Blanket lockdown measures appear to be doing far more damage than good yet many politicians continue to advocate for their use. Why on earth would they? Forget globalist agendas and new world order conspiracies, the real reason may be far less mysterious than you think...
I believe the inclination of politicians towards megalomania and the pursuit of personal power are generally well understood within the public zeitgeist. I also believe our governments have been treating their battle with Covid as an absurd zero sum game in which our gain or loss of utility is somehow exactly balanced by losses or gains in Covid case numbers, irrespective of any rising collateral death tolls or economic damage. On top of this, I believe our obsession with movies like "Contagion", zombie flicks and apocalyptic films helped prime our collective conscious to overreact massively to trigger words like ‘outbreak’, ‘pandemic’ and ‘quarantine’.
It is also my conviction that many of those in office would rather adopt a strategy they knew would most likely do more damage than good if they felt by pursuing that strategy they would be shielded from any potential political reprisals that they wouldn't be otherwise. To elaborate, as soon as other developed countries governments began to adopt indiscriminate lockdown strategies, other governments felt obliged to follow suit, or risk being blamed for any subsequent deaths; easier to hide behind, and potentially blame, their small groups of scientific advisers than try to explain the pros and cons of alternative solutions to a complex issue to the public (as it happens, none of the countries which chose not to go into lockdown have particularly high death rates at all, many have some of the lowest mortality rates in the world. Here’s a list of those countries which did and didn’t go into lockdown, check for yourself https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-52103747). We now know that there will be many millions more collateral blanket lockdown deaths than from the virus itself but this is of no concern to politicians (see my article “millions will die if we don’t replace blanket lockdown measures with targeted protective measures”.). This is of no concern to politicians because when everyone is to blame, no one is to blame. They believe that as every country went into lockdown, they can’t be blamed for choosing to as well. Of course, what these cowardly policy makers didn’t anticipate was developed countries like Sweden being brave and rational enough not to pursue a blanket lockdown strategy and then achieving a lower death rate than many of those countries which did, minus the hundreds of thousands of collateral deaths, immense economic damage and job losses.
The motivation to support blanket lockdown in many countries is more immediately obvious than in the UK; in the US the issue has become blatantly bipartisan with the Democrats seeking to conflate the problem and contemporaneously blame Trump and the Republicans; despotic regimes like Russia and China have clear incentives for promoting an excuse to track, trace and control the movement of their population, with China, for example, using Covid as an excuse to suppress protestors in Hong Kong.
I wouldn't be surprised if many look at the hundreds of billions of dollars at stake for big pharma companies seeking to profit from the coronavirus panademic [1, 2] and look at the multi-billion dollar pain killer scam/ opium epidemic still sweeping America, in which, beginning in the 1990s, thousands of doctors across the nation were duped or somehow coerced into over prescribing extreme pain killers (like ‘OxyContin’) to the point that millions became so addicted that after their medical insurance ran out, or their doctor’s ended their prescription, they turned to illegally procuring pills or injecting heroin; this eventually lead to a successful, record breaking $8.3 billion lawsuit, which may seem large but only dented big pharma’s overall profits, as Andrew Kolodny at Brandeis University in Massachusetts explains, “Criminal charges against corporations don’t work. They’re seen by companies as the cost of doing business” [3]. Drug companies have made billions misleading or somehow coercing doctors and the public right in front of our eyes before, without allowing themselves to be hindered by unprofitable moral inhibitions, who says they couldn't do it again? I'm not so convinced by this argument, although I wouldn't rule out any corruption, or big pharma potentially having any influence on the narrative being promoted to us in the media; drug companies have a strong vested interest in the public believing the only way out of lockdown is vaccination and yield massive political power and cash flow; the seminal rule of modern marketing: first create the need, then fill it.
However, whilst I believe these points are undeniable and I believe they may all have contributed towards us entering blanket lockdown in the first place, I do not believe they are what's keeping us from abandoning blanket lockdown measures now or ruling them out in the future.
The predominant reason blanket lockdown measures are now being enforced is that those who initiated the measures in the first instance now have no choice but to continue to advocate for their use. This is because stating these measures are no longer the best solution to the problem is tantamount to saying they never were. This is tantamount to saying they made a mistake and considering that mistake ended many lives, ruined millions more and put the economy into the worst recession in more than a century [4], no inherently spineless politician or expert is ever going to admit they made a mistake. In fact, I have no doubt the potential burden of immense guilt and shame such a confession would bring has led many politicians and their failed expert scientific advisers, like Prof Neil, to believe their own lies and delusions, only adding to their fascist conviction. But if we call out our governments and let them know, whether they are willing to admit it or not, that we are aware of the mistakes they made and demand they change their strategy we can still save many lives in the UK and around the world.
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program” – Milton Friedman
References:
1. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/covid-19-created-55-multi-billion-dollar-business-opportunities-totaling-1-38---1-94-trillion-301080921.html
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