When considering a policy as unprecedented and far-reaching as a nationwide lockdown, you’d assume the Government would carry out a cost-benefit analysis. After all, such analyses are routine in policy-making.
For example, the Treasury maintains a document called ‘The Green Book’, which gives detailed guidance on how to compute the costs and benefits of particular actions. It refers to concepts such as opportunity cost, discount factors and adjusting for inflation.
You might say there wasn’t much time to carry out a detailed cost-benefit analysis before the first lockdown last March. (Though the Government could have provided a few rough numbers for the public to scrutinise.) However, it’s now more than a year later, and there still hasn’t been any attempt to weigh the costs and benefits.
In a report for the Institute of Economic Affairs published last December, the economist Paul Ormerod argued that the Government’s refusal to crunch the numbers reflects a general overreliance on epidemiological expertise, at the expense of economic expertise.
As Russ Roberts, another economist, has observed, “Knowing a lot about the human body does not make you an expert in risk analysis, tradeoffs, or unintended consequences.” Note: this is not to imply that all or even most economists are opposed to lockdowns, but simply that key insights from that discipline have been overlooked during the course of the pandemic.
Several cost-benefit analyses of the UK lockdowns have been published by persons outside the Government, and each one has concluded that the costs almost certainly outweighed the benefits.
Since the NHS typically pays up to £30,000 to extend a patient’s life by one quality-adjusted life-year, a reasonable estimate of the benefits of lockdown can be obtained by multiplying the expected number of life-years saved by 30,000.
For example, if we assume (generously) that lockdowns saved 50,000 lives and prevented 500,000 people from getting long COVID, then the total benefits would be about £16.5 billion. This figure then has to be weighed against some measure of the costs (including effects on the economy, health, education and civil liberties). Given that the fall in GDP alone last year was over £220 billion, it seems very unlikely that lockdowns would pass a cost-benefit test.
The Government’s lack of interest in cost-benefit analysis was highlighted in a recent LinkedIn post by Daniel Fujiwara – an expert in policy evaluation. Fujiwara was apparently invited to “meet with senior Government officials to discuss the pros and cons of lockdown”. However, despite offering his advice and input pro-bono, he “never heard back from them”.
In the post, Fujiwara goes on to say, “Lockdowns should have stopped at the point where an additional day of #lockdown causes more damage to our society than it benefits us… My analysis of the impacts of lockdown last year suggests that we have gone well beyond this threshold.”
One can only assume that the Government’s failure to publish even basic estimates of the costs and benefits of lockdown is due to fear of what those estimates might show…
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
They want to imply that by rejecting the corporate notion of pride that you by implication wish to attach shame to these people. You cause trouble by setting up an implied dichotomy that isn’t there. And then of course people notice that it isn’t there and then start squabbling about it while the predators get away with all the spoils. It isn’t brain surgery but it clearly is for many. It may as well be a physical implant such is its effectiveness.
the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario
An outfit that “celebrates” diversity by imposing conformity. How very interesting.
It’s time to Make Orwell Fiction Again.
A sort of LBGTQ Macht Frei.
I am surprised that the Mayor is still in position, I am on our village Parish Council and I suspect that if anyone tried to pull a stunt like this there would be a mass resignation.
The fact that this is all happening in Canada cannot but put me in mind of Monty Python’s lumberjack song;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfRdur8GLBM
As ever in our modern clown world, yesterday’s comedy and satire becomes today politically correct reality.
Perhaps they should start flying the Canadian flag upside down as a sign of ‘distress’?
Thank just looked at that I even remembered all the words! Showing my age!!
Most people associate going along with this agenda with basic human kindness. These aren’t bad people they are just naive. We know about the naivete hence the taking of the poison death shot. It does raise interesting ethical questions; like what do you do with people who are essentially good but hopelessly naive, especially when the naivete has grave implications for everyone else. It seems harsh to destroy them and impossible to change them so what can you do?
Bend the knee or feel our wrath, peasants.
I think world events will intrude very soon that will make any talk about sexuality seem superfluous.We all have our issues but we would probably keep our mouths shut in the event ot a major military strike. Somehow your pecker doesn’t feel so pressing anymore. That is how we wake up and I would wager that there won’t be any chill out period afterwards where we can fall back to sleep. You might hate the sight of a woman and dread breeding with her but you will do so for the sake of your tribe. You will provide her with the best seed that you can conjure up, gay or straight.
What better way to gain ‘allies’ than by threatening punishment for not showing support.
This is actually the quick route to deep resentment and hostility. Is this the intent?
We reached the same conclusion about 2 seconds apart!
The intent is obviously to teach a lowly elected mayor who’s really calling the shots in his town and in the country. He should have done what Reading borough council does to honor such overarchingly important events —- take the national flag down and hoist the 2SLGBTQA+ one instead so that the inhabitants can see who is and who isn’t to be “validated” in Canada.
WTAF?
The problem I can see with enforcing this propaganda on the population is that it will generate resentment and eventually even hatred for the rainbow people.
The absolute majority of people do not care what their neighbours do in their private lives. But when they start enforcing their views on you, you will resent them and one day that resentment might turn into something toxic. So the authorities who mandate flying the flag will produce the exact opposite result.
… enforcing this propaganda on the population … will generate resentment and eventually even hatred for the rainbow people.
They don’t see their situation as we see it. In their own eyes they are the exquisitely virtuous ones, the people with a moral superiority so breathtaking that it’s never been seen in human society before. Their demented view of themselves fundamentally is that they believe they should have all the rights, and that we, therefore, should have none. Furthermore, and as an additional derangement, they call their system of unequal rights “equality”. It’s the madleft at its finest.
Yeah, well, the Great Deception, coming from the Father of All Lies…
I think that’s simply bullying by people who are absolutely convinced that they’re the biggest bullies and itching to show off about that.
That’s probably the point of it, see other comment above. It’s supposed to teach the white cis colonial lowlives who’s running the show to make them realize their total lack of power about this.
Quite right. It’s no longer enough simply to tolerate these people – one has to actively “celebrate” them – or else…
It is not Fascism when the queers and Tranny’s do it.
So we are told.
It is ‘die-versity’.
Mental illness as a new state enforced cult.
I struggle to accept things have come to this,
How to create division, it can only be what the Canadian Government is up too.
The fines could really start to mount up if the town chooses not to mark black history month (if this is a Canadian thing), national indigenous people’s day, world otter day (yes there is actually one) etc etc.
Totally fine with otter day.
But you shouldn’t be sent for re education if you fail to mark it, thus discriminating against otters and nutters who identify as an otter. If you want to be on the safe side and mark the day it’s the last Wednesday in May.
There’s also a world octopus day (8th October), a world pizza day (15th January). Every day is probably a world something day. Who decides what each day should be? There may well be hundreds of people at the UN (all of them on the gravy train) endlessly debating what each day should be and how it should be marked.
So the support of political and social movements one does not approve are now mandatory in Canada?
All human rights are equal, though some are more equal then other.
What a fxxxxxx farce!
Indeed – we’ve all seen a similar statement before… perhaps it’s almost animal farm / 1984
Maybe those that come to collect the money are never seen or heard of again.
I would love if the mayor insisted this went to court. This nonsense needs sunlight. The more who know the better.
Pride is one of the seven deadly sins
Is there a crowd funding page?
How truly awful. I hope the town rises up in revolt.
The mayor and his colleagues are to be congratulated for showing common sense and standing up against the fascists.
Any chance of Crowd Funding to help them pay these ridiculous fines and demonstrate our support for their actions?
Not to pay the fine, but to fight the whole notion of this.
April 1st has come around quickly! Mackinro: “You can’t be serious”.
More overeach for Trump to stop! Edit. Oops forgot Ontario is in Canada!
This is sure fraud, to take so much money off a small town. Disgraceful that it is even considered possible.