by Alexis FitzGerald
I consider myself to be left-wing on virtually every political topic: I am a socially-liberal social democrat who believes in a strong social safety net, high-quality public healthcare for all, robust environmental protections (including shifting to renewable energy sources immediately and protecting half of the globe for nature), restorative justice, legal abortion and reducing inequality and corporate influence over politics. I despise Donald Trump and believe Brexit was a huge mistake. I am firstly presenting my political biases in order to dispel the caricature that has emerged of lockdown sceptics as being all right-wing, Trumpian Brexiteers. I think this labelling has been very unfortunate and misguided, as I too believe that the lockdown policy in response to Covid-19 has been an utter and complete disaster, and that most of the left have gotten this issue completely wrong. I will argue that the position of the lockdown sceptic really should be a more naturally left-wing cause to adopt, and those on the left should not be distracted by the reflexive partisan politics and virtue signalling that has taken over so much of the debate around lockdowns.
The left should be interested in protecting working class and marginalised people and shielding them from economic hardship and exploitation, first and foremost. However, by many reasonable projections, these lockdown policies are delivering us into the worst economic depression in world history, and this will certainly negatively affect working class and marginalised people more than anyone else. Small businesses are being swallowed up by the thousands by large multinational corporations like Amazon (very much like a novel virus, sweeping through our populations and killing off the weakest among us), and automation has now taken on a whole new impetus for these companies. There will be few jobs left to return to for those furloughed by this lockdown, and there will be no resources to invest in worthy left-wing causes such as better public healthcare and vaccines, renewable energy systems, public transport, universal basic income, upskilling of the workforce, etc. We have developed complete tunnel vision on one cause of death, and forgotten or relegated all of the other causes of human death and suffering. We are now casually discussing the possibility of new famines in Africa and India and of economic bailouts three times the size of the 2008 economic crash, after just one month of lockdown. These outcomes are by no means guaranteed by the appearance of Covid-19 itself. This is the shocking result of lockdown policy, and a stark reminder of how disastrous public policy can be in the wrong hands. The economy is not just some toy for the ultra-rich (although aspects of it can be, e.g. stock markets), it is also crucial to the continued prosperity and flourishing of average working families. Therefore, the flippant dismissal of economic concerns by some on the left is a massive mistake, the consequences of which will be suffered for generations, and the weight of which will fall particularly on the shoulders of young people like myself. This has never been about life versus money, it has always been about life versus life.
In our current media climate it is not often mentioned that national and international lockdowns in response to a virus outbreak are completely unprecedented in world history, and that this is for good reason. Not even in war time did Western governments impose such severe restrictions on citizens’ personal liberties (churches and schools largely stayed open in the United Kingdom during World War II). And it is not just our liberty that we are losing, but our livelihoods and our young people’s futures. It will be young people and struggling working-class families who will bear the burden of the economic aftermath of this policy and who will have to pay back these forced Covid-19 subsidy loans that are being thrust upon us after being forced out of work by government fiat, through economic depression and inevitable austerity over many years. Multi-billion dollar socialism for mismanaged corporations and banks will certainly continue unabated, and ordinary people will be made to foot the bill once again, just as we did in 2008. If we continue with varying levels of lockdown until the end of the summer (and perhaps beyond), we are guaranteed to have destroyed generations of human potential. We on the left should have seen this coming months ago, and we should actively be resisting the lockdowns which caused it.
Given that national lockdowns have never before been attempted and are so extreme in nature, the onus falls upon governments implementing them to provide overwhelming and inarguable evidence and data to justify this policy and to prove its efficacy beyond any reasonable doubt. However, it is clear that governments and public health officials have completely failed us in this regard. You just have to take a look at the Worldometers data for Covid-19 that anyone can access in order to make comparisons between different countries to see how our governments and public health officials have failed. However, there are other scientists and scholars presenting this with more sophisticated statistical analyses which I highly recommend reading, such as Wilfred Reilly’s recent articles on the topic. For example, Sweden had 2,763 infections per million, and 343 deaths per million as of 12th May 2020. These statistics are quite similar to my own country, the Republic of Ireland, with a much higher 4,739 infections per million and a similar 303 deaths per million, also as of 12th May; yet Ireland has been in full lockdown for some seven weeks at this point – a fellow European country with a similar population, similarly dense cities, similar age profiles in the population and similar sizes and densities of nursing homes. Sweden never introduced a national lockdown, but rather maintained strong recommended (rather than government-mandated) social distancing measures while attempting to shield the most vulnerable. Sweden kept its economy open and kept its populace as calm and rationally-informed as possible in the face of this crisis, and has recently been praised by the World Health Organisation for their efforts in tackling the crisis in a long-term sustainable fashion. Sweden also has a much lower death rate than Belgium, Spain, Italy, UK, etc. Those who like to point out that other Scandinavian countries have lower deaths per million seem to forget that Sweden is simply further along the infection curve than these neighbouring countries, and thus that they have not saved any lives but rather delayed the death sentences of those vulnerable people in their populations by a mere few weeks or months – a delaying strategy which could be considered to be socially destructive in itself. And all the while, detractors conveniently forget all those European countries that have fared the same or much worse than Sweden according to the numbers.
This is replicated virtually everywhere when you compare countries or US states in lockdown to those non-lockdown, social-distancing countries or US states such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Nebraska, Wyoming, etc. Therefore, social distancing appears to be doing almost all of the work for us in terms of controlling the spread of the virus. These are live experiments that we are witnessing before our eyes which show us that lockdown is not even working well in terms of our public health, and for some bizarre reason governments and their health advisors are completely ignoring them and not learning any lessons from them. Every week of lockdown that goes by is digging us further into a deep hole of economic turmoil which will take us years to get out of. The evidence for the efficacy of lockdowns is simply not forthcoming, and therefore the policy is utterly unjustified – however much we may imagine it to be. Lockdowns were first instituted when we had no hard evidence to hand, only models (which have since turned out to be wildly out of sync with reality), and the policy has not been re-evaluated in any serious scientific way since this time.
For some strange reason, many people (particularly on the left) appear to want the Swedish model to fail, and the bizarrely-negative media coverage they receive should simply be ignored. In normal times, Sweden is held up as a model country on the left for virtually everything from health care to prisons to immigration policies. Suddenly, they are now viewed as the pariah of the world, being run by semi-fascistic leaders who should be (as one Twitter user noted) “carted off to the Hague” – presumably for crimes against humanity. This level of irrational ire could only be caused by those who are frustrated that the Swedes have not panicked and have instead taken a smart, long-term, balanced, middle-ground approach and have thus succeeded by the numbers while respecting their citizens’ basic liberties and livelihoods, which are also essential to living a decent life. And I really think we should be doing the same.
Furthermore, the lockdowns are almost certainly bad for our public health. Covid-19 is not by any means the only thing that kills people. Many people are now too scared to go to hospitals to get important treatments, tests and surgeries that are certainly losing us lives to undiagnosed cancers, heart issues, etc. Where our healthcare systems cannot cope with Covid-19, we should immediately have funded and expanded our capacity (e.g. with temporary hospitals) rather than locking down society. Our mental health problems, stress, addiction and abuse levels are increasing. Furthermore, it is a well-known sociological phenomenon that suicides – particularly amongst men – increase when a recession puts them out of work for extended periods of time. And our immune systems are weakening. We are a social primate, and our immune systems evolved over millennia to be kept strong by continual exposure to microbes via social contact and being outdoors, thus developing in us an immunity from many different diseases. Therefore, being inside our homes for weeks or months, away from other people and dousing every surface with bleach and sanitiser is almost certainly detrimental in the long term for our immune systems. There are guaranteed to be many novel microbes and diseases other than Covid-19 to which we need to develop an immunity as a species through continued social contact. When lockdowns are finally released, we may see a surge of new infections of various kinds due to this weakening of our immune systems. Recently we have seen that 66% of new Covid-19 cases in New York are of people who have been locked down for weeks, according to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. This indicates that either the virus is much more widespread in New York than was previously thought, and/or that the weeks of lockdown have significantly weakened locked-down New Yorkers’ immune systems, making them much more vulnerable to the virus – and other illnesses.
Furthermore, if the economic collapse continues, we may expect new famines in Africa and India that could threaten many tens to hundreds of thousands of lives, if not more. And this is not to mention the fact that we are losing vast sums of tax money and borrowing power every day by paying large proportions of our national populaces to stay home. This is money that we could be investing in our public health care systems in order to increase capacity, improve treatments and facilities, fund new government vaccines and antibiotic development programmes, etc. So it is very likely that with all these added “lockdown deaths” and the catastrophic loss of public money to spend on health care and vaccines, we are producing a significant net loss of life which will by far outweigh any lives that one might claim to have been saved by the lockdowns (which is a questionable claim at best, as we have seen). Surely it cannot now be the case that Covid-19 deaths are the only deaths that matter any more? Looking at all causes of death and suffering in this world together, an intelligent person should conclude that lockdowns are definitively a net-negative policy for our society and for the globe.
One might think that – at the very least – this lockdown experience would have dramatically improved our sense of national societal solidarity, reflecting the tired and facile comparisons with war time conditions. But even this has been dealt a serious blow by the lockdowns. We are now being primed by our governments, media and public health officials to behave like misanthropic, obsessive-compulsive hypochondriacs who are to regard any other person as a potential viral infestation to be avoided at all costs. Just picture the viral force-field that surrounds people in public health infographics on social distancing. The most basic activities of a social primate like us are now considered to be forms of contagion-ridden, death-spreading evil. I must point out that no such moralising inanity around viruses is entertained when it comes to influenza, which spreads through social contact and kills many tens of thousands worldwide every year. This is because contagion is usually understood to be an inescapable part of life as a social primate and not something one can feasibly control beyond a reasonable degree, such as by staying at home (and/or wearing a mask) when one feels sick, and by maintaining basic hygiene. Things other than life itself are indeed valuable to us – including social contact – and we often take minor risks with our lives for this very reason. Living one’s life is simply inherently risky.
I wish I could say this were hyperbole, but unfortunately I cannot. Barriers that are usually lowered between citizens in times of collective crisis are in fact being raised higher, both physically and emotionally. The invented two-metre distance must be maintained at all times, and in my experience people don’t smile at, or talk to each other lest they are breached by the viral force-field around each human infestation. International solidarity is also waning. We are being told to consider anyone arriving from abroad as a potential disease vector who must lock themselves away for two weeks, despite the obvious logical interjection that you are just as likely to get Covid-19 from your local supermarket (in virtually every major country in the world now) as you are from someone arriving from Brazil or South Africa or Nigeria or India or Turkey – with the possible exceptions of those two global hotspots, New York and northern Italy. A recent protest occurred in late April 2020 at a port in Dingle, Co. Kerry, in the south-west of Ireland, by Irish fishermen who were outraged that a boat originating from Spain would arrive on our shores bringing us our seafood dinner, lest they also bring us their contagion. So to add insult to injury, the lockdown measures have been disconcertingly well designed to accentuate the worst misanthropic aspects of our character, undermining our national and international solidarity and exacerbating base xenophobia.
We have to start thinking much more reasonably, rationally and maturely about the death rate from Covid-19 and the kinds of risk levels that different people and age groups experience. The death rate for the virus is simply far lower than we originally believed it to be at the beginning of the crisis. Randomised serology testing studies carried out in multiple countries in Europe and in the US have shown that from c.4–15% (and even 30% in some cases, depending on the study) of our national populations in Europe and the US either have Covid-19 or have had it recently. And it is becoming increasingly apparent that the virus has been around for quite a bit longer than we previously believed: France recently reported a confirmed case of Covid-19 from December 2019. Any honest analysis of the statistics around this virus (rather than self-serving and scaremongering anecdotes about the tiny number of younger people who have died from this disease) will show that it is an exceptionally ageist one. If you are under 65 and without any major pre-existing conditions (such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc.), your chances of dying from Covid-19 are extremely slim; and for people under 30, your chances are infinitesimally so. If nursing homes had been adequately protected from Covid-19 in Ireland, our death rate would be one third of its current rate. Therefore, keeping the entire work-force and all schoolchildren – children are almost entirely immune to this virus – locked up at home is a completely crazy strategy to adopt. As Lord Sumption has pointed out, we are all perfectly capable of assessing our own personal levels of risk based on our age, health, who we live with, etc. and of adjusting the way we live our life accordingly. Some may want to keep working from home or staying isolated or cocooned, while some vulnerable people may want to take a risk with their own lives by ending their isolation because they value things other than life itself, such as being able to spend time with their loved ones. We don’t need an incessantly-intrusive nanny state telling us which friends we can and cannot meet, when and where we can go outside, whether or not we are allowed to exchange goods and services between consenting parties, etc. This sense of fundamental personal liberty – which I had hoped would be strong on the left – appears to be depressingly absent, and in its place there exists a kind of docile supinity and subservience to state power and lab coats. All but forgotten is Benjamin Franklin’s stark warning to us from 260 years ago, that “[t]hose who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”. This is more relevant than ever today. Some governments are using this lockdown as an excuse to undermine democratic institutions and norms, and in some countries even to seize full dictatorial-decree powers (such as Viktor Orban’s government in Hungary), while others are using it as an opportunity to loosen environmental protections (such as in Slovenia).
Ultimately, the decision as to whether or not we prolong the lockdown is not a scientific or public health decision. It is a political, public-policy and economic decision. Public health science can – and should – inform these decisions, but they are ultimately political ones, and politicians hiding with cowardice behind public health officials will eventually be seen for what they are. Now more than ever, we need politicians who are willing to show leadership and a steady, rational hand in a crisis – something that has been noticeably absent throughout this period.
Some like to claim that all of these negative outcomes would have happened naturally in any case because of the virus itself, but this could not be further from the truth. Lockdown policy, combined with panic-inducing, clickbait-oriented and scaremongering media coverage, has caused much of the damage we are experiencing. This is a government- and media-induced insult to add to the injury of the virus itself. My biggest fear is that governments and citizens will continue to defend the lockdown policy (operating on a kind of sunk costs fallacy) and will never realise or admit how much damage it has done (ascribing all the damage to the virus rather than to the lockdown policies), and will then repeat this policy ad infinitum every time a new outbreak of Covid-19 or some other contagion occurs. We simply cannot survive as a civilisation in this way. Governments should step forward and admit honestly that the lockdown policy was a mistake, and that they were simply acting as best they could without available evidence at the time – evidence which, increasingly, we have at our finger-tips. These governments should shift immediately to a Swedish or similar model – for instance with a policy of mandatory mask-wearing in public or crowded spaces – and those of us on the left (as well as those in the centre who are still supporting the lockdowns) need to realise this necessity. At the very least, even if we do not have the wisdom and rational forethought at this time to end these lockdowns as soon as is humanly possible, then I sincerely hope that we will regain enough of our collective rational minds in the coming months in order to realise how destructive these lockdown policies have been, and to make certain that we never again repeat this strategy. Three similarly-sized pandemics were experienced by humanity during the 20th century, and we will continue to face this challenge in the future. Lockdowns were never implemented then. They were wise to avoid it, and we would be wise to learn from them.
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I totally agree with this. The left have been mistakenly viewing this crisis through a narrow political lens. And there is an increasingly worrying tendency to see the censorship of non conforming views, ideas and even scientific data, as being perfectly acceptable. I don’t agree on the masks point though – just as the data on infection rates should encourage evidence-based, reasoned responses, the evidence for masks affirms they make no difference in the community and can actually serve to suppress our immune system through rebreathing our own carbon dioxide and limiting our oxygen levels.
I also agree with everything and I think it is so wonderful someone on the left has raised to denounce the hypocrisy of the Left and its self-indulgence in a soap – opera of false solidarity. The only thing I don’t agree with is the proposal to wear face-masks. As a person with respiratory allergies, I know not from now, that face masks are not a good idea, they gather allergens, prevent fresh air to enter the lungs, and most of them can’t stop viruses in reality.
The face mask you are instructed to wear is not worn to protect you. It’s to protect others from any contagious particles you may spread when you get infected. Remember, most people become infectious before they develop symptoms.
A Corona myth that will not die…….WHO has looked far and wide but has found NO evidence of asymptomatic transmission (they now refer to it as ‘rare’).They assumed significant asymptomatic spread at the outset.
They can always stay at home and look out from behind their curtains. Food? Pay to have it delivered.
What complete and utter twaddle.
Agree, especially considering the science is pointing to faecal-oral aerosols, and not respiratory aerosols. Here is a whole bunch of info on it:
The discussion around masks has unfortunately drowned out the science around transmission. THis article discusses a recent Chinese study that found that 80% of COVID-19 infections occurred from inside the home: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-08/coronavirus-threat-in-melbournes-high-rise-towers-explained/12430218
The findings fits with the current science around SARS-CoV-2 being spread, much like polio, via a faecal-oral route. SARS-CoV-1 was also spread this way. In 2003 more than 300 people were infected with SARS in a housing block in Hong Kong through a defective sewage pipe which caused vertical spread via a plume that came from a bathroom used by an infected person with diarrhoea. The case study on this confirmed that spread was caused by faecal transmission, not respiratory droplets. This case study wasn’t on SARS-CoV-2, but studies show that’s it’s strongly related to SARS-1, which is more reason to pay attention to the issue of sanitation. This is one article that talks about it (however you can find the study directly as if you have science minded people in your team, which hopefully you do): https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/virus-cases-hong-kong-apartments-recall-sars-memories-68906209
Recently 239 scientists wrote to the WHO to urge it to recognise SARS-CoV-2 as spread via airborne respiratory droplets. The only research they cited in support of this was the 2003 SARS-1 case study which was determinative of faecal aerosols, NOT respiratory aerosols. This is important for two reasons – one, that we should be focusing on faecal-oral transmission and two, the research on transmission of SARS-CoV-2 via respiratory aerosols simply isn’t there. If it were, it would have been cited here. There is however, research determinative of faecal aerosol spread.
In relation to SARS-CoV-2, in Feb/March this year a study was done of 35 air samples from two Wuhan hospitals. The patient rooms, patient hall, ICU and CCU “had undetectable or low airborne SARS-CoV-2 concentration but deposition samples inside ICU and air sample in Fangcang patient toilet tested positive.” The only place coronavirus aerosols were found was in the toilet area, NOT where patients were being treated. Adequate sanitation measures eliminated the problem. This suggests that toilet plumes, not respiratory droplets should be the main concern: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.08.982637v1.abstract
This is an another important article on faecal-oral spread of SARS-CoV-2:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrasternlicht/2020/04/02/why-you-should-flush-with-the-lid-down-virologist-warns-of-fecal-oral-transmission-of-covid-19/#151952d56eb8
In Tempe, Arizona, they are monitoring spread through sewer water, and identifying ‘hotspots’ before they even occur. Before symptoms even show up, people are excreting the virus into the toilet: https://www.abc15.com/news/region-southeast-valley/tempe/tracking-covid-city-of-tempe-warning-residents-where-potential-hotspots-are?fbclid=IwAR10BWluKPmlcKA40-JE_lpaejmWAyuhp0jWPXWj_VWp2_6YJ_P39ufGxVE
Scientists worldwide are calling for a greater focus on this issue given the strong indications that faecal aerosols are highly implicated in transmission. The entire live virus has been found in stools and sewage worldwide: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720324360?fbclid=IwAR21FUSVCagMFU7G7HqzS_VIPw4DCCqhntXcInPYB_LOYgLmcz4Tf9IO38k
In the Philippines they will be going door to door to remove people from their homes if they have tested positive and share one toilet. Is this normal for a respiratory virus? http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:CMas_6hVjeEJ:cnnphilippines.com/news/2020/7/15/Oplan-Kalinga-home-quarantine-tokhang.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&fbclid=IwAR294–vMMBAlPSuRFTiuMp12jzdKU8q24CuRTI-8VfeI5bzCyKDLsjzPQg
i hope reality has taken you to beyond your fecal oral fixation..
I have been trying to assemble data and arguments against Lockdown for a few days. This article says everything I have been trying to assemble and from a refreshingly left wing point of view. All it needs to make it more readable are some sub headings. Please don’t overestimate our ability to take information in unless it is a little better presented. Otherwise fantastic. Thank you so much. I am going to put those headings in and then pass it on to as many people as possible.
Peter snowdon
Wonderful article but why discuss this in terms of right and left at all? Surely these terms mean next to nothing at a time when the so-called left have all but abandoned their interest in workers’ rights or freedom of speech and many on the so-called right have become their champions. I’m Irish too and the only people I see in Ireland at the moment who are willing even to discuss the issues of constitutional freedoms or freedom of speech are Gemma O’Doherty and John Waters. Anyone I know on the left almost spits blood at the very mention of their names and refuses even to think about the merits of their arguments. As I see it, continuing to put ourselves and each other into boxes marked ” left ” and ” right” is a nonsense leading absolutely nowhere. Why can’t we move past it?
Excellent! I’m totally fed up seeing this left/right discourse attached to every major topic. It serves no purpose except to divide. Why not look more closely in terms of age, gender, financial status, region or even what newspaper if any they read. If you included all those then that would at least be more valid. Who actually knows where people are on some very ambiguous political spectrum. Many don’t know themselves!
Well said. I’m radical but neither left nor right. I reject that simplistic binary beloved of politicians and those unable to think for themselves, a plague on all their houses!
O’Doherty is an illiterate far right bigot! A Poundland Katie Hopkins!
This is a fantastic article covering just about every aspect of the issue. I am a liberal but apart from the defence of the welfare state, I can subscribe to nearly everything you say. The international dimension is often forgotten, but a life lost in a poor country because of lockdown in a rich one is worth the same as any life saved in the West. No surprise to me though that the Left, in recent years distracted by safe spaces and nanny stateism, supports the lockdowns. What has surprised me in Spain, where I live, is that many liberals are also in favour. But this is the defining issue of our age. At this time the dividing line between supporters and opponents of lockdown is more important than the left/right divide
Brilliant essay , expresses all my opinions and I am an 80 year old active old fart ! Alexis , may I suggest you submit it to The Irish Times as an op-Ed piece ? Fintan OToole has finally started to criticise the Irish Government / HSE handling of this pandemic . This might help Leo Varadkar realise that he has been led astray by Dr Tony Holohan!
Excellent piece, thank you.
I despair about the way this has turned into partisan squabbling. It’s a virus. It has no political affiliation.
You are absolutely right that the left SHOULD by all rights be the ones defending the common man and civil liberties. It has been with some astonishment that I’ve found common ground with Fox News, after two decades of viewing them with unmitigated horror. But if conservative outlets are the only ones willing to question the insane one-sided story coming out of the mainstream media, and conservative politicians the only ones questioning the wisdom of global lockdowns, I am willing to listen to what they have to say and support them in their efforts to spring us all from prison.
I opposed Brexit because the EU granted British citizens the liberty to travel, live and work in other European countries, and shielded citizens of those countries from the UK’s illiberal immigration control regime. Brexit diminishes individual freedom, and says that everyone must do what the majority says. So in that sense the lockdown is an extreme form of Brexit.
Speaking of Brexit, is it not the case that the benefits of Brexit (and any potential concomitant economic shocks owing to Brussels’ political intransigence) no longer apply here in the UK, given that (Sweden apart) all EU countries (the 26) and the UK (the 1) have locked down simultaneously, thereby crippling their GDPs simultaneously, thus managing to achieve (Mr Barnier will be pleased with this) a ‘levelling of the playing field’. It looks like Remain got its way in the end. How curious. What a thoroughly convenient virus this is…
It’s a eurovirus.
Oh dear, really? Brexit frees us from the grip of a federal superstate in the making. What do you think federal means? Look at the USA. If you’re British, the EU handed our fisheries to the Spanish to vanuum up everything including the creatures on the sea bed, and killed off most of our fisheries. The CAP paid millions to the biggest landowners based on acreage, and nothing to sdmall famrers and growers who were farming with the environment in mind. Sere what we had to put up with from the sneering elitists of Europe? That’s because what they’re losing is the second largest payment in to their budget, to be handed out to all the failures like East Europeans and Ireland, whose ‘Tiger economy’ was funded from benefits paid by our taxpayers.
The inept way they sat and watched for several years while the illegal immigrant flow increased tenfold, the majority young and male and paying smugglers thousands to get them into Europe is just another nail in the US of E’s coffin. It was illegal immigration. not illiberal policy. Many of them were criminals or jihadis, which is why they couldn’t migrate legally as others do. The UK isn’t against immigration, we depend on it, just controlled by us and predicated on people with skills, rather than shoplifters and car thiueves. Liberals are the worst racists, they see brown skin and want a different attitude displayed, mustn’t criticise. That’s why liberals always use the refugee word for people who are from stable countries andhave traveled across a dozen safe states to get here. It’s called virtue signalling.
I see myself as left wing. Not the middle class elite left however. I’m astonished by the Guardian and so called left wing journalsists who have abrogated their basic responsibilities in speaking truth to power. Even in asking basic fundamental quetions – as has the media in general, the BBC being a disgraceful example. Unfortunately the Guardian has so absorbed its self in identity stupidity and victimhood it should have been no surprise to me that it would hand over freedoms to the government (indeed a Tory government!) for the “safe space” of lockdown.
Do the advocates on the so called left – ie bourgeois hacks who can afford to lock down unlike the real working class who are coming close to, or are in, penury – think this economic catastrophe will be a holiday for the next four years under a Tory government? The last ten years would suggest otherwise. A man made catastrophe we could have avoided will of course hit the working class the hardest. And where will the so called left be when even more populists spring up around Europe as happened after the last financial crisis? Whether we like it or not, we live in a global capitalist world and will suffer the concomitant capitalist consequences of a black hole in productivity in the UK for years to come.
I fully concur. The faux left is more interested in identity politics and political correctness than social justice. The reaction to the lockdown is also a symptom of this, since I don’t see a legitimate legal basis for it and the modelling and even the chief modeller have been exposed as bogus. I also concur that the depression resulting from this will be unprecedented, since even if it doesn’t equal prior depressions such as the ’30s earlier, the speed with which it has set in is without precedent. Actually, populism isn’t a bad thing as long as social justice and liberty are part of the mix. What it boils down to is systemic and anti-systemic. I used to read the Grauniad and trust it in the 1900s up to about 2005. Now it is simply part of the multi-party power structure which is the 21st century update of fascism.
No legal basis? Tell that to those lying in hospital beds unable to breathe.How much liberty have they enjoyed?
From UK Column News article article – COVID Coercion: Boris Johnson’s Psychological Attack on the UK Public:
It was announced on 17 April this year that the Government and the newspaper industry have formed a three-month advertising partnership called All in, all together to help “keep the public safe and the nation united” throughout the Covid-19 ‘pandemic’.
So news media have a commercial interest in providing a propaganda service to the UK government. Indeed, it has been noticed that the government is becoming the UK media’s most important client.
Do you deny ‘lockdown’ has reduced massively the infection rate and evenually the death rate? Perhaps you wouldn’t be so assured if someone close to you had died with tubes down their lungs.
Black holes in capitalist production are clear air for the planet. I love lock down, I can take my dog walking without the stink of endless traffic queues. There are far fewer road kills of endangered species, less cobsumption and less plastic thrown into rivers and seas. It’s capitalism that’s killing the planet and causing 1,000 plus extinctions annually. It’s right now, not something in the future, and not cuddly furry animals yet, but vital members of the ecosystem nonetheless. Just wait until all the bees have gone and famine culls the naked ape, because our food depends on them all.
Brilliantly written article, agreed with every word after the first paragraph. As a right-leaning Libertarian I do have to admit that I’m sceptical that you are actually left-wing – it’s been so long since I’ve heard any sense from anyone who identifies as a leftist, but in a funny way I really hope you are exactly what you claim to be, as this would give me some optimism for the possibility of the restoration of reasoned debate between left and right.
I am left-wing, and also a libertarian and I am also 56. I share all the author’s viewpoints about the lockdowns. I am stunned by the knee jerk reaction by the left and see it as a catastrophic blow left’s reputation and viability long term. The left should be guided by science, facts, and caring for our fellow citizens. I think there was good reason for the lockdown in the beginning and Sweden’s policy was risky. But with the benefit of time and experience, it is incredibly clear that we are not facing a 1918 level pandemic and the economic costs come nowhere close to the loss of life. It’s sad to admit that the left is just as rigid as the right in their knee jerk impulses to value any harm to anyone above the common good and freedoms of everyone.
This is not exactly left against right. The vast majority of hard right governments, such as Orban, Duterte, even Boris Johnson itself have imposed strict lockdowns. In the no lockdown camp there are hard left governments (Belarus, Nicaragua) and a moderate centrist one (Sweden). It is often forgotten as well that countries considered to be successful such as Germany and Taiwan never had a lockdown as well (Germany limited sizes of groups and closed shops, but people could still leave their house whenever they want)
You’re right, it’s not left or right, just conveniently framed that way.
I too am on the left and agree with everything the article has to say – apart from face masks
And Germany is in severe difficulty right now with massive spread and hospitalisation. An inconvenient truth.
I too am left libertarian [whisper the word anarchist!] and have watched the liberal-left wallow in woke political correctness,gender politics and BLM posing as they lost votes in their millions, while sneering at the working class across the developed world. The left have embraced narcissism, and are busy banning words they disapprove of, pulling down statues that have no relevance and banning speakers they don’t like from universities. I saw it coming, years ago, a drift to the right became a flood.
Haha, it is completely hilarious for someone to describe themselves as libertarian/anarchist, whilst also supporting the greatest infringement on individual liberties in modern history. The person who also just said below that he doesn’t “object to the lockdown, if nothing else it slows the destruction of Earth if hominids are kept at home and can’t pollute as much as normal”. KEPT AT HOME. What kind of liberty that represents I have no idea. Simply delusional.
I’m left wing too and totally agree with article
I am not even a “libertarian”. I am a full blown tankie that believes the collective comes before the individual and in strong state intervention. I agree with every word of this article. To have socialism you need a society, not bubbles of isolated, selfish people who see everyone else as a source of disease. We are essentially sacrificing the majority for a minority and creating a world that isn’t worth to live in.
This is an excellent article which sums up my thoughts exactly… I’ve never been particularly left wing but over the years my views have certainly started to shift that way… recent events have however almost made me question what it is to have “left wing” views anymore as I wondered why it was not those on the left who sought to save our freedoms, sanity and many “other” lives with it?!
Anyone who thinks this is a good article, like I do, has a duty to forward it on / circulate it to as many sensible people as they can to try to undo the brainwashing that our government, media and stasi-like public has inflicted upon the nation, and before it is too late.
It was all going so well until “ for instance with a policy of mandatory mask-wearing in public or crowded spaces – ”.
But still quite good. I’ll be forwarding it to some of my lefty family.
Thanks for your article Alexis. I’m cheered to have discovered this site (I could only find Peter Hitchins being the voice of the UK ‘Lockdown Deniers’ prior to this).
I myself used to identify to the left when I was younger for the very reasons you mentioned. Since Tony Blair and the ensuring couple of decades I would now describe myself as not a Statist at all.
Anyway, I have found it incredibly ironic throughout this that Peter Hitchins of The Daily Mail has been the lone voice. No Guardian up in arms.
Perhaps it’s because the Left has drifted into the idolisation of Socialism and Communism (witness Justin Trudeau gushing about China a while back). Unfortunately, when it comes to the economy, we are all in this together and it may prove to be the tipping point that the Left have to reconsider what they value as important.
No more Intersectionality and Cultural Marxism; Gad Saad was interviewed recently and stated that ideologies – like animals – fight the hardest just before they die. A simplfied image, of course, but one that I wonder if it applies to the Left at this juncture.
So caught up in theory that they’ve forgotten about the real world, real time implications and consequences for actions. I get the impression a lot of people really believe we just pick up where we left off.
When they turn out to be siding on the wrong side of history, what then?
Will they graciously admit their mistake or fight tooth and nail to not be proved wrong?
Who do the Left represent now? The NHS?
The Golden Cow that will have to be unironically sacrificed when the money runs out.
Absolutely brilliant article, I agree with every word. My only extra, major, comment is that the additional effect upon ‘non vital’ but life affirming past times is also colossal. To name but a few, live music, live sport, theatre and cinema will be wrecked as a result of Covid19 lunacy. I cannot believe that the media have just blithely accepted that these are a reasonable loss on the mast of risk avoidance. Needless to say, as well as bringing great pleasure, all these activities also employ huge numbers and generate enormous amounts of revenue. As a lesser point, but still important, almost every ‘adapted’ pleasure experience will be diminished. A major point of a busy restaurant or pub is the buzz of numbers. Who wants to sit in a tomb segregated by plastic guards. It has been been a societal issue for a while now but the difference between living and existing has never been more stark.
Very well done.
Mick Oak
“If you are under 65 and without any major pre-existing conditions (such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc.), your chances of dying from Covid-19 are extremely slim.”
We should avoid being too blase with statements such as this, considering that a good many people under the age of 65, particularly in countries like the UK and the US, do indeed have such pre-existing conditions. Apparently, around 70% of Americans are obese, for example. By and large, due to a variety of factors, these are not particularly healthy societies.
That said, I do agree with the thrust of this article. As someone who considered myself politically on the left for a long time, I have been shocked at the zeal with which this lockdown has been embraced and lack of reason and rationality often on display when defending it. You’re absolutely right to point out the undisguised longing for the approach taken by Sweden to fail, the seeming lack of any concern for the erosion of civil liberties and simple-minded virtue-signalling of counter-posing ‘lives’ and ‘the economy.’ Whilst confirmation bias is something everyone needs to be on guard against, it’s bizarre how more optimistic or even cautious conclusions about what the evidence is telling us about this virus is dismissed out of hand, always in favour of the most alarmist projections. It’s becoming clear that some of the left don’t appear to want this shutdown of society to ever end. The one honorable exception to all of this sanctimonious irrationality has been John Pilger. Your point about the further atomisation of society as a result of these lockdowns is also interesting. All in all, quite depressing.
False. 70% of Americans are not obese. You made that up.
42% still high because the USA is number one or closer to it in everything bad about society: obesity, child poverty, Heart disease, diabetes, press freedom, lack of internet penetration, most expensive broadband, healthcare quality, most expensive health care system, most people uninsured for health
Over 70 million adults in U.S. are obese (35 million men and 35 million women). 99 million are overweight (45 million women and 54 million men). NHANES 2016 statistics showed that about 39.6% of American adults were obese
I didn’t ‘make it up’, I remember seeing that figure somewhere but can’t recall exactly where. It does seem quite excessive, but whether that’s a precise figure or not doesn’t detract from the point, Let’s say an awful lot of Americans are obese. Rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease are serious problems in the general population.
Excellent stuff – thank you.
Largely summarised my views and position on lockdown.
In conversation with my ICU anaesthetist brother we discussed the gradual shift of public perception from death (and risk of death) as a natural part of life to the current insanity where death is seen as a consequence of the failure of medicine and health services. And on to the purpose of Lockdown – to save our NHS. With the unfortunate side effect that by saving the NHS apparently just for C19 victims, we are denying other sick people access to free healthcare as is supposed to be their right. The impact of lockdown on deaths from other causes (likely massive rise) may emerge as a national disgrace.
We seem to be gripped by a mass panic over the fact that old people die – every year, relentlessly.
As my 91 year old Irish mother in law commented when she heard that her recently deceased eighty five year old neighbour was to be subject of a post mortem “Ridiculous. Waste of money and time. He died because he was old.”
Thank you for this. It’s what I have been thinking and arguing for many weeks now. Lockdown politics teaches us to be be fearful of others and keep them at bay. It focuses public policy on ONE RISK (death from Covid-19) at the expense of dealing with the multiple risks to health and well being inherent in (a) lockdown and (b) the economic aftermath – the burden of these fall much more heavily on the poor. In the UK it acts as a decoy while the government pursues its ludicrous Brexit policy. What is also astonishing is the numbers who happily submit to instructions that are poorly evidence based – apparently yearning to be told what to do.
Yes, I notice also that apparent yearning to be told what to do, to have freedom of choice and discernment ~removed~. In my more reactive moments, I have been ashamed at how terrified my fellow humans are about this virus, which, yes, will kill some of us. But as Mr. FitzGerald points out, there are many things that are deadly, even much more deadly. The governmental responses to this thing have been outrageous, not reflecting the nature of the situation; and all along I have been looking around for “who benefits?” and “how did this happen” and how do we walk away from the propaganda fed to the television watchers among us . . . are they willing to give it up? It is addictive: the “evening news.” I am so grateful for the sanity in this essay. I feel like “morning has broken.”
Thank you Sara, it’s a devastating time, but all we can do is stay clear-headed and try to change as many minds as we possibly can.
Very well put Anna, totally agree. Keep hammering everyone you know with your arguments and slowly but surely the Overton window (and public opinion) will shift.
Superb article. Hits just a bout every spot with my highlight being the fact that, with all the data we now have, it is very easy to see what we should be doing. And everything you state we should be doing is exactly right.
Clapping, cheering, crying. I am you. All of this is so true. Also, lockdown never would have happened pre-social media. I despair for my children. What if a REAL pandemic happens? I hate how sceptics are seen as fringe-y. I can barely read my dear friends’ posts anymore. Thank you!!!
This is a real pandemic!
I think Laura means one that kills more than 1% of those that get infected
I have two comments. The data from Kerala India shows that a society needs along term strategy based on ‘benefits for the people’. The infrastructure in Kerala included both health clinics and schools in every village plus a minister of health who foresaw the pandemic and up-scaled the infrastructure so that the policy of test, trace, isolate and then crucially support has seen wonderful curtailment of the pandemic.
Secondly, a national approach may be following the principle of you are either for me or against me. It is not a black or white issue. The UK found itself after 10 years of austerity very, very poorly prepared for a national emergency. Lock down in Wales, smaller cities and towns was probably an inappropriate action but only IF a combination of social distancing and test, trace, isolate and then adequately support the isolation. London on the other hand is almost impossible to keep functioning al la Stockholm because of the larger population and critical dependence in the mass transport system, so social distancing is not feasible. So I cannot put forward an alternative to lockdown for London even if the policy for the elderly and vulnerable were ‘stay at home’ and care homes were recognised to be particularly vulnerable so that special carers were employed who did not circulate freely.
So much here makes sense. But there is one point I would query. You suggest that vulnerable people can make their own decisions about the level of their exposure to the virus, and in some cases that’s true. But there are many vulnerable people in the mainstream workforce who don’t have the economic choice to self-isolate, and even in lockdown we are seeing a prevalence of deaths in certain sections of the population. People of all ages have underlying health conditions, and there still hasn’t been a satisfactory explanation for the number of deaths in the BAME population, so the risk to people in that group is currently unmeasurable. Is it possible to devise a social security system based upon self-assessment of risk?
Joe, thanks for sending this. I like his arguments against the lockdowns and have Beene steadily heading that way myself.
If it weren’t so prevalent and so dangerous, I’d find his naïveté about the left to be almost cute. But the fact is, he has more in common policy wise with Donald Trump, or me, for that matter, than he does with Nancy Pelosi.
The left does not care about people. They care only about power and control.
The lockdowns are about stealing the next election.
The real left is not Nancy Pelosi – these people are imposters
This is helpful. One statistic to add. In California, we see the stars by county. Notably, the number of Confirmed cases correlates directly to the number of tests administered. Either we do far more testing in counties with many cases, or the more we test the higher number of confirmed cases we find.
This could suggest that the anti-body tests which suggest far more people are already infected are roughly accurate.
Well and impressively said and from a young one at that. This alone is hope for my children and grandchildren! Thank you!!!
Finally someone on the left is making sense. We have been saying this for several weeks now. Good for you, but you are too late. As far as I see, the only media who’s saying this is Fox and sometimes WSJ. MSM is so blindsided by Trump impeachment, that they don’t even understand they are the one who failed. I blamed also local NY reporters, who have no common sense that once outbreak occurs in China, it can come to NY the next day. They are completely worthless and I now do not watch CBS NY any more. Right now, the left is in completely losing position as Trump is the one who’s fighting for small business.
Hi Alex, my name is Liz Wheeler. I host the show “Tipping Point” on One America News Network. I’d love to have you as a guest on my show to discuss this piece your wrote – it’s fabulous! Send me an email at the address provided. Thank you!
Thank you
I agree with all but two points. Humans are the carriers si the virus dies rather quickly on surfaces. Therefore, an infected human coming into your country is more dangerous than store inventory which sits usually long enough in transit to have any virus die off. Also, I disagree with the new cases in New York statement, ones immune system would not fall apart that quickly making one more susceptible to covid-19. Is the virus more wide spread than originally thought, probably, if you are asymptotic why would you get tested? I agree with Sweden. Save the old and immune compromised by keeping them isolated. Do not allow positive cases near them. Eventually it will pass through the population and we will become immune.
I’m inclined to agree with your view of the immune system, but today there is new research published which suggests that vitamin D is a major player in preventing people from catching Covid-19. It could explain the prevalence in BAME communities, and also the findings in New York, where people who have been staying at home are now making up more than 60% of new cases.
There is a view that the libertarian/authoritarian axis is more important than left/right -see here
It’s hard to understand when the Guardian et al became authoritarian – and how this associates with the identification with (certain types of) victims..
Nice colours but means nothing. All I can see is I’m purple. So?
A brilliant essay, I am also a confirmed lefty if of the older variety. Unfortunately your last paragraph though spoiled it – there is absolutely no evidence that wearing masks prevents the spread of viruses
The author does something very strange, though. At the start he characterises Brexit as a naturally ‘right wing’ phenomenon. In doing so, he makes exactly the same mistake as those who assume that lockdown is ‘left wing’.
In fact, Brexit only became assumed to be ‘right wing’ in the run-up to the 2016 referendum, and this was primarily to do with people choosing who they were prepared to ‘share a platform’ with. Most left wingers couldn’t imagine sharing a platform with Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees Mogg etc., so the issue polarised into ‘left’ and ‘right’ at that point.
In fact, we can see left-winger Peter Shore in 1975 opposing Britain’s entry into the EEC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoO6146qM5g
And as late as 2015, left wingers such as Owen Jones and George Monbiot were making the case for Brexit:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/14/left-reject-eu-greece-eurosceptic
Sometime in March or April I googled “liberals against lockdown” and found nothing. I continue to be mystified and frustrated by the left’s lockstep endorsement of lockdowns. It has alienated me from the left wing.
Thank goodness somebody on the left has dared to say what my gut and my head have been wanting to say since lockdown, but virtue-signalling from my comrades on the left has made this a risky manoeuvre.
Firstly, I want to say that many of the points the author makes are valid concerns forecasting the repercussions of the Covid-19 epidemic. When the author talks about the Left’s duty in- “protecting working class and marginalised people and shielding them from economic hardship and exploitation” –I couldn’t agree with this more. However, I am a little sceptical of the logic of this article, which seems to imply that the onus of the Left should be to criticise Lockdown without criticising the things around it. There is a cause for real concern regarding many of the points that the author makes, including: “Small businesses are being swallowed up by the thousands by large multinational corporations like Amazon” and the “Few jobs left to return to for those furloughed by this lockdown, and there will be no resources to invest in worthy left-wing causes such as better public healthcare and vaccines, renewable energy systems, public transport, universal basic income, up-skilling of the workforce, etc.” I would argue that while many of these positions are already concerns of the Left. The ways that the author presents the relationship between lockdown policy, economic fallout and blame are often underpinned by ‘gut feeling’ conclusions that I believe make weak jumps of logic and reveal some right-wing undertones. The first example of faulty logic is the idea that we should be sceptical of Lockdown because they are unprecedented in our history. The author explains how “Not even in war time did Western governments impose such severe restrictions on citizens’ personal liberties (churches and schools largely stayed open in the United Kingdom during World War II).” I believe that this comparison is incompatible. A war and a health epidemic operate in very different ways. The most noticeable difference is that warfare works through political decisions and ideology, while a virus has no goal other than to reproduce. The potential mortality rate for people using churches and schools during WWII could not have been reproduced past the individual if a site was bombed. A bomb has no reproduction rate. The point of this comparison it seems is to amplify the idea that our liberties are under attack, which I would like to examine later. The author goes on to predict that: “it is not just our liberty that we are losing, but our livelihoods and our young people’s futures. It will be young people and struggling working-class families who will bear the burden of the economic aftermath of this policy and who will have to pay back these forced Covid-19 subsidy loans that are being thrust upon us after being forced out of work by government fiat, through economic depression and inevitable austerity over many years. Multi-billion dollar socialism for mismanaged corporations and banks will certainly continue unabated, and ordinary people will be made to foot the bill once again, just as we did in 2008.” The fallout of the coronavirus epidemic does look set to produce many of these effects on the lives working class and young people in the UK and globally. I am, however, uncertain if the author makes a clear case for criticising the ‘concept’ of lockdowns. “Given that national lockdowns have never before been attempted and are so extreme in nature, the onus falls upon governments implementing them to provide overwhelming and inarguable evidence and data to justify this policy and to prove its efficacy beyond any reasonable doubt.” I do agree that there needs to be greater government transparency when it comes to continued policies for and ending Lockdown, but, the point that the author makes here is a tautology. If, as the article argues, lockdowns like this are unprecedented in human history. Is there such a thing as inarguable evidence for any policy concerning these issues? I would also like to point out that the author has not included in this article that it wasn’t until 23 March that the UK went into Lockdown, which was several weeks after the coronavirus had already entered the country. During this time the Cheltenham festival, international football matches, concerts, pubs and restaurants remained open. In contrast, Sweden began implementing its social distancing recommendations on 13 March. This article also ignores that the UK government had a very different first approach to dealing with this crisis. The concept of herd immunity. I believe overlooking this information undermines the main argument in this article against Lockdown because the UK government were initially opposed to the idea of having one. The reason the conservatives pursued the idea of herd immunity in the beginning, was in aid of ‘preserving the market’ and ‘freedom of exchange’ and not because of public health interests. In February, Boris Johnson described how other governments reactions to the coronavirus outbreak would lead towards “market segregation, which will go beyond what is medically rational.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMwXlOQLu44&t=13s I’m not sceptical of what the author describes as concerns for the Left and the failures of governments. I am sceptical of the pervasive idea that it is the Lockdown that we should be criticising rather than the ideologies that underpin our government’s actions and its failures in implementing sustainable public health measures. It should go without saying that I am not hopeful that Sweden’s model fails. But I should add that comparative data even if it takes into account population density, age, and class. Doesn’t and can’t reflect on the nuance and diversity of each countries type of government, history and political zeitgeist. I think its fair to say that Sweden has done a better job at controlling the virus than the UK, but I don’t believe that this observation necessarily equals “we should actively be resisting the lockdowns.” because of the very different political and infrastructural features that separate the UK and Sweden. I believe articles like this distract the Left from holding the UK government to account for their repeated failures in safeguarding the working class and those in BAME communities who have been the most affected by the virus. Principally because it makes most of its main points from an emotionally charged rhetoric that isn’t even evidenced a lot of the time. For example: “Our immune systems are weakening. We are a social primate, and our immune systems evolved over millennia to be kept strong by continual exposure to microbes via social contact and being outdoors, thus developing in us an immunity from many different diseases. Therefore, being inside our homes for weeks or months, away from other people and dousing every surface with bleach and sanitiser is almost certainly detrimental in the long term for our immune systems. There are guaranteed to be many novel microbes and diseases other than Covid-19 to which we need to develop an immunity as a species through continued social contact.” This passage is based on hypotheses and includes no evidence to support this view. Even if these prognostications are accurate, further elements of the text begin to show an undertone that I think is problematic. “We are now being primed by our governments, media and public health officials to behave like misanthropic, obsessive-compulsive hypochondriacs who are to regard any other person as a potential viral infestation to be avoided at all costs.” Observations like this undermine the sacrifices people have made in response to the current crisis, by assuming that the caution that has been widely recommended is an over-exaggeration. That over 40,00 people have died in the UK should, in my opinion, be a cause for collective anxiety. The author continues to this trend with statements like this- “The most basic activities of a social primate like us are now considered to be forms of contagion-ridden, death-spreading evil.” Another problematic part of the article is when the author describes- “contagion is usually understood to be an inescapable part of life as a social primate and not something one can feasibly control beyond a reasonable degree.” This statement presumes that ‘because the coronavirus is naturally occurring’, it is unwise to “beyond a reasonable degree” to attempt to control its spread. I believe this approach assumes that any “natural spread’ of infection occurs equally and unbiasedly throughout a population. But this isn’t the case! Various factors, including race class and access to information all, play a role in how a virus spreads. The idea that we shouldn’t ‘beyond a reasonable degree’ attempt to control the infection fails to take into account that not all communities will be affected the same. The author goes on to claim that because younger people are less affected by the virus that- ‘we are all perfectly capable of assessing our levels of risk based on our age, health, who we live with, etc. and of adjusting the way we live our life accordingly.’ – Although the government has repeatedly failed at meeting its criteria and undermining its public messages surrounding Lockdown, the idea that we should be able to choose for ourselves the levels of risk a virus possesses doesn’t take into account that it’s not just ourselves that we would put at risk. “We don’t need an incessantly-intrusive nanny state telling us which friends we can and cannot meet, when and where we can go outside, whether or not we are allowed to exchange goods and services between consenting parties, etc. This sense of fundamental personal liberty – which I had hoped would be strong on the Left – appears to be depressingly absent, and in its place, there exists a kind of docile supinity and subservience to state power and lab coats.” Surprising for a self-proclaimed left-winger, This argument appears to be a mostly conservative position by conveying the view of government or its policies as overprotective or interfering unduly with personal choice. I believe that this is where the author reveals himself to be again more invested in individual liberties rather than in public health, which is by now a recurrent theme in the text. The reason I want to illustrate this component of his argument is that even though I agree to most the Left wig concerns of this article. This piece does reveal some trends towards conservative ways of thinking, especially if you look at it in the context of this website in general. I want to draw your attention towards one of the only adverts on this website, which is a link and banner add for ‘The Free Speach Union’ that is run by Toby Young, who it seems is also the mastermind behind this lockdown sceptics website. The Free Speech Union is an organisation that proposes to stands up for the speech rights of its members by “mobilising an army of supporters” to organise “counter petitions, crowdfunding campaigns using allies in the media to come to your defence and legal assistance”—essentially establishing a network for collective action to protect peoples free speech. This organisation is by no means, for free speech absolutism, as you can see on their website that they do recognise that there are limits to free speech if it incites violence. If you look at the content on the site, you get a general sense that the organisation was developed in concern that ‘some peoples’ speech is being infringed. Not by the police necessarily, but in terms of people being driven out of their jobs and powerful positions because of things they have said. This could be a legitimate concern, but what I believe Toby Young and the FSU imply by not allowing speech that incites violence in their union is that its a political decision where and how we limit free speech. What’s clear about this union is that they are not interested in free speech ‘in general’ because the majority of the organisation is right-wing. Presumably, the times its members have gotten in trouble is because they have said something about trans women or gender equality or that other people consider racist. It is telling that no one on the board of the FSU is an… Read more »
I think much of what you said in response is wrong and misguided, but I will just reply with a few points below:
the comparison with WW2 was to show that even in the most extreme period in recent history, no such extreme limits (as e.g. closing schools and churches) were imposed upon entire national populations, particularly in western countries. It is get across how unprecedented the current restrictions are.
You want to focus on criticising government actions because you think that government action/inaction was the game changer in different countries’ outcomes. But that is not necessarily the case at all. See the recent interview with the Norwegian head of health who said (also admitting that the lockdown, and particularly the closing of schools, in Norway was an over-reaction), government action may have changed little with regard to virus spread and death rates globally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2ewxCPtw7w In essence, what countries like New Zealand and Australia or UK or Sweden etc. did or didn’t do, probably had little or no impact on the natural course of the virus through their populations, we have a fantasy of being able to control this phenomenon, that’s not to say all diseases are uncontrollable, but this appears to be so (or it would require permanently ceasing civilisation to stop it, I hope you agree that’s not an option). And this is borne out when you objectively analyse the statistics around cases/deaths and different countries responses, there is no real discernible pattern. And much of the different responses may be due to prior population immunity levels, age levels in population and many other factors that governments can’t control whatsoever. See this interview for an exploration of the complexities of population immunities https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IY4M0kp8xM. I think you want to focus on government inaction because you dislike Boris Johnson and Trump’s governments (I happen to share your dislike for these governments and their ideologies) and you want to have yet another excuse to criticize them and play party politics. I’m much less interested in partisan politics at this moment, it seems very petty (and even demented and disconnected from the suffering of ordinary people globally) to me now, I just care about the most rational and effective policies winning the day, to relieve as much human suffering as possible in the world.
And by the way, this point isn’t made enough but Sweden’s response is par for the course by historical standards, it’s the lockdowns that are the extreme (and untested) response, if the history of pandemic responses is any guide at all.
You state “This passage is based on hypotheses and includes no evidence to support this view. Even if these prognostications are accurate, further elements of the text begin to show an undertone that I think is problematic. ” Yes this is a hypothesis I am proposing, I am more than entitled to do so in an opinion piece, but it has been recently put forward also by the renowned Oxford Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology Sunetra Gupta (incidentally, who’s research was sadly ignored by the UK government, who instead sided with the scaremonger faction of the epidemiological community) – see this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKh6kJ-RSMI
Of course I am concerned about protecting people’s basic liberties, like for example when and where you can go outside in a free democratic country, there’s nothing right wing about this. It’s just basic humanity. If you are so concerned about fascism, then aren’t you concerned that lockdowns are giving cover to actual fascists like Viktor Orban to seize permanent dictatorial decree powers? And Trump who many on the left were calling a fascist a few months ago, were then pleading with him to override state rights and issue federal stay at home orders? You trust him with such unprecedented powers? Or Boris Johnson? I certainly don’t, and it is by no means right wing to mistrust these fools, I think you would be a fool to grant them such powers, even temporarily. That is a bizarre reaction from someone who claims to be against these right wing populists and fascists. It seems I am more libertarian-leaning left, you seem to be more inclined towards authoritarian left, or at least you consider the authoritarianism to be justified by the circumstances, I don’t.
This is clearly presented as an opinion piece and is not intended to be some perfectly objective fact sheet. And yes my article is emotionally charged because I really care about these issues and the damage being done to everybody, that’s why I wrote this article, my first public political article. I fully believe this to be the worst public policy disaster in our lifetimes, rivaling the effects and aftermath of WW2, and it was absolutely not guaranteed, as history has shown. Just look at our response to the 1950s Asian Flu and 1968 Hong Flu (both of which pandemics killed more than twice as many as covid-19!) to see how Covid-19 could and should have been handled responsibly – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/02/britain-handled-1968-flu-epidemic-shutdown-avoided-second-wave/ – https://www.wsj.com/articles/forgotten-pandemic-offers-contrast-to-todays-coronavirus-lockdowns-11587720625 – https://dailysceptic.org/from-stoicism-to-hysteria-uk-pandemic-responses-a-historical-context/
This was also a total disaster in terms of our public health as I outlined above (more years of life have been lost by the lockdowns than by covid-19 – https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/499394-the-covid-19-shutdown-will-cost-americans-millions-of-years-of-life), as well as our social cohesion, maintenance of basic freedoms, livelihoods, the developing world loosing a huge amount of progress in relieving poverty, etc. Lockdowns are a luxury of western, wealthy people, at the expense of the countries and peoples of developing nations. They don’t have any government subsidies to fall back on. They just starve. Again it’s an unmitigated disaster, and that’s precisely why it is so hard to admit to a mistake, and why it is also why it’s more important than to show the bravery and fortitude to admit and correct errors.
The saddest thing about this whole thing is that people’s sacrifices (as you alluded to) have indeed been largely in vain. It is the worst thing about this, and ultimately why people find it so hard to reckon with the fact that lockdowns were a mistake. The WHO just announced that asymptomatic transmission of the virus is extremely rare, which means that quarantining the healthy/asymptomatic (certainly at a national level) was never even scientifically justified.
Finally, you say “I believe that the idea that Lockdown risks our liberties is the real message the author wants to portray in this piece. I’m not sure this idea shows appropriate solidarity with the many thousands of people who have lost their lives because of this epidemic. Freedom is important, but it cant come at the cost of other peoples liberties“. This is frankly word salad. My intention is to outline that lockdowns are loosing us many more lives and years of life than anything that the lockdowns may purport to save, this is perfectly clear if you read the article and related materials (e.g. the Hill article I linked above). This is a bad enough, but the lockdowns also assault our liberties and social and international cohesion. These are all things anyone should care deeply about, whether you’re left, right, centre, diagonal or upside-down, I don’t care. I am showing much more solidarity with people than you as I am aware of the vast and often hidden costs of lockdown policy. Again, covid-19 deaths are not the only deaths that matter, you have to start to understand this, or else we’re doomed. Your last sentence doesn’t make any sense at all, so I am not bothered to refute it.
I’d probably put myself on the libertarian centre right, if anywhere. Excellent article, and excellent reply to one of the very people who make me uneasy these days. An anecdotal confirmation of the costs of lockdown: my next door neighbour told us sadly the other day that while he has lost no-one close to covid-19, he has lost five friends to suicide during lockdown.
Alexis FitzGerald wrote:
The saddest thing about this whole thing is that people’s sacrifices (as you alluded to) have indeed been largely in vain. It is the worst thing about this, and ultimately why people find it so hard to reckon with the fact that lockdowns were a mistake.
Isn’t the idea of “we sacrificed so much we shouldn’t stop now” the same thing politicians say to justify continuing wars and military adventures whenever people suggest the government stop doing such destructive things?
How do you feel now we know more? For example Sweden, how do you explain that the lockdown has protected people when all countries around the world have similar outcomes and Swedens infection rate is now lower than lockdown countries?
Even though we are aware of the damage and we know that this virus is not as dangerous as first thought, we are now expecting to be locked down again. Are you still going to argue the virus is more dangerous than the policies to control it?
It would be interesting to know if you’ve woken up yet?
I appreciate this perspective. I am also on the left and initially bought into the idea of lockdown, but then started reading and consuming the data and scientific literature myself and realized what a horrible mistake this has been. I also am quite shocked by the behavior of lots of individuals on the left who take it upon themselves to lecture people on neighborhood facebook groups, or regional groups on Reddit, about staying home and not going out. Additionally, living in the United States I have seen something I never thought I would see, which is people reporting businesses and their neighbors to the public health authorities for perceived acts of noncompliance with undemocratic public heath diktats and taking pride in doing so. It disturbs me.
People on the left, particularly upper middle class white liberals, are obsessed with the idea of ZERO – zero new infections, zero cases, zero deaths. The sooner we accept that is not possible, the sooner we’ll be able to learn to deal and live with COVID-19 more effectively.
Absolutely agreed Michael, thanks for the message!
Does anyone here read Arthur Bough’s blog, and specifically his three-part series on how the left should have responded to Covid-19?
I also can’t help drawing parallels between lockdown mania among the left and opposition to nuclear power. While there may well have been other drivers behind leftist anti-nuclearism (chiefly the role of fossil fuel interests: either domestic ones like the NUM or foreign ones like the Kremlin) I can’t help feeling that the belief that economic catastrophe will benefit the left is also a driver.
This belief is delusional, especially when the economic catastrophe takes the form of a collapse in production rather than injustice in distribution. In these situations, murderous fascism built on “lifeboat ethics” is more likely to be the main beneficiary of the crisis.
Totally agree with the distinction between a ‘collapse in production’ and an’ injustice in distribution’. It would seem pretty obvious that this confusion is inimical to any thinking ‘left’ perspective.
… but, sadly such a basic confusion seems rife amongst those who claim the ‘left’ badge of virtue. Let’s be clear – if your slim grasp of language equates the term ‘economy’ with ‘neoliberal capitalist profiteering’, its hardly surprising that the latter will walk all over your face in any political conflict.
As to political definitions, the Covid-19 death-porn scam has clearly illusrated the inadequacy of the ‘left-right’ dimension as a sole descriptor, as the distinctions have clearly been on the ‘libertarian-authoritarian’ axis (apart from the third dimension of ‘stupidity’
)
I agree that the libertarian-authoritarian axis is very important, and is more so than ever today. But I think economically right-leaning (and often Trump-supporting, populist) people often conveniently try to make us forget that there is still a very clear and important economic policy divide between traditional left and right that has not gone away, and probably never will. I want the left-leaning, anti-woke, libertarian ‘populists’ to finally get their act together and start winning.
This article was a delight to read. I am also a left liberal person, however this lockdown will in the long run be a disaster for our country, especially given Brexit is also ongoing. People seem so unaware of the fact that when the ‘lockdown’ ends, it will be the working class who foot the bill of the lockdown and also the magic Money tree which has also been discovered by the government. additionally, I believe they are using the lockdown to restrict freedoms and liberties in this country drastically. they will use the reasoning of necessity to implement draconian rules. the new mask rule which is coming in in a few days seems to baffle me- masks are now suddenly essential after being in 4 months of lockdown? Most left thinking individuals do view the corona virus through a narrow lens, without considering the long term effects which is scary. I WANT TO work, I NEED to work, I NEED to put food on the table.
A recent Chinese study found 80% of infections came from in the home. There is is research to suggest it’s faecal-oral more than respiratory that is the problem. A case study in 2003 of a SARS outbreak in a housing tower in Hong Kong found that the entire apartment block (over 300 people) became infected via faecal aerosols that spread via defective plumbing from the toilet of the infected person who had had diarrhoea. In relation so SARS-CoV-2 one study was undertaken in 2 wuhan hospitals on infected aerosols. Air tests were taken from various locations in the hospitals. All tests in ICU, CCU, patient treatment rooms, patient halls returned negative for the airoborne virus. The only place where positive results were returned were from tests in the toilet. This suggests faecal-oral (either from contaminated surfaces or infected toilet plumes), so sharing toilets with infected people is likely the worst thing we can do. Have links to studies if anyone wants.
This is an amazing piece of research for anyone interested https://jbhandleyblog.com/home/2020/6/28/secondwave?fbclid=IwAR0-vC3JPeEojArYWjOEGN_Tg2EcPb4C7yE5RI3l5ftY140bVlZFiSI1254
Sadly, the economic and personal cost of lockdowns and controls are neither quantified nor discussed in the third world countries. After lockdown, mostly they push the disease down in the economy ladder, with the middle class getting less and less disease and the poorer wage earner getting more of the Covid pie. This is a reality we would live with in the developing societies.
Totally on the correct!! Seems to me that it simply reduces down to the extraordinary number of stakeholders there are who are completely invested in the catastrophising of Covid. While not all a leftie, and certainly not pro Trump. I’m definitely not to the right of Attila the Hun. Just a regular British middle of the roader!!
Thank you so, so, so much for this. In addition to the physical isolation, i started worrying i was losing my mind because of the lack of voices on the left when it comes to this issue. It sounds absurd but the lack of those on the left voicing this as artfully as you have has been soul crushingly difficult. Thank you for showing that there are still some that put thought into this complex issue.the dogma has been suffocating.
Great essay – as a person on the very far left, I have felt the same ever since this episode started. I am a US citizen, but live and work in Ireland, and noticed early on that the average age of death RofI officially published was always over 80. Eventually, this statistic was omitted from the daily updates, a change I found quite interesting. I am very grateful for stumbling upon Lockdown sceptics from a mention in one of the many sceptical articles on OffGuardian. Increasingly over the last four years of the age of Trump I have found myself in the company of supposed ‘right-wing’ opinion and websites because I refused to be taken in by the corporate US Democratic virus of Trump Derangement Syndrome and the Russiagate nonsense. At one point during the panicdemic I thought I had truly lost my mind because I just was not ‘afraid’ of catching it, as the vast majority of my friends and family were. OffGuardian and Lockdown Sceptics were a lifeline, as is this essay. Kudos to this website and Alexis Fitzgerald. They are both very much appreciated by this lefty.
I want to pick up on this excellent piece by responding to this excerpt:
[quote]International solidarity is also waning. We are being told to consider anyone arriving from abroad as a potential disease vector who must lock themselves away for two weeks, despite the obvious logical interjection that you are just as likely to get Covid-19 from your local supermarket (in virtually every major country in the world now) as you are from someone arriving from Brazil or South Africa or Nigeria or India or Turkey – with the possible exceptions of those two global hotspots, New York and northern Italy. A recent protest occurred in late April 2020 at a port in Dingle, Co. Kerry, in the south-west of Ireland, by Irish fishermen who were outraged that a boat originating from Spain would arrive on our shores bringing us our seafood dinner, lest they also bring us their contagion. So to add insult to injury, the lockdown measures have been disconcertingly well designed to accentuate the worst misanthropic aspects of our character, undermining our national and international solidarity and exacerbating base xenophobia.[/quote]
People on the left end of the political spectrum are concerned about the plight of refugees around the world. Even before covid, we had large numbers of refugees displaced from climate change and military conflict. That was already guaranteed to accelerate, and now the famines he mentions in Africa and South Asia will only worsen that crisis.
Imagine what it’s like to be a regular person. You hear over and over that you’re not supposed to visit or physically interact with people you know. Maybe you’ve had to cancel a wedding, or have had to pick and choose who to invite based on restrictions. Maybe someone you knew had a weeding and you lost that lottery. Maybe you worked in a service sector job such as a restaurant, which has closed because people have stopped eating out. You will almost certainly have to contend with fewer government services due to budgetary austerity.
Now imagine that the very same people who advocated this particular response, which has ruined your life tell you that you have a moral obligation to allow in refugees from other countries and spend your tax dollars to help them.
How do you think average people are going to respond to that?
Sadly, I have found that the Left has revealed its true colors on this one. (Although I’ll admit, I may have been missing them prior to this feardemic.) And I’m speaking as a now former Dem (as of May) who’s voted straight party line for 45 years. I believe in most liberal tenets, but not the ones usurped by the new, Woke left.
Why do so many people who consider themselves leftwing find it necessary to state they oppose Brexit? Do you know anything about the EU or are you one of the apolitical ‘liberals’ who simply assume it’s a Coca Cola ad like organisation teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony?
The EU is a stage on the way to a United States of Europe, as first stated in the [US] Marshall Plan after WW2, First a Common Market and then by stealth so the electorates don’t get alarmed to an increasingly federal Europe. In what sense is a mega state left wing or liberal? Have a look at the USA, mega states are always a nightmare for the environment, and rarely leftwing, unless you liked the USSR and think that a good model.
If you are remotely green I suggest you remember the dictum ‘Small is beautiful’, and also educate yourself on the environmental damage the EU’s CAP did to the UK’s environment, and its CFP did to our fisheries.
There always was a leftwing case for leaving the EU, I have been opposed to this creeping megastate from the start, and never expected the UK public to ever have the power to get us out. I despise Farage by the way, but the one thing he did for all of us was get a referendum from a political class that was sold on being players in a world of megastate bullies. Other countries in the EU have held referenda on leaving; Ireland and France for instance, both voted to leave, and were bullied by the same methods we saw here to hold another and vote correctly the second time, which they did. The same anti-democratic forces were at work in the UK, all claiming to be democrats but unwilling to accept a majority decision.
Far too many remainers hadn’t a clue why they felt that way, I tried to get many to state their case, but all they were fit for was name calling and nastiness. It didn’t all start with Trump, the liberal-left plitical elite and their hangers on were pretty vile years ago, and it was their attitude of superiority and snee4ring elitism which drove the electorate to the right and to polulism. It happened across Europe as well as America, and until the left examine their behaviour and attitude it will stay with the right. The success of Biden is simply anything to get rid of the spoilt baby in the White House, a glove puppet would have won.
A lot of people who I thought were friends called me racist during the ‘discussion’ over Brexit that I had to reconsider exactly why I had thought that. None had a clue why they loved the EU so much, despite it costing the UK taxpayers billions every year along with the loss of our fishing grounds. With other member states struggling to quieten their populations calling for referenda, it will be interesting to see how long the EU manages to fool so many people, and whether it will ever make it to a federal superstate ir will collapse in a few years.
I forgot to mention the virus! I have no fear of catching it, but don’t object to the lockdown, if nothing else it slows the destruction of Earth if hominids are kept at home and can’t pollute as much as norma;. The roads are almost clear across the country, wildlife are benefiting massively – just think of how many fewers road kills there are – and many have benefited from the release fro the rat race sand time to take stock and think whether they want to keep manically slogging away to get rich, on a conveyer belt to a heart attack. Many love working from home, many others have started businesses of their own, most seem to be newly concerned about climate change and whether a constant drive to get more at a cost to the environment is really what they want to leave to their grandchildren.
My take on it is that all this objecting to lockdown is a juvenile ‘shan’t’ from pampered narcissists who don’t want to be told anything, who think they already know everything. Perhaps if their parents had said no to them more they would be more mature now, with the self discipline adults need to act responsibly for themselves. Infections went down and down after the first lockdown, and when it was lifted they juveniles misbehaved and dr5ove it up again. Anyone want to put their hand up to that?
The reason I’m not bothered is that I already take 2,000 IU of Vitamin D3 daily to ensure my immune system is as good as it possibly can be. I do that because it is vital to a healthy immune system and we can only make Vitamin D by exposure to sunlight; that’s why viruses strike in winter with shorter hours of daylight when they are present in the atmosphere all year, and it’s why BAME people are suffering worse outcomes this close to the arctic circle, when the melanin in their skin is designed to filter UVB from much stronger radiation further south.
Why the ageing scientific advisors haven’t thought of this, or have rejected it out of hand, is for them to explain when it is proved to be central to outcomes. Since I have gone 25 years taking D3 and echinacea [also for immune system] and haven’t had flu or even a cold in that time, I think I’m on to something, don’t you think? I’m not bothered about this virus either, despite being in the vulnerable group, apparently.
“if nothing else it slows the destruction of Earth if hominids are kept at home and can’t pollute as much as normal” – this is the thought process of an authoritarian misanthrope. You need to do some reading. Read The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch, More From Less by Andrew Macafee, Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker, Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger, etc. You are wrong on the facts unfortunately. Although it is intuitively convincing to think humans are just an evil plague on the Earth (I used to believe this when I was younger), the facts and data don’t show this to be case, and there is no physical or logical reason why we shouldn’t be able to have a thriving, galaxy-exploring humanity living alongside a thriving natural world. As Deutsch has pointed out, in physics terms, matter/resources is not the limiting factor for humanity (and whatever we want to achieve, exploring galaxies, ending poverty, protecting nature, etc.), it is KNOWLEDGE that is limiting us. All we need to do is generate the universalizable knowledge of how to use our resources better. This worldview you have adopted is clearly clouding your judgement on lockdowns. Yes lockdowns have failed utterly, they have no efficacy whatsoever in preventing covid deaths, and in fact they cause more covid deaths (because they extend the period of time that it takes for the non-vulnerable population to get infected quickly and achieve herd immunity, thus making it more likely on average that vulnerable people will come into contact with an infectious person, Sweden’s strategy saves lives on every front, including covid – listen to Sunetra Gupta et al. on the bulletproof logic of herd immunity, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZKXce5e4Xg&ab_channel=talkRADIO), as well as more all cause deaths. 150 million people in Africa and India are going into extreme poverty and starvation as we speak due to lockdown policy, in return for your nice comfy working from home and walking the dog with less cars on the street. But given your misanthropy, that wouldn’t seem to bother you I’d imagine. Is that something you are really content with? I’m not. Wake up. You represent a nice example of the other cohort of the pro-lockdown people that I also fear, the far-left climate-obsessed, climate lockdown people. You believe civilization is incompatible with nature/Earth. Well all I can say is open your mind and do some more reading outside of the Guardian.
Pretending left and right don’t exist is silly, it’s not to say they are perfect descriptors, but they still carry weight. And I don’t think leaving the EU was smart, UK should have stayed and fixed it (and if necessary dismantled it) from within. Now the EU will grow its power with no principled resistance. The UK kept Europe from tyranny twice in 20th century not by running away and pretending they can hide away, but by engaging with Europe. Big mistake.
The caricature of those opposed to Lockdown as uncaring fascists was the greatest coup of this whole process. The left, via useful idiots like Jones and Toynbee, fell for it, hook line and sinker. And, because the left has stopped debating in favour of deplatforming, no one dared challenge what the Guardian was telling them.