We're sleepwalking into a crisis (delayed post)

First published in the www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk & www.dissexpress.co.uk on Thursday, October 09, 2020.

Enough is enough. Now is the time to take back control and let sanity and a decent measure of individual liberty take precedence.

To what am I referring? The slow sleepwalk that we are taking as a society towards a second COVID-19 lockdown, of course.

This eventuality will only lead to further personal misery, accelerating morbidity and increased death rates. It also risks a prolonged economic depression that could strip this country of much of its economic capital.

As I write this, over 25% of the UK’s population is already living under varying levels of severe constraint on their freedoms of association and movement.

The Government, divided between natural Libertarians on the one hand and those who instinctively consider the extension of state power and intrusion to be the ‘natural’ response to crises, oscillates between different approaches.

The powers accorded to state institutions, including the Police and the courts, under the Coronavirus Act are being deepened and extended as the days and weeks go by.

We are being encouraged, implicitly in some cases and more directly in others, to rat on our neighbours if we suspect that they are not abiding by these draconian rules.

The hatred being unleashed on otherwise law-abiding citizens who do not wear face coverings now seems to extend to outdoor situations, as well as inside shops and other public buildings. This is in spite of a Japanese study that has found that plastic shields are almost totally useless at trapping respiratory aerosols. Furthermore, research by University of California, Davis, showed that the fabric in home-made cloth face coverings, releases a large amount of fibres into the air.

The public finances are being mortgaged to the hilt by schemes that offer support in the guise of grants and loans to businesses, largely no matter how viable they might be in future years. The announcement last week by the Chancellor of the Exchequer represented a welcome scaling back on some, such as the furlough scheme, but involved yet further Government borrowing.

This will have to be paid back by future generations and will become a brake on the prosperity and security of our children and grandchildren in years to come.

We are staking everything on a lockdown strategy that is scientifically questionable and which clearly failed to work in the spring.

To repeat this is truly a sign of madness. It is also cruel. The likely daily spike in COVID-19 cases being projected over the winter months need to be offset against the prolonged increases in deaths from cancer, strokes and heart disease caused by people being unable or afraid to access treatment.

Cancer expert Karol Sikora has estimated that an extra 30,000 cancer deaths will soon emerge due to the ongoing delays in scans and tests and failures to identify serious illnesses early enough.

Add to that the mental health issues caused by the loss of liberty of everyone from dying and sick care home residents who are denied visits by their relatives or grandparents unable to cuddle their grandchildren.

To those leftists who accuse me, as they do occasionally, of putting my Libertarian principles before the lived reality, I have one word in reply. Sweden.

Since the start of the pandemic, bars and restaurants have been allowed to stay open, as have schools and colleges and gatherings of up to 50 people have been allowed throughout this time.

Has Sweden been a European hotbed of infections and deaths? Of course, it hasn’t.

By trusting the good sense of its population, minimising the amount of bullying and finger-wagging from the Government, but also sharing objective scientific advice, Sweden has witnessed lower death rates (581 per million people, with the UK on 618) and a smaller economic decline (Swedish GDP has fallen by 8.3% to date compared to 20.4% here) than have we.

I’m pleased that a significant number of Conservative MPs (and some cross-party too) are seeking to roll back the authoritarian tide sweeping over the UK by putting amendments down to the Cornavirus Act.

I wish them well.

Ends.