In some way, I suppose, it’s gratifying to see the mainstream media finally catching up to The BFD. For nearly a year, we’ve been reporting the growing body of scientific evidence that lockdowns do not work. At last, some senior mainstream journalists, at least, are starting to catch on.
Globally, assuming (and it’s quite an assumption) that death figures are not inflated, the Wuhan plague would barely scrape into the Top Ten causes of death. In Australia, it doesn’t come within cooee of the Top 20. In fact, COVID deaths remain less than a quarter of the 2019 toll for influenza and pneumonia.
Yet we don’t ban the prime causes of death: alcohol, cigarettes or sugar (much as some busybody troughers would like to) because we recognise that living fulfilling lives entails a certain amount of risk.
The “health advice” for COVID-19, however, has become almost sacred, dominating other considerations. Leaders bat away any criticism of restrictions by reference to it.
In what must be the greatest overreaction in health policy history, Western Australia’s government put Perth, a city of two million people, in hard five-day lockdown on Sunday because one perfectly healthy man in his 20s tested positive for COVID-19.
Does this not strike anyone as more than a little bit insane?
Not to mention anti-democratic?
If the health advice is to shut down major cities for a week and put travel plans in disarray whenever someone tests positive on a PCR test for COVID-19, the health advice — just as it so often is for drinking, flossing and smoking — should be politely declined. Thanks but no thanks. Just as war is too important to be left to the generals (as Georges Clemenceau once said), civil liberties and livelihoods are too important to be left to health bureaucrats.
In an interview last week, South Australia’s Chief Medical Officer suggested checking in with QR codes should remain after the pandemic had passed so we are better prepared for the next one, which climate change had, she said, made more likely.
These people are mad with power. Far from being celebrated as “heroes”, they should be unceremoniously thrown out of their unelected sinecures and every one of our trampled civil liberties handed back with a grovelling apology from every politician who robbed them from us.
More importantly, not one of them should be paid another cent from the public purse until the staggering cost of their Chicken Little fearmongering is paid off in full.
Last week, the International Monetary Fund said the pandemic had cost governments $US14 trillion. Here, combined federal and state government debt is on track to rise from the equivalent of 42 per cent of GDP in 2018 to 74 per cent by this year — a much bigger increase than any other major country.
That’s about an increase of $640bn. Let’s hope we’ve saved a lot of lives.
But it’s not the people who imposed the measures, nor those who largely clamoured for them, who will be paying it off. Like old-time Canaanites throwing their babies into a burning bronze maw, we have collectively sacrificed our childrens’ futures in order to allay our irrational fears.
Even as health measures, Brisbane and Perth-style mini-lockdowns don’t make much sense. It’s well known the incubation period of COVID is up to 14 days. If Perth reaches the end of this week without any new cases emerging, it doesn’t mean the lockdown “worked” or that the offending security guard who tested positive hasn’t infected anyone.
It’s now 10 months since state and federal governments began enforcing the health advice to the letter. In the space of six weeks, three state capitals have been fully or partly locked down. No sane civilisation can lock down like this in perpetuity. It’s time we question the sustainability and logic of the health advice.
The Australian
And still the evidence is clear: lockdowns do not work.
We’ve lost our collective minds.
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