The WhatsApp message leak

[Mycatsgoldtooth]

So, we’ve had the FBI saying it was a lab leak, the leaked messages showing many of the restrictions were for show, stats on the reality of masks being mostly useless unless N95s. Where are all the people that were so upset about anyone saying anything against the government now.

It’s almost as if no one care where the virus came from and how the government reacted. If I’d spent years being terrified and washing my shopping I’d be really pissed off.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/01/untruth-untruth-peddled-justify-great-lockdown-disaster/

Midwit actually. If you look at the work of the authors and how they had spent their careers and the focus of the GBD saying the poor and working class would be most likely effected that’s hardly right wing. The government that got the army to spy on its citizens, embezzled money and turned the country into a police state were the right wing ones. But they are the ones who’s policies you support, so not sure why you are trying to smear anyone else as right wing. It seems your concern was for yourself and your family only. As long as you were safe then ‘it was a Sophie’s chide’ to quote you.

Course.

Lucy Easthope is a disaster planner and hugely knowledgeable, including about our pre 2020 pandemic planning. She's fairly obviously left of centre. I haven't read her book yet but I need to get it.

twitter.com/LucyGoBag

There's this book by Toby Green, first written in 2021 but I think there's been an update/reprinting recently.

www.amazon.co.uk/Covid-Consensus-Politics-Global-Inequality/dp/1787385221

Toby Green is also on twitter, and then here are some other left wing people, mostly academics in various disciplines and some clinical people.

twitter.com/snj_1970
twitter.com/michael_riordan
twitter.com/RobFreudenthal
twitter.com/princessjack

I don't agree with all of them, and indeed some of them disagree with each other, but they were all saying things in the very early days. Some of them offer the sort of missing and necessary expertise I was talking about earlier (disaster planning, criminology etc). Also this isn't intended to be exhaustive or even a list of the most prominent ones, just off the top of my head- no disrespect intended to anyone who fits the bill that I've forgotten or not heard of.

Article by Dr Gemma Aherne about criminalisation and the pandemic.

www.liverpool.ac.uk/law-and-social-justice/blog/partygate-lockdown-justice/

I love how @MinkyGreen is trying to 'subtly' insinuate that anyone who doesn't agree with lockdowns is right wing OR WORSE.

Fucking hilarious.

Minky you support policies implemented by Boris Johnson and his band of morons. I don't think you have a leg to stand on when it comes to trying to shame others for their views.

It's very noticeable nowadays how certain people like to shut down a discussion by pointing out to their opponents that their views happen to align with another group's, therefore their opponent must also belong to that group. "You disagreed with lockdown therefore you MUST be a Tory. You were hesitant about accepting a Covid vaccine, therefore you ARE an anti vaxxer."

It's the argument that TRAs when smearing women who just want to protect their safe spaces. They ARE terfs, bigots, fascists etc.

It was the argument that Sadiq Khan was massively criticised for last week, when he compared to people who disagreed with his transport plans to Covid deniers, and anti vaxxers, and members of far right groups.

Such tedious immature nonsense.

I for example have never voted Tory in my life (or Labour for that matter) and I thought the GBD sounded like it was worth thinking about.

Sturgeon used that tactic as well recently: "Nicola Sturgeon has accused critics of Holyrood’s gender reforms of using the debates to “cloak” their transphobia, misogyny and racism"

So that's anyone that was worried about rapists in women's prisons then.

The right wing accusations get madder by the minute. I remember when Sadiq Khan used his brain and would not have tried that. Right wing has become utterly meaningless. I have a neighbour who knows I'm anti lockdown and he was shocked to find I support the strikes.

this issue though...we've got Brexit and Remain, pro and anti Trump, in my circle. I could cope fine with that and we very much took a "more in common" line. But I couldn't cope with a lockdown supporter, particularly the type who expects some people to keep working in factories etc to keep the laptop classes at home.

I think the fact that the people with voices on the mainstream left are mostly not those who were expected to go out and continue doing their jobs after having the frighteners put on them was probably pretty significant too. We never heard much about what it was like to take on more than your equal share of risk for bugger all money, then be expected to go home quietly once you weren't doing anything that the laptop classes (I'm a laptop monkey myself) needed in order to be comfortable. Because we don't hear from those people at the best of times, so we weren't going to start getting their perspectives in a time of crisis, when they might say something inconvenient.

Anecdotal I know, but in my working class and extremely Labour voting area, lockdown observance was always, well, hit and miss.

Bashir I don't know what was said in the media - lockdown marked the deepening of my rejection of it! - but as Tube user, I found after a couple of weeks, people chatted and certainly those workers were aware of how crappy the treatment was.

I had to let commercial cleaners in a couple of times and they were really relieved when I said, "I'm fine for you to wear a mask or not".

Another leftist critique here of the decision to centre the pandemic response around criminalisation- which essentially means to have locked down, since such a key part of lockdown was the element of compulsion.

irr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/A-threat-to-public-safety-v3.pdf

Anecdotal I know, but in my working class and extremely Labour voting area, lockdown observance was always, well, hit and miss

I think this is true both within the UK and on a global level. Most of Africa was business as usual out of sheer survival necessity, no matter what supposed rules were imposed at the top in order to keep in step with other countries globally.

YY @EmmaEmerald The privilege of the "you only have to wear a mask for 20 minutes round Waitrose" posters was sickening. The workers in my local Sainsburys and Tesco were really struggling in them while stacking shelves. And really resentful of it when i talked to them about it and i dont blame them.

Yes, it was always quite obvious who people coming out with that assumed the 'you' was.

Yes - and on here, like they didn't think they could be talking to someone who might have to wear a mask at work?

Mask exempt lady at my local shop told me she got abuse from customers.

so many people just hate people, they really took the chance to show that.

Fair points. Interested to hear how those that support GBD see this working.

And if my HA thinks im wearing a mask for a 2 to 3 hour check in my home which isnt even mandatory they can think again.

The people shielding could still have had the food parcels, furlough or work at home where possible, the law could protect them if they wanted to shield.

Ive never shopped online (thought id better say that first) but i remember the panicked threads about trying to get online slots on here. One thing that could have been implemented was all online slots go to those vulnerable to the illness and everyone else to physically go to the supermarket.

I haven't read the GBD and not interested enough to do so, but I'm not a fan of any approach that sugar coats the reality that we couldn't ever have protected all the vulnerable. Once covid had a foothold, which it did by the time we found out it existed, the only thing we could do was make a choice which vulnerable groups we wanted to prioritise. Who we were willing to sacrifice to protect others. There was no way to protect everyone, because what protected some people killed others.

This is also why pretty much all of the moralising on the subject is inappropriate. There's nothing inherently more or less moral about prioritising the welfare of those vulnerable due to covid over those vulnerable due to lockdown, or vice versa. It's just that we heard a great deal more about the vulnerabilities of one cohort than we did the other, once we started to follow the restrictions based approach.

@EmmaEmerald, yes that could have helped them, but what about the people they need to interact with - families, carers etc. The things @frothytoffee mentioned.

It also implies the initial symptoms of covid are all that matters when there is a vast body of research already showing longer term health issues related to covid.

How did lockdown stop them interacting with families and carers?

Families with a shielding household member could also apply for those things eg shopping slots, home working or furlough.

I was dreading the possibility of a shielding letter - I'd have ignored it but my cousin found it upsetting to get one (transplant patient, immunocompromised) and some people can't lie to their bosses. Never, in three incidences of pneumonia now, have I thought "everyone should stop normal life in case I get sick".

I'd like us all to be off work when sick, with proper sick pay. I understand that's not an option for some, including NHS cleaners.

and carers and nurses are entitled to have lives, they shouldn't have to lockdown to protect patients. Me, and dad's side of the family, are all lumbered with vulnerabilities. That's for us to deal with. It would be insanely unfair to ask others to make sacrifices for us.

there is a vast body of research already showing longer term health issues related to covid

But that happens even post vaccine roll-out. Bluntly put, there's not a lot that can be done about that except some research into the condition longer term.
There's not going to be any more lockdowns or distancing mitigation now.

Actually, I was heavily criticised for making the last point during lockdown, so I should gird myself.

There you go again.

Trying to associate ALL proponents of a certain viewpoint as being akin to the likes of Nigel Farage. To try and shame them.

It's such an immature way to try and debate.