https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/09/07/the-neverending-nightmare-of-zero-covid/
China’s ongoing brutal lockdowns are a reminder of the insanity of ‘Zero >Covid’.
Brendan O'Neill
BRENDAN O'NEILL
CHIEF POLITICAL WRITER
7th September 2022
The ideology of lockdown is a menace to society
Share
Topics
COVID-19
POLITICS
WORLD
Remember Zero Covid? This was the idea that the only way to deal with >Covid-19 was by eliminating it. Only when every trace of the virus had
been scrubbed from society would it be safe to let the masses out again, >insisted the Zero Covid fanatics. Zero Covid ideologues were everywhere.
In the medical establishment, the political elite, the media. In early
2021 the Guardian’s leader writers were telling Boris Johnson that he
should ‘[stamp] out the virus with a Zero Covid strategy’. Kill Covid to
save society.
How is Zero Covid looking now? Ask China. The suffering of the Chinese
people under the ideology of Zero Covid is extraordinary. Lockdown may
be a mercifully fading memory for us in the West but it remains the
ruthless daily reality for the Chinese. The numbers are staggering. >Sixty-eight cities in China are currently in partial or full lockdown.
As of last week this includes the megacity of Chengdu, where 21million
people have been instructed to stay indoors. Only one person from each >household is allowed out to do essential shopping. No exercise, no
strolls in the park, no going to work. Briefly nipping out for food is
the only civil liberty the people of Chengdu enjoy.
The Chengdu lockdown is truly dystopian. Not only have millions been
placed under house arrest – others have been forced to take up residence
at their places of work. Chengdu is an economic powerhouse, home to
global players in the automaker and technology markets, including
Volkswagen and Foxconn Technology Group. And to ensure that the lockdown >doesn’t disrupt production too much, some factories are operating
‘closed loop systems’. This means ‘separating workers from the rest of
the community’. The workers stay on site, in campuses, away from their
fellow citizens and families, and are constantly tested for sickness.
All so that they can carry on being a cog in China’s vast economic
machine. Under Zero Covid you’re either a potential carrier of disease
that must be sealed into your home or a machine to be separated from
society so that you can carry on producing for profit. Zero Covid
dehumanises all.
The announcement of the lockdown in Chengdu last week led to widespread
panic buying. Social-media footage showed ‘desperate Chengdu residents’ >grabbing as many essential supplies as they could. Such distressing
images were not surprising considering that in other recent lockdowns
people have run out of food. The people of Chengdu may be thinking of
the city of Xi’an in north-west China, which was locked down in December
and January. A few days into that lockdown, even the right of people to
leave their homes to buy essentials was scrapped. Remarkably, 13million >people were forbidden from going outside for any reason whatsoever, even
to acquire the means of sustaining life. Instead, officialdom set up a >food-delivery system. It didn’t go well. People took to social media to
say they weren’t receiving enough to eat. One desperate man offered up
his Nintendo console for some instant noodles and steamed buns. Another >offered dishwashing liquid for apples. Xi’an was experiencing a ‘return
to primitive society’, said one resident.
In between the Xi’an and Chengdu lockdowns came the Shanghai lockdown, >possibly the most disturbing lockdown in China so far. It was in April
and May. It lasted for two months. The restrictions on the lives of the >city’s 25million residents were ‘ruthlessly enforced’. Again people ran
out of food. Some became so desperate that they ate wild vegetables,
falling ill as a result. It was ‘eerily reminiscent of the desperate
times of the Great Leap Forward… when the bark was stripped from trees
by starving people’, said one observer. Overnight, green metal fences
were erected outside any apartment building in which a resident had
tested positive for Covid – homes turned into impromptu prisons. Alarms
were put on the doors of the infected, to alert the authorities if they >ventured outside – a modern-day version of the black cross that was
painted on the doors of the infected during the Great Plague of London
in the 1660s.
Why Boris deranged the elites
RECOMMENDED
Why Boris deranged the elites
TOM SLATER
Like something out of a dystopian B-movie, drones were sent out into the >Shanghai sky with loudspeakers telling the locked-up masses below to
‘Control the soul’s desire for freedom!’. There were forced evacuations
and forced family separations, too. Entire communities were relocated.
The people of the Pingwang suburb were moved en masse to quarantine >facilities a hundred miles away. The thousand residents of the town of
Beicai were forced into temporary accommodation so that their town could
be ‘disinfected’. Children who tested positive for Covid were removed
from their parents. People going hungry, people fenced into their homes,
sick kids spirited away from their parents – it is extraordinary that
this was happening in the gleaming modern metropolis of Shanghai, just
three months ago, as we in the West went about our post-lockdown lives
as normal.
The harms of Zero Covid are becoming clearer and clearer. As the British >Medical Journal pointed out, there were even ‘reports of people [in
Shanghai] dying from non-Covid causes because they [could not] access
their usual medicines’. The entire oath of medicine – First, Do No Harm
– is turned upside down when society devotes itself so singularly and >psychotically to tackling one virus alone. Spiritual health, social
health, even physical health – all have been sacrificed in China’s
crusade to achieve Zero Covid. Let’s be grateful Boris didn’t heed the >Guardian’s plea to pursue a Zero Covid strategy. Actually, the horrors
of Shanghai seem to have changed even the Guardian’s mind. ‘Fear,
paranoia, anger – this is life under China’s Zero Covid strategy’, a
headline said in April.
And yet even as we balk at the tyranny in China, now spreading,
virus-like, to Chengdu, let us not imagine that we would never do
anything like this. We already did. Our lockdowns were not as severe as >China’s, but we did send drones to spy on dog-walkers during the first >lockdown in March 2020. We did limit people’s right to leave their
homes. We did clamp down on criticism of the Covid strategy on social
media, just as China is now doing. The social-media giants of Silicon
Valley gave Beijing a run for its money when it came to restricting >‘disinformation’ about Covid and lockdown. And yes, we harmed our
citizens’ health by turning Covid into the only issue in town.
Undetected cancers and mental-health problems are just two of the >public-health crises that appear to have been exacerbated by lockdown.
Indeed, the West’s importing of Chinese-style authoritarianism was one
of the most disturbing things in the Covid era. Who can forget
Imperial’s Neil Ferguson saying that he and the other early supporters
of lockdown never imagined they could ‘get away with’ what China had
done around Wuhan – but ‘then Italy did it, and we realised we could’.
In July 2020 Tory MP and one-time leader hopeful Jeremy Hunt seemed to
praise China’s approach, and suggested that we should also have aimed
for ‘zero infection and elimination of the disease’. Go and tell that to
the heavily pregnant woman in Shanghai who posted a desperate message on >social media saying she only had two days’ worth of food left.
Liz Truss and the crisis of political will
RECOMMENDED
Liz Truss and the crisis of political will
BRENDAN O'NEILL
Zero Covid has been an act of self-sabotage for China. It is now having
a huge impact on China’s economy and political stability. It is all an
apt and depressing reminder of what happens when the state elevates
ideology over reason. When citizens are reduced to vectors of disease to
be managed and controlled rather than being treated as wise, good
individuals who should be trusted to behave responsibly. The nightmare
in China is an indictment of the regime in Beijing, and also of some of
the lockdown fanatics here in the West who might have happily led us
down the same path to social destruction.
Michael Ejercito wrote:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/09/07/the-neverending-nightmare-of-zero-covid/
China’s ongoing brutal lockdowns are a reminder of the insanity of ‘Zero >> Covid’.
Brendan O'Neill
BRENDAN O'NEILL
CHIEF POLITICAL WRITER
7th September 2022
The ideology of lockdown is a menace to society
Share
Topics
COVID-19
POLITICS
WORLD
Remember Zero Covid? This was the idea that the only way to deal with
Covid-19 was by eliminating it. Only when every trace of the virus had
been scrubbed from society would it be safe to let the masses out again,
insisted the Zero Covid fanatics. Zero Covid ideologues were everywhere.
In the medical establishment, the political elite, the media. In early
2021 the Guardian’s leader writers were telling Boris Johnson that he
should ‘[stamp] out the virus with a Zero Covid strategy’. Kill Covid to >> save society.
How is Zero Covid looking now? Ask China. The suffering of the Chinese
people under the ideology of Zero Covid is extraordinary. Lockdown may
be a mercifully fading memory for us in the West but it remains the
ruthless daily reality for the Chinese. The numbers are staggering.
Sixty-eight cities in China are currently in partial or full lockdown.
As of last week this includes the megacity of Chengdu, where 21million
people have been instructed to stay indoors. Only one person from each
household is allowed out to do essential shopping. No exercise, no
strolls in the park, no going to work. Briefly nipping out for food is
the only civil liberty the people of Chengdu enjoy.
The Chengdu lockdown is truly dystopian. Not only have millions been
placed under house arrest – others have been forced to take up residence >> at their places of work. Chengdu is an economic powerhouse, home to
global players in the automaker and technology markets, including
Volkswagen and Foxconn Technology Group. And to ensure that the lockdown
doesn’t disrupt production too much, some factories are operating
‘closed loop systems’. This means ‘separating workers from the rest of >> the community’. The workers stay on site, in campuses, away from their
fellow citizens and families, and are constantly tested for sickness.
All so that they can carry on being a cog in China’s vast economic
machine. Under Zero Covid you’re either a potential carrier of disease
that must be sealed into your home or a machine to be separated from
society so that you can carry on producing for profit. Zero Covid
dehumanises all.
The announcement of the lockdown in Chengdu last week led to widespread
panic buying. Social-media footage showed ‘desperate Chengdu residents’ >> grabbing as many essential supplies as they could. Such distressing
images were not surprising considering that in other recent lockdowns
people have run out of food. The people of Chengdu may be thinking of
the city of Xi’an in north-west China, which was locked down in December >> and January. A few days into that lockdown, even the right of people to
leave their homes to buy essentials was scrapped. Remarkably, 13million
people were forbidden from going outside for any reason whatsoever, even
to acquire the means of sustaining life. Instead, officialdom set up a
food-delivery system. It didn’t go well. People took to social media to
say they weren’t receiving enough to eat. One desperate man offered up
his Nintendo console for some instant noodles and steamed buns. Another
offered dishwashing liquid for apples. Xi’an was experiencing a ‘return >> to primitive society’, said one resident.
In between the Xi’an and Chengdu lockdowns came the Shanghai lockdown,
possibly the most disturbing lockdown in China so far. It was in April
and May. It lasted for two months. The restrictions on the lives of the
city’s 25million residents were ‘ruthlessly enforced’. Again people ran
out of food. Some became so desperate that they ate wild vegetables,
falling ill as a result. It was ‘eerily reminiscent of the desperate
times of the Great Leap Forward… when the bark was stripped from trees
by starving people’, said one observer. Overnight, green metal fences
were erected outside any apartment building in which a resident had
tested positive for Covid – homes turned into impromptu prisons. Alarms
were put on the doors of the infected, to alert the authorities if they
ventured outside – a modern-day version of the black cross that was
painted on the doors of the infected during the Great Plague of London
in the 1660s.
Why Boris deranged the elites
RECOMMENDED
Why Boris deranged the elites
TOM SLATER
Like something out of a dystopian B-movie, drones were sent out into the
Shanghai sky with loudspeakers telling the locked-up masses below to
‘Control the soul’s desire for freedom!’. There were forced evacuations
and forced family separations, too. Entire communities were relocated.
The people of the Pingwang suburb were moved en masse to quarantine
facilities a hundred miles away. The thousand residents of the town of
Beicai were forced into temporary accommodation so that their town could
be ‘disinfected’. Children who tested positive for Covid were removed >>from their parents. People going hungry, people fenced into their homes,
sick kids spirited away from their parents – it is extraordinary that
this was happening in the gleaming modern metropolis of Shanghai, just
three months ago, as we in the West went about our post-lockdown lives
as normal.
The harms of Zero Covid are becoming clearer and clearer. As the British
Medical Journal pointed out, there were even ‘reports of people [in
Shanghai] dying from non-Covid causes because they [could not] access
their usual medicines’. The entire oath of medicine – First, Do No Harm >> – is turned upside down when society devotes itself so singularly and
psychotically to tackling one virus alone. Spiritual health, social
health, even physical health – all have been sacrificed in China’s
crusade to achieve Zero Covid. Let’s be grateful Boris didn’t heed the >> Guardian’s plea to pursue a Zero Covid strategy. Actually, the horrors
of Shanghai seem to have changed even the Guardian’s mind. ‘Fear,
paranoia, anger – this is life under China’s Zero Covid strategy’, a >> headline said in April.
And yet even as we balk at the tyranny in China, now spreading,
virus-like, to Chengdu, let us not imagine that we would never do
anything like this. We already did. Our lockdowns were not as severe as
China’s, but we did send drones to spy on dog-walkers during the first
lockdown in March 2020. We did limit people’s right to leave their
homes. We did clamp down on criticism of the Covid strategy on social
media, just as China is now doing. The social-media giants of Silicon
Valley gave Beijing a run for its money when it came to restricting
‘disinformation’ about Covid and lockdown. And yes, we harmed our
citizens’ health by turning Covid into the only issue in town.
Undetected cancers and mental-health problems are just two of the
public-health crises that appear to have been exacerbated by lockdown.
Indeed, the West’s importing of Chinese-style authoritarianism was one
of the most disturbing things in the Covid era. Who can forget
Imperial’s Neil Ferguson saying that he and the other early supporters
of lockdown never imagined they could ‘get away with’ what China had
done around Wuhan – but ‘then Italy did it, and we realised we could’. >> In July 2020 Tory MP and one-time leader hopeful Jeremy Hunt seemed to
praise China’s approach, and suggested that we should also have aimed
for ‘zero infection and elimination of the disease’. Go and tell that to >> the heavily pregnant woman in Shanghai who posted a desperate message on
social media saying she only had two days’ worth of food left.
Liz Truss and the crisis of political will
RECOMMENDED
Liz Truss and the crisis of political will
BRENDAN O'NEILL
Zero Covid has been an act of self-sabotage for China. It is now having
a huge impact on China’s economy and political stability. It is all an
apt and depressing reminder of what happens when the state elevates
ideology over reason. When citizens are reduced to vectors of disease to
be managed and controlled rather than being treated as wise, good
individuals who should be trusted to behave responsibly. The nightmare
in China is an indictment of the regime in Beijing, and also of some of
the lockdown fanatics here in the West who might have happily led us
down the same path to social destruction.
The only *healthy* way to stop the pandemic, thereby saving lives, in
China & 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://www.spiked-online.com/2022/09/07/the-neverending-nightmare-of-zero-covid/
China’s ongoing brutal lockdowns are a reminder of the insanity of ‘Zero >>> Covid’.
Brendan O'Neill
BRENDAN O'NEILL
CHIEF POLITICAL WRITER
7th September 2022
The ideology of lockdown is a menace to society
Share
Topics
COVID-19
POLITICS
WORLD
Remember Zero Covid? This was the idea that the only way to deal with
Covid-19 was by eliminating it. Only when every trace of the virus had
been scrubbed from society would it be safe to let the masses out again, >>> insisted the Zero Covid fanatics. Zero Covid ideologues were everywhere. >>> In the medical establishment, the political elite, the media. In early
2021 the Guardian’s leader writers were telling Boris Johnson that he
should ‘[stamp] out the virus with a Zero Covid strategy’. Kill Covid to >>> save society.
How is Zero Covid looking now? Ask China. The suffering of the Chinese
people under the ideology of Zero Covid is extraordinary. Lockdown may
be a mercifully fading memory for us in the West but it remains the
ruthless daily reality for the Chinese. The numbers are staggering.
Sixty-eight cities in China are currently in partial or full lockdown.
As of last week this includes the megacity of Chengdu, where 21million
people have been instructed to stay indoors. Only one person from each
household is allowed out to do essential shopping. No exercise, no
strolls in the park, no going to work. Briefly nipping out for food is
the only civil liberty the people of Chengdu enjoy.
The Chengdu lockdown is truly dystopian. Not only have millions been
placed under house arrest – others have been forced to take up residence >>> at their places of work. Chengdu is an economic powerhouse, home to
global players in the automaker and technology markets, including
Volkswagen and Foxconn Technology Group. And to ensure that the lockdown >>> doesn’t disrupt production too much, some factories are operating
‘closed loop systems’. This means ‘separating workers from the rest of
the community’. The workers stay on site, in campuses, away from their
fellow citizens and families, and are constantly tested for sickness.
All so that they can carry on being a cog in China’s vast economic
machine. Under Zero Covid you’re either a potential carrier of disease
that must be sealed into your home or a machine to be separated from
society so that you can carry on producing for profit. Zero Covid
dehumanises all.
The announcement of the lockdown in Chengdu last week led to widespread
panic buying. Social-media footage showed ‘desperate Chengdu residents’
grabbing as many essential supplies as they could. Such distressing
images were not surprising considering that in other recent lockdowns
people have run out of food. The people of Chengdu may be thinking of
the city of Xi’an in north-west China, which was locked down in December >>> and January. A few days into that lockdown, even the right of people to
leave their homes to buy essentials was scrapped. Remarkably, 13million
people were forbidden from going outside for any reason whatsoever, even >>> to acquire the means of sustaining life. Instead, officialdom set up a
food-delivery system. It didn’t go well. People took to social media to
say they weren’t receiving enough to eat. One desperate man offered up
his Nintendo console for some instant noodles and steamed buns. Another
offered dishwashing liquid for apples. Xi’an was experiencing a ‘return
to primitive society’, said one resident.
In between the Xi’an and Chengdu lockdowns came the Shanghai lockdown,
possibly the most disturbing lockdown in China so far. It was in April
and May. It lasted for two months. The restrictions on the lives of the
city’s 25million residents were ‘ruthlessly enforced’. Again people ran
out of food. Some became so desperate that they ate wild vegetables,
falling ill as a result. It was ‘eerily reminiscent of the desperate
times of the Great Leap Forward… when the bark was stripped from trees
by starving people’, said one observer. Overnight, green metal fences
were erected outside any apartment building in which a resident had
tested positive for Covid – homes turned into impromptu prisons. Alarms
were put on the doors of the infected, to alert the authorities if they
ventured outside – a modern-day version of the black cross that was
painted on the doors of the infected during the Great Plague of London
in the 1660s.
Why Boris deranged the elites
RECOMMENDED
Why Boris deranged the elites
TOM SLATER
Like something out of a dystopian B-movie, drones were sent out into the >>> Shanghai sky with loudspeakers telling the locked-up masses below to
‘Control the soul’s desire for freedom!’. There were forced evacuations
and forced family separations, too. Entire communities were relocated.
The people of the Pingwang suburb were moved en masse to quarantine
facilities a hundred miles away. The thousand residents of the town of
Beicai were forced into temporary accommodation so that their town could >>> be ‘disinfected’. Children who tested positive for Covid were removed >>>from their parents. People going hungry, people fenced into their homes,
sick kids spirited away from their parents – it is extraordinary that
this was happening in the gleaming modern metropolis of Shanghai, just
three months ago, as we in the West went about our post-lockdown lives
as normal.
The harms of Zero Covid are becoming clearer and clearer. As the British >>> Medical Journal pointed out, there were even ‘reports of people [in
Shanghai] dying from non-Covid causes because they [could not] access
their usual medicines’. The entire oath of medicine – First, Do No Harm
– is turned upside down when society devotes itself so singularly and
psychotically to tackling one virus alone. Spiritual health, social
health, even physical health – all have been sacrificed in China’s
crusade to achieve Zero Covid. Let’s be grateful Boris didn’t heed the
Guardian’s plea to pursue a Zero Covid strategy. Actually, the horrors
of Shanghai seem to have changed even the Guardian’s mind. ‘Fear,
paranoia, anger – this is life under China’s Zero Covid strategy’, a
headline said in April.
And yet even as we balk at the tyranny in China, now spreading,
virus-like, to Chengdu, let us not imagine that we would never do
anything like this. We already did. Our lockdowns were not as severe as
China’s, but we did send drones to spy on dog-walkers during the first
lockdown in March 2020. We did limit people’s right to leave their
homes. We did clamp down on criticism of the Covid strategy on social
media, just as China is now doing. The social-media giants of Silicon
Valley gave Beijing a run for its money when it came to restricting
‘disinformation’ about Covid and lockdown. And yes, we harmed our
citizens’ health by turning Covid into the only issue in town.
Undetected cancers and mental-health problems are just two of the
public-health crises that appear to have been exacerbated by lockdown.
Indeed, the West’s importing of Chinese-style authoritarianism was one
of the most disturbing things in the Covid era. Who can forget
Imperial’s Neil Ferguson saying that he and the other early supporters
of lockdown never imagined they could ‘get away with’ what China had
done around Wuhan – but ‘then Italy did it, and we realised we could’.
In July 2020 Tory MP and one-time leader hopeful Jeremy Hunt seemed to
praise China’s approach, and suggested that we should also have aimed
for ‘zero infection and elimination of the disease’. Go and tell that to >>> the heavily pregnant woman in Shanghai who posted a desperate message on >>> social media saying she only had two days’ worth of food left.
Liz Truss and the crisis of political will
RECOMMENDED
Liz Truss and the crisis of political will
BRENDAN O'NEILL
Zero Covid has been an act of self-sabotage for China. It is now having
a huge impact on China’s economy and political stability. It is all an
apt and depressing reminder of what happens when the state elevates
ideology over reason. When citizens are reduced to vectors of disease to >>> be managed and controlled rather than being treated as wise, good
individuals who should be trusted to behave responsibly. The nightmare
in China is an indictment of the regime in Beijing, and also of some of
the lockdown fanatics here in the West who might have happily led us
down the same path to social destruction.
The only *healthy* way to stop the pandemic, thereby saving lives, in
China & 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!
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