UK: Scientists tell us there IS a better way to tackle coronavirus. So why is it being ignored?
Lockdowns were originally a Chinese idea. Why are we copying them?
Fear stalks our country. It swirls around the Cabinet table, and has entered Boris Johnson’s soul.
One of his main terrors, according to colleagues, is Nicola Sturgeon. The First Minister yesterday announced tougher measures aimed at controlling the rapid rise of the virus.
Mr Johnson is terrified that if the death rate in England should exceed that in Scotland, the pugnacious Ms Sturgeon will accuse him of being chaotic and unreliable.
Nicola Sturgeon announced tougher measures aimed at controlling the rapid rise of the virus on Wednesday
Her message to Scots would be that they are far safer with her than with reckless Tories down south. She would shore up her already solid support in the independence stand-off.
Boris is a passionate unionist, and doesn’t want to do anything to bolster her strong position. Much more than Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer, Nicola Sturgeon is shaping the Government’s policy over the pandemic.
So where she goes first, the Prime Minister is likely to follow. It probably won’t be long before large parts of England adopt similar measures to those announced in Edinburgh yesterday.
All pubs and restaurants in central Scotland will close for 16 days. In other areas they will be allowed to remain open but only to serve outdoors. These new rules will inevitably inflict more economic hardship.
Will they succeed? They go further than measures tried out in northern England but will do little to control the virus among students, who will remain free to socialise. I should be surprised if Nicola Sturgeon’s package brought down infection rates to the levels of a few weeks ago.
We had better be honest with ourselves. None of the clampdowns applied in northern England have worked. Quite the opposite, as Sir Keir correctly pointed out at yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions.
He said that when restrictions were introduced in Bury, the infection rate was around 20 per 100,000. Today it is 266. In Burnley the rate per 100,000 has risen from 21 to 434 since the start of the clampdown. In Bolton the rate has jumped 18 from to 255.
Hardly a triumph. Admittedly, it’s possible that without restrictions the rate would have gone up even more. But it’s clear that stricter rules have failed to rein in the virus.
Almost the only place where harsher measures have succeeded is Leicester. The reason is that restrictions there were more draconian. They approached in severity those experienced during national lockdown.
Two weeks ago, I predicted that, despite the Rule of Six and early closure of pubs, the number of daily cases of Covid-19 would keep rising. I added that ‘within weeks further coercive measures will therefore be announced’.
In truth, almost anyone could have foreseen what has happened, and almost anyone can predict what will happen now. The national daily infection rate will go on increasing, and more restrictions will be introduced.
Only measures similar to those of lockdown will work. They may not be applied nationally, but before long swathes of the United Kingdom will be forced to submit to daunting new regulations. Our stuttering economic recovery will suffer.
Unless or until there is a vaccine, this debilitating on-off pattern — shutting down the economy, then opening it up again, then shutting it down once more — will continue.
And yet there is an alternative way, if only Boris Johnson and his supporters in a divided Cabinet could open their minds and throw off their fear — and engage in a proper debate.
Thousands of doctors and scientists from across the world have signed a letter known as the ‘Great Barrington Declaration’, named after the town in Massachusetts where it was conceived. It is the brainchild of three leading epidemiologists from Oxford, Harvard and Stanford universities.
It argues for a new tactic of ‘focused protection’. The elderly and vulnerable would be protected while the rest of society returned to normal life to build up herd immunity.
The letter points out that ‘vulnerability to death from Covid-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young’ and that ‘for children it is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza’.
It declares that current policies are ‘producing devastating effects on public health’. These include ‘lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health — leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden’.
In other words, the cure is worse than the disease. The Government and much of the media are so fixated on daily figures of new cases that they ignore the greater harm being done as a result of restrictions.
Meanwhile our national broadcaster, the BBC, isn’t good at putting Covid statistics in perspective. While dwelling on the growing number of cases, it seldom stresses that deaths are running at about five per cent of the rate at the height of the pandemic.
Nor is it seemingly very interested in debate. Many more exponents of tougher measures appear to be interviewed than distinguished scientific sceptics. ‘Professor Lockdown’, aka Neil Ferguson, remains a favourite of Auntie’s with his repressive toolkit. He was the scientist whose modelling helped trigger the lockdown — which he promptly broke with trysts with his married lover.
Shockingly, the BBC and much of the broadcast media yesterday morning largely ignored the explosive new letter. When I last looked, it had been signed by 3,621 medical and public health scientists and 5,919 medical practitioners.
It wasn’t mentioned on the news bulletins on Radio 4’s influential Today programme, although it was cited by presenter Nick Robinson during an interview with Trade Secretary Liz Truss.
She batted it away in an irritatingly smug way. While doing so, she asserted that ‘none of the critics are proposing alternative measures’. But that is precisely what they are doing!
Boris Johnson has said, more than once, that there is no alternative. So the Government persists with the present policy of restarting and stifling the economy. It’s not working.
According to the Government’s own modelling, 74,000 people will die from non-Covid causes as an indirect result of the lockdown imposed in March. How many more will die as a consequence of the regional lockdowns likely to be imposed in the next few weeks?
My suggestion is not that the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are right in every respect and the Government is entirely wrong. It is simply that there must be a better way than the one we are taking, and if the Government (and some of the media) weren’t so frightened of debate we might find it.
Why is Boris Johnson fearful? It’s partly because of the desire I’ve discussed not to give any advantage to Nicola Sturgeon. It’s partly because he had the stuffing knocked out of him by catching the disease, and so universalises his personal experience.
And it’s also because he is in thrall to scientists such as Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty who are zealots in their conviction that the only way to deal with Covid-19 is to try to knock it repeatedly over the head, even if in so doing you bring the whole of society and civilised life to a halt.
The virus is back big-time, and will make further gains. And the Government’s only policy is to march us straight back towards another lockdown.
Dr. Scott Atlas Says Lockdowns ‘Are a Luxury of the Rich’ and ‘Children Need to Go to School’
Why hasn’t Dr. Scott Atlas taken over Dr. Doom’s (Fauci’s) job yet? He’s the only one standing up for American freedom and common sense. On The Ingraham Angle Tuesday night, Atlas dropped truth bombs about the “frenzy of fear” that was spread about the coronavirus, which led to serious medical repercussions for so many people. “More than half of breast cancers” didn’t get diagnosed, “650,000 people who were on chemotherapy, half didn’t get their chemo…25% of kids 18-24, one-fourth thought of or had suicidal ideation during the month of June,” he said.
Atlas went on to excoriate lockdowns, “This lockdown is what I would call a luxury of the rich. This is really a class problem here where the affluent elites don’t understand, that what the president understands, which is that people need to work. The working class need their jobs, children need to go to school, and it’s very harmful to do otherwise.”
Host Laura Ingraham pointed out that the places that are open—which are doing better economically and mentally—are all Republican states. “There is a complete fallacy that President Trump is not following the science,” continued Atlas. “These people actually agree very much with [Trump’s] strategy: protect the vulnerable as much as we can and open up because of the harms of that.”
Ingraham pointed out that the media will not report the massive drop in hospitalizations and deaths for political reasons and instead focus on the president taking off his mask while alone on a balcony for a photo. Atlas said, “We’re all thrilled how well he’s doing, it’s amazing. The guy is incredibly resilient,” but added that he’s not cavalier about it at all. “He’s wearing a mask when other people are around,” said the eyewitness who has been in the room with the president recently.
Ingraham showed the numbers for flu versus COVID for school-aged children that demonstrate it is less deadly than the flu. Atlas concurred, saying, “this is not really arguable…it’s scientifically factual.”
Poll: Voters Back Judge Barrett’s Confirmation by Double-Digit Margin
A new Morning Consult poll of voters shows that those surveyed favor the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court by a double-digit margin. The poll shows support for Judge Barrett’s confirmation growing among Republicans, Democrats and Independents, despite the partisan hysteria coming from the Left in hopes of derailing the confirmation process.
Democrats are doing their best work to convince voters that Judge Barrett’s confirmation process is “illegitimate,” “unsafe,” and a “power grab” from Republicans, but this poll shows that voters know better.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) set Judge Barrett’s confirmation to begin on Monday, October 12. Though two Republican members of the committee have tested positive for coronavirus, Graham has equipped his committee with procedure to hold hybrid hearings to ensure safety.
Senate Democrats can do virtually nothing to stop her confirmation, but have already waged a full-fledged war on Judge Barrett’s character.
IN BRIEF
Texas grand jury indicts Netflix for “lewd visual material” after “Cuties” controversy (The Daily Wire)
Trump halts deadlocked COVID relief negotiations until after the election (National Review)
“Immediate action is needed”: Trump administration unveils sweeping changes to controversial H-1B guest worker program (Fox News)
House investigation faults Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google for engaging in anti-competitive monopoly tactics (The Washington Post)
Trump announces his intent to debate Biden October 15 (Disrn)
James Comey and Robert Mueller have massive Clinton Foundation problems (American Thinker)
NBC News’s “undecided” voters previously featured as Biden supporters on MSNBC (The Washington Free Beacon)
Facebook censors conservative host Mark Levin for “repeated distribution of false news” (Disrn)
Facebook bans QAnon — a nutty but harmless conspiracy theory — across its platforms (NBC News)
Triggered Democrat Party media guy pulls a knife on “Oregon Women for Trump” convoy (PJ Media)
Hate hoax? Police find no evidence after Madison, Wisconsin, woman claims she was set on fire by white supremacists (The Post Millennial)
World’s richest people are now $813 billion wealthier despite the pandemic (Time)
U.S. goods trade deficit in August hits record high of $83.9 billion (Politico)
Swiss city of Geneva votes for world-record $25 hourly minimum wage (Foundation for Economic Education)
Oregon State “women, gender and sexuality studies” professor blames devastating Western wildfires on white Christians (PJ Media)
California governor’s office tells diners to wear masks “in between bites” (CBS News)
Oklahoma detention officers charged with cruelty for torturing prisoners by cranking “Baby Shark” on repeat (Not the Bee)
A bike company offers black customers reparations in the form of a discount (Yahoo! Finance)
Oprah Winfrey says America’s racial “caste system” was “the template for Nazi Germany” (Disrn)
Georgia pastor raises $12,000 for Waffle House waitress after learning her unborn child has same name as his late son (Disrn)
Black-and-white film of a snowball fight in France in 1896 is colorized and speed-adjusted to look stunningly modern (Daily Mail)
Policy: Biden’s virtue signaling against Saudi Arabia will backfire (Washington Examiner)
Policy: Problems with theories on the black-white wealth gap (Mises Institute)
For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.
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