Are They Being Deliberately Stupid Or Is It Natural

Are the proponents of lockdown being deliberately stupid, so as to ignore how idiotic it is, and how ridiculous their arguments in defence of it have now become, or are they genuinely too stupid to be able to think critically, because that would mean admitting that they have pursued a failed and counter-productive strategy for the last six months?

Tim Martin is an odious, right-wing Brexiteer who championed the cause of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and other of that ilk. It would be easy, now, to gloat and to think that Martin has got his comeuppance, as an incompetent Johnson sends the economy into one disaster after another. Promote clowns like Farage and Johnson, or, in the US, Trump, and you get what you deserve, we might conclude sanguinely. But, of course, in the catastrophe that is going to unfold in respect of Brexit, and more immediately as a result of the lockdown, and other measures of partial lockdown that the government is introducing, and that Keir Starmer has been goading on with a political whip, it will not be the likes of Martin who will really suffer. It is going to be the thousands, indeed millions, of workers in the leisure industry, and other service industries that now comprise around 80% of the UK economy, and 80% of employment in Britain, as in most other developed economies. Already, Wetherspoons is getting rid of 450 out of 1,000 jobs in its airport outlets, and many more are now bound to disappear across the sector. Thousands of jobs in retail have already gone, with millions more about to go when the unsustainable furlough scheme comes to an end next month. Estimates are, now, that around a quarter of all companies in Britain, or about 1.25 million businesses, are zombie companies, hanging on only able to pay interest on their loans, which absorbs the whole of their profits, where they are making any.

Yet, as my wife said yesterday, hearing Martin from another room, and so not realising who was speaking until she came in, “That's the first time I've actually heard him say anything I agree with.” And, the truth is that, if you don't base your politics on simply putting a minus sign, where odious right-wingers like Martin place a plus sign, in his comments about Johnson's latest set of insane proposals, in relation to lockdowns, there was, indeed, considerably more rationality and argument, based upon facts, than anything coming from Johnson or Starmer. The fact is that there is little evidence of people being infected with COVID in pubs and restaurants etc., where staff have been implementing, and ensuring that customers abide by, physical distancing requirements, as well as the use of face masks and so on.

Just as a digression, the question of face masks is another example of this. Everyone now accepts the need for the use of face masks as a useful means of preventing the spread of the virus. Masks are useless to prevent you getting the virus, but they do stop those who have it from spreading it to others, by preventing the dispersion of virus laden globules from people's mouths. So, again, when people automatically align with the WHO against the moron Trump, it is yet again another example of this mindless placing of a minus sign wherever your opponent places a plus sign, rather than examining the facts, and drawing rational conclusions of your own. In the 1930's, Trotsky described that kind of mindless approach, and advised socialists to Learn to Think. Trump, of course, has his own political, as well as moronic, reasons for criticising the WHO, and yet his criticism of that organisation is no reason why socialists should then mindlessly support it, any more than just because the libertarian right attack the BBC, which is the capitalist state's propaganda arm, it is any reason why socialists should then support it.

The truth is that the WHO, early on, argued AGAINST people wearing masks, saying that it would be counterproductive and ineffective, despite the fact that mask wearing, in many parts of the world, in response to previous epidemics had shown its effectiveness. The WHO's advice was mindlessly picked up by government advisors in Britain, and elsewhere, who, with a moral panic in full swing, did not want to be seen to be arguing against the established meme. They argued that if everyone wore masks it would mean that those in health and social care who needed them, wouldn't be able to get them, which says a lot about how prepared these organisations actually were to deal even with a bad flu season. The truth is that, if the WHO and government advisors had recommended wearing masks six months ago, tens of thousands of lives would have been saved. The WHO's response to COVID19 has been pretty abysmal, as has its response to previous epidemics.  The fact that the moron Trump also points that out does not change matters.

Similarly, Martin is right in relation to pubs and restaurants, and imposing restrictions on them is simply an act for show rather than for effectiveness, which has been the case with pretty much all of the government's response, as well as of Labour's demands placed upon it. The truth is that many of those younger people, turfed out of pubs early in the evening, will now simply go to drink in public, where, evidence is, they will not abide by any measures of physical distancing. They will return to holding large scale raves, in public open spaces, or as in the 1990's in some available warehouse, of having shabeens on large estates. And, to respond to this breaking of its rules, the government, now, is turning the state even more into an authoritarian police state, with the added threat of martial law, with troops being lined up to enforce these draconian limitations on civil liberties.

And, again, the truth is that even if the mostly younger people involved were to transmit the virus to one another, as a consequence of such gatherings, the risk to them from the virus is miniscule. More than half the people dying from COVID19 are aged over 80, the majority of them over 85. 92% of people dying from, or suffering serious illness from COVID are aged over 60. The mean average age of death is 81! Of the remaining 8% of deaths, 7% are people with underlying medical conditions that compromise their immune system, and we will no doubt find that, of the remaining 1%, they too had some such condition that had not been diagnosed. The chances of dying or being seriously ill from COVID19 are incredibly small for people under 60. You are currently five times more likely to die from flu, if you are under 60 than you are from COVID. If you are under 40, you are currently ten times more likely to die from flu than from COVID. And, that is despite the fact that we already have vaccines for flu.

So, its not young people that are at serious risk from COVID, but only old people, yet it is young people that are being demonised for their normal activities, and being made scapegoats for the failed policies of the government and opposition. It is young people that are suffering the consequences of those failed and idiotic policies, as they lose their jobs by the thousands, and as it is the wages of younger people that are being devastated most. And, now, at the same time, those young people are being demonised and criminalised, with the threat of £10,000 fines, and the use of the armed forces against them.

A Left, that does not respond vigorously against such action is a Left not worthy of the name, a Left that deserves to be branded with infamy, and disregarded by the current generation of young people that have been abandoned by it. Starmer has become a bigger Brexiteer than Corbyn, and now has adopted the reactionary delusions of the Lexiters, as he calls on Johnson to push through Brexit with all haste, promising also to continue with that Brexit, as he pursues the reactionary, utopian delusion of building Social-Democracy in One Country. As a result, Labour already is throwing away the support from that younger generation that Corbyn won in 2017. Starmer might be winning back some of the reactionary voters, as he promises to become an ardent Brexiteer, and passionate promoter of nationalism/patriotism, whereby Britain would not just waive the rules, but also again rule the waves, as in the days of Empire, but anyone who thinks that is the way for even a social-democratic party to behave, let alone one some of whose members have aspirations of socialism, is seriously deluded.

Labour may be benefiting in the short term, from Johnson's incompetence, just as the Democrats are benefiting from Trump's idiocy and incompetence in the middle of a pandemic, but that will not last. In the longer term, what millions of workers will see is that the imposition of lockdowns was neither effective nor rational, whilst the consequences of the lockdown was to devastate the economy and cause the loss of millions jobs, destroying lives and livelihoods for years to come.

Already, we know that thousands of excess deaths have resulted from the imposition of lockdowns as many people did not get the medical treatment for other illnesses they required. Across the globe, particularly in poorer countries, the deaths from malnutrition, and other symptoms of poverty, caused by the global slowdown caused by the lockdowns, far outweigh any deaths from the virus. Whilst, currently, Trump and Johnson are the ones necessarily paying the political price of that, in coming weeks as unemployment soars, and economic catastrophe beckons, they will be easily able to point to the fact that it is lockdowns that are the cause of it, and that if their political opponents had had their way, the lockdowns would have been even more draconian, even more long-lasting, even wider in their application, so that the damage to the economy and to people's livelihoods would have been even worse. They will be able to argue that they only pushed the lockdowns in the way they did, because they had been pressurised by their political opponents to do so, egged on by the media. It may not be sufficient to save Trump, but with four years to go to a General Election in Britain, it will certainly doom Starmer. And, with a Biden presidency inevitably repeating all of the failed politics of Clinton, and Obama, the Democrats occupancy of the White House and control of Congress also looks set to be shortlived, and merely a prelude to a further move forward of the US Right, just as the failure of Macron has done in France.

And, it is a fact that lockdowns were an idiotic policy that was bound to fail, and have failed. It was inevitable, as many epidemiologists said from the start, and indeed as I said, that as soon as those lockdowns, or similarly the intense test and trace regimes, were relaxed, then the virus would simply resurge. And so, wherever those policies were adopted, it has. No matter how many times such lockdowns are introduced the same will continue to happen. Already the partial lockdowns on social activity that have been implemented have caused the worst economic slowdown in 300 years. Further such lockdowns will threaten to send the global economy back to conditions not seen for more than a century, as it will not just be a slowdown in the amount of new value created, but an actual destruction of capital itself, as businesses are closed down, and buildings, machinery and other means of production are simply scrapped, because they cannot be used.

On top of that the payment of people and businesses to not produce has raised levels of debt to unsustainable levels, because this debt is completely different to the debt undertaken to finance investment and productive activity, it is debt to simply finance consumption. Those who think that this can be remedied by consuming from the fruit of the Magic Money Tree are equally deluded. You cannot eat all those additional banknotes that are printed, you cannot clothe yourself in those banknotes, and so on. The more of them you print, the less each of them are worth, and if you simply use them to pay people not to work, then there are no goods and services for these worthless bits of paper to buy anyway!

Last night, on Sky's Paper Review, Isabelle Oakshott asked Sonia Sodha this simple question, if there is no vaccine by this time next year, will you still be arguing that the economy has to be locked down. Sodha could not answer, because the proponents of lockdown have no answer. They know that the lockdown has already caused massive economic damage; they know any further lockdown will cause even more damage, but they can't withdraw from it, because they have not thought through any other rational alternative, and know that to do so would mean admitting that their previous arguments were deeply flawed. They have no alternative but to act like a goldfish, continually swimming around its bowl, saying to itself “Oh look a castle, Oh look a castle”, hoping that, as they repeat the same failed experiment, they might get a different result. As Einstein described such behaviour, the definition of stupidity.

And, of course, not only is the experience of the failure of lockdowns evidence that it offers no rational solution. There is an alternative experiment that has had different, this time successful results. That is the experience of Sweden. It made the same mistakes in relation to the lockdown of care homes, as other countries, but has since remedied that. It never did lockdown, and yet Sweden has had better per capita mortality rates than most other European countries from the start. It essentially ended all new COVID deaths months ago. In September it has had just 30 deaths, or less than 2 per day. Of course, you would not know this from listening to the media, or politicians, because, from the start, they vilified Sweden for pointing out that the Emperor had no clothes on, and so daring to digress from the established meme. Indeed, those epidemiologists like Professor Sunetra Gupta who pointed out the truth about lockdowns have faced similar ire.

Yet, as Professor Ioaniddis said months ago, the response to COVID was likely to be the biggest data fiasco in a century, and so it has been. The predictions of 45 million global deaths, a repetition from the same source at Imperial College, of the prediction of 45 million Swine Flu Deaths, have proved to be just as wildly wrong. So far, global deaths from COVID have not reached even a million, whilst deaths from economic consequences of lockdowns are already way in excess of that. In Britain, the predictions of half a million deaths were equally wildly exaggerated, with deaths at still only just over 40,000, still much less than the number of flu deaths in Britain in 1968.

The experience of Sweden shows, as Professor Gupta and others have said all along, that the only rational solution is to isolate the 20% of the population, i.e. mostly those aged over 60, from the virus, so as to allow herd immunity to develop safely in the rest of the population. In the 1950's, when there were no widespread vaccines available for many diseases such as chicken pox, or mumps and so on, that is indeed what used to occur. Parents would allow their kids to visit friends who had such diseases, so as to become infected, and, thereby develop immunity, because they were less serious in childhood than in adulthood. With no vaccine in sight for COVID for another year, it is the only sensible course of action now, given that we know that for 80% of the population, it is asymptomatic, or has only very mild cold like symptoms attached to it. That is how Sweden has been able to develop herd immunity, and has now more or less stopped all new deaths from it.

But, of course, those that have been promoting that insane lockdown policy cannot admit that. Isabel Oakshott is a right-wing media hack, but again, that does not make everything she says automatically wrong. So, she was absolutely correct last night on Sky to point out that the number of deaths in Britain of people under 60, who had no underlying medical conditions was just 307. Its no wonder that the other contributors to the programme had no knowledge of this fact, because neither the government nor the media have had any interest in promoting that fact, as against their incessant talk about the number of infections, which is a meaningless statistic, and not just because it is based upon a deeply flawed testing regime. It is meaningless, because its not how many people are infected that is important, given that the vast majority of infections are asymptomatic, but only the number of deaths or serious illness. And, of course, illustrating why the new measures introduced by the government, egged on by Labour, are so idiotic, is that even though the number of infections have risen, there are no current cases of people in intensive care, and the number of new deaths remains relatively low, indeed much lower than deaths from flu!

The response to those facts being pointed out has itself been idiotic. Sodha's response to the fact that there has only been 307 deaths of people under 60 was to retort, "well have you no concern for those 307 people"! We could, then, every year, say, "well have you no concern for the 8,000 people who die on average from flu, or the 17,000 who died in 2018 from flu? Should we then keep the economy in a total state of lockdown in perpetuity so as to avoid any deaths from any virus, be it flu or COVID? Indeed, should we not just abandon any activity that might result in a risk of death?" Its only necessary to ask the question to see how ridiculous such an approach is, because all life has some risk attached to it, and it is a question of balancing those risks one with another. We do not close down the economy, because every year several thousand people will contract flu, and die, because doing so would result in far more people dying from the consequences of such action. So, why on Earth would you close down the economy, and social interaction to avoid the death of just 307 people.

What is far more significant, here, is the 40,000 people, over 60, who have died, and whose deaths could have been avoided had other action been undertaken. Had that 40,000 people, and all of the others in the 20% of the population actually at risk from COVID, been isolated from it, then their lives could have been saved. Sodha's response to this argument was the most idiotic I have yet heard. She said that many of those people could not be isolated, because they depend on other people coming to take care of them in care homes and in hospitals, and so contact with these other people was unavoidable. Its as though she had never heard of the concept of PPE so that those providing such care do not transmit infections to those for whom they are providing care, or that she has never heard of the concept of initiating contact protocols to prevent such transmission of infections. This is just one example of those who have mindlessly promoted the idea of lockdowns, who, when confronted with the facts, seem to grab at any old argument, to cling to their failed agenda. After all, if a care home or a hospital isn't somewhere you can go, and expect to be protected from the transmission of infections, where can you? Its as though Sodha thinks that when someone goes into hospital for a routine operation they should expect to die from an infection, because, after all, why would you expect the operating theatre to be sterile, that the surgeon's instruments are sterilised, or that the surgeon will wear surgical gloves, masks and other PPE?!

The other argument she grabbed at was that there have been some cases of people who have suffered longer term conditions, such as chronic fatigue. But, those that bring forward such arguments never provide any actual data. Before taking any of these claims seriously, we need to know how many people have suffered such conditions, what proportion does this constitute, do we actually know that these conditions are a consequence of COVID or some other virus or condition, and are these people who are under 60 and have no other underlying condition, or are they also mainly people over 60, or who have some other condition that made them vulnerable?  The data we have suggests that only 20% of younger people who are ill with COVID19, suffer some form of chronic fatigue lasting several weeks.  But, the data also shows that the number of younger people who are actually ill with COVID19 is itself very small.  Those under 60 with no known illness comprise only 1% of deaths, and about the same proportion applies in relation to those suffering more than mild symptoms.  20% of a small number is an even smaller number, in this case, 20% of 1% is just 0.2%.  But, COVID is not peculiar in this regard, because longer term chronic fatigue is a feature of many other viruses.

Similarly, the argument is sometimes raised that herd immunity can't be the way forward, because there have been reported cases of people who have been reinfected. In fact, there is only one documented case of someone who has been reinfected, and that was of someone who first had a strain of COVID19 prevalent in North America, who subsequently was infected with a strain prevalent in Europe. Basing yourself on just one case is not a very scientific way of proceeding, but, in any case, this individual was asymptomatic, because having developed immunity against the North American strain, it was sufficient to give them resistance to the European strain. More importantly, the mindlessness of those that make this argument is shown by the fact that, if it were valid, it would mean there is no point in spending time developing a vaccine. They seem unaware that vaccines also work by creating artificial herd immunity as opposed to naturally acquired herd immunity. It involves the production of antibodies to fight off the virus. If its not possible to develop immunity by natural means to prevent reinfection, then a vaccine which works by also producing such an immune response will not work either!

Sodha's idiotic argument was almost equalled by Boris Johnson, who in his address to the nation talked about it not being acceptable to “lock up” the old and vulnerable. But, no one is talking about locking up the old and vulnerable, any more than is already the case for some of them confined to care homes and hospitals. Any old person or sick person should, of course, be free to go out and risk infection with COVID or flu, or any other such disease, in just the same way that they are free to go out and smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol that might kill them, or in just the same way that someone with a nut allergy is free to go out and eat nuts if they so choose. But, all having made that choice must then accept the risk attached to their actions.

I would love to have been able to have gone dancing over the last six months. However, as someone aged over 60, and an asthmatic, even if the government had allowed me to do so, I would have chosen not to, in order to avoid the risk of infection. But, that would have been a matter of my choice. It would not have been a question of being locked up. On the contrary, it is the government's action in imposing the lockdown that has effectively meant that I am locked up, because they have taken away my choice as to whether to go dancing or not. And, although I would not have chosen to do that, I see no reason why someone under 60 in good health should not have that freedom to engage in such action, a part of any civilised, free society, because they could do so perfectly safely.

It is not a question of those of us in that vulnerable 20% being “locked up” as Johnson claims. I have been self isolating since March. But, that self isolation does not mean being “locked up”. I can still exercise in my garden, just as I can see my son and his partner safely there in the open air; I can walk the dog safely, or go for my daily half hour run, whilst keeping physically distant from others; I can talk to others online or via Skype, and so on. The idea that any of this amounts to being “locked up” is nonsense. What would be useful would be if the government facilitated that for everyone in the 20%, by ensuring that there was sufficient capacity for online deliveries, and that Britain had a fast and reliable broadband infrastructure. What would be useful would be if the government allowed the 80% of the population not at risk from COVID 19 to just get on with their lives as normal and build up herd immunity as has happened in Sweden, so that the virus is quickly killed off, and we can all get back to normal.