Welcome to episode 28 of the Sceptic! On the show this week, host Laurie Wastell speaks to the following guests:
- Peter Hitchens, columnist at the Mail on Sunday and author of books including The Abolition of Britain, on the bombshell expert findings about Lucy Letby and why her case must now be heard again
- Barrister Adam King, on his client with the Free Speech Union, former Royal Marine Jamie Michael, being found not guilty of stirring up racial hatred – and what it says about the Government’s post-Southport crackdown
- And for our premium subscribers, Laurie speaks to pseudonymous commentator Eugyppius, author of the substack Eugyppius: a plague chronicle, on the chaos in German politics after the fall of the German establishment parties’ cordon sanitaire against the AfD
Donate to the Daily Sceptic to access our premium content. Follow Laurie on X. Follow Peter on X. Follow Adam on X. Join the Free Speech Union here. Read Eugyppius’s latest on the Daily Sceptic here. Follow Eugyppius on X. Subscribe to the Daily Sceptic YouTube Channel here. Produced by Richard Eldred. Filmed at the Westminster Podcast Studio.
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Yes, your view certainly seems correct – and leaves the only hope as the well-known Charles Mackay quote: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
Let’s hope the recovery is not too slow, although the damage done to date is near catastrophic anyway.
p.s. Oh yes – with the proviso that one regards hyper-rationality as a form of madness.
Would be interesting to hear your view on what I think of as one of the key elements of the imposition of the lockdown in the US sphere, which is the sharp and rather sudden expulsion of the concept of “herd immunity” across the Pale and beyond the bounds of acceptable policy discussion.
As I recall it in broad terms, one day in probably late February or early March herd immunity was basically the settled way to deal with a highly transmissible, low ifr virus such as this one, once it had clearly beaten attempts to control it at the borders. You protect the vulnerable while the virus spreads through the population and increases the general level of immunity to the point where it can no longer spread rapidly, while managing the rapidity of the spread to keep within (ideally) your healthcare capacity. The next day it was verboten. Unacceptable. “Darwinism”, as I had it described to my by some of the more hysterical amongst my acquaintances. Some kind of modern equivalent of leaving the elderly and the weak behind in the snow as the tribe moved on.
I wasn’t really paying attention at the time (I wasn’t expecting such a wholesale overturning of received opinion and policy, and I was concentrating on watching the disease numbers around the world). It all seemed to happen so quickly it was over even before I realised it was going to change the world dramatically for the worse, almost overnight.
Would it have made a difference if the concept had been termed “population immunity”, rather than”herd immunity”? Was the objection as shallow as that? Surely not – presumably that was just bad pr, exploited by those who wanted to get herd immunity off the table to concentrate on the policies they preferred. I recalled some intellectuals, clearly with no conception of the kind of damage a coercive lockdown must do to a modern economy and society, let alone to the poorer countries around the world, pushing comical “hammer and dance” theories about wiping the disease out via sustained full court pressure from the state followed by amusingly Orwellian “track and trace” policies, but they seemed absurdly implausible as policy contenders.
Even the Swedes, who were clearly following the “standard” epidemiological approach, suddenly seemed scared to admit that they were aiming for herd immunity. with repeated explicit denials combined with rather unconvincing and evasive muttering about that being a “byproduct” of their policy.
Surely there’s scope for a few studies, essays and theses there, over the next few years (if there’s sufficient spare university funding left or such frivolities)?
That’s exactly how it seemed to me, too. I was prepared to get the disease – I wasn’t looking forward to it, but at least I knew that after it was over life would resume.
When it first entered the UK I felt 100% sure I would catch it in the coming few weeks, I was prepared for this, expected a week or so of misery from the infection and then to resume life. I was also preparing to take sensible measures to reduce my chance of spreading and catching it, but not to the extent of shutting my whole life down. When I knew I would catch it I was optimistic. Now amid this lockdown I’m not sure if I will catch it, I don’t know if I might have aready had it, and my stress levels are much higher, and not because of the pesky virus. What we need now, most of all, is an organised group against the health and safety nanny state culture, striving for an end to all the stupid legislative and insurance company crap and a recognition that our risks are our own. I’m sure there could be a good political party in this.
Agreed. I think the word ‘herd’ was the trigger. The frantic media and commentor reaction was built on this. The UK government’s use of language has been sloppy and ill-judged throughout.
Why? ‘Herd immunity’ is a standard term, and always has been. For instance, here’s a science piece from 2016 – long before this virus was ever invented – which explains it clearly, using it without scare quotes or trigger warnings throughout:
https://www.ovg.ox.ac.uk/news/herd-immunity-how-does-it-work
Absolutely right Mark!!!
David Starkey identifies that point in time in his discussion here https://youtu.be/8S8Js-tEmlg . Says it was panic in the government that changed the approach.
That’s a good interview Starkey gives and I’m sure he’s correct about the panic. He doesn’t really go into the issue I raise here in depth, though he touches on it peripherally.
Good link, anyway, thanks.
An excellent piece. Yes, the balance between living a full life with risks and attempting to eliminate all risks is a delicate one. Once a person loses the distraction of day-to-day living in the real world, and begins to fixate on their fears, strengthened by government and media propaganda, I can see that they may never recover.
I once decided to take up motorcycling, and bought the bike and all the gear. I enjoyed riding around a car park, and took the preliminary test to enable me to ride on the road. My mistake was to ‘do my research’ and buy a book on motorcycling. It described what to do in a crash, and how to slide the bike out from under you so it didn’t land on top of you – something that might never happen to me in practice, and would probably be instinctive, anyway. But the idea was planted in my mind. I didn’t *need* a motorbike – I had a car. I remember that night just lying there awake imagining all the terrible things that might happen to me on a bike and how unnecessary it all was, and how I would regret it forever if it should happen. Next day I ditched the whole idea – at great expense. If I’d not read that book and just ridden the damn thing I would have been fine…
That picture of the playground with kids boxed into lonely squares reminds me of a part in Meetings with Remarkable Men by Gurdjieff where he says that Yezidis used to draw a circle around their children to keep them in one place. It was a form of magic and apparently it worked, the children couldn’t escape the circle until it had been broken by somebody else. This seems to be another form of magic, we hope the virus cannot penetrate the square and harm the young ones. Humans are still so primal.
This is what happens when science replaces God.
You are right about the cause of this risk aversion: anxiety. But what is the cause of that, given that today’s society has more knowledge and wealth and therefore more safety than ever before?
Hyper-rationality partly explains it. But again I think it’s a symptom, not a cause. The ultimate cause I suggest is subjectivism. This is a fundamental belief reinvigourated by Kant and promoted in universities ever since (hence its reach), that reality is unknowable to an individual mind because the mind has built in filters (‘categories’) that distort its perception. Kant then invented a ‘noumenal’ world that we could gain knowledge of through intuition. Such intution is of course endlessly contentious which leaves western intellectuals with only one means of validating ideas: taking a poll, which in a democracy entails entrusting the leaders with making the day to day decisions that guide our lives.
This is why socialism has been so successful at creeping into every aspect of our lives even when society is led by those who profess to believe in freedom: unless you accept that reason is valid at an individual level and can defend that principle, you will feel bound to ‘help’ people by doing their thinking for them. This gives the populace a) a false sense of security because it turns out that politicians are fallible and b) an underlying feeling of panic because their lives are forever at the mercy of others’ thinking rather than their own. How can they have self-esteem and confidence living like that?
It also explains the rise in tribalism, groupthink and fear of different ideas.
To my knowledge, Ayn Rand’s Objectivism provides the only philosophic system to refute Kant and describe a properly rational way for humans to live on earth. Back in 1961 she described what we are witnessing today and the solution to it in her book, “The New Intellectual”, this extract from which I find particularly pertinent: https://courses.aynrand.org/lexicon/pragmatism/ .
Well said sir.
‘crowd’ isn’t really the right frame here, ‘crowds’ are what you see at football matches, and their behavior is generally organic. what we see in GB and other countries in regard to this phantom menace called ‘covid!!ooaascary!!!’ is population management. They’ve been working on it for decades, or over a century depending on where you want to start counting, and they’ve got it pretty much down to a science. It’s encouraging to see the amount of resistance we’re seeing, although more discouraging to see the amount of passivity. Like the guy said – interesting times. Will Big Brother prevail??? Or will he have to retrench and refine and try again in a year or 3????
Crowds are no longer what you see at football matches, unfortunately.
it’s not hard to find moments like that right now… everything fine soon.
Good Luck!!!
Also, having read through the piece, what comes to mind immediately following the summation are Calhoun’s ‘mouse paradise’ overpopulation experiments, and the aberrant behaviours described therein. The effects of this current iteration of society’s rationale are disconcertingly similar to his findings in many ways.
“Welcome to the hyper-rational cult of anxiety, making sure you and your loved ones can’t be exposed to risk, ever again.”
I believe we can go further with the “cult” concept:
Is Corona a Religious Cult?
https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2020/05/18/against-the-corona-panic-part-xii-an-anthropological-study-into-the-corona-cult-pro-panic-hardliners-and-the-media-succeeded-in-erecting-a-virus-centered-apocalypse-cult-as-state-religion-and-in/
Very good, but an acknowledgement of PG Wodehouse as the originator of the very amusing desription of Piers Morgan might be a good idea…
Wonderful read. Some of my thoughts, in no particular order:
(1) What’s fascinating about this mass anxiety is that it’s getting veiled, and justified, by the virtue-signaling curtains of the “I am such a good person and don’t want to infect others, therefore I wear masks and socially distance” narrative. Which is, of course, followed by “If I get it, I am likely going to be fine, but I just can’t handle knowing that someone died because of me.” Mind you, societies like America have continuously voted for presidents in the last decades who have gone on to commit global atrocities and murders, and no one for a second considered that their choices and votes have led to destruction of others’ lives. Now, you are the spawn of Satan for going out and simply breathing, and everyone wants you to know just what a horrible person you are. It’s absurd.
(2) Here’s another hypothesis that I’d throw into this, and it’s strictly my layman observation, no real sociological proof behind this. Among my acquaintances and friends (very disappointingly), I have noticed that hyper-rationalization is most present in people whom I consider to be more selfish or more self-centered than others. They are always the ones surfacing up statistics, saying how it’s our moral duty to protect others, and how one must socially distance and wear masks. Moral policing seems to be correlated with selfishness and self-centeredness. Conversely, the more generous and altruistic ones are those who have not succumbed to hyper-rationalization and are more reasonable. Could be just a very specific sample from my circle, but I figured an interesting observation to share.
(3) The mass clinical anxiety is really damaging in two ways. Either you have succumbed to it and are living in perpetual paranoia or you have realized that everyone around you has succumbed to it, which can be a very lonely experience. What’s more isolating is not being subject to social distancing, but seeing close people in your life become victims to hyper-rationalization and seeing how they completely change their relationship with you. A friend — who already had COVID! — was planning to visit her sister (at the sister’s request, important context), and the sister asked my friend to quarantine upon visit. Beyond ridiculous. And her bizarre request — asking my friend, and her sister, to come visit but then also asking her to quarantine — is somehow justified because there is this slim statistical chance my friend would have COVID again.
Here’s a link to an interesting take on this. The site it’s from is out there (tin foil hats, alt right etc)
I wouldn’t be in full agreement with it but the central argument does seem to explain what’s going on around covid.
Especially the inability of people to have a rational discussion about covid.
The last I heard from an otherwise highly intelligent rational relative with a PhD in hard science and a high level job in banking was “I have given up on the real world and will stick to watching cat videos” https://www.unz.com/chopkins/the-covidian-cult/
I see this piece was written several months ago now, and that the degree of compliance is now almost universal. One feels frighteningly apart from the massed masks in almost every situation outside one’s home. The hysterical response from ‘scientists’ who condemn a balanced and rational explanation of the true nature of this novel virus, and its limited lethality fights too viciously to allow any other view to be held, and at the moment I don’t see how sceptics can prevail.
I can only be optimistic if I begin to see younger people start to react strongly against the orthodoxy. It hasn’t happened yet, and the massed ranks of the Red Guard and Hitler Youth suggest it could too easily go the other way, with the young being enlisted to crush opposition.
Well, maybe “mad cow disease” IS coming full circle…all the mad cows now hiding under the bed, due to too much…kale. Having had to rip the muzzle off a while ago, due to not being able to breathe [ptsd, asthma], I was moo-cow stared at by two females – human, not bovine. Still regret not coughing at them. But, there is another chance soon, I hope. And by now, foaming at the mouth, I MIGHT “need” a muzzle soon…like Hannibal Lecter. So I am writing on mine “fava beans and Chianti”…let’s see what happens !!!