British Lockdown Updates

[-:Undertaker:-]

- Wales goes into 17-day lockdown closing all bars, restaurants and non-essential businesses.

Beyond absurd. So many generally healthy and young people are going to die of cancer, heart problems and suicide because of this. We're already reading cases of cancer going terminal. We know how bad recessions can be, but imagine an economic depression. We're talking starvation, social unrest and even revolutions.

Not what I said, but right now it just shows a disregard for human life (especially with the "herd immunity here we come" posts) and isn't necessary. A wednesday night rave consisting of enormous groups battling the police is not needed. Nice of you to seemingly change your tack and admit that it's nothing to do with people going to work though, it was even more disingenuous of you than usual to try claiming that it was - especially after your post the other day stating that most of the people you saw in Liverpool aren't bothering with distancing or masks. I wonder what tangent you'll go off on for your next post

Those who support lockdowns and restrictions seem to think they can accuse anyone who dares disagree as not caring about other people. It's a nice trick which deflects from the logic of the argument, which is that the virus is making its way through the population and will continue to do so unless a vaccine/army on the streets lockdown.

[dbgtz]

am i living in satire

[-:Undertaker:-]

am i living in satire

No, you're living in a free country where numerous scientists and legal experts and a significant portion of the population disagree with you.

I would like lockdowners such as yourself to tell us just how many cancelled operations, bankrupt businesses and months locked indoors we are expected to endure to achieve.... what exactly?

https://gbdeclaration.org/

[dbgtz]

i was actually referring to you talking about giving a crap about people and trying to bring logic into something, 2 things you have famously avoided

btw polling has a majority people supporting lockdown, you lost get over it

[-:Undertaker:-]

i was actually referring to you talking about giving a crap about people and trying to bring logic into something, 2 things you have famously avoided

btw polling has a majority people supporting lockdown, you lost get over it

Of course I care about people, which is why I am arguing we don't have millions of people lose their jobs in a pointless effort to stop a virus we cannot stop.

I assume you still have a job? Easy to sit at home still employed and call for more lockdowns... not so easy if your business is facing ruin.

[-:Undertaker:-]

- Manchester has now been placed under a tier 3 lockdown
- Rumours a national lockdown is next to come

And now here's some sanity from Lord Sumption in the Daily Mail as to why the public ought to flout and not follow this disasterous and pointless policy.

Everything in science is provisional but one thing is certain about Covid-19. Lockdowns do not stop the disease.

They merely postpone infections until after they are lifted. They can work only if they are kept in place indefinitely. We do not need epidemiologists or mathematical modellers to tell us this.

All we need to do is look out of the window and see what is happening in the world. Infections are roaring up in every country where a lockdown has been imposed.

We are now about to go through a repeat performance of a policy that has demonstrably failed.

Our Government is planning to destroy businesses and jobs, to increase poverty, to aggravate mental illness, and to inflict untold distress on many millions of active and healthy people who are unlikely to suffer serious symptoms even if they are infected.

There will be layers of humbug to divert attention from what they are doing. Ministers will heave and moan about the pain that this causes them, as they assure us that it will all be worth it in the end.

The Leader of the Opposition will throw in his hap’orth of support for some of the most poorly reasoned decisions of modern times. But failed policies are never worth it.

If politicians want to be taken seriously, they have serious questions to answer which they have evaded so far.

First, what are they trying to achieve? Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the House of Commons last week that the object was to ‘suppress’ the virus. But what does that mean?

The Government has accepted since May that Covid-19 is going to be with us long-term. Its scientific advisers have consistently said that lockdowns only buy time.

If the Government is trying to buy time, which seems to be the most that its measures could ever achieve, what is the use of that? The virus will still be there waiting for us when time is up.

Buying time until what? Until the NHS has caught up? It caught up in April, the one thing for which Mr Hancock deserves unstinting praise.

Until the Government has acquired enough basic competence to run a proper test-and-trace programme? Will it ever?

Until there is a vaccine? We do not know when that will be, or how effective it will be.

Some vaccines give lifelong protection against smallpox or measles. The consensus seems to be that an anti-Covid vaccine is unlikely to do that.

Like the flu vaccine, it seems more likely to confer only a partial and temporary immunity, and then not on everyone.

The most bizarre feature of the current situation is the refusal of Ministers to learn from experience. If a total lockdown of several months did not work, either here or anywhere else, why does the Government imagine that lesser measures such as the Rule of Six, travel bans, pub curfews or two-week ‘circuit-breakers’ will do any better?

The reality is we have no idea what our Government thinks it is doing. In the absence of answers to these fairly obvious questions, we have to assume that Ministers have no idea either. We are not told what their exit plan is, presumably because they do not have one, apart from ‘Something will turn up’.

There is a variety of different views in the world of epidemiologists and immunologists – 35,000 or so public health scientists and medical practitioners have signed up to the Great Barrington Declaration, drawn up by three eminent specialists a fortnight ago.

They point out that indiscriminate attempts to stop infections prevent healthy people from acquiring natural immunity and that buying time only prolongs the crisis. Both of these things are likely to increase deaths.

The signatories argue that we should protect the vulnerable who are at risk of serious illness or death and allow the others who are not at risk to be exposed to the disease and acquire some immunity.

Nobody, least of all the declaration’s authors, pretends that this is a perfect solution. It will not eliminate all deaths. Natural immunity may not last (although it will last at least as long as a vaccine).

There will be some whose vulnerabilities are not identified. There will be vulnerable people who would rather take the risk and enjoy life. But it is a better bet than the current ill-thought-out measures. The Great Barrington Declaration approach may or may not be right but it is at least a coherent case. It stacks up.

The Government’s case does not stack up. It is full of holes, left by the silence of Ministers. So far, the only response of the lockdown enthusiasts has been an attempt to smear the Great Barrington authors with allegations they are the tools of Right-wing doctrinaires or antisemites. If there was a better answer than abuse, we would no doubt have heard it.

The programme of the Great Barrington scientists is at least consistent with experience. The success of the Swedish model has been passed over in embarrassment by UK Ministers who have no answer to it.

Stockholm, where the epidemic struck hardest in the spring, has a density of population, an age balance and a public health system comparable to those of major British cities. But we have preferred to follow the example of countries that have failed to contain the virus rather than the one country that appears to have succeeded.

There is a nasty divide opening up between those who want to take reasonable steps to protect themselves and live as normally as possible without going over the top and zealots who think that, as a matter of principle, the state should take over our lives, occupy our sitting rooms and keep us infantilised at home. What has happened to rational thought in Britain?

Rational thought has been banished by fear. Fear encourages unthinking responses. It leads to intolerant conformism and ill-tempered abuse of anyone who steps out of line.

It provokes panicked demands for government action, without reflecting on the limits of what government action can achieve. This is an atmosphere in which the advocates of coercion and authoritarian styles of government have always thrived.

But the main culprits are not the public but Ministers, who have got caught in a trap of their own making. They stoked up people’s fears to justify their decisions and induce compliance. They promised the impossible and, when the inevitable failure came, they blamed it on the public for not complying with their commands. The real reason Ministers have not dared to answer the questions posed by their policies is that their purpose is not to suppress the virus, which they must know is impossible. It is to shield themselves from responsibility.

They believe they will be criticised for the Covid-19 deaths but that they will get away with the indirect consequences of their brutal countermeasures: the cancer deaths, the loneliness and mental breakdowns, the poverty and job destruction, the public and private bankruptcy. Truth is the first victim of this process but it is not very high on this Government’s agenda.

Having got itself into a pattern of coercion, the Government does not dare to change course, for fear of discrediting its own past decisions.

Yet even fear has its limits. As public trust drains away, it is forced to keep up the atmosphere of panic by ever more hyped-up alarms, misleading statistics, draconian fines, bullying threats, appeals to sneaks and informers and cavalier disregard for the basic values by which people live.

I have yet to meet anyone in London who intends to comply with the ban on receiving friends and family in their house. So here is a final question for the Government to answer: Why on earth should they?

[-:Undertaker:-]

As the government plunges South Yorkshire into economic abyss, a plain-talking Granny speaks for common sense.

Exactly what my 85 year old Grandad says.

“I’ve not got that many years left of me and I’m not going to be fastened in a house.”

Here’s how one 83-year-old in Barnsley reacted to the news that tier three restrictions will be introduced in South Yorkshire from Saturday.

See more here: https://t.co/Kmf1y5Msfe pic.twitter.com/58YJYfIzvU

— BBC Yorkshire (@BBCLookNorth) October 21, 2020

[-:Undertaker:-]

The lunatic Welsh First Minister (whatever his name is, Labour though) has ordered shops only sell what HE deems "essential items".

I feel like we're living in some creepy North Korean state where Little Hitler politicians who crave power now have their chance to ban shopping, issue draconian fines, tell you what you're allowed to wear and if you're allowed to see your family and friends. As a Conservative voter I am appalled in this government allowing this including the balkanisation of national policy. Sturgeon, this Welsh fella and crackpot mayors are going one step further than even Matt Hancock. Shame on them ALL.