Joshua is a 57 year old who has done a variety of jobs ranging from court reporter, photojournalist, civil servant and assorted filler manual jobs. He currently runs the fahrenheit211.net site where he writes about politics, religion, Islamic extremism, and culture.
Anybody who has a modicum of intelligence and who can understand basic data and the graphical display of data, will know by now that, to all intents and purposes, Covid-19 has gone the same way as many other diseases that have caused either epidemics or pandemics.
There was, as we saw earlier this year, a steady rise in infections early on when nations had just started to get to grips with Covid-19, followed by a spike in infections and of deaths in those with co-morbidities and vulnerabilities, or who were in general susceptible to illness due to age. This rise and spike pattern then changed into a sharp decline in deaths and physical harm as Covid burned through the population sectors that were particularly susceptible to the disease. This had the effect of leaving behind those who either had some natural immunity to Covid-type viruses that were either genetically or socially acquired prior to the emergence of Covid, or who had an acquired immunity through exposure to or the contracting of Covid in either a mild to moderate form.
This is what we know so far about how Covid has progressed as a disease agent. But far more damaging in my view is the British government’s response to Covid. It has, in my view, been absolutely appalling, authoritarian and somewhat ineffective. It has been for many of us, a ‘cure’ that is worse than the disease itself.
Like many other Britons, especially at a time when little was known about this novel virus, I looked back at how other epidemics and pandemics were handled, in particular the 1918/1919 influenza pandemic. Because of that exercise in looking back at previous situations that looked similar, I broadly supported the government desire to encourage voluntary social distancing, at least until more was known about Covid.
Now we know a great deal more than we did at the beginning of this situation regarding Covid and we can see that ‘cases’ does not equal large numbers of deaths. This should be the time for the Government to relax ALL the restrictions and get the country back to work and moving again. Unfortunately this is not the case. The Government has instead ramped up the authoritarianism and the ‘fear-porn’.
I do believe that there is both a scientific and practical case for shielding those with known vulnerabilities to respiratory diseases like Covid or influenza wherever possible, but this would be a morally and ethically acceptable quarantine policy. To lock down an entire nation and trash it economically and socially with broad spectrum lockdowns, is in my view both immoral and unethical, in fact I’d go so far as to say that it is a form of unacceptable tyranny.
With the knowledge that Covid is no longer the killer disease for most of the population that many feared it would be in the beginning, there is no longer any excuse for any more lockdowns, authoritarian rules or for the police to crack the heads of those who object to the current government policy. In fact I’m not even sure that the original lockdown was either effective or it could even have been counterproductive, since it has impeded the acquisition of herd immunity. The original lockdown was most certainly counterproductive to the economy, to mental health and to the physical health of Britons, the vast majority of whom have been denied, due to Covid, access to basic NHS healthcare including cancer and heart disease screening.
On the subject of the Government’s presentation of the current Covid situation, it appears to me that they are practising some form of sleight of hand with the figures. We can see from the ONS data that have been published here and elsewhere that the number of people who have died directly because of Covid has fallen dramatically and may well end up being less than originally assumed. This is because there is no real guarantee that people who died, who had been previously tested and were found to have come into contact with the Covid virus, died primarily from Covid itself.
I’ve noticed that the Government is now having to rely on the very vague and broad category of ‘cases’ rather than something more concrete like deaths or hospital admissions in order to justify the ongoing and damaging authoritarianism. Surely that shift from concrete data on deaths and hospitalisations to the more vague and, as some may say, more easily talked up and manipulated category of ‘cases’, should inform us that this whole business is now more political than science or medicine based?
Anyone who has eyes to see can discern that Britain is in a mess of the Government’s making. The government relied too much on one particular model, which we now know to be incredibly faulty, brought in possibly unnecessary lockdowns and is now delighting us, or rather not, with Ministers of the Crown encouraging British subjects to inform on their friends and family should they break the Covid rules. I for one will not be dobbing in other Britons for breaches of the Covid rules and I have taken a solemn pledge not to do so.
The big question to me, now that we know more about Covid and that it is considerably less lethal than first assumed, is how do we get out of this mess? I am really not sure that I trust the Government entirely on having a plan to get us out of the mess, one that guards the liberties of Britons, all their responses so far seem to be to turn the authoritarianism up to 11.
There will have to be, at some point, some pushback from the public and from the media against this capricious authoritarianism. There have been some good signs that at least some in the mainstream media are starting to ask awkward questions about government policy, most notably the Express, Mail and Telegraph, but it needs much more. It needs the media to put before the public the true figures of deaths, infections and recoveries and to compare how the UK has handled the Covid problem when compared to other nations and indeed individual US states. Despite the growth of alternative media over the last decade, outlets like the BBC, ITV and the dead tree press, still command a lot of influence in the UK. Whether these outlets would put in jeopardy their cosy contacts with government figures or step away from the often lucrative sensationalist newspaper reporting policy of ‘if it bleeds it leads’, is another big question?
I do wonder at what point the public will say ‘enough is enough’ when it comes to the authoritarianism and just throw it off? Will it be when a critical mass of Covid and lockdown related suicides is reached? Or when people have realised that the Government’s response to Covid has impoverished them both financially and socially? Or will, and I’m almost treading onto ‘tin foil hat’ territory here, when police and social services take into care the children of those who refuse test and trace or who are Covid dissidents challenging the Government’s narrative?
I’m seeing signs of the beginnings of a pushback from the public online and from talking to people locally, but there are still a lot of low information individuals out there who still believe that Covid is as dangerous as say Ebola, which by now we can see it is not. I’m still seeing people who moronically believe for example that children are at risk and have put their toddlers in masks, even though the vast majority of masks probably do not do anything to filter out anything that is the miniscule size of a virus.
I’m a great believer in, where possible, mocking such people gently, or quietly informing them of the necessary facts. Discussing the Covid issue and airing views that differ from the Government’s one track minded narrative with those around us, or who we work or socialise with, is also likely to be effective. I’m also one of those who believe that when confronted with a problem and especially one where there may be a political solution, make use of standard political channels. This can be in the form of raising matters with your local councillor or writing to your MP with information about the disastrous effects of the Government’s Covid policy in their constituency and across the country as a whole. These communications should also challenge, with credible evidence, the Government’s narrative. It may also help to remind MP’s if you voted for them last time there was an election that you did and that future votes for them or their party would depend on whether or not the MP in question was willing to stand up for the freedoms of Britons or merely wanted them locked down again. I feel most strongly that even though we are living through a period of almost completely unjustified authoritarianism, we should use democratic means to bring about a change to the current situation.
There are also signs that there is a public movement coalescing against the Government and against lockdowns. Now that there is likely to be a second mostly unnecessary lockdown, I expect this movement to grow and for the state and the more tame sectors of the media to come down hard on it.
So far, I’ve been distinctly unimpressed with this movement. It appears to be being led by people whom I would not follow or offer any support to, such as the likes of David Icke and various off the wall anti-vaccination types. I have, for a variety of reasons, a very low toleration threshold for conspiracy theories, whether they be ones about Satanic Ritual Abuse, 9/11, chemtrails or VIP paedophile fantasies of the sort peddled by the liar Carl Beech, Among these reasons are that I believe that such conspiraloon fantasies are well proven to be dangerous in the hands of charismatic maniacs, such as Adolf Hitler, for example. Also these conspiracy theories suck up energy from people that could be used for more positive activities or channelled into fighting genuine problems. After all why bother doing your bit and challenging bad government policy if you are fully immersed in, or rather mind-captured by, some laughable but somewhat interesting conspiracy theory about Chemtrailc, 9/11,the Rothschilds or little green men?
Sadly, having these conspiraloon types such as Icke or the anti-vax types in any type of high profile position in any public movement to challenge the Government, will probably harm any organised movement against the lockdowns and the cause of demanding our liberties back. It would be far preferable in my view to have people with some degree of credibility and record of asking awkward questions, such as Peter Hitchens in public facing roles. I also know there are others who are academically credible and with some degree of public recognition who could also provide a counterbalance to the government narrative or be a nucleus for public challenge to the current Government’s policy.
To conclude: We are all in a mess. The media is in a mess because they didn’t ask salient and probing questions of government early enough in the Covid situation, the public are in a mess because they’ve believed too much of the fear-porn from both government and media and the government is in a mess. My view is that the Government should shoulder by far the bulk of the blame for the problems we face, whether that be the economic, social and/or health problems brought about by their response to Covid.
We are led by rudderless politicians who seem to have reversed Baroness Margaret Thatcher’s conviction that ‘advisors advise and Ministers decide’. The Government, who should have taken a holistic approach to a novel virus and not trashed the economy and the social bonds or the trust between people, have surrendered control to unelected advisors and I hope that the politicians who have done this are punished by the electorate at the next General Election. The Government need to push the buttons and pull the levers to get us out of the mess we are in, but they will not do it unless there is significant non-violent and credible pushback from the public. Whatever suggestions that those who read this piece may give to get us out of this mess most surely will not be as destructive and as muddle-headed as some of the actions carried out by Boris Johnson and his government.
10 thoughts on “Joshua from Fahrenheit211: How do we get out of this mess?”
What is done is done. We can’t change what has happened — but maybe we can change what we do from now onwards.
Some of us were underwhelmed by the evidence for a “pandemic” from very early days — Hector deserves a big pat on the back for standing up on this issue. But decisions (BAD decisions) were made, relying on models (VERY BAD models) from the punters at Imperial College. The people who were susceptible to the disease have now mostly died anyway, and the economy has been thumped.
Having said all that — the way forward probably should not include blaming individuals, although it might be healthy to defund Imperial College as a warning to others. BoJo and others made very bad decisions — but who among us has not made bad decisions from time to time? Let’s first focus on not doing any more damage — roll back all the restrictions on the great bulk of the population, and focus appropriate efforts on protecting the now clearly identified At Risk minority. Since politicians and academics are never going to admit that they screwed up royally, it would be best to let them claim victory over Covid-19 and then roll back their “emergency” measures.
Once we are back on the road to normality, there might be a case for a Truth & Reconciliation Commission to analyze what went wrong (without any punishment of the guilty parties — except for Imperial College, of course), and to make recommendations for the future. For example, we have learned that the entire West is extremely over-dependent on the continued good will of China for supplies of medications and medical supplies. Even if it costs extra to manufacture those kinds of goods in the West, that is clearly a price worth paying.
Mr Longmuir. I was cautious at the beginning of all this because there are appeared to be a lack of knowledge about Covid and caution was in my view reasonably justifiable. Now we know, and Boris Johnson must know that this disease has gone the way of other epidemics and burned its way through the potential victims. Whilst I agree with you that the politicians made mistakes, after all we are all only too human, they’ve not just made one mistake, they’ve made hundreds. Those who’ve made those mistakes need to account for them. Chief among those mistakes is taking on trust a single source to base decisions on and a source, Imperial College, that has been woefully wrong about a number of other potential epidemics.
There does need to be some form or Truth and Reconciliation Commission after this or a Royal Commission to investigate it,but I’m really not sure that the Government even intends giving up these tyrannical powers. In a recent court case in the USA, in Pennsylvania, the judge came to the conclusion that the the imposition of ‘new normal’ rules went against the US Constitution because the lockdown rules would have become permanent and therefore robbed the US citizens in that state of their Constitutional rights. We have no such rights here in the UK and although I have great hopes for the upcoming case being brought by Simon Dolan and others, I fear government and legal treachery will sink it.
The government have upped the ante with the introduction of troops into the equation and although the government say that these troops are only to guard ‘facilities’ I very much doubt that this deployment of the military will end there. We will have troops on the streets with all the potential for confrontation that this will bring. Things are bad enough already, we’ve already got police in Wales allegedly breaking the heads of pensioners who don’t want Channel migrants housed in an army camp there, how much worse will it be if the army are breaking the heads? As I said to someone on Parler yesterday, January 1972, Bloody Sunday, called and said please ‘stop copying’.
I completely agree that we need to reduce our reliance on China and we can now see the absolute folly of allowing a hostile nation to become a primary supplier of goods that Britain needs.
**I have, for a variety of reasons, a very low toleration threshold for conspiracy theories, whether they be ones about Satanic Ritual Abuse, 9/11, chemtrails or VIP paedophile fantasies of the sort peddled by the liar Carl Beech,***
This article is misguided in my view. “Conspiracy theory” is a media term to discredit opinion contradicting the orthodoxy beyond the approved parameters.
There is abundant evidence that Covid *is* a conspiracy between the same agencies responsible for Climate and Diversity, two other causes, i.e ‘conspiracies’ around which the same globalist interests coalesce. Which share the same political goals and the same official / media approval.
WEF. WHO. UN and any number of other transnational outfits whose activities are exempt from critical scrutiny are conspiracies against the loyalties of ordinary Europeans, whose goal is the dissolution of the nation state as the form of political allegiance for West / Christendom.
The political alliance between the media, governments, banksters and these global agencies isn’t so much a theory as an observable fact. Check out any of their websites: their political content uniformly antagonistic to West / Europeans / Christendom. How does that not qualify as conspiracy?
The idea that ‘lockdown’ is some kind of error or miscalculation on the part government / scientists; that the media are not its prime instigators doesn’t bear scrutiny.
Every media channel’s Covid coverage follows a comparable pattern. They all give a platform to so-called ‘sceptics’. The entire debate centres around whether ‘lockdown’ is warranted or not.
The middle-ground fallacy model is identical to “immigration” or “anti-racism”. In place of Afua / Ash / Kehinde (critical race theory) v James / Toby / Rod (guaranteed minority status for indigenous), it’s Larry / Patrick / Boris (Lockdown) v Carl / John / Toby (effects of virus don’t warrant such measures).
The broader globalist agenda passes without mention. The parameters of the debate are fixed around the disputed medical facts. What Larry Fink, Agenda Contributor to WEF and CEO of BlackRock Inc has spoken of as the “Intersect between Covid, Climate and Racial Justice” is exempt from scrutiny.
Thus anyone anyone invoking the globalist agenda can be framed as “cranks” or “conspiracy theorists”. ‘Lockdown Sceptics’ / “conspiracy theory” stands to Covid as ‘Free Speech Union’ / “racism” to Diversity.
It’s likely in my view that some of the more prominent “conspiracy theorists” such as David Icke are controlled opposition whose function is to discredit *all* opposition to the globalist agenda. Piers Corbyn on the other hand, who I’m old enough to remember from the 70s is probably bona fide.
Media journalists are another matter. Right wing’ pundits are bound to be complicit in what they ostensibly oppose. They can’t tell the truth as a condition of employment because, as with the demographic catastrophe, their plutocrat employers are its principal agents.
Delingpole and Young were cheerleaders for Boris a while ago. Even though he’d scarcely disguised his globalist / communist credentials as Mayor of London, openly siding with the Banksters, even calling for an amnesty for people here illegally when even going by official figures native births will be a minority before the end of the decade; British schoolchildren an ethnic minority in British schools by 2035.
Now he’s “not the Boris we knew” and is “betraying his libertarian ideals” or somesuch.
Delingpole calls the most centralised financial system in the world, the City of London, “free market”. But Banksters seek to abolish cash. What could be more communist that that?
A digital currency means the abolition of free trade. Without cash we can’t buy and sell from each other freely at all. The virus is about decimating small business. But this isn’t reported on because its prime movers, as with our demographic displacement, are the media corporations themselves.
Joshua, good, thank you
The Two Doomsters on Monday:
– “Only 8% of UK population are immune”
Whut? That is a blatant lie. If it were true we’d have had over 1 million UK deaths by now. Carl H etc support view we have reached herd immunity
On pushback, more & more journalists are – today Mrs Gove
As I wrote yesterday
Spectator is a stand out as most have been sceptics since Day 1; many at DM, Spiked & Telegraph too
@Gavin
Made bad decision, learnt and changed – yep. Boris et al made bad decisions, learnt nothing and continue making ever worse decisions – they deserve blame and bankruptcy with all their assets removed
Pcar: “… they deserve blame and bankruptcy with all their assets removed”
You are right, of course. BUT! The “but” in this case involves recognizing that it is the politicians & bureaucrats versus We The People — and they are the ones who write the laws. Sun Tzu (“Art of War”) advised never to pin an enemy army with its back against a river; when people have no escape, they will fight to the death.
Consequently, our best option would be to allow the politicians a graceful avenue of retreat. Let them declare victory in their fight against Covid, and then reverse all their burdensome impositions upon us. If the politicians subsequently decide to beat up on the bureaucrats & academics who gave them bad advice … well, we could live with that.
It is in fact very easy to get out this mess: stop mandatory mask wearing. The economy will then, I am sure, fairly quickly return to normal as mask averse people are allowed to lead the way, get back in the shops, restaurants, shows and public transport and shame the risk averse into following suit. Really, in cannot be emphasised enough: mandatory masks are literally, economically, psychologically and metaphorically suffocating us.
@Gavin
They don’t deserve a graceful exit given their destruction of economy, health and lives. Glass of whisky and a Webley with one bullet for them all from Johnson, Starmer, Valance & Whitty down.
Listen to the disgraceful emotional fear mongering bs from Piers Moron’s buddy today
Don’t be tested, don’t ‘track and trace’
@Peter
+1
Boris lied when he said ‘they were to reassure people
To Peter Bollada. You are correct. The way to return to normality is for the abandonment of the pointless masks. I say these masks are pointless because they have had no impact on the number of people testing positive for covid even though they have been forced on us by an overmighty government. If they were as effective as the government say they are should we not be seeing some sort of downturn? I’m coming around to the view that these masks serve a similar purpose to the Yellow Stars that the Germans imposed on Jews in the 1930’s which is as a form of social control. But, in the case of the masks, they are not there to highlight the wearer as someone despised by the government, as were the yellow stars, they are there to identify subservience to the government with the non mask wearers identified as ‘enemies of the people’ by a dishonest and tyrannical government.
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