https://archive.ph/kl7Ik
Lionel Shriver
Why didnt more people resist lockdown?
From magazine issue: 3 September 2022
Why didnt more people resist lockdown?
[Getty Images]
Text settings
Comments
Share
Last weeks Spectator interview with Rishi Sunak conveyed the
anti-science science, the paucity of even fag-packet cost-benefit
analysis and the ideological lockdown of Boris Johnsons cabinet that
brought forth calamitously extensive lockdowns of everyone else. Ever
since, numerous politicians and institutions implicated in this rash >experiment have had a vested interest in maintaining the myth that
putting whole societies into standby mode, as if countries are mere >flatscreens that can be benignly switched on and off by governmental
remote, saved many millions of lives.
As it will take years for culpable parties to retire, I once feared that
a full generation would need to elapse before we recognised lockdowns
for what they were: the biggest public health debacle in history. Yet >everywhere I turn lately, still another journalist is decrying the
avoidable social, medical and economic costs of this hysterical
over-reaction to a virus, while deriding lockdown zealots for having
vilified sceptics of a policy that may well end up killing more people
than it protected. The Covid revisionism is welcome though its a good
deal easier to publish these opinion pieces now than it was two years
ago, and I speak from experience.
Im all for holding officialdom accountable for mistakes from on high
that continue to generate dire consequences, not least todays soaring >inflation. Yet its worth pressing more uncomfortably: should the public
not also be held accountable? After all, the professional naysayer Neil >Ferguson notoriously assumed that democracies would never get away
with lockdowns in Europe and then Italy did it. And we realised that
we could. What facilitated sending entire populations to their room
like naughty children? Not merely draconian laws, but widespread public >eagerness to obey them. Johnsons heavy hand was forced in part by
British opinion polls.
With nary a whimper, the public abdicated every civil right theyd
imagined to be inalienable
What was wrong with people individual people, and in many instances
this means you, reader yes, you whod never even heard of a
lockdown outside a prison or an American school-shooting drill, yet
who overnight embraced as inevitable a method of suppressing
communicable disease never before tried at scale, never recommended in
public health literature and first used to successfully quell Covid by >lying, authoritarian China? Why didnt more independent thinkers say:
Hold on a minute. Have you thought this through? Might nationwide house >arrest be just a tad over the top? And have you pols never heard of >unintended consequences? Why didnt more enterprising citizens hit the >internet and note: Wow! Weve had pandemics before and some older
folks would have lived through the contagions of 1957 and 1968
themselves and we didnt close so much as a betting shop. Why cant
we be trusted to act like grown-ups and behave in our own
self-interest? Why didnt more members of the public get angry?
In the UK, a resistance did emerge, but we were few and roundly
traduced. Chillingly uniform journalistic cheerleaders for government >restrictions on all the major networks might at least claim to have been >intimidated by coercive Ofcom guidelines. But under no such regulatory >pressure, most regular shmoes in whose faces interviewers poked
microphones still obligingly spouted: No ruination of our lives is too >extreme! With nary a whimper, the British public abdicated every civil
right theyd imagined the very week before to be inalienable: the right
to assembly; to free association; to family life; to travel, even the
right to leave the country; effectively, too, the right to free speech. >Worse, a substantial volunteer army became the states enforcers,
ringing the police when neighbours dared to go running twice in a day.
If we step back to gain a modicum of perspective, whats most disturbing >about the past ten years is a different kind of climate change: a
sequence of social manias that have swept the world like back-to-back >sandstorms.
In 2012, a rare mental illness entailing estrangement from the sexual >signifiers of ones own body suddenly snowballed into an international >obsession, until now we have thousands of women lopping off their
healthy breasts with the blessing of both the medical establishment and
the state.
In 2017, a movement energised by legitimate consternation over a
sexually predatory Hollywood producers abuse of power exploded into a >worldwide female grudge-fest, until no woman could hold her head high in >public without a personal story of sexual victimisation, which ambitious >females carried with them everywhere like bespoke handbags. Some of the
men destroyed by this frenzy surely deserved their fate, but others
didnt. In the process of conflating rape and a disappointing date while >demonising commonplace flirtation and courtship, we must have lowered
the birth rate in multiple countries by several babies per thousand.
In 2020, we all moaned cosily, Here we go, another lockdown, as if the >state barricading us in our homes for months on end were a time-honoured >tradition like Christmas. With the populace primed for hysteria, that
summer massive marches all over the world poured into the streets after
a single unjustified murder of a black suspect by a white policeman in >Minneapolis, issuing in an era consumed by race that is, alas, still
with us. It never appeared to enter the heads of indignant protestors in >Seoul that, gee, they didnt really have any black people in South Korea. >Swept up in this succession of manic social waves, everyone gets
exercised about the same thing, mindlessly repeats the same empty
phrases and eagerly adopts the same branding (with its implied chiming
in, the coinage MeToo was pitch-perfect). Trans women are women!
Believe women! Protect the NHS! Black lives matter! Yet once a mania
begins to subside, we never hear any sheepish self-examination. Say, >something like: Hmm. I do feel badly about that Floyd chap, but why did
I find myself shouting on a London street Hands up, dont shoot! when
our constabulary is unarmed? Members of the throng never seem to notice
that none of these passing intoxications was their idea, or to wonder
what this blowing-in-the-wind suggestibility says about their
vulnerability to, er, you know, fascism. So youve really got to worry
what comes next.
Michael Ejercito wrote:
https://archive.ph/kl7Ik
Lionel Shriver
Why didn’t more people resist lockdown?
From magazine issue: 3 September 2022
Why didn’t more people resist lockdown?
[Getty Images]
Text settings
Comments
Share
Last week’s Spectator interview with Rishi Sunak conveyed the
anti-science ‘science’, the paucity of even fag-packet cost-benefit
analysis and the ideological lockdown of Boris Johnson’s cabinet that
brought forth calamitously extensive lockdowns of everyone else. Ever
since, numerous politicians and institutions implicated in this rash
experiment have had a vested interest in maintaining the myth that
putting whole societies into standby mode, as if countries are mere
flatscreens that can be benignly switched on and off by governmental
remote, saved many millions of lives.
As it will take years for culpable parties to retire, I once feared that
a full generation would need to elapse before we recognised lockdowns
for what they were: the biggest public health debacle in history. Yet
everywhere I turn lately, still another journalist is decrying the
avoidable social, medical and economic costs of this hysterical
over-reaction to a virus, while deriding lockdown zealots for having
vilified sceptics of a policy that may well end up killing more people
than it protected. The Covid revisionism is welcome – though it’s a good >> deal easier to publish these opinion pieces now than it was two years
ago, and I speak from experience.
I’m all for holding officialdom accountable for mistakes from on high
that continue to generate dire consequences, not least today’s soaring
inflation. Yet it’s worth pressing more uncomfortably: should the public >> not also be held accountable? After all, the professional naysayer Neil
Ferguson notoriously assumed that democracies would never ‘get away
with’ lockdowns in Europe – ‘and then Italy did it. And we realised that
we could.’ What facilitated sending entire populations to their room
like naughty children? Not merely draconian laws, but widespread public
eagerness to obey them. Johnson’s heavy hand was forced in part by
British opinion polls.
With nary a whimper, the public abdicated every civil right they’d
imagined to be inalienable
What was wrong with people – individual people, and in many instances
this means you, reader – yes, you – who’d never even heard of a
‘lockdown’ outside a prison or an American school-shooting drill, yet
who overnight embraced as inevitable a method of suppressing
communicable disease never before tried at scale, never recommended in
public health literature and first used to ‘successfully’ quell Covid by >> lying, authoritarian China? Why didn’t more independent thinkers say:
‘Hold on a minute. Have you thought this through? Might nationwide house >> arrest be just a tad over the top? And have you pols never heard of
unintended consequences?’ Why didn’t more enterprising citizens hit the >> internet and note: ‘Wow! We’ve had pandemics before’ – and some older
folks would have lived through the contagions of 1957 and 1968
themselves – ‘and we didn’t close so much as a betting shop. Why can’t
we be trusted to act like grown-ups and behave in our own
self-interest?’ Why didn’t more members of the public get angry?
In the UK, a resistance did emerge, but we were few and roundly
traduced. Chillingly uniform journalistic cheerleaders for government
restrictions on all the major networks might at least claim to have been
intimidated by coercive Ofcom ‘guidelines’. But under no such regulatory >> pressure, most regular shmoes in whose faces interviewers poked
microphones still obligingly spouted: ‘No ruination of our lives is too
extreme!’ With nary a whimper, the British public abdicated every civil
right they’d imagined the very week before to be inalienable: the right
to assembly; to free association; to family life; to travel, even the
right to leave the country; effectively, too, the right to free speech.
Worse, a substantial volunteer army became the state’s enforcers,
ringing the police when neighbours dared to go running twice in a day.
If we step back to gain a modicum of perspective, what’s most disturbing >> about the past ten years is a different kind of climate change: a
sequence of social manias that have swept the world like back-to-back
sandstorms.
In 2012, a rare mental illness entailing estrangement from the sexual
signifiers of one’s own body suddenly snowballed into an international
obsession, until now we have thousands of women lopping off their
healthy breasts with the blessing of both the medical establishment and
the state.
In 2017, a movement energised by legitimate consternation over a
sexually predatory Hollywood producer’s abuse of power exploded into a
worldwide female grudge-fest, until no woman could hold her head high in
public without a personal story of sexual victimisation, which ambitious
females carried with them everywhere like bespoke handbags. Some of the
men destroyed by this frenzy surely deserved their fate, but others
didn’t. In the process of conflating rape and a disappointing date while >> demonising commonplace flirtation and courtship, we must have lowered
the birth rate in multiple countries by several babies per thousand.
In 2020, we all moaned cosily, ‘Here we go, another lockdown,’ as if the >> state barricading us in our homes for months on end were a time-honoured
tradition like Christmas. With the populace primed for hysteria, that
summer massive marches all over the world poured into the streets after
a single unjustified murder of a black suspect by a white policeman in
Minneapolis, issuing in an era consumed by race that is, alas, still
with us. It never appeared to enter the heads of indignant protestors in
Seoul that, gee, they didn’t really have any black people in South Korea. >> Swept up in this succession of manic social waves, everyone gets
exercised about the same thing, mindlessly repeats the same empty
phrases and eagerly adopts the same branding (with its implied chiming
in, the coinage ‘MeToo’ was pitch-perfect). Trans women are women!
Believe women! Protect the NHS! Black lives matter! Yet once a mania
begins to subside, we never hear any sheepish self-examination. Say,
something like: ‘Hmm. I do feel badly about that Floyd chap, but why did >> I find myself shouting on a London street “Hands up, don’t shoot!” when
our constabulary is unarmed?’ Members of the throng never seem to notice >> that none of these passing intoxications was their idea, or to wonder
what this blowing-in-the-wind suggestibility says about their
vulnerability to, er, you know, fascism. So you’ve really got to worry
what comes next.
The only *healthy* way to stop the pandemic, thereby saving lives, in
the U.K. & elsewhere is by rapidly ( http://bit.ly/RapidTestCOVID-19
) finding out at any given moment, including even while on-line, who
among us are unwittingly contagious (i.e pre-symptomatic or
asymptomatic) in order to http://tinyurl.com/ConvinceItForward (John
15:12) for them to call their doctor and self-quarantine per their
doctor in hopes of stopping this pandemic. Thus, we're hoping for the
best while preparing for the worse-case scenario of the Alpha lineage mutations and others like the Omicron, Gamma, Beta, Epsilon, Iota,
Lambda, Mu & Delta lineage mutations combining via
slip-RNA-replication to form hybrids like
http://tinyurl.com/Deltamicron that may render current COVID vaccines/monoclonals/medicines/pills no longer effective.
Indeed, I am wonderfully hungry ( http://tinyurl.com/RapidOmicronTest
) and hope you, Michael, also have a healthy appetite too.
So how are you ?
HeartDoc Andrew, in the Holy Spirit, boldly wrote:
Michael Ejercito wrote:
https://archive.ph/kl7Ik
Lionel Shriver
Why didnt more people resist lockdown?
From magazine issue: 3 September 2022
Why didnt more people resist lockdown?
[Getty Images]
Text settings
Comments
Share
Last weeks Spectator interview with Rishi Sunak conveyed the
anti-science science, the paucity of even fag-packet cost-benefit
analysis and the ideological lockdown of Boris Johnsons cabinet that
brought forth calamitously extensive lockdowns of everyone else. Ever
since, numerous politicians and institutions implicated in this rash
experiment have had a vested interest in maintaining the myth that
putting whole societies into standby mode, as if countries are mere
flatscreens that can be benignly switched on and off by governmental
remote, saved many millions of lives.
As it will take years for culpable parties to retire, I once feared that >>> a full generation would need to elapse before we recognised lockdowns
for what they were: the biggest public health debacle in history. Yet
everywhere I turn lately, still another journalist is decrying the
avoidable social, medical and economic costs of this hysterical
over-reaction to a virus, while deriding lockdown zealots for having
vilified sceptics of a policy that may well end up killing more people
than it protected. The Covid revisionism is welcome though its a good >>> deal easier to publish these opinion pieces now than it was two years
ago, and I speak from experience.
Im all for holding officialdom accountable for mistakes from on high
that continue to generate dire consequences, not least todays soaring
inflation. Yet its worth pressing more uncomfortably: should the public >>> not also be held accountable? After all, the professional naysayer Neil
Ferguson notoriously assumed that democracies would never get away
with lockdowns in Europe and then Italy did it. And we realised that >>> we could. What facilitated sending entire populations to their room
like naughty children? Not merely draconian laws, but widespread public
eagerness to obey them. Johnsons heavy hand was forced in part by
British opinion polls.
With nary a whimper, the public abdicated every civil right theyd
imagined to be inalienable
What was wrong with people individual people, and in many instances
this means you, reader yes, you whod never even heard of a
lockdown outside a prison or an American school-shooting drill, yet
who overnight embraced as inevitable a method of suppressing
communicable disease never before tried at scale, never recommended in
public health literature and first used to successfully quell Covid by >>> lying, authoritarian China? Why didnt more independent thinkers say:
Hold on a minute. Have you thought this through? Might nationwide house >>> arrest be just a tad over the top? And have you pols never heard of
unintended consequences? Why didnt more enterprising citizens hit the
internet and note: Wow! Weve had pandemics before and some older
folks would have lived through the contagions of 1957 and 1968
themselves and we didnt close so much as a betting shop. Why cant
we be trusted to act like grown-ups and behave in our own
self-interest? Why didnt more members of the public get angry?
In the UK, a resistance did emerge, but we were few and roundly
traduced. Chillingly uniform journalistic cheerleaders for government
restrictions on all the major networks might at least claim to have been >>> intimidated by coercive Ofcom guidelines. But under no such regulatory >>> pressure, most regular shmoes in whose faces interviewers poked
microphones still obligingly spouted: No ruination of our lives is too
extreme! With nary a whimper, the British public abdicated every civil
right theyd imagined the very week before to be inalienable: the right
to assembly; to free association; to family life; to travel, even the
right to leave the country; effectively, too, the right to free speech.
Worse, a substantial volunteer army became the states enforcers,
ringing the police when neighbours dared to go running twice in a day.
If we step back to gain a modicum of perspective, whats most disturbing >>> about the past ten years is a different kind of climate change: a
sequence of social manias that have swept the world like back-to-back
sandstorms.
In 2012, a rare mental illness entailing estrangement from the sexual
signifiers of ones own body suddenly snowballed into an international
obsession, until now we have thousands of women lopping off their
healthy breasts with the blessing of both the medical establishment and
the state.
In 2017, a movement energised by legitimate consternation over a
sexually predatory Hollywood producers abuse of power exploded into a
worldwide female grudge-fest, until no woman could hold her head high in >>> public without a personal story of sexual victimisation, which ambitious >>> females carried with them everywhere like bespoke handbags. Some of the
men destroyed by this frenzy surely deserved their fate, but others
didnt. In the process of conflating rape and a disappointing date while >>> demonising commonplace flirtation and courtship, we must have lowered
the birth rate in multiple countries by several babies per thousand.
In 2020, we all moaned cosily, Here we go, another lockdown, as if the >>> state barricading us in our homes for months on end were a time-honoured >>> tradition like Christmas. With the populace primed for hysteria, that
summer massive marches all over the world poured into the streets after
a single unjustified murder of a black suspect by a white policeman in
Minneapolis, issuing in an era consumed by race that is, alas, still
with us. It never appeared to enter the heads of indignant protestors in >>> Seoul that, gee, they didnt really have any black people in South Korea. >>> Swept up in this succession of manic social waves, everyone gets
exercised about the same thing, mindlessly repeats the same empty
phrases and eagerly adopts the same branding (with its implied chiming
in, the coinage MeToo was pitch-perfect). Trans women are women!
Believe women! Protect the NHS! Black lives matter! Yet once a mania
begins to subside, we never hear any sheepish self-examination. Say,
something like: Hmm. I do feel badly about that Floyd chap, but why did >>> I find myself shouting on a London street Hands up, dont shoot! when
our constabulary is unarmed? Members of the throng never seem to notice >>> that none of these passing intoxications was their idea, or to wonder
what this blowing-in-the-wind suggestibility says about their
vulnerability to, er, you know, fascism. So youve really got to worry
what comes next.
The only *healthy* way to stop the pandemic, thereby saving lives, in
the U.K. & elsewhere is by rapidly ( http://bit.ly/RapidTestCOVID-19
) finding out at any given moment, including even while on-line, who
among us are unwittingly contagious (i.e pre-symptomatic or
asymptomatic) in order to http://tinyurl.com/ConvinceItForward (John
15:12) for them to call their doctor and self-quarantine per their
doctor in hopes of stopping this pandemic. Thus, we're hoping for the
best while preparing for the worse-case scenario of the Alpha lineage
mutations and others like the Omicron, Gamma, Beta, Epsilon, Iota,
Lambda, Mu & Delta lineage mutations combining via
slip-RNA-replication to form hybrids like
http://tinyurl.com/Deltamicron that may render current COVID
vaccines/monoclonals/medicines/pills no longer effective.
Indeed, I am wonderfully hungry ( http://tinyurl.com/RapidOmicronTest
) and hope you, Michael, also have a healthy appetite too.
So how are you ?
I am wonderfully hungry!
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 302 |
| Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
| Uptime: | 123:08:55 |
| Calls: | 6,769 |
| Calls today: | 2 |
| Files: | 12,299 |
| Messages: | 5,376,804 |
| Posted today: | 2 |