The danger in the post-lockdown era is that in our rush to move on we forget the hard lessons that have been learned about this catastrophic public policy failure.
On the basis of alarmist modelling, often commissioned by governments and amplified by sensationalist media, panicked politicians discarded all basic ideas about proportionality and the rule of law to criminalise everyday life and exert unprecedented controls over the citizenry.
From the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, all Australian governments adopted the attitude that any public health mitigation measure was on the table, and little to no consideration was given to the costs of the measures that were adopted.
This is the subject of new research published by the Institute of Public Affairs, which for the first time in Australia calculates many of the costs of the nation’s Covid zealotry up to June 2022. In the report, Hard Lessons: Reckoning the Humanitarian, Economic, and Social Costs of Zero-Covid, we find that the total economic and fiscal cost of the Australian COVID-19 response was no less than A$938.4 billion (£550.6 billion) to June 2022. This report identifies:
- $595.8 billion in state and federal Government to enforce Covid policies and stimulate the economy;
- $259.8 billion in lost economic activity because of the restrictions and economic shutdowns;
- $82.8 billion in inflation related costs due to expansive monetary and fiscal policies, a cost which is set to only increase more and more over the next couple of years.
The research also calculates how much children suffered in terms of schooling. Despite being the safest cohort in society when it comes to COVID-19, children were routinely sent home to learn remotely or not learn at all. We estimate children in the state of Victoria would have lost about 12 weeks of reading skills and 17 weeks of numeracy skills, something which for many will never be recovered.
Even on the most basic metric, lockdowns failed. In terms of the number of years of life, the costs of joblessness because of the initial nationwide lockdowns in March and April 2020 were about 31 times more costly than the maximum possible years of life saved by lockdowns throughout 2020 and 2021.
Even in the state of Victoria, whose Labor Government enthusiastically established a world-renowned Covid police state, politicians are no longer touting their pandemic response in the lead up to the state election in November.
Likewise, the former federal Liberal/Nationals Coalition Government, which was voted out of office earlier this year, rarely boasted of its Covid response.
Governments of the Covid era appear to have accepted the failure of the Covid-elimination approach, but rather than confront the reality of this failure are just pretending that it never happened.
This is not about living in the past, because the reality is we are still bearing the costs now. In terms of the resulting mental health crisis, lost learning, shuttered businesses, Government debt and inflation, we are not likely to know the full costs of the Covid response for many years to come.
Our future wellbeing as a society also demands that we remember the hard lessons of the Covid response.
We will need to deal with pandemics in the future, and it is critical to know what went wrong, and how these failures came to be.
Australians were subject to the harshest restrictions on their way of life in their history, and we should be demanding not that it should be forgotten, but that it should be remembered so that it doesn’t happen again.
Morgan Begg is the Director of the Legal Rights Program at the Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne, Australia.
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Interestingly enough on this subject I have just had an eye consultation refused this morning at my local NHS clinic in St Albans because I declined the offer of wearing a mask in the facility. I had a very repetitive conversation with the medical care professional there who explained how good they were at keeping everyone ‘safe’.
I failed to succumb to her less than compelling persuasion and left as neither of us was going to give way.
I’ve emailed the NHS outfit that manages this service to seek confirmation on whether we have a de facto refusal of treatment and access to services if a face mask is not worn. I asked for a one word answer. I will await a reply.
Based on my experience and speaking to doctors and nurses I know over the years, I am pretty certain that people who work in the NHS don’t like the patients. That is of course not true of every doctor and nurse nor of every patient, but for the most part, the staff find interaction with patients not very pleasant and something they can’t wait to get over and done with.
This impression is somewhat validated by the experience of the last 2+ years. Every opportunity that has presented itself to push patients away has been taken, be it cancelling service, online consultations, barring visitors.
It also explains partly why the NHS has legions of staff doing all sorts of jobs that in aggregate make up the service to patients. Think of a typical visit to the NHS. You’ll see a chain of people, none of who spend more than a few minutes with you at most before you get passed on to someone else. Everyone is very rushed and simply have to get on to something else (rarely another patient, but rather writing something down, looking something up, checking something).
I see masks as part of that effort do push patients away. Masks create a barrier between people and for doctors and nurses, they serve to put distance between themselves and their patients. A doctor I know confessed as much to me, saying that she didn’t mind the masks and in some ways was grateful for them as it saved her having to put on an empathic expression when she was tired or low on energy – which is most of the time.
If they could anaesthetise us at the door, wheel us in, carry out a diagnosis without our participation, treat us, attach a set of follow up instructions for us read, then wheel us back out and wake us up, that is exactly what they would do.
And they would claim it was the best thing for our safety.
Nurses used to train on the job, as such there was never any doubt in their minds about what the job was about.
These days, they have to “study” for ages and are perhaps then a little dismayed when expected to do the actual work. They are also, in my experience, looking to be promoted to one of the endless “management” or “consultant” positions; they have been patronised by their “education”.
My qualification required to register with the NMC was a three year DipHE of which 50% was in practice and 50% in university. In the good old days, when my father trained, it was two years for SEN and 3 years for SRN. Yes the training was ward based, but there were classroom sessions as well. The other difference was that student nurses were included in the numbers as they were employed by the hospital.
Personally, I don’t think that there would have been a difference for me whichever training scheme was used, I was 50 when I qualified after a previous career as a systems/software engineer.
However, and it’s probably truer now that it’s all degree only, it is a means to obtaining a degree.
To fulfill the role of nurse practitioner I needed courses at level 7 post graduate level.
Your inalienable right to refuse to consent to a NPI as stated in Article 6 of the UNESCO Universal Declaration of Bioethics & Human Rights has been breached. It states that not giving consent to an intervention, which masking is, does & should not be detrimental to an individual’s right to receive medical care.
Stating that one is exempt, as you lawfully are exempt just by deciding not to submit to wearing a muzzle, is a route which is unchallengeable & they have no right to question the reason for the exemption.
I hope that you receive a reply.
Correct. That is why it was possible, right from the start, to download all the graphics for creating “exemption” badges from a gov.uk website. Not well advertised, but it’s up to us to use it if required. Soon after the scam started, there were some cases (in the legal definition) in which damages claims were made against organisations that refused to provide services on those grounds. The Discrimination Act 2018, and the Equality Act 2010 were also useful. The ones I read about appeared to have settled outside court, but cash changed hands on account of that.
Along the lines of selective publication, the bureaucrats kept quiet about the fact that there was never a requirement for a third party to grant exemption. Unilateral declaration, and printing out the bits and pieces published (quietly) by themselves, was what I did, almost two years ago.
P.S. This was the original source: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/face-coverings-when-to-wear-one-and-how-to-make-your-own It says that it is “withdrawn”, but that’s no surprise. What I have attached above was a DHSC publication back in August 2020.
Well done for not giving way, Savage. Horrible times indeed. Yes, do please let us know the response.
WTF a downvote???
Earlier this week I was refused a mammogram because I refused to wear a mask and I also refused to use hand sanitiser. When I pointed out that there was no mandate for hand sanitiser, I was met with stunned silence. My refusal to wear a mask was met with even more incomprehension.
So basically the people there felt that the risk to them of Covid (all ladies under 40, healthy) was greater than the risk of me having undiagnosed breast cancer – despite having a family history of that.
Thanks NHS.
I think they just wanted your compliance.
They all carry out normal unmasked lives on trains, in pubs and supermarkets.
It’s just that when you are in their little fiefdom, you do what they say. They don’t care about you, obviously. They care about themselves and their own authority.
Authority without responsibility; the happy hunting ground of incompetent bureaucrats to bully the people who pay their wages
What a surprise. Perhaps they have actually learnt about it all? I never used them anywhere during the last two years.
There was a fair bit of useful information, from the British Standards Institution, and others. In particular, much of the junk on sale had tiny labels that most people would not read, that said that they were NOT masks to any standard, so as to avoid being prosecuted under trading standards. Much of it was a con, and an opportunity to sell junk.
I have pointed out the very same label to many people wearing masks, they stare at me vacantly.
Lights on, nobody home.
I still remember the inscription on the set I bought when they were mandated. It said (in the kind of broken English one expects from the Chinese) Fashion mask. Not a medical mask. Use for dust protection, sun protection, fashion. Yet, there are still people clinging to them.
Here in Thailand we had the mask mandates lifted yesterday, HOORAY.
I chucked the remainig box of masks in the cupboard and checked the price I paid for them
50 ‘masks’ 40 baht = 95p sez it all really.
It’s really good to see Niall is still fighting.
When you see people still wearing masks you ask yourself “do the no wonder how all these unmasked people are not dropping dead?”
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Deserves to be mentioned here again (and it may be useful in such disputes): The Ebola stations set up during the most-recent Ebola epidemic represented a serious attempt at preventing viruses from escaping into the environment and infecting health workers or other patients. Despite all these efforts, some people still got infected. That so-called Sars-CoV2 infection prevention measures never even came remotely close to that is a conclusive proof that they’re nothing but theater and that neither actors nor directors of this penny dreadful drama take it seriously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism “Something must be done” etc. Many so-called experts were attempting to create an impression of competence; with some of us, it’s backfired.
Can nobody read, it says on the box that the masks are not intended to prevent infection??
Right. Something’s happened. I’ve just been to Tesco and a significant number of shoppers were masked. All varieties out in numbers, from the anxious elderly to the virtue-signalling young. What’s happened? How have they been nudged?
Nothing particularly unusual. Just another ONS junk estimate about rising levels of infection in healthy people. The only noteworthy thing about that is that Omicron variants have now supplanted Sars-CoV2 variants in official messaging and that the UKHSA is trying to pull a WHO by labelling some of them as variants of concern.
As I’ve already written in the past: Until the professional pandemic bullshitters have their microphones disconnected and other resources repurposed, we’re only out on bail and the nonsense can start over at any minute.
I have noticed recently that more and more adverts for NHS services are creeping in on tv and are showing people wearing masks.
Oh Lordy ! Will they ever leave us alone?
Well done Niall and those who have to put up with this nonsense. I’m retired but do my best to challenge maskers where possible. As ever, the NHS is a postcode lottery. I was refused access (without facecloth) to a gp surgery for stitches removal by a young nurse who claimed she was “vulnerable”. Not so far away the nurses at the Minor Injuries Unit were more accepting. We are living amongst the possessed – people who barely function because they see threats everywhere – but must keep chipping away and staying sane.
This kind of nonsense is still going on all over the world and much worse besides.. The basic problem is global leaders aided by the media can not admit that most of the rules and regulatons that were imposed on their societies have been utterly pointless. As a consequence Covid zealots (who were afforded unprecedented influence during the panicdemic) continue to persecute people by whatever means is available to them.They want lockdown or semi-lockdown to be made a permanent way of life. Why? Look at the Green movement. It is full of nutters too!
I believe the WHO do not regard masks as PPE either—this should further remove question one from the equation.