The Price of Panic

April 20, 2020 Longrider Civil Liberties, General News, misanthropy 26

In this case, the price of panic is a trashed economy that will take decades to repair.

When Covid-19 struck these shores, the government took what I felt was a fairly sensible approach. Allow the virus to spread, but minimise infection through common sense measures such as social distancing and hand washing. They were panicked by a sudden spike in cases combined by hysterical reporting and pressure from the populace to “do something”. Locking down the country was “something” so that was what they did.

There were sceptics such as your faithful scribe who felt that this was a knee-jerk reaction and that a police state was not necessary and would be damaging both to our economy and our liberty. But anyone who made this point was accused of wanting to kill people. See for example this point raised by an old friend who bought into the panic:

Hi Mark
I wonder how you would manage ensuring lockdown is adhered to?
I’ve just had a zoom meeting including people in Turkey and the Isle of Man.
In Turkey over 65 locked down, escorted by police to a doctor if necessary, shopping etc done for them.
In the Isle of Man the fine for breaking lockdown is £960 or 4 months. And a man who tested positive but wasn’t feeling too bad walked his father’s dog breaking his isolation and has been sent down for 14 days. In Spain you are only allowed 1 person in a car and 1 trip to the shops a week.
This isn’t a rehearsal Mark. This government has been lax enough as it is. With people breaking the rules which are not strict enough IMHO others are dying.

To be fair to her, she means well, but has swallowed the propaganda, and framed her question as a false dichotomy. I did explain that there is another alternative to the causation/correlation fallacy of the lock-down option. I also pointed out that despite the propaganda, the lock-down was never about saving lives. People will get this virus and a significant number will die as a consequence. There is nothing that the government can do about this – the lock-down was about attempting to manage the demand on ICU beds, not about preventing deaths, the majority of which will happen anyway due to co-morbidity.

I then went on to remind her that other countries have managed to contain the outbreak without a full scale lock-down therefore lock-down does not correspond with death rates. It’s a classic correlation/causation confusion. Interestingly, she hasn’t responded.

Now, today, we get this.

The UK has today announced 450 more coronavirus deaths – the fewest for a fortnight.

England declared 429 deaths, Scotland 12 and Wales nine. Northern Ireland has yet to announce its daily update, and an all-UK round-up with an adjusted total is expected later this afternoon.

The number is a fall on the 596 fatalities announced yesterday, Sunday, and half as many as the day before that (888). It is the lowest number since April 6, when 439 victims were confirmed.

Although the statistics are known to drop after a weekend, the sharp fall adds to growing evidence that the peak of the UK’s epidemic has blown over.

It comes as a medicine professor at the University of Oxford has argued the peak was actually about a month ago, a week before lockdown started on March 23, and that the draconian measures people are now living with were unnecessary.

Professor Carl Heneghan claims data shows infection rates halved after the Government launched a public information campaign on March 16 urging people to wash their hands and keep two metres (6’6″) away from others.

He said ministers ‘lost sight’ of the evidence and rushed into a nationwide quarantine six days later after being instructed by scientific advisers who he claims have been ‘consistently wrong’ during the crisis.

If this is correct, we were right. If this is correct, the government has trashed the economy for no good reason. If this is correct, heads need to roll. If this is correct, the lock-down needs to be lifted so that we can get back to our lives, the draconian legislation repealed and Plod put back in their box.

26 Comments

  1. Here in Queensland we had no new cases overnight yet our dumb Premier wants to see this for several weeks. Evil bitch is, of course, still drawing a salary. The whole of Australia should be open for business and interaction with sensible social distancing and good hygiene while we figure out how we reopen international borders.

  2. The problem now, as I see it, is that the government has no strategy to get out of lockdown. And, the public are so terrified, I don’t think they will leave their homes even when it is all declared ‘over’ (whatever that is).

    There is going to be a HUGE problem in getting people back to work and kids to school.

    The MSM has hyped up the scare factor, and this bogeyman now has mythical proportions.

    • Trust me, the public aren’t so terrified as you’d like to think. On my morning walk today I saw quite a bit more traffic than the last couple of weeks. I think people are beginning to weary of lockdown.

  4. One of the most scary thing about the possibly unnecessary panic about Covid19 is the fear that it has engendered in ordinary Britons. This fear is not fear of or about the disease, but fear of the State. A good example of this fear comes from a friend of mine who lives near to me.

    He desperately wants to take his daughter, whose getting lockdown stir crazy, to a playground that the council have interestingly forgotten to lock up. He mentioned his plan to his wife who hit the roof with fear and anxiety. She was really worried that if someone saw him and his daughter in the playground and grassed him up to the police (something sadly likely these days), then social services would take their child on the grounds of non compliance with lockdown and therefore being a bad parent.

    This sort of grinding fear that the State will take children from parents who do not comply to questionable State rules is in my view something that should never have happened but it is what we have, with the assistance of filthy grasses and the equally filthy police, what we’ve ended up with.

  6. Rather good and much, much better than expected

    Weekly Roundup – 19th April 2020convert case
    Lord Nazir Ahmed
    You Clap For Me Now
    President Donald Trump
    Corona Faces
    Covid Cops Watch: Week 4
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGbYHJcMbz8

    A caveat, the WHO funding pie chart is extremely wrong. Actual is:

    2018:
    United States – $436.8 million
    United Kingdom – $318.7 million
    Germany – $240.5 million
    Japan – $134.7 million
    Kuwait – $94.2 million
    Sweden – $76.6 million
    Norway – $64.7 million
    Australia – $54.4 million
    Canada – $46.2 million
    https://inews.co.uk/news/health/who-funding-by-country-donald-trump-world-health-organisation-funds-money-halts-support-2539278

  8. In Spain we can now have two to a car, provided the passenger sits in the back. Only one person can go shopping, but no limit on frequency. People here are very docile and accepting of the new rules, though the future is bleak.

  9. Ever since this started I’ve had a line from a song going through my head. It took me a while to remember what the song was: Dracula Moon by Joan Osborne. It’s the second line in the song: “What if the cure is worse than the disease?”

    I’m still not sure what the answer is but I’m tending more and more towards yes, it is.

  10. An issue is Boris. Those who contract it badly seem to have the usual – a very strong affection for those there for them, who saved him. Also the whole hospital thing of being flat on your back and dependant. Plus the wish to pay back.

    Then there’s the aftermath; the fact you’re still infectious for about 14 days. That your body is not always your buddy. Most are known to have quite severe lung problems and it can affect other internal organs (lots of this on the web, Facebook really).

    Boris is likely to be a cautious, scared little bunny and the fact he wants to keep us in check until the 2nd wave is over implies he’s drunk from the healthist cup… deeply.

  11. Gov Leak today:

    Scared Bunny Boris to keep most lockdown in place until end of 2021, or until vaccine developed

    Gove on Sunday: Pubs and restaurants probably shut until Christmas. – 2020 or 2021?

    Shutdown cost is running at ~£30 Million per With CV-19 premature death and GDP cost/death increasing daily

    Maybe it’s time to put Col Tim Collins in charge, he’s not scared of some deaths causing negative press coverage unlike our spineless politicians who refuse to lead and hide behind Medics whose prime objective is saving lives

    Replacing Med advisors with Undertakers another thought

  12. At long last, in Cyprus at least, someone with authority has chosen to speak. And it makes sense, especially that utter crap that it’s very easy to get infected.

    https://cyprus-mail.com/2020/04/21/coronavirus-matsakis-calls-on-president-to-lift-restrictions/

    UK needs more like that. Get rid of this team of advisors, quit looking at models, start going with the data. The peak’s gone, next surge will be lots smaller. Once those declared cured is higher than new infections, that’s it, our job’s done, our sacrifice made.

  13. Misters are fretting about a second wave of infection if they end the lockdown in the next few weeks. Few months won’t matter. If there is a pool of healthy people and an infectious virus locus somewhere, there will be a second wave once the lockdown ends. It will be grit your teeth time and pray. Infuenza virus shuffles of a few tens of thousands every winter. There is no lockdown. That’s because of the psychological crutch of a vaccine.

  14. Gov Today (again): Isolation needed for rest of 2020. Must wait for a vaccine or people might die

    Was world shut/isolating before MMR, Whooping Cough, Chickenpox, Flu…. vaccines?

    As I was at Prep school in 196/70s and caught all but mumps; holidayed in IoM, London, Tunisia, Austria, Switzerland: World Not Shut

    Is world shut/isolating from:
    TB: 1.5 million people died from TB in 2018
    HIV: In 2018, 770,000 people died of AIDS-related illnesses. This number has reduced since the peak of 1.7 million in 2004 and 1.4 million in 2010

    Wuhan SARS-CV19: Global Pandemic? Deaths (176,786) and infected (2,520,522 cases) are orders of magnitude below a Global Pandemic

    Message for Govs: Everybody Dies. End this unnecessary hugely damaging shutdown Now

  15. These kinds of epidemics always eventually die down. I appreciate that each one is different, but there surely must be a regular pattern to they way these things go. If someone is an epidemiologist I would expect them to have hundreds of case studies to draw on so that they had a pretty good idea about how this particular one will pan out. If not, what use are they?

  16. Here in Devon they have abandoned plans for 400 bed Nightingale hospital at the county showground in favour of a much smaller one on the site of a former Homebase store presumably because not enough of us are getting ill.

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