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TANSTAFPFC (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Protection From Covid): Micha Gartz documents Covid Derangement Syndrome’s terrible toll on children [2]. (DBx: But who cares? All that matters is that children don’t die of Covid-19. If they suffer from, or die of, any other ailment or misfortune – cancer, child abuse, suicide, accidents – that’s perfectly acceptable. The only suffering and deaths worth preventing or lamenting – the only suffering and deaths that matter – are suffering and deaths from/with Covid. Or so humanity, beginning one year ago, seems to have concluded.)
The UN reports that Covid-19 lockdowns killed 228,000 South Asian children under the age of five [3].
Dr. John Lee talks with Julia Hartley-Brewer [4].
I’m always honored to be a guest of Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson [5].
Harry Warren, a student at the University of Edinburgh, decries the Scottish government’s deranged closure of libraries [6]. A slice:
Under the somewhat bizarre Scottish government rules, students are still permitted to study in the library if they wear masks, maintain social distancing and pre-book to allow staggered arrivals and exits. Clearly, the Scottish Government believes mitigating policies, rather than bans, are enough to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Why then, will it not allow the same logic to apply to books when they are clearly low risk?
If this policy were just a well-meaning but ineffectual public health measure the government could be forgiven. Yet, the damage being done by the policy is tangible and worsening each day that dissertation and exam deadlines approach. All students are currently barred from accessing physical copies of library books and texts. Students who can afford it have simply navigated this problem by purchasing the required texts themselves. Those who have lost jobs because of Covid or who have had to pay for accommodation themselves do not have the resources to purchase hundreds of pounds worth of texts. As a result, richer students have effectively been gifted a substantial advantage over their poorer counterparts. How can someone compete academically when they cannot physically access the resources they need?
Lucy Wyatt sensibly wonders why the U.K. government suddenly abandoned, in March 2020, its own pandemic plan [7]. A slice:
In other words, when the pandemic struck in 2020, the UK Government entirely ignored its own advice: it had no consideration for public morale, no concern over ‘substantial’ economic or social consequences and made no attempt to promote countermeasures such as antivirals. Yet it could hardly claim ignorance of the damaging effects its contrary decisions from March 2020 would have since such policy responses were specifically rejected, on those grounds, in the 2011 strategy.
The Government has not deviated from that position in over a year, even though there is little evidence that at any point in 2020 the NHS would have struggled to cope any more than in previous years once it achieved the requisite ICU capacity, which it did quite early on.
So what happened? Why did the Government change from being more than just usually incompetent to being cruel, irrational and incompetent, a government without care and compassion? Aware that its actions would not save lives, but destroy them?
Why did the Government need to instil such fear and anxiety? Was it to protect us from a pandemic that would overwhelm us or was it, wittingly or unwittingly, to create the illusion of a ‘PCR testing’ pandemic?
Here’s wisdom from Daniel Hannan [8]. A slice:
My own view is that many lockdown prohibitions are disproportionate. We know that outdoor transmission of Covid-19 is rare and, as a general principle, we should trust people to use their common sense. I would therefore allow peaceful demonstrations to go ahead. But plenty of good and sincere people disagree with me. Indeed, if the polls are to be believed, most voters want restrictions tightened further.
Fair enough. Where to draw the line between liberty and security is a legitimate argument – and, during an epidemic, an especially difficult one. If you’re in favour of people being allowed to congregate outside, fine. If you’re against it, fine. But if you want bans on sports crowds, weddings and other gatherings, but think that a special case should be made for demonstrators whom you happen to like, then you need to go back to basics and understand what the rule of law means.
When I say “you”, I include all the Labour and Conservative MPs who have spent this week complaining about the application of a law that they themselves passed only last year. I have no doubt that they were genuinely shaken to see images of women at Clapham Common being roughly manhandled. But what did they imagine would happen when they voted to outlaw demonstrations?
Daniel Finkelstein argues that we were too ready to surrender our freedom [9].