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Opinion

Opposing lockdown is NOT “profits before people” – Off-Guardian

Ever since the UK entered “lockdown”, those pushing for it to end have been labelled “callous” or “selfish” or accused of putting profits before people. Meanwhile millions are unemployed and a global famine is on the horizon. The lockdown will kill more people than the virus, and needs to be ended.

In what is perhaps the greatest example of gaslighting in human history, we have “champions of the working class” arguing for mass unemployment, the shutting down of small businesses and the self-employed, and draconian police powers.

https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/12/opposing-lockdown-is-not-profits-before-people/

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Opinion

The lockdown left is no friend of the working class – Spiked

It is now the left that wants working people to be decommissioned, put out to pasture, languishing on state-paid wages or Universal Credit and uncertain of whether their job will even exist once the lockdown is finally lifted. And it’s the Tories saying: ‘Erm, don’t you think it would be better if working people worked?’

Of course, the left’s justification for its new policy of preventing the working classes from working is that they might catch Covid-19 and die. They’re ramping up the culture of fear in a desperate effort to present their bizarre, historically unprecedented anti-work outlook as a good, noble thing. Actual facts – like the fact that under-40s have made up just 0.75 per cent of deaths from Covid – don’t get so much as a look-in. No, keep all workers at home, even the fit, healthy young ones.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/13/the-lockdown-left-is-no-friend-of-the-working-class/

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Opinion

Take the Shutdown Skeptics Seriously – The Atlantic

This is not a straightforward battle between a pro-human and a pro-economy camp.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/take-shutdown-skeptics-seriously/611419/

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Publications

Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions against COVID-19 in Europe: a quasi-experimental study – medRxiv

We found that closure of education facilities, prohibiting mass gatherings and closure of some non-essential businesses were associated with reduced incidence whereas stay at home orders, closure of all non-businesses and requiring the wearing of facemasks or coverings in public was not associated with any independent additional impact. 

“Surprisingly, stay-home measures showed a positive association with cases”

“These results would suggest that the widespread use of face masks or coverings in the community do not provide any benefit”

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.20088260v1

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Opinion

Has our mad mass house arrest during Covid-19 saved even a single life? – Peter Hitchens, The Mail on Sunday

Normal life will be virtually impossible. Previously simple actions will be endlessly complicated and expensive. And while this farce continues, businesses will continue to close and jobs continue to vanish, visiting misery and sickness on millions.

I have seen this before in the old Communist world, a mad, fixed idea pursued by dense men relentlessly and without opposition or thought, until the whole thing collapses or explodes. Now I see it here.

https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2020/05/peter-hitchens-has-our-mad-mass-house-arrest-during-covid-19-saved-even-a-single-life-1.html

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News Opinion

The Grand Delusion: Bail-out billions shield us from the reality – our economy is in tatters – Dr. John Lee, Daily Mail

  • Just 11 people under the age of 20 have succumbed to Covid-19.
  • Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College has a dismal record as a forecaster.
  • There’s the possibility that the lockdown has actually made the virus more deadly.
  • Bank of England warned that if the lockdown is extended until June the economy could shrink by 14 per cent this year.
  • More than one-in-five adults now furloughed on 80per cent of their wages.
  • A fifth of the working-age population could be jobless and the quality of people’s mental and physical health would plummet.
  • Every day, about 1,700 people die in Britain. Only five years ago, in the winter of 2014/15, more than 28,000 people died from seasonal flu, not far off the current coronavirus death toll of just over 30,000.
  • Direct evidence to support the two-metre rule is weak, and based almost entirely on modelling rather than real life.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8302055/Bail-billions-anaesthetise-reality-economy-tatters.html

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Opinion

The lockdowns still aren’t working – Spiked

It is also worth noting another unsayable fact at this point: approximately the same number of people have always been projected to contract Covid-19 in most ‘curve flattening’ scenarios. Lockdowns simply spread the deaths out across a longer period of time.

The original argument for locking down to ‘flatten the curve’ was very specifically about stopping patients from entering hospital in a single stream that would overwhelm healthcare resources and cause millions of incidental deaths. Now, however, we know that hospitals have not been swamped on a large scale in any of the non-lockdown US states, nor in nations such as Sweden which never locked down. In fact, more than 200 hospitals in lightly hit areas of both lockdown and social-distancing states have begun to furlough their employees, after cancelling elective procedures in preparation for a Covid wave that simply never arrived.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/08/the-lockdowns-still-arent-working/

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Opinion

Lockdown fanatics scare me far more than Covid-19 – Spiked

The Covid threat is not the apocalypse we were warned about. Its death rate is low. Its impact on younger people is negligent. Just 0.75 per cent of deaths in the UK have been among under-40s, and the majority of those were people with underlying health conditions. And yet most under-40s – fit, healthy workers – remain locked at home, denied the right to work and play and keep society going.

The horror stories that were spread about Covid-19 by government officials and media fearmongers have been exposed as inaccurate, and in some cases hysterical. As the government adviser Professor Robert Dingwall says, the government has ‘effectively terrorised’ us into ‘believing that this is a disease that is going to kill you’. When in the vast majority of cases that simply isn’t true. As Professor Dingwall points out, 80 per cent of people who get the virus never have to go to a hospital, and of those who do, ‘most of them will come out alive – even those who go into intensive care’.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/08/lockdown-fanatics-scare-me-far-more-than-covid-19/

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News Opinion

Matt Ridley We know everything – and nothing – about Covid – The Spectator

The horrible truth is that it now looks like in many of the early cases, the disease was probably caught in hospitals and doctors’ surgeries. That is where the virus kept returning, in the lungs of sick people, and that is where the next person often caught it, including plenty of healthcare workers. Many of these may not have realised they had it, or thought they had a mild cold. They then gave it to yet more elderly patients who were in hospital for other reasons, some of whom were sent back to care homes when the National Health Service made space on the wards for the expected wave of coronavirus patients.

Once the epidemic is under control in hospitals and care homes, the disease might die out anyway, even without lockdown. In sharp contrast to the pattern among the elderly, children do not transmit the virus much if at all. A recent review by paediatricians could not find a single case of a child passing the disease on and said the evidence ‘consistently demonstrates reduced infection and infectivity of children in the transmission chain’. One boy who caught it while skiing failed to give it to 170 contacts, but he also had both flu and a cold, which he donated to two siblings. Children appear to have ACE2 receptors, the cellular lock that the coronavirus picks, in their noses but not their lungs.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/we-know-everything-and-nothing-about-covid

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News Opinion

On lockdown, Boris Johnson faces a new opponent: his own party – The Guardian

The prime minister’s former business adviser Andrew Griffith – elected as an MP in December – has warned that every day the UK economy is in lockdown, and its competitors aren’t, means lost business.

“It’s easy to like lockdown if you are being paid close to the same to stay at home as you would to go to work,” says one MP. Another adds: “People like lockdown? Wait until the furlough scheme ends.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/08/lockdown-boris-johnson

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News

Coronavirus: 2million have now claimed benefits in UK since outbreak took hold – The Mirror

An astonishing 1.8million have claimed Universal Credit, 250,000 claimed jobseekers’ allowance and 20,000 claimed Employment and Support Allowance between March 16 and the end of April.

Even now UC claims are still running at around 25,000 a day – double the usual rate, MPs heard.

The new figures suggest around 5million people may now be on Universal Credit in the UK – many of them in work on low incomes.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-coronavirus-2million-now-claimed-21972159

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News

Wasted milk, euthanized livestock: Photos show how coronavirus has devastated US agriculture – CNBC

  • American farmers are being forced to destroy their crops, dump milk and throw out perishable items that can’t be stored.
  • Dairy farmers are dumping out as many as 3.7 million gallons of milk every day,.
  • Chicken processors have been forced to euthanize chickens because of the reduced capacity in plants.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/02/coronavirus-devastates-agriculture-dumped-milk-euthanized-livestock.html

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News Opinion

We’re destroying the nation’s wealth – and the health of millions – Peter Hitchens, The Mail on Sunday

Nobody will be able to say, when the much-needed inquiry eventually sits in judgment on these times and on those responsible, that criticism is just hindsight and that nobody pointed out at the time that a grave mistake was being made.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8281063/PETER-HITCHENS-destroying-nations-wealth-health-millions.html

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Opinion

This unprecedented curtailment of our freedom must end as soon as possible – The Telegraph

A decade of painstaking fiscal repair-work was undone within the first few hours; and that was just the start. The direct cost of Britain’s stimulus package is £70 billion which, as Alok Sharma, the Business Secretary, confirmed on Friday, is considerably higher than in other countries.

The indirect costs are harder to assess, but will surely be gargantuan. The first nine days of the crisis pushed half a million more people onto the dole, wiping out five years of rising employment. With every day that our shops remain shut, the benefits bill will rise – just as tax revenues dry up.

I don’t think we yet understand how vast a hit we are taking. It has become commonplace to compare the coronavirus to the Second World War, but our domestic economy continued to function even at the height of the Blitz. Shops, pubs and schools stayed open, and cinemas were closed for only two weeks.

http://archive.today/2020.03.29-112126/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/unprecedented-curtailment-freedom-must-end-soon-possible/

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News

HOW CORONAVIRUS WILL AFFECT THE ROAD HAULAGE INDUSTRY – TrackTrans

This will affect the road haulage industry substantially, which already suffers from a HGV driver shortage of 59 thousand drivers according to an October 2019 FTA report. Government statistics show that there are approximately 300 thousand HGV drivers in the UK3, meaning if 20% of drivers are off sick at once, this will effectively temporarily double the driver shortage to 120 thousand. What this could mean on a short-term basis is that there is a marked increase in subcontracting out jobs to other hauliers, as some hauliers will be much harder hit than others in terms of driver numbers – due to various factors such as regional considerations and timing.

http://archive.today/2021.09.26-163145/https://www.tracktrans.com/blogs/how-coronavirus-will-affect-the-road-haulage-industry/

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News Videos

Businessman Luke Johnson: Coronavirus lockdown is “Project Fear Mark 2… Enough is enough” – talkRADIO

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Opinion Videos

Coronavirus UK Lock Down extended but what’s next? – Peter Hitchens

  • Britain is losing £2.4 billion per day during the lockdown.
  • All the savings during the austerity period have been squandered.
  • A ‘capital levy’ or confiscation of private property may be on the horizon.
https://youtu.be/VyCY0Gtn7dE
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News Opinion

The case for trusting the public is stronger than ever – The Spectator

One next step should be making the lockdown voluntary, not mandatory. People can be asked — not ordered — to be careful. To keep their distance, not take undue risks. Return to work, where it’s safe to do so. Send young children back to school. Sweden has tried this approach and found a strong public response. Travel to Easter holiday hotspots was down 94 per cent; city streets, even now, are almost deserted. Sweden’s logic is that economic repair can happen more quickly if the pandemic is controlled by public consensus, with liberties protected.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-case-for-trusting-the-public-is-stronger-than-ever

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News

If Sweden succeeds, lockdowns will all have been for nothing – The Telegraph

When foreign commentators discuss Sweden’s light-touch response to Covid-19, they tend to adopt an affronted tone. Which is, on the surface, surprising. You’d think everyone would be willing the Nordic country to succeed. After all, if Sweden can come through the epidemic without leaving a smoking crater where its economy used to be, there is hope for the rest of the world. So far, many signs appear encouraging. The disease seems to be following the same basic trajectory in Sweden as elsewhere.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/25/sweden-succeeds-lockdownswill-have-nothing/

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News

Britain could be the Western economy hardest hit by coronavirus unless we can unlock soon – The Telegraph

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/04/25/traffic-lights-approach-can-lead-us-lockdown/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw