Billy Asko wrote:The things is, epidemics and pandemics are the classic example of the self-defeating prophecy. Because it wasn't as bad as you thought it might be,
Sorry but you can't have that. If the worst case modelling predicted the death of tens of percent of the population then the action taken would be justified. It didn't. With Covid the worst case modelling said that 99.4% of the UK population in March 2020 wouldn't die as a result of Covid. And even if the potential death of 0.6% of the the population was accepted as justifying the actions taken in March 2020, it did not justify the actions in the autumn of 2020 when Covid moved from a public health emergency to an obsession which was going round in circles with every wave. And as soon as it became clear how exaggerated the modelling was (particularly when the Lockdown II launch event included data known at the time to be wrong) the approach had to change rather than continuing to act based on doomsday scenarios that kept failing to happen. But it didn't. In the end, it was more luck than judgement that we ever got out of that circle. That is terrifying. It's not like I'm going on a hunch which happened to have gone my way, any balanced analysis of the bigger picture and even the most superficial critique of the response to the unfolding situation as 2020 moved along clearly showed that what we were doing was wrong. That's what I called out. At the time. Yet every time anyone who questioned it could simply be dismissed because clearly they were genocidal maniacs not sufficiently interested in 'Saving Lives™'. No. No way. The insanity of what we were doing was there to be seen and could have been avoided.
Billy Asko wrote:then the restrictions put in place were clearly pointless.
The higher level restrictions had an impact on spread of the virus but had no cost-benefit analysis or true consideration of their negative impact done (unless of course you want to claim that because we didn't go quite as far as China then that counts for an impact assessment). Again, possibly justifiable for a 3 week intervention in March 2020, but not for something that went on for months and months with no fixed end date nor justifiable for something rolled out on second and third occasions (and let's not forget how close to a fourth round we came last winter before the partygate scandal and the backbench revolt forced a change of course). The lower level restrictions (which seemed to be principally based on crippling the hospitality industry as a symbol of being seen to be doing something) were based on abstract bits of social theory without any clear evidence or even modelling as to what these measures were actually supposed to achieve (something essentially admitted by the government at one point)...but again as long as we kept saying 'Stop the Spread™', 'Protect the NHS™' and 'Saving Lives™' then nothing could be said against them. In any other situation this would be laughable. But this is serious and real. This is actual stuff we actually did with ashen-faced seriousness.
Billy Asko wrote:I'm not sure it's worth the self-congratulation.
You know what, self congratulation on this subject shouldn't even be a thing. It was blindingly obvious from a very early stage that we were over-reacting and listening too much to people too close to the subject rather than taking the bigger picture view which was desperately needed. And in the absence of the government doing that, it was down to the opposition to push for this. Instead all the opposition did was argue the government wasn't being extreme enough and we entered into a bizarre situation when the government's own back benchers became the opposition because the actual opposition refused to be one.
There are many, many angles to look at this from but one thing that really irks me - and also comes from a healthcare perspective rather than an economic one - is that the first lockdown essentially ignored the impact this would have on mental health entirely but was justified anyway because 'Saving Lives™'. That action single-handedly set the quest to take mental health seriously back years. And right now, I'd gladly trade any self congratulation I may feel on this subject if we could have gone back to early 2020 and got Covid into perspective before we did quite so much damage to so many people.
The fact that I can see that and others can't certainly doesn't make me better, it just means that some people are too close to the subject to have been treated as an unquestionable authority on what should have been done. That's not their failure for arguing from their perspective, that is a total failure of government. Not just our government, but governments around the world.
And actually people working in healthcare have been set up to be the ultimate scapegoat as governments the world over will now deflect any blame for the damage they allowed to happen on their watch by saying 'we were only following the science'. Every MP from the current cohort will be prepped for interviews in the years to come with a story of an NHS Doctor calling for a lockdown or restrictions as deflection for what has happened. It won't be the fault of the politicians for failing to do their jobs, it'll be the the healthcare sector's fault *for* doing their jobs.
NHS workers will go from being celebrated heroes to spending the rest of their lives justifying policies they didn't make - the politicians will make sure of it.
Billy Asko wrote:
It's clear most people aren't reflecting on the issues caused by Covid because the more pressing issue at the moment are the soaring energy costs and inflation that have nothing at all to do with pandemic spending.
And there we have the ultimate response of the Covid obsessed...the claim that the cost of living crisis wasn't directly caused by the response to Covid. That and trying to make the spending literally the fault of the virus itself, rather than the choice to respond to it in such an extreme way. Even in 2020, it was obvious that the amount of money being spent alongside shutting down large parts of the economy was unviable and we would be taxed to death over it. Now that's started to happen. It was obvious that responding to Covid with what the government itself described as a 'war-level footing' in terms of spending meant if something else came around the corner requiring a big spending response that they would struggle to respond. Now we have it and they are struggling (which means the population is struggling). The Ukraine war (itself possibly caused by Putin finally losing the plot altogether due to his own isolation caused by Covid obsession which may not have happened had the international narrative not pushed Covid so hard) has made a bad situation worse, but we were already in a cost of living crisis 6 months before that where energy costs had already soared and inflation along with it. Are you seriously saying you think these things would have happened anyway even in the absence of the response to the pandemic?