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…this isn’t proof, but it’s pretty good evidence the lockdowns caused a lot of harm. Physical harm, at the least.
- 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.
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
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/
During the Cold War, the British Government used the general public as unwitting biological and chemical warfare guinea pigs on a much greater scale than previously thought, according to new historical research.
In more than 750 secret operations, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Britons were subjected to ‘mock’ biological and chemical warfare attacks launched from aircraft, ships and road vehicles.
Up until now historians had thought that such operations had been much less extensive. The new research, carried out by Ulf Schmidt, Professor of Modern History at the University of Kent, has revealed that British military aircraft dropped thousands of kilos of a chemical of ‘largely unknown toxic potential’ on British civilian populations in and around Salisbury in Wiltshire, Cardington in Bedfordshire and Norwich in Norfolk.
A new analysis by Edge Health, a leading provider of data to NHS trusts, warns that a second and then a third wave of “non-corona” deaths are about to hit Britain. Unless radical solutions can be found to resume normal service and slash waiting lists, the NHS may be forced to institute a formal regime of rationing.
Social distancing orders to keep two metres apart to stop the spread of coronavirus is based on a made up figure, a government adviser has warned.
Robert Dingwall from the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) said the rule was ‘conjured up out of nowhere’.
Unlike covid-19, this is a killer we have created and that we can do something about. Boris called the first lockdown because the science pointed that way at that time, and the First Secretary, Dominic Raab, presumably renewed it because Boris was ill. But whoever renews the lockdown again would simply have blood on their hands.
The political reality is that the government has boxed itself in by allowing policy to be dictated by opinion-poll; it bowed to pressure to copy everyone else (apart from the free Swedes), then had to scare the public into compliance with the lockdown they’d demanded, and now the public is indeed scared. But look purely at the likely toll: even if declaring lockdown was originally the right move, leaving it in place can certainly be the wrong move. Protect the vulnerable, sure, but lift the lockdown: back to Plan A.
https://thecritic.co.uk/its-hurting-but-its-just-not-working/
Natalie Wolfson, 85, a resident at Westacres Care Home in East Renfrewshire, passed away the day after her GP allegedly asked for her to be admitted to hospital for hydration and pain relief after she fell and fractured her upper arm.
Westacres Care Home manager Linda Carruthers told Channel 4 News Scotland Correspondent Ciaran Jenkins she believed Natalie, who also had suspected Covid-19 symptoms, died as a consequence of being refused admission to the hospital.
Businesses are being discreetly advised by ministers on how to get people back to work in the coming days and weeks amid growing concerns over the economic impact of the lockdown.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/24/government-tells-uk-businesses-time-get-back-work/
Science is not a good guide for society. Of course science is essential to our understanding of the world and to the creation of the new insights, technologies and treatments our societies need. But it cannot tell us what is best for our societies in political, moral or economic terms…
If it is true that Boris put the country into lockdown partly in response to media pressure, then the media themselves may have a lot of questions to answer about the damage currently being done by this unprecedented freeze on working life and the economy.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/24/the-importance-of-courage/
Criminalising otherwise normal social activity should have the greatest possible mandate by parliament before it has effect, not be slipped out with no parliamentary approval at all.
David Allen Green is a commentator about law and policy and a contributing editor at the Financial Times.
Some interesting links between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Chris Whitty (Chief Medical Officer and advisor to the UK government), Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)
Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer and advisor to the UK government, received £31million pounds of funding from The Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation in 2008 and now takes Bill Gates public health policy’s directly to government.
A scientist at Public Health England said the in-house tests that have been in use since February are performing worse than commercial kits, which labs have been advised to switch to by the end of the month.
When our American cousins cry “Live Free or Die” and take to the streets to protest overweening state authority during lockdown, whether they know it or not, they are honouring the tradition of English liberty.
The coronavirus crisis has clearly demonstrated the value of good journalism. Yet the response of too much of the media has also shown how bad journalism can help to make a terrible situation even worse.
Self-important media outlets have crossed over from ‘speaking truth to power’ to assuming that they should have the power to tell governments what to do.
The overwhelming pressure of this shrill Something Must Be Done journalism quickly helped to push the UK government into changing tack and imposing a general lockdown, with far-reaching consequences for society.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/23/how-the-media-made-the-crisis-even-worse/