testing schoolchildren is important here, as they are much less likely to die. Any other suggestions?
Perhaps the most significant impact on the UK’s testing regime, apart of course for the shedloads of money that testing companies are making out of it, is the way it feeds into the SAGE and Government narratives. Now that hospital admissions are falling again, and the grim epidemiological predictions of September on which SAGE based its hysterical outbursts are shown to have been even more ridiculous than the models of 2020, it is the level of Cases which is preventing the end of the epidemic from being declared. This stops the country from returning to normal life, stops the NHS from properly addressing the dire situation it has with all the other diseases and conditions which are causing so much suffering and death, and allows the Government to maintain its authoritarian grip.
James McMeehan Roberts
4 October 2021
*note: Statistics based on Worldometer download at 6.05 pm 4 October 2021
Apologies – formatting of the table undone by the system.