2021-01-11
I am indebted to Lockdown Sceptics for today's links, which cover three separate aspects of our locked-down existence at the beginning of 2021 - a year of new hope or of new despair?
The NHS
First up is a discussion of what should be the highly topical issue of the NHS and its response (or otherwise) to the Covid narrative. It may not have been prepared in March (although "project Cygnus" (download the report) already sounded all the warning bells of unpreparedness in 2016) but it should certainly have been prepared for the winter resurgence / "second wave" in January-February. So why are we being locked down ever harder once more?
Lockdown Harms
This article from the Toronto Sun takes the form of a Q&A session in which Dr Ari Joffe, who initially supported lockdowns, but changed his mind after researching a cost-benefit analysis that assessed the collateral damage from lockdowns to be an order of magnitude greater than the harms that they purported to avoid.
Why has our government never attempted (as far as I know) such a cost-benefit analysis?
See the full cost-benefit analysis: COVID-19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink.
Behind the Hysteria
Why does the public not appear to be convinced by the arguments presented by (amongst many others) Lockdown Sceptics? Anybody who reads the newspapers cannot fail to be impressed by the double-page spreads (and the internet equivalent broadcasts) daily offered to trumpet all the alleged ways in which new-variant Covid is overrunning "our NHS" at the start of 2021.
We only have to consider the enormous subliminal reach of these articles, even (perhaps especially) if they are not even read, to understand that those who are not directly led to challenge "the narrative" will inevitably be swept along on this tide.
Still, for those who want to delve deeper, Lockdown Sceptics offer an intriguing analysis of the politics, psychology, perhaps even religious faith involved in feeding the trusting belief that the government is to be given the benefit of any doubt in this matter.
