The writer is in Australia.
As regular readers will well know I have despised what Governments around the democratic world did to us for two-plus years during the Covid pandemic (not including the Governments of Sweden or Florida or a handful of other U.S. states but including all others). It was despotic, thuggish and overwhelmingly flew in the face of the data – data we had at the time, to be clear. Also culpable were the preponderance of the doctorly caste and the vast majority of journalists who exhibited zero scepticism and became barely better than PR, fearmongering agents for the Government, not too unlike Pravda in that regard. And not just the ABC either but big swathes of Sky TV journalists and those writing for the Australian too (all but a Steve Waterson here and an Adam Creighton there). As I’ve said before, it was an honour and a privilege to have been associated as a regular writer with the Spectator Australia because we came out against the lockdowns from virtually day one and never wavered – these policies were wrong on the data; wrong in principle for any society with a passing commitment to freedom and civil liberties; wrong in terms of sensible decision-making in conditions of great uncertainty because in those times you don’t jump to the ‘perceived least risk for just this one threat, a sort of precautionary principle on steroids’ approach, instead you just continue with the laid-down plans you have (the way Sweden did, which as I write has the OECD’s lowest cumulative excess deaths from the start of the pandemic – yes, Australia has a lot more excess deaths, meaning dead people because of what we did, and ours are running at about 15% above expectations, the journalists and governments have just stopped talking about it because they caused it) and wait for more data.
I could go on and on because to be honest I am still seething mad at what the political class did to us. And they did it to us without taking a pay cut. Without suffering anything like what those who were young suffered, what those who were poor suffered, and what those who were outside ‘the laptop class’ suffered. Their claims that ‘we’re all in this together’ were patent lies and anyone with a half-functioning brain could see as much. But it became plain that there was unlikely to be any consequences, any retribution, for all of this cancelling of critics, outrageous slurs about being ‘granny killers’, turning people into snitches of their neighbours and friends, weaponising of the police into thugs, and a lot more. Alas, any inquiry or royal commission would be, at best, three parts whitewash to one part mild and hesitant ‘with the benefit of hindsight we might have done a few peripheral things better’ type outcome. Sure, 10 years from now this would widely be seen in the terms the Speccie Australia stated from virtually day one, the worst public policy fiasco in two or three centuries. But we lockdown sceptics weren’t likely to get much else.
And then a week or two ago Matt Hancock proved that cynicism to be wrong. If readers don’t know, Hancock was the Health Minister in Britain through virtually the entirety of Covid. A while back he approached the U.K. journalist Isabel Oakeshott to ghost-write his memoirs or book on the Covid years. To do this Hancock gave her all of his encrypted WhatsApp texts to everyone that mattered during the entire pandemic years. Oakeshott wrote the book and then, even though she’d promised not to, she gave the entirety of these WhatsApp texts to the U.K. Telegraph. My take is that the Telegraph is covering itself in glory publishing these texts. And the various journalists criticising Oakeshott for ‘betraying’ Hancock (and for doing her job, really) are the very same ones who didn’t do theirs. For two-plus years. Sure, it’s generally a good rule not to break promises. That has social utility. But it’s not an absolute good nor the only important value in life. There are lots of others. And releasing these texts massively outweighed the promise-keeping virtue here. As Oakeshott said, otherwise there was going to be a whitewash. It was in the public interest for people to see these texts and know that their political class was comprised of charlatans and heartless zealots fired by self-interest, making things up on the fly and continually mouthing ‘this is the Science’ when they knew it simply was guesses, seat-of-pants guesses at that, and cover to look good politically.
You have to read some of these released text messages to believe them. Children made to mask-up when they knew there was no scientific evidence, none, for doing so but the politics were good. Top bureaucrats laughing at people who would have to go from business class flights into pokey little hotel rooms for weeks on end. The explicit targeting of sceptics and dissenters, including some of the best epidemiologists in the world, to discredit them and have them silenced because that was undercutting the pollies’ messaging – no mention of truth, notice. When they were told various idiotic rules had no utility they carried on with them because to do otherwise might make them look bad. Seriously, go and read these WhatsApp revelations because we citizens can never again trust these (what’s the word I’m looking for? Two syllables. Might start with an ‘f’).
It will be extra tough reading for those whose small businesses were destroyed. Or those with children whose lives were ruined. (And yes we knew from day one that the chances of a healthy person under 30 dying from Covid was less than one one-thousandth that of someone over 75. It was essentially zero. They knew it too.) Or those who resisted useless mandates. Well, it’ll be cold comfort reading these texts but do it. Because all of us labelled ‘conspiracy theorists’ were right on almost everything. And the whole ‘fact-checking’ industry is nothing more than partisan opinion claims, often worse and verging on a propaganda operation, on behalf of out-of-control government. Laugh at the mere mention of ‘fact checkers’.
Project Fear succeeded because we citizens let it. Never again can it happen. We should shame every MP who played this game and perpetuated this disgusting thuggery and illiberal anti-science that have destroyed people.
Again, Australia right now has sky-high excess deaths. If the goal of lockdowns was to save more lives than it cost then it has failed miserably on its own terms. The incredible stupidity of Hancock in being so arrogant that it never occurred to him not to give away otherwise encrypted texts (which made the writers more forthcoming than otherwise) has done us all a huge favour. And every single Australian knows in his or her heart that our own politicians were no different than Britain’s – no less self-serving, focused on PR and fearmongering, clueless on the data, afraid to stand up to the worst elements of the modelling class, etc. Read ‘em and weep readers.
James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University. This article first appeared in Spectator Australia.
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No, they were NOT “well-intentioned”. They were egotistical, authoritarian, morons who conspired to commit some of the most totalitarian acts against the people in history. This includes knowingly harming children and have left a legacy of destruction, emotional damage and death that will never be repaired. Never. These people are all either evil or stupid beyond belief – either way, they deserve no place in a civilised society.
“Well-intentioned, my arse!”
J Royle.
Ditto!
Evil, definitely evil.
That insane head of the Northern Territories was a full blown Nazi.
Morriston? A complete dictator drunk on all the power he wielded.
The police that broke into people’s homes to arrest them violently for speaking out, speaking for gods sakes, against lockdowns? A bit too overzealous…
The crooked house has gone! Fire
Ah! The Crooked House, where you could believe you were drunk before you were actually drunk.
So true.
“Lockdown Zealots Were Well-Intentioned“
Sorry, I had to stop reading at that point
I don’t think that they were “well intentioned”, simply too gullible and stupid to be in positions of power.
Some were/are gullible and stupid, many knew and know exactly what they were doing and how wrong it was, but carried on anyway. Even Hancock, who does a good impression of Tim Nice But Dim, said “is it time to deploy the new variant?” – does that sound well intentioned? Whitty and Vallance knew Covid was not a serious threat -they bloody well said so, publicly and privately- mild for most, not dangerous enough to justify an emergency vaccine.
Those in positions to do so and had read the Rockefeller document Lockstep certainly weren’t “well intentioned”.. it was the plan..
2010: Rockefeller’s ‘Operation Lockstep’ Predicted 2020 ‘Lockdown’
https://principia-scientific.com/2010-rockefellers-operation-lockstep-predicted-2020-lockdown/
2010: Rockefeller’s ‘Operation Lockstep’ Predicted 2020 ‘Lockdown’
I found this very early on, certainly close to the start of the Scamdemic and it absolutely opened my eyes to the evil we were facing. Written in 2010 and yet we are expected to believe “Lockstep” was nothing more than coincidences. Worldwide coincidences, but coincidences nevertheless. That is how they view us – thick, stupid, disposable.
Plus, which so-called “free and democratic” civilised country looks to somewhere like authoritarian China, where not only human rights are not recognised but active abuse and killing of minorities and those who oppose the regime is carried out routinely ( forced organ harvesting, for example ) and thinks, “Yeah, locking millions down and depriving them of their civil liberties and inalienable human rights looks like a good idea and would definitely work”. No sane person would ever say such a thing and even if someone did, they’d be in a tiny minority because everyone else would sit them down and explain all the negative ways in which that’s a bad idea and to stop being an alarmist, Chicken Licken mentalist. But none of that happened because there appeared to be a consensus and everyone agreed to behave like they were a tyrannical communist regime in North Korea, but only *for a few weeks, to flatten the curve*. And the rest, as they say, is history.
”We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more, we had no awareness of the situation…We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”. A. Solzhenitsyn.
Surely to goodness people cannot be duped or bullied into submission by such tactics ever again, now they’ve lived through it…?
Thanks Mogs. A fine post.
As the behavioural scientists understood, politicians can be manipulated. I think this has been posted before but should not be forgotten as politicians are merely front-of-house (no less responsible).
https://www.bi.team/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/BIT-Behavioural-Government-Report-2018.pdf
A genuine question: would truly well-intentioned people respond in the same way?
Thank you Dr. Tomlinson for your thorough and well-articulated contribution.
If there was no conspiracy, kindly explain to us how Moderna was granted a US patent on a key part of SARS-COV-2 in 2016:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fviro.2022.834808/full
-3 already.. bullseye Castorp..
”Three is the magic number. Yes it is, that’s the magic number.”
”The road to hell is paved with good intentions”
However, I do feel what this thread’s lacking is a vegan horse-riding interlude. Down-vote if you agree. Oh OK then, hold your horses, here you go….
https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1688232251128258560
Personality changes as a result of the injections! FFS.
Are you accusing me of having a personality?
certainly not an injection! Well 1 out of 2 isn’t bad.
Actually I am prone to being a bit manic from time to time…and over-sharing..
Not you Mogs – the bloody “horse riders” in the video.
Apologies for not making myself clear.
Looks like the 77th are out in force with the red marker pen this Sunday.. must be a touchy subject..
Well people with good intentions don’t say:
“Mask don’t work but you will be fined heavily if you don’t wear one.
Well intentioned = saviour complex.
See Matt Hancock as a classic example of the complex.
Midazolam Mat is a psychopath – end of.
Indeed
After further reflection and a stiff ginger mojito I am disappointed to say this article is well intentioned but a bit of an insult to the intelligence of DS readers
About as ”well intentioned” as bloody Xi Jinping! It’s cutting the criminals some slack which is downright insulting because they were playing with peoples lives, health and futures. To my mind ‘well intentioned’ is how Sweden played it.
So true. Just like Neil “Professor Pantsdown” Ferguson.
Report 9 was wrong from start to finish.
In it the authors made the following predictions for GB:
+ That the peak would occur in late May. Wrong. The peak occurred on 8 April.
+ That the peak would reach about 22 deaths per day per 100,000 population. With a GB population in 2020 of about 65.86m people, that’s 14,340 deaths per day. Wrong. The peak was 1,450 deaths (Covid mentioned on the death certificate) on 8 April.
+ An epidemic curve can be tall and narrow or wide and flat or something in between. By defining the peak daily deaths of 14,340 (height) and overall number of deaths at 510,000 (area) and the date of the peak on 22 May 2020 they’ve defined the shape of the modelled epidemic curve – the yellow curve in the chart below. This model predicts the first day with multiple deaths on 18 April 2020. Wrong. The first day with multiple deaths was 5 March 2020.
+ That the death rates would not follow a classic epidemic curve. Their figures suggest a logistic curve. Wrong. The Covid mentioned on the death certificate rates could hardly have been a better match to a classic epidemic curve.
If we slide the Report 9 model curve to the left (earlier) so that the first day with multiple deaths matches reality (5 March) and then compare the first few days of the GB epidemic with the model we see just how wrong Report 9 is. By the end of day on the date of publication of Report 9 (16 March) their model predicted a cumulative death toll of 5,938. Wrong. The cumulative death toll by the end of 16 March was actually 153. Report 9 was demonstrably wildly wrong on the day it was published. By the time UK lockdown was announced on 23 March their model was predicting over 7,000 deaths per day but reality was 202 deaths.
If our lockdown zealous politicians had good intentions their incompetence is breathtaking. School-level maths should have shown them that Report 9 should have been flushed down the toilet.
But there were all those people repeating ad nauseam that it was growing exponentially never mind the laws of Maths (realizability, aka common sense) or the prior art (models dating back to 1927).
I agree. It was never exponential. Saying or implying it could be or was exponential was foolish fear-mongering. The chart below shows what exponential means.
Indeed. It was always sub-exponential, except for an extremely brief time.
Please do all this in a submission to the Hallett Inquiry- Every Story Matters to support responses of Hart Group, who so far have got limited rights to file evidence, and my own attempts to say that there never was a pandemic as shown by the Diamond Princess and a whole lot against lockdowns, the jab roll out and trashing of civil liberties. I was unsure about doing anything, as many think the report has already been written, but experts on our side have confirmed if it would be helpful if as many of us as can do a submission to oppose the official narrative
I’ll look into it today.
For a comparison of a well mixed population to a social network of voles the latter takes 4 times as long to finish and results in 89% never infected whereas the former leaves only 32% never infected. So fairly basic qualitative modelling doesn’t need all these Professors.
“Well-intentioned”
The foot soldiers maybe, they usually are oblivious to what’s actually going on, they’re too busy at the coal face. But their managers and everyone above? Not a chance in hell. They were not “well-intentioned”. At best, they were going along to get along. At worst, evil.
So all things considered, the least-worst realistic scenario in the long run was probably within the envelope of “do nothing”, or more accurately, “adopt the flu strategy”. Or as the now disgraced BoJo originally said, “let it wash over us” before he panicked. As for ICUs being overwhelmed, which turned out to be a gross exaggeration in any case, the best way to look at the curves is to ask, if you were working as an ICU nurse, would you rather have a few really bad *weeks* and then it’s over, or a few slightly less bad *months* followed by the risk of it happening all over again later? Ergo, the idea of “flatten the curve” falls flat on its face.
Bojo panicked alright.. when someone had a quiet word in his ear and mentioned a state funeral for the sitting PM..
We all know what the road to hell is paved with.
A few observation:
Extraordinary measures require extraordinary evidence.
Scientific debate should never be stifled.
Even if you think the first lockdown was panic and trying to do the best, there is no way the subsequent measures were anything but negligent.
it is important the truth will out as without the two principles as stated above we will rinse and repeat. And not only on infectious diseases, also on climate.
“Indeed, perhaps if we want a population to get to herd immunity as quickly as possible, we should herd them all together, not keep them apart!”
Indeed, indeed ever heard of “Chicken Pox parties”?!
I know, right? Hindsight is indeed 2020, quite literally in this case.
Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua actually encouraged mass gatherings. Or to paraphrase the Wu-Tang Clan, we should have had a gathering of the masses that came to pay respects to the Wuhan Flu.
” My working hypothesis is that everyone concerned thought they were doing the right thing. ”
If that really was the case, they would not have suppressed the opinions of high-profile, eminent experts, who were presenting evidence that what they were doing was dangerous and would be counter-productive.
People who “thought they were doing the right thing” with no evidence to support their actions would be extremely grateful to receive advice that their actions were in fact the wrong thing to be doing.
How many times. There was no pandemic.
There is nothing well intention about zealots – they are entirely self-absorbed, self-righteous, uncompromising and dangerous.
Of course they thought they were doing the ‘right thing’, every tyrant and terrorist down history has believed so. The worst of all evil is that done in the name of good by those who think they are doing the right thing.
We need to put them on trial for their numerous crimes against Humanity along with the misanthropic climate change lunatics.
Here’s where the term originated: Zealot – a member of a radical, warlike, ardently patriotic group of Jews in Judea, advocating the violent overthrow of Roman rule.
And both jealousy and zealotry come from the same Latin root word, interestingly enough. Because they tend to go together, it seems.
To all the lockdown zealots, how does it feel to be on the wrong side of history? Because we wouldn’t know anything about that.