160619
The Weekly Sceptic Live The Weekly Sceptic Live The Weekly Sceptic Live
  • Log in
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Forum
  • Donate
  • Newsletter
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

Lockdown Sceptics Were Demonised – But the Lockdown Files Show We Were Right

by Toby Young
4 March 2023 12:01 PM
Allison Pearson is a staff writer for the Daily Telegraph. She lives in Cambridge with her husband and two children.

Allison Pearson is a staff writer for the Daily Telegraph. She lives in Cambridge with her husband and two children.

Allison Pearson has written a terrific piece for today’s Telegraph about how vindicated she feels as a lockdown sceptic by Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages. I know how she feels. Here is an extract:

I was spied on, reported, publicly denounced, called a murderer, banned and shadow banned. At times, it felt like we were living in East Germany under the Stasi. Our blessed, free country had become an island of hysterics, snitches and obsessive Dettol wipers. Driving in my car one morning to take the dog for a walk in woods two miles up the road, I thought, “Am I allowed to do this?”

Am I allowed to do this? Dear God. Where had Britain gone?

And now, vindication. So much that we “conspiracy theorists” suspected turns out to be true, from the Wuhan Covid-19 lab leak (“racist” back in 2020 but now highly likely says the FBI) to Matt Hancock’s imaginary “protective ring” around care homes to the brutal collateral reckoning for lockdown. Vindication is bittersweet, alas, because you cannot mend all the people they broke (over a million children with mental health problems, millions more awaiting hospital treatment – where do you begin?) nor bring back those who died without a loved one to gentle their passing.

And don’t tell me thousands more would have died if we hadn’t locked down because thousands more are dying because we had lockdown. Men and women in their thirties, forties and fifties with families; fit, younger people whom the virus could not harm, now presenting with incurable cancers. Will they be putting their names on the National Covid Memorial wall? They should.

Human beings have an astonishing capacity to forget, especially when something is embarrassing to look back on or when it makes us feel a bit stupid.

“The tingle of a remembered shame,” George Eliot called it. But we should force ourselves to remember, I think. The Lockdown Files, drawing on the WhatsApp messages vouchsafed to the superb investigative journalist Isabel Oakeshott by Matt Hancock, the former health secretary of state, and published this week by The Daily Telegraph, are an extraordinary aide-memoire to the madness we all lived through. They also provide a remarkable insight into the behaviour of those running the country at the time. What a bunch of arrogant, clueless, emotionally stunted authoritarians they turn out to be for the most part.

The biggest shock revealed by the Telegraph scoop is quite how often our leaders, who always claimed to be guided by ‘the science’, were making decisions on the hoof.

Astonished, we read conversation after conversation where, it becomes clear, that decisions affecting the suffering of the elderly entombed in care homes, of children shut out of schools and playgrounds is filtered through the prism of something called ‘Comms’.

So, when Boris Johnson asks his top team whether masks in schools are necessary, Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, replies: “No strong reason against in corridors etc, and no strong reason for. The downsides are in the classroom because of the potential to interfere with teaching.”

But Lee Cain, the PM’s director of Comms, is not happy. Scotland has just confirmed masks in schools so England is under pressure to follow suit lest Nicola Sturgeon gain the advantage. “Why do we want to have the fight on not having masks in certain school settings?” asks Cain.

Oh, I don’t know, Lee. Maybe because imposing an unevidenced and alienating NPI (non-pharmaceutical intervention) on vulnerable adolescents is a really bad idea? Perhaps because forcing children into futile masks for protection against a virus they largely don’t need protecting against is just a repugnant piece of political power play. Perhaps because, with their young worlds turned upside-down, the reassurance of seeing smiling faces would have been really nice. Finally, as that WhatsApp conclave of geniuses somehow failed to foresee, permitting masks in school corridors would be the gateway to the teaching unions demanding (and getting) masks in classrooms.

(While the big boys’ club was throwing kids under the devolution bus, a group of mums who founded an organisation called Us For Them to stick up for children’s rights, were fighting furiously to get the school mask mandates withdrawn under threat of pre-action letters. They succeeded, twice. So often during the pandemic, it took the defiance of ordinary men and women – parents, publicans, restaurateurs, shop owners, small business people – to restore some sense to the senseless edicts.)

Worth reading in full.

Tags: Allison PearsonLee CainLockdown Scepticsmatt hancockThe Lockdown FilesUs For Them

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

Covid and the Pandemic of Moral Injury

Next Post

Britain’s Descent Into Authoritarianism

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

36 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

 

DONATE

PODCAST

Nick Dixon and Toby Young Talk About the Attack on Kellie-Jay Keen by Trans Rights Activists, the BBC’s Perverse Insistence on Calling a Rapist “Her” and the Brutal Cancellation of Alfie Brown

by Will Jones
28 March 2023
0

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editors Picks

Britain’s Backlash Against LTNs: Fed-Up Residents Torch Road Blocks Hours After They Were Installed

28 March 2023
by Will Jones

In Defence of Andrew Bridgen’s Speech to Parliament on the Risks vs Benefits of Covid Vaccination

28 March 2023
by Norman Fenton, Clare Craig, Martin Neil, Jonathan Engler and Mr Law

The Great Food Reset Has Begun

28 March 2023
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

28 March 2023
by Will Jones

The Dumb Chain of Events that Brought Face Mask Tyranny to the West

28 March 2023
by Eugyppius

In Defence of Andrew Bridgen’s Speech to Parliament on the Risks vs Benefits of Covid Vaccination

30

The Dumb Chain of Events that Brought Face Mask Tyranny to the West

25

The Bad Science Behind Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ Anti-Car Crusade

26

News Round-Up

35

Britain’s Backlash Against LTNs: Fed-Up Residents Torch Road Blocks Hours After They Were Installed

15

In Defence of Andrew Bridgen’s Speech to Parliament on the Risks vs Benefits of Covid Vaccination

28 March 2023
by Norman Fenton, Clare Craig, Martin Neil, Jonathan Engler and Mr Law

The Dumb Chain of Events that Brought Face Mask Tyranny to the West

28 March 2023
by Eugyppius

The Bad Science Behind Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ Anti-Car Crusade

28 March 2023
by Ben Pile

Mainstream Media’s New Obsession: Labelling Criticism of 15-Minute Cities ‘Conspiracy Theories’

27 March 2023
by Rebekah Barnett

Almost Everything Is “Institutionally Racist”

27 March 2023
by Noah Carl

POSTS BY DATE

March 2023
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Feb    

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Forum
  • Donate
  • Newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Please note: To be able to comment on our articles you'll need to be a registered donor

Already have an account?
Please click here to login Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment