A new report from the OECD has shown that the pandemic took life expectancy in the UK in 2020 back to 2010 levels. Life expectancy at birth dropped by one year from 81.4 to 80.4, a level last seen in 2009. In 2008 it was even lower at 79.8.
This has largely been reported as something shocking – “Pandemic wipes out decade of progress on improving life expectancy”, declares the Telegraph – but in fact what it really shows is how limited the impact of the pandemic has been.
Despite all the daily reports of deaths, the running total of over 165,000 Covid deaths, and the repeated lockdowns imposed to protect a health service ever on the brink of collapse, the country has experienced a mortality rate no worse than 2009. I don’t know about you, but I can remember 2009. I don’t recall any lockdowns and panicking, or coerced experimental medicine, or bodies piling up in the morgues. Yet it was a worse year for deaths than the great pandemic year of 2020. Let that sink in.
Why are we destroying people’s lives and livelihoods and dismantling our freedoms to avoid going back to 2009 levels of mortality? Are we that obsessed with extending life at all costs that we regard it as intolerable to return to mortality levels last seen around the time the current party of Government came to power?
The OECD analysis is in line with the analysis done in April by economist John Appleby writing in the BMJ. The chart below shows that age-standardised mortality in 2020 was lower than in 2008 and every year prior to it.
These are overall deaths, so include deaths due to the Government interventions, including missed medical care and deaths of distress and despair.
No doubt it is disappointing to see improvements in life expectancy set back by a decade, though the impact is unlikely to remain long term. But we have clearly lost all sense of perspective. UK life expectancy is still, despite the pandemic (and lockdowns) above 80 years old. Eighty. Is it really worth demolishing our freedoms and filling our lives with rules, restrictions and mandates over a disease that didn’t even manage to reduce average life expectancy below 80? That’s a question that answers itself.
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The backbench MPs who threatened to oust Kim Jong-Johnson can be credited for there not being a lockdown.
Kim Jong-Johnson was positively itching to impose lockdown.
If you read only one essay today, let it be this one by Jeffrey Tucker of the Brownstone Institute. There aren’t many adults left in the room … but Tucker is one of them.
This explains how we got to where we are, but, more importantly, asks how do we get out of this mess. We are in uncharted territory when the unelected bureaucrats and crony oligarchs really pull all the strings.
https://brownstone.org/articles/now-is-the-time-for-mass-resignations-from-within-the-ruling-class/?fbclid=IwAR3jZfgY07Qgj_2eggq-fG4GZG9q2rfsyyi6nKQTpI9lGYM2KYcREUh3-V8
It had not previously dawned on me that both Arden an Trudeau are snivelling away from their own people at the same time using the same excuses.
The author does not explain why the coming impasse between the lockdown technocracy and the rest will lead to their mass resignations except for some vague idea that it would be doing the right thing, as if.
Truckers are not typical of ‘the people’ if only because they need to be strong and tough, unfashionable though that is supposed to be these days. They each own a valuable business, make lifetime altering decisions every day, multi tasking constantly and thoughroughly admirable.
They might be truly independent in ways most of us can hardly dream about but not typical. It would be nice to think of them as an anti technocracy vanguard but I’m not holding my breath for the rest of us to follow.
What is of more interest in this essay is that the New Elite, as some of them brazenly describe themselves, have exposed themselves and their methods for such paltry gains. Flogged some PPI, cozied up to China (to what end? China doesn’t need them), given themselves some sparkly media exposure by a media basking in its perceived self importance and, in the UK, recieved a few gongs from Her Maj.
With the acknowledged fundamental transfer of power from where we thought it was, the ballot box, to where it really is, as illustrated so brilliantly in the world of Yes Minister/Prime Minister several decades ago they turn out to be a bunch of low achievers who haven’t even gathered much in the way of heritable futunes or power.
https://youtu.be/zG7XZ2JXZqY
If you haven’t seen it, and have an hour to spare I’d highly recommend this video with Dr Jay Bhattacharya (of Great Barrington Declaration fame) by Peter Robinson for the Hoover Institute.
One of the highlights for me is that they confirm that focussed protection for the elderly could have seen us provide food delivery, alternative accommodation and nursing care to vulnerable groups for a tiny fraction of the costs associated with lockdowns of the healthy not at risk population. First class care to those in need.
Children would have remained in education, businesses would have thrived, and the national debt would have not become cripplingly bad for our future prosperity. “Omnicron” would have happened many months ago, and the only shortage would be of the Greek alphabet letters to name the newest, and weakest strains.
Governments around the world have magnified the harms caused that the actual threat we faced bears no relationship whatsoever to the harms we now see everywhere. It’s like a bar brawl escalated into an all out war.
PS haven’t listened to the podcast – I’ve heard that podcasts are really dangerous vessels of information – Prince and Princess GingerNutMeg of California said so.
‘Freedom Convoy’ eyewitness on Canada’s SHOCKING anti-protest tactics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvM_865Ju0A
Ezra Levant, Founder of Rebel News, witnessed firsthand the immense support ‘Freedom Convoy’ truckers received from Canadians throughout the nation and specifically in Ottawa. But the anti-protest tactics used by both Canadian police forces and government officials (like Castro super-fan President Justin Trudeau) are just like the tactics used in Venezuela today, Levant says. Truckers with all kinds of backgrounds are tired of their overbearing government mandating rules that just don’t make sense. Levant explains how their stand against that government has formed a new coalition of Canadians — onetime Trudeau voters included — who are tired of the ‘bully state.’ GLEN BECK
We need far more people at all our events here
if we want the tyranny to end for good
Tuesday 1st February 2pm to 3pm
Yellow Boards By the Road
Between Henley Bridge & Little Angel Pub
White Hill A4130
Henley-on-Thames RG9 2LY
Stand in the Park Sundays 10am make friends, ignore the madness & keep sane
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Henley Mills Meadows (at the bandstand) Henley-on-Thames RG9 1DS
Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Delingpole is such a tube. I feel sorry for Toby having to co-host with him. Toby, I suggest you find another podcast you can contribute to without having to do constant battle with a fringe nutcase.
I hope Toby and James were practicing for the shooting at dawn of the main criminals involved in the scamdemic!