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Why is the Left So Enthusiastic About Covid Restrictions, Given that the People they Harm the Most are the Poor and Vulnerable?

by Toby Young
22 November 2021 7:00 AM

We’re publishing an original essay today by Dr. Gary Sidley, a retired clinical psychologist with over 30 years’ experience working for the NHS, asking why the left are more enthusiastic about lockdowns than the right. Contributors to this site have been puzzling away at this for some time and Dr. Sidley’s essay will take it place in the section headed “The Left-Wing Case Against Lockdowns” on the right-hand menu. Here is an extract:

A political dimension shaping attitudes towards the Government’s response to Covid might help explain an intriguing observation I made in the spring of 2020, and one that continues to baffle me: that the large majority of my left-wing, socialist friends immediately embraced and supported unprecedented restrictions that were always going to disproportionately disadvantage the less affluent people within our communities. Twenty months on, and despite accumulating evidence that impositions such as lockdowns and masks are ineffective and hugely damaging, their views seem resistant to change. What are likely to be the key reasons why most Labour Party supporters have backed the Government’s draconian Covid restrictions? Although I do not claim to have the definitive answers to this question, my intention is to share ideas that will stimulate the ongoing debate.

It was clear from the outset that lockdowns, and other unprecedented measures, would hurt poor people considerably more than the affluent, and it was therefore reasonable to expect that those on the left of the political spectrum would push back hard against these restrictions. Dire predictions were evident early in the pandemic. In April 2020, a pre-print paper in the Lancet forecast that the restrictions would have a “devastating” impact on the third-world, significantly contributing to the deaths of more than one million children under five years-old in low-to-middle income countries. Around the same time, the UN International Labour Organisation expressed concern that “half the people in the global workforce risk losing their jobs”. Subsequently, these grim prophecies were substantiated, with lockdowns evoking carnage in both Africa and India, despite their populations being much younger than those in the Western world and therefore at far less risk from the virus.

While the parliamentary Labour Party repeatedly backed the Government’s imposition of draconian Covid measures, typically urging earlier and harder restrictions, the working-class demographic they claim to represent were suffering disproportionately. Whereas many white-collar, professional employees happily Zoomed from home, those in relatively low-paid occupations (such as delivery drivers, supermarket workers and care-home assistants) continued their essential work in the real world. Many other people, particularly the young and lowly paid in the leisure and retail industries, lost their jobs; by winter 2020, an additional 600,000 people in the U.K. had fallen into poverty as a result of lockdown.

Worth reading in full.

Tags: Leftists For Lockdown

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234 Comments
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huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago

Well done Sir.

171
-3
FerdIII
FerdIII
2 years ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

His son has myocarditis post Darting. One of his son’s friend’s died post Stabs.
Hence his conversion.

He promoted the Stabs and if his son was healthy….he would still be promoting the stabs.

What I want to also hear is the money factor. How much money did he and other Quacks make pushing the drug-induced murders and mayhem? Were they given incentives by the $cience? Why would a Quack push drugs whose contents he can’t pronounce, name or describe?

28
-2
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 years ago

Recent conversation with some work colleagues:
Colleague 1: My dad has covid, he keeps testing positive
Colleague 2: Has he been vaccinated?
Colleague 1: Yes, four times. I’ve just had covid too. I’ve been vaccinated twice
Me: I’ve not been vaccinated at all. I’m still alive and well.
Colleague 1: Are you one of those conspiracy people?

296
-1
Roy Everett
Roy Everett
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

That’s entry level! To get to the next level in the game your colleagues have to accuse you of infecting them asymptomatically. 🙂

195
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 years ago
Reply to  Roy Everett

Lol. Fortunately I never have to be in their physical presence; probably they are looking into whether covid can be transmitted via Microsoft Teams 🙂

I’ve been compared to Hitler by one of them – does that count?

164
0
Roy Everett
Roy Everett
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

Yes! Under Godwin’s Law you have immediately won the round. Shuffle the data and re-deal. BTW, I saw in a shop window a board game called Contagion. You have to work co-operatively with the other players to defeat the killer virus before it wipes you all out!

67
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago
Reply to  Roy Everett

“I saw in a shop window a board game called Contagion.”

Produced by the BMG Foundation presumably.

48
-2
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 years ago
Reply to  Roy Everett

There should be a sceptics version where we work cooperatively with other players to defeat the killer vaccine before it wipes you all out, or perhaps where you work cooperatively with other sceptics to defeat killer covidians before they wipe us all out.

91
-1
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

Oh, that gave me a chuckle. Thanks tof.

48
-2
RW
RW
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

I’ve had something like this occurring in a circle of acquaintances. While this may seem funny on the outside, one has to realize that these people are victims of the system (or whatever one wants to call it): They’ve been brainwashed into taking a medicine which doesn’t help to counter a disease which isn’t dangerous to them and to accept that any side effects of this asinine procedure are just a fortunately only very small price they have to pay if they want to continue living on this planet.

Our beloved leaders are not supposed to abuse those who trust them in this way.

83
-1
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 years ago
Reply to  RW

I’ve tried to engage with a few of them in the past but have generally given up now. Most people just can’t seem to hack having a logical discussion. Anyway I’m their boss so ending up ranting at them for being daft isn’t really on, much as I am tempted. Furthermore discussing the “vaccines” is even more problematic than the rest of the covid nonsense because you’re basically telling them they might get serious health problems. The whole business is very sad all round.

101
-1
Judy Watson
Judy Watson
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

I don’t understand the downtick? Could he/she explain why?

31
-5
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 years ago
Reply to  Judy Watson

Sometimes almost every post on an article gets downticked, which I imagine is the result of some non-sceptic trying to wind us up.

30
-5
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

Pretty much everything I post receives a downtick, as this surely will. I have my own personal troll.😀

17
-7
Gefion
Gefion
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

A very dear friend in her 80s has just been diagnosed with oesophageal cancer after having been a very healthy lady. She said she’s had 4/5 vaccines and never had Covid. Her son stopped taking the shots after 2 as he’d read up on them. I’m very sad for her but it would serve no useful purpose to engage her and her husband in any kind of discourse. They’re not stupid people, they just did as they were told.

34
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 years ago
Reply to  Gefion

Sorry to hear about your friend.

Don’t want to seem horrid but “just doing what you’re told” is a pretty good demonstration of stupidity when it involves taking an experimental medical treatment that has not been through the established safety trials, cooked up in a supposed “emergency” and where governments had to bully people into getting it. To be fully useful to oneself, “intelligence” needs to include the ability to spot when you’re being bullshitted, and to say no.

FWIW I probably wouldn’t engage them in any kind of discourse right now – unless they say they want more jabs.

40
0
RW
RW
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

I have to repeat this here:

Our beloved leaders are not supposed to abuse those who trust them in this way.

The reference to whoever is the current Kim Sonstwer of North Korea is absolutely intentional.

[Sonstwer is actually a German word and it means roughly Another of those of which there are too many to bother keeping track of then.]

10
0
stewart
stewart
2 years ago

Interesting that he feels he needs to make a public appeal via social media.

Has he tried the formal channels within his profession and they are non-responsive?

Who does he want to join forces with? Other doctors? The public?

What a sorry state the medical profession is in.

161
-2
Dr G
Dr G
2 years ago
Reply to  stewart

My guess is that his medical colleagues are unresponsive.
And yes, the medical profession is in a sorry state world wide.
A couple of years ago, my wife (a non-doctor) saw a GP for a small medical issue, realising that doctors should not treat their spouses.
The doctor did an inappropriate examination which actually caused my wife an injury.
She ordered a test, which was also inappropriate, then misinterpreted the results and prescribed an inappropriate drug as treatment.
My wife now swears she will never again go to a GP.
I provided a referral to the relevant specialist and the issue was sorted.

60
0
Gefion
Gefion
2 years ago
Reply to  stewart

I believe it’s part of a video made by concerned doctors and sent to some suggest medical body who will most likely ignore it.

11
0
Deborah T
Deborah T
2 years ago

You’re a good man, Angus. Let’s pray that the trickle becomes a stream becomes a tsunami, and that never again will people be pressured, coerced or forced into being injected with something that they can never get rid of, often didn’t truly want, for which there was no long-term safety data!!!

172
-2
Alan
Alan
2 years ago

He thinks it does not look like coincidence – does this now pass as evidence? It is no better than the lack of evidence about the vaccine safety before they were introduced.

2
0
Jon Mors
Jon Mors
2 years ago

Slightly O/T, but I do wonder if the effect on our immune systems from the lockdowns has been much more dramatic than we (here) might normally suggest, and a lot of the excess deaths is related to that. That might not explain cancer, but maybe it could?…It could certainly explain what’s happening in China right now, with people dying (or so we are told) with Covid that they have no natural immunity against.

I’ve had three pretty bad colds in the autumn/winter so far, and there are many others I know in the same boat (I went to the opera recently and the amount of coughing from the audience was much more noticeable than normal). I know two vaxxed people of similar age to me that have been very under the weather for 3-4 weeks (I’m not vaxxed), and I’m aware of many more in my wider circle (colleagues etc.,)

5
-1
Maurice
Maurice
2 years ago

A video by Stephanie Seneff 12-Dec-2022 where she shows mechanisms in the literature which may explain what Prof. Dalgleish is seeing. https://worldcouncilforhealth.org/multimedia/dr-stephanie-seneff-c19-jabs/

BTW I hope you have a video player where you can slow the playback to ~0.80 speed She talks way too fast! LOL

Last edited 2 years ago by Maurice
2
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