Back in March 2020 Toby found himself among a depressingly select group of journalists who opposed the lockdowns. The other side included erstwhile Brexit comrades, including his now Spectator Editor Michael Gove, who has let him write about it in this week’s magazine under the heading ‘I was right – and Gove was wrong – on lockdown‘. Here’s an excerpt.
I thought I could count on the Tufton Street mafia to weigh in on my side – after all, aren’t they wedded to the principle that ‘government is best that governs least’? Surely, paying people not to work, forcing businesses to close and increasing public expenditure by £400 billion was anathema to them? But most of the Right-wing policy wonks became enthusiastic supporters of the Covid restrictions, a group I dubbed ‘libertarians for lockdown’. Boris Johnson passed the initial test with flying colours, urging the public to ‘take it on the chin’, but soon fell into lockstep with the more cautious people surrounding him, including my political lodestars Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings. As someone who’d shared foxholes with them during the Brexit wars, that was heartbreaking.
I’d like to say all these people now recognise the error of their ways and come bounding up to me at parties to tell me how right I was, but as Mark Twain said: “It’s easier to fool people than convince them that they have been fooled.” The only person I’ve received any kind of mea culpa from is Boris, who sheepishly told me at the end of a long evening last year that I may have been right about lockdown. At least, I think that’s what he said. As friends of his will know, he rarely looks you in the eye and half-mumbles, half-gabbles when admitting to a mistake, so I may have misheard. I give him credit for standing his ground in December 2021, refusing to cancel Christmas, and I’ve no doubt Sir Keir Starmer’s response to the pandemic would have been worse.
I was initially sceptical about the official Covid Inquiry, worried that Baroness Hallett had already made up her mind that we should have locked down sooner and harder. But after seeing her Module 1 report, which was more nuanced than I’d anticipated, I’m optimistic she’ll condemn some aspects of the lockdown policy, such as the decision to close schools. On the other hand, I don’t think it matters very much what she concludes, because a future government, when faced with another pandemic, will just ditch all our carefully laid plans and do whatever is politically expedient, like the Conservatives did in 2020. The influenza pandemic preparedness strategy, which cautioned against locking down, was unceremoniously dumped within weeks on the grounds that it was designed to manage an outbreak of bad flu rather than something more serious. In fact, the fatality rate of COVID-19 was comparable with that of the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968-70. Sweden, which did follow our strategy, experienced fewer Covid deaths per capita than us.
In fact, the Government’s Pandemic Preparedness Strategy didn’t just “caution against locking down”, it ruled it out: “The U.K. Government does not plan to close borders, stop mass gatherings or impose controls on public transport during any pandemic.” The jettisoning of this mostly very sensible plan is perhaps the most egregious error of all.
Toby concludes by letting the weak politicians off the hook, saying he’s decided to forgive them “because their room for manoeuvre was constrained by the public’s limited appetite for risk. They might now accept that locking down caused more harm than it prevented, but still argue they had no choice”.
Though doesn’t that just doom us to repeat the debacle next time around? We can only hope lessons have been learned. In Gove’s case at least it seems they have.
Worth reading in full.
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…their room for manoeuvre was constrained by the public’s limited appetite for risk.
More flim-flam. A confident implementation of the Pandemic plan, with the mantra “We must follow the science” (ie the real science) and a full explanation of just how much scientific experience lay behind the plan, would have dealt with what risk-aversion the public had before they were indoctrinated by Project Fear.
It’s still not completely clear if the government even knew there was a plan to ignore – there’s a good deal of evidence that “certain parties” led by Intelligence agendas rather than medical science quickly put themselves into the role of expert advisors to governments, and suppressed the truth as Intelligence Services were created to do.
“More flim-flam. A confident implementation of the Pandemic plan, with the mantra “We must follow the science” (ie the real science) and a full explanation of just how much scientific experience lay behind the plan, would have dealt with what risk-aversion the public had before they were indoctrinated by Project Fear.”
Indeed. It’s a weak argument. The Swedes got away with it, as did other countries and US States.
It was the elites which bigged the thing up in the first place. I expect they wanted a crisis which they could be seen to have mastered but didn’t. Just as I argue Gordon Brown did with his financial crisis.
The “covid inquiry” (pass the sickbag) is nuanced???? Guess my interpretation of that word is not the same as the author’s.
“We can only hope lessons have been learned. In Gove’s case at least it seems they have.”
What, because he let TY write this in his magazine? Not buying that. Mr Scotch Egee. Never forgive, never forget.
Lord Scotch of Egg, surely. Lord Reasonable of Meal!
Lord Deluded Self Important Flim Flam of Aberdeen more like it …
Lord went clubbing during The Deadly Pandemic (TM).
Whitewash is a better word for it….As for Gove & Boris, crimes against humanity and total violation of the Nuremberg code & Bioethics.
I can’t believe anyone could take it seriously. The entire establishment more or less globally, and most of the general public, thought or said they thought that “covid” was a “deadly pandemic”. Why would anyone want to question that now? Er, sorry folks, we ALL lied to you/got it wrong and you’re all idiots!
I’m often curious just what ‘scary intelligence’ it was that Gove was alluding to when attempting to give evidence at the so-called inquiry.
How much of our response here was dictated from elsewhere? The countries all moved in lock-step. Conspiracy theories in ‘x’ were realities in ‘y’ then proposed in ‘x’ a few days later.
I’m still angry.
I guess we may never know, in our lifetimes anyway.
I too am still angry. I have no wish to let go of that anger. It’s part of life. Anyway the evil continues under different disguises.
Toby clung to cock-up theory for a considerable length of time and I’m not sure he has ever admitted he was wrong.
I imagine our gracious host would say that he has nothing to admit. I’ve seen enough to know what I think but I don’t think we’ll ever see enough proof to convince everyone.
It took ten minutes doing an internet search in March 2020 to get an expert opinion on covid from on the spot in China.
‘There’s a vast underreporting of cases in China. Compared to Sars and Mers we are talking about a coronavirus that has a mortality rate of 8 to 10 times less deadly to Sars to Mers. So a correct comparison is not Sars or Mers but a severe cold. Basically this is a severe form of the cold.’ 06 Feb. 2020
Prof. John Nicholls Univ. of Hong Kong, internationally recognised coronavirus expert.
His opinion was backed up by evidence from two serial prevalence studies conducted by Jay Bhattacharya in March 2020:
‘We learned that in both LA County and Santa Clara County, there were 40 or 50 infections per case identified. 40 or 50 per case identified…..the numbers we got were that it was 0.2%. So two out of 1,000 mortality rate.’
No excuses. The inept politicians relied on Whitty, Farrar, Ferguson and their Ebola experience. Does this sound familiar?:
‘The UK government has decided to support another strategy: passive case-finding with community isolation.’ Nov. 2014
https://www.nature.com/articles/515192a
These people knew nothing of coronaviruses. But the British Government did, because it had set up a ‘common cold unit’, then closed it in 1992.
The Common Cold Unit discovered coronaviruses and knew exactly how to deal with them:
‘It is therefore arguable that in the case of infections like coronavirus or rhinovirus colds, which are normally quickly self-limited, the best approach would be to relieve the patient’s discomfort and disability and leave their immune system to take care of the virus.’
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016635429290032Z
There is no excuse. There can be no excuses. Everything was available to identify ‘covid’ as just another seasonal Influenza Like Illness. Everything was available to enable a sensible and proportionate response.
The actual response was one of abject panic by a bunch of hypochondriacs who, by a combination of unfortunate circumstances, found themselves holding the levers of power whilst, frankly, unfit to run a whelk stall.
Of course they will not admit to this…and they themselves appointed those directed to hold them to account.
Systemic reform is required, this day!
We have exactly the government we deserve. I think it’s perfectly terrible but most people disagree with me. To be clear, I am not talking just about this particular government but many before it, and I’m not talking just about the Labour party but virtually every other party that got seats in Parliament.
…and there was no pandemic, right ToF?
I feel it was really a stampede and I want to get my hands on the cowboys who started it.
It might be worth noting that the UK Gov débacle occurred within 3 months of the General Election that got them in. Indeed, at the time a lot of it looked like a continuing GE campaign!
It is indeed the case that the Common Cold Unit in Salisbury, Wilts was the organisation that invented the term “coronavirus” for the group of viruses of interest. Apparently, it was chosen on account of what it looked like under electron microscopy – the use of which was quite new at the time. If it had been done somewhere with no monarchy – say France – it might have acquired a different name, perhaps, with it being an optical comparison with a crown.
Incidentally, although John Tyrell was no doubt right in his comment which you have quoted, the knowledge of how to improve the immune system’s capability of dealing with it has moved on quite a bit – at least by some.
I would genuinely be interested to educate myself regarding how to improve the immune system’s capability to deal with Influenza Like Illnesses.
May I ask you for your references for that statement?
I was thinking about the output from a couple of frequent YouTube presenters, John Campbell (https://www.youtube.com/@Campbellteaching ) , and Ivor Cummins ( https://www.youtube.com/@IvorCumminsScience ), in particular on the topic of enhanced Vitamin D levels – well above the minimum numbers recommended by the NHS at present. There are products off the counter in supermarkets & others, like Holland & Barrett. I normally use as much as 100 µg Vit D3 per day at this time of year now.
Very many thanks.
Sunshine, fresh air and exercise, a good diet, works wonders indeed.
Plus ca change…..
And let’s not forget the diamond princess episode.
I was following it all quite closely and I knew it was little more than bad cold by end February 2920.
In my view they all panicked because they knew it was an escaped bioweapon, and very successful too, destroyed western economies without attracting any sort of retaliation.
“In my view they all panicked because they knew it was an escaped bioweapon, and very successful too, destroyed western economies without attracting any sort of retaliation.”
No.
There was no panic, the whole shit show was centrally planned and co-ordinated and with the aim of setting in train the destruction of Western countries.
C1984 was re-branded ‘flu used as cover for all the propoganda. To suggest panic is to fall for cock-up theory. There was no cock-up and no pandemic. Scamdemic, yes.
Too many people who fell for the scam are still seeking absolution for their stupidity by clinging to notions such as panic and cock-up. Absolute BS.
Ferguson was shagging his mistress, Cummings was testing his eyesight, Hancock was shagging his employee, Starmer was having “acting lessons”, Johnson was eating cake. Yeah, petrified of a bioweapon they all were….
Not to forget the performative mask-wearing by ‘world leaders’ for the photoshoot, followed by a maskless buffet schmooze fest.
Bloody pantomime, the whole thing
German intelligence apparently give the lab leak theory a high level of probability.
Other theories on here always add to the gaiety of the nation.
‘The analysis here predicts that even with parameter estimates favourable to conspiratorial leanings that the conspiracies analysed tend rapidly towards collapse.
Even if there was a concerted effort, the sheer number of people required for the sheer scale of hypothetical scientific deceptions would inextricably undermine these nascent conspiracies.
For a conspiracy of even only a few thousand actors, intrinsic failure would arise within decades.
For hundreds of thousands, such failure would be assured within less than half a decade.
It’s also important to note that this analysis deals solely with intrinsic failure, or the odds of a conspiracy being exposed intentionally or accidentally by actors involved—extrinsic analysis by non-participants would also increase the odds of detection, rendering such Byzantine cover-ups far more likely to fail.’
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-01-26-too-many-minions-spoil-plot
You could say Nazism was one big conspiracy based on pseudoscience, still duped a Nation and terrorised others to fall inline. After, when things have calmed down, everybody was hiding a Jew in their basement. If you have a problem with the word conspiracy, how about collusion.
Spot on
I’m not sure collusion is correct, either.
‘French newspaper Liberation, citing sources in Macron’s office, said Johnson’s decision came after the French leader gave him an ultimatum on Friday morning, threatening an entry ban on any traveller from the UK if there were no new measures.
“We had to clearly threaten him to make him finally budge,” the report quoted an Elysee official as saying.
Contacted by Reuters, Macron’s office declined to comment. But a source close to Macron confirmed there was a phone call between the two leaders on Friday. “The way it’s presented is a bit harsh, but we were indeed preparing to close (the border),” the source told Reuters.’
The idea of such a conspiracy raises the spirits, though, as do space lasers!
I just can’t see it all being down to Macron. Things are coming out slowly, like the DOD & NATO etc. Why change the virus status to a medium status HCID and then Lockdown.
Johnson was being bullied by his wife, his immediate staff, a bunch of hopeless nincompoops in SAGE who knew nothing of coronaviruses but everything about Ebola lockdowns. Macron threatening to close the channel ports was probably the final straw.
A stronger and more capable PM would have stood firm.
Still doesn’t explain the 180 on Masks & herd immunity, with no new information to cite. We also know about the Diamond Princess that gave a good control group on the IFR.
A few conspirators, many many cowards and fools. It doesn’t have to be a large conspiracy to be effective.
Excellent point
I love the conspiracy idea just as I love the idea of Rothmans space lasers but where is the evidence for either?
Yes, the Diamond Princess did it for a lot of people. That was Feb 2020. Having understood what happened there meant you knew the whole thing was bull.
Personally, I knew it was all bollox from the moment Tesco put out hand sanitiser to combat an airborne virus from the same overall class as variants of the common cold.
Followed later that morning by the public library putting a book I’d ordered into 72-hour quarantine to Stop the Spread (only for the library to shut for the duration 48 hours later).
As summarised by the preceding commenter, the respected Professor Nicholls in Hong Kong had already assessed for what it was, a respiratory virus with an age-fatality profile that paralleled general mortality.
Yet heist still in full flow four months later, when A.B. De Pfeffel in all seriousness notified the House of Commons a cricket ball was a Vector of Disease.
Sports scientists at Loughborough University later went to the trouble of spending public money on spreading snot on cricket balls, to prove by PCR testing that after 30 seconds rolled along an outfield, 99% of the evil snot had dispersed.
Delayed start to the club cricket season a feat never managed by weather, Kaiser or Fuhrer, but managed effortlessly by feeble-minded gov.uk over a daft weekend in March five years ago.
Bollox is as bollox does.
My huz still has his ‘lockdown beard’. 🧔😶 He promised to shave it off when everything went back to normal but he got so many compliments and positive feedback on his Zoom meetings with colleagues that he shaved his head instead and the beard stayed put. I told him if he could rotate his head 180 degrees that’d be perfect but I don’t think I’d recognise him now if he was clean shaven. My brain has become accustomed.
We’d also be going on bike rides during the scamdemic ( we were allowed out to play and weren’t grounded, until curfew started at 10pm ) and other bearded men would just nod at him in a knowing sort of way, and I’d ask “Who’s that?”, and he’d say “No idea.” It was like an acknowledgement from members of some secret society of beardy men. So now he spends longer than me in the bathroom doing all sorts of facial grooming/shaved noggin type things in front of the mirror. Beard oils have also sneakily infiltrated the bathroom cabinet.😳
As a member of the bearded community I wholly concur.
That reminds me of the technique for vain balding men to start wearing a toupee undetected. They grow a hipster beard, and shave it off the same day they put on the wig. Their friends all say, “You’ve done something different – I know, your beard’s gone!”
Me, I’ve had a beard nearly all my adult life, and it’s never had any treatment more special than washing the soup off.
Then I think if you shaved it off without telling anybody their reaction might be interesting. It is quite remarkable how different men look though;
https://x.com/TheFigen_/status/1875256008454631748
Someone at my local parish church insisted that microphones, that were not held but in stands, were to be put in isolation for x days after use. But the churches then capitulated to the idiotic and unscientific order to close shortly after.
“the fatality rate of COVID-19 was comparable with that of the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968-70.”
No it was not.
The number of false attributions of death to the C1984 probably exceeded the real ie actual deaths by a considerable percentage. How many thousands did Midazolam Mat kill in Spring 2020, all of which were deemed covid deaths when the reality was murder?
We must always remember that deaths were attributed based on knowingly fraudulent PCR tests both before and after death or were simply made up by the nearest passing body with an NHS pass.
Posting laudotary and chummy articles such as this does a great disservice to the readership. A touch of rose-tinted spectacles looking backwards and not appreciated. We are assailed by BS daily. DS needs to remember its foundations.
Indeed….We know the virus was already in UK & Europe in late 2019. The April2020 spike correlates with the counter measures, like ventilation, Midazolam & morphine under the Pathways protocols. The Liverpool Pathways were illegal, they just changed the name and carried on as normal. It was the perfect killing ground with families kept at bay. Shipman would’ve been in his element.
Yes. He might have been alive and carrying on – after all, what do you think he would write on the death certs? No-one would question the ones issued for C-19, so he would have got away with it.
Well said. UK all cause mortality in 2020 was absolutely at the most terrible worst level ever since, er, that catastrophic year 2008. Remember that? 2008. Blimey, maybe I was asleep for the whole of 2008 and missed the bodies piled up in mounds. FFS!
Thanks 👍
Didn’t they use photos from a doat disaster a few years earlier when they cranked up the fear-porn in Italy. Dead bodies in a Hanger, would be good if someone has these with a link.
Photos from 2013 are falsely shared as ‘Dead bodies of Coronavirus victims in Italy’ – FACTLY
Please don’t forget to send in your birthday cards, it’s coming up to the 5th anniversary of launching the original web journal ‘Lockdown Sceptics’. forerunner of the august Daily Sceptic. Remember the extremely lively discussion forums of those early days [which took 5 of us half the day to moderate…]?? Remember ‘Love in a Covid Climate’?. And the postcards ‘Around the World in 80 Lockdowns!’?
Been there, done that, perhaps Lord Young of Lockdown will print us some t-shirts!?!
I do remember all of those things very well. Some of the original crew are still hard at it here: LockdownSceptics
I laud the efforts of the Reddit group “Lockdown Sceptics”. That sub-reddit is an oasis of sanity in a desert of leftie self-congratulation. In fact I am surprised that it was allowed in the first place
Well done!
It’s a good group and we have some good debates, and the moderation is very light touch indeed – the mod is a free speech absolutist. Almost zero trolling and personal abuse too. Quite a few came from Lockdown Sceptics as-was (what became DS) comments section. Reddit autobans some stuff that the mod needs to reinstate and some links (Rumble, Telegram, Zerohedge) need to be obfuscated as Reddit simply removes the posts, but other than that we have so far flown under the radar. It’s perhaps a bit less mainstream and more “conspiracy theorist” oriented than DS. Worth a look. Reddit itself as a platform works pretty well I think for this kind of thing. We have a daily comments thread that is auto generated by something that the original mod set up at the start of the group (Mabel Cow, who came from here).
I should add that various elements of the group, disparate geographically as they are, do meet up in real life from time to time – wherever you are there’s probably someone up for that at some point.
I was there H. Well from September 2020.
Never forgive, Never Forget. If it were up to me Gove along with the rest of the crew would be in the Dock for crimes against humanity
I will gladly second.
Until people understand the real reason for illness and disease, politicians will keep repeating the irrational, illogical and damaging interventions. Pasteur and Koch were fraudsters and the medical establishment have been lying to us ever since. The books have been well and truly cooked, which is easy to do using observational trials. Until the ‘germ theory’ lie is challenged, proper vaccine safety and efficacy trials are conducted and environmental toxins are exposed, only then will we see a drop in illness and disease.
Once again Toby, thanks for Lockdown Sceptics!
Indeed.
If TY has let Gove off the hook, then maybe those of us sceptical at him accepting a gong and joining the elite were right.
Not that I will pay the Spectator a fee to read the whole article, so have to accept what I read in this excerpt and commentary by Will.
It’s a club and we’re not in it.
Does anyone know about this organisation and who funds them, they did a hit piece on Dr Dave Martin:https://science.feedback.org/review/financial-analyst-david-martin-misrepresents-studies-patent-applications-promote-baseless-claim-sars-cov-2-developed-bioweapon/
I can’t help feeling people responsible for the covid debacle are being let off the hook. Toby has long been of the opinion the government’s response was more cock-up than conspiracy, as opposed to his old mate James Delingpole, (also old mates with Gove & Johnson – or was), who is convinced the pandemic was planned and implemented by the cabal, deep state, predator class, call them what you will, for nefarious reasons.
Now that Toby is a signed up fulltime member of the establishment I can’t see him holding his old buddies to account for their incompetence and crimes against humanity. More’s the pity because the longer the illusion of competence in government continues the longer the public will continue to trust their government, whatever the crisis, when in reality we are being played and gaslit as we always have been. And as we know the captured love their captors.
Here’s a link to the Mark Oshinskie‘s take on the legacy of lockdowns.
https://open.substack.com/pub/markoshinskie8de/p/five-years-of-coronamania?r=egcno&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Looking on the bright side, today’s announcement of the reorganisation of NHS England might have the effect of reducing trust in the system, depending on how it works out. That said, it’s almost certain that the Treasury will have a stronger grip on the whole lot, inside the Department of Health.
Fiddling at the edges. The government has no business providing healthcare.
I don’t think TY’s “elevation” is relevant. I probably hold different views to him on aspects of “covid” but he has been consistent from the start. He’s an open book as far as I am concerned. I don’t think the “establishment” generally put their energies behind websites like this and organisations like the FSU. Credit where it’s due.
The “people responsible for the covid debacle” are many so there’s nobody left to put them on the hook. There’s no victor in the “covid war” – pretty much everyone was on the same side.
People want to be led. If Boris had been a proper leader, he’d have been bold and told everyone it was a bad flu and get on with life.
Old people die of: infection, bodily breakdown or accident. We don’t die of old age.
“Toby concludes by letting the weak politicians off the hook, saying he’s decided to forgive them”
They ruined the economy; loaded us with unimaginable levels of debt; ruined millions of lives (including an entire generation of schoolchildren) and with the coerced, experimental jabs, killed or injured hundreds of thousands.
Forgive them! Not now; not ever.
Apart from all the other betrayals, it is why I will never vote for the Blue-Branch of the Westminster Uni-Party ever again.
I’m grateful to LS for continuing to publish challenging articles but I rarely comment these days. I want lessons to be learned and change to happen but so long as “we the people” continue to elect weak and corrupt politicians we are stuck in a doom loop. We must never forgive and forget but continue to speak out about the dire situation we’re in. There is hope from across the pond but we are nothing like as resourceful as the US when it comes to reasserting the will of the people. Despite all the nonsense going on at the top of Reform UK I will continue to support our local candidates (here in the Devon Council elections) in the hope that the popular movement for change that was obvious at the General Election will continue to grow.
What a depressing conclusion. They should all be banged to rights otherwise it’s all going to happen again. As for Hallett – what a whitewash, what a complete waste of taxpayers money most if not all the salient points have been ignored or banned from even talking about.
TY might be chums with these scumbags but I would probably get arrested if I come across these scumbags. Tell it to the family of the dead, young people who were coerced into taking this experimental gunk that they didn’t need. I suppose post WW2 people were mates with ex SS officers, as long as the conversation doesn’t involve that troubled time.
The covid hysteria and lockdowns were my red pill. What a horrible time. All my friends and neighbours swallowing the MSM rubbish. The stupid virtue signalling clapping ritual. The shadow banning of any sceptical voices through which I nevertheless managed to learn that the Swedes were standing alone and refusing to follow the herd. I have the misfortune to have kept a diary and therefore a permanent record of this depressing and disastrous human folly!
I agree. I try and suppress my anger at the stupidity, greed and malice of those in charge. My overwhelming feeling is sadness for my willfully blind friends and family who can’t cope with the truth. I pity them and am glad that I can see through all the scams they subscribe to. We are not alone but are struggling to turn things around despite there being many wise people on our side. Sometimes I have to switch off from the frenzy of bad news but remain hopeful that humanity will prevail.