Two years ago today Britain locked down. Will Jones reflects.
Also reflecting on Britain’s lockdown is David McGrogan. A slice:
“Après nous, le déluge” should have been the motto of the past two years. As long as one was “safe” and able to enjoy one’s splendid isolation with one’s gin, one’s tonic, one’s Netflix, one’s Amazon Prime account and one’s lockdown puppy, what consequence was it that government debt was skyrocketing to 103.7% of GDP? What consequence was it that quantitative easing would inevitably lead to eye-watering levels of inflation? What consequence was it that a generation of children were not just being denied schooling, but were being inducted into a world of addiction and vice by being babysat by screens for days at a time? What consequence was it that our young people, and their children, and their children’s children, would likely have to deal with the fallout from all of this for their entire lives?
The blitheness with which these issues have been treated over the past two years puts one in mind of Edmund Burke’s famous warning, that the “possessors” of a “commonwealth”, “unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity”, might “commit waste on the inheritance” of the young. Apart from being bad in itself (passing on society’s wealth to the young is one of the most important duties of adults), this would have the even worse effect of teaching the younger generations the same bad habits, to the ultimate ruination of the “commonwealth” itself. Burke’s warning has been ignored for decades, but the experience of lockdown confirmed its horrible predictive power – it is bad enough that we spend £60 billion a year (that could be spent, for example, on education) merely on servicing debt, and that inflation will soon approach 10% (meaning that savers will lose a tenth of the value of their children’s inheritance in a single year). But what is truly terrifying is that most of the adult population of the country do not seem to care, and certainly have no interest in teaching to children the message that the nation’s wealth is a valuable inheritance that they are to steward, and pass on to their own children in turn. And that’s just the economic side of life: what can one say about a society which sees nothing wrong in forcing children to stay at home for months, without meeting or playing with other children, and inflicting great mental harm as a result – merely to make adults feel safe? It is a society shorn of loyalty to anything larger or longer-lasting than the immediate physical existence of its members; a society comprised of individuals in the truest sense, thinking only of their own health and in signalling their own virtue in purportedly “protecting others”.
The straw man continues to romp through China.
The Biden Administration has announced a new pandemic roadmap and with it, a new response coordinator. Although the new plan claims to “Prevent Economic and Educational Shutdowns” by providing schools and businesses the supplies and guidance they need to remain open, its incoming response coordinator has been a proponent of lockdowns, school closures, masking kids, vaccine passports, businesses mandating vaccines on their employees and not communicating the science on natural immunity (calling for previously infected to get vaccinated). Due to his visibility in the press during the COVID response, Dr. Jha has appeared to be a Fauci in waiting.
The Great Barrington Declaration has been both a bellwether and teaching point during, and now after, the flawed government pandemic response is subsiding.
The Declaration’s three highly credentialed signatories promoted a policy called “focused protection” of high-risk populations. Its authors strongly cautioned to avoid lockdowns. They predicted it would lead to known, heavy burdens on the working class and younger members of society, bringing irreparable damage and disproportionate harm to society’s underprivileged.
Tragically, time has shown these authors were right.
Yet, Dr. Jha didn’t seem to understand the public health debate he was a part of. Which was fine as many health professionals fell for the fear play and became cheerleaders of lockdowns – only later to apologize for their errors.
Dr. Jha told lawmakers discussing the COVID response to ‘Stop talking about things they don’t know much about’ yet perhaps it was he who should have heeded such advice.
On October 15, 2020, less than two weeks after The Declaration was released publicly, Dr. Jha bashed the document calling it ‘junk science.’
Your Ontario Doctors tweets: (HT Jay Bhattacharya)
“2yrs ago we uncritically accepted unreliable mathematical models that predicted this microbiological apocalypse.. Now enormous sunk costs of reputation/politics make it hard for ppl to admit they were wrong”
—Dr Schabas
Former ON CMOH [Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health]
