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/

The point is that because they would need to interact with families and carers (not to mention colleagues, or pupils, or patients) they could not be protected from covid. Which the GBD writers wouldn't acknowledge because it exposes the GBD as a simple 'devil take the hindmost' policy - the 'protect the vulnerable' part was never a real part of it, just something included to make it sound a bit nicer.

That's a very fatalistic view of the situation. There's a lot that could be done with ventilation, for instance.

I'm sure big businesses have shuddered over the last couple of years at the thought that they might end up with an expensive obligation to provide staff or customers with a minimum standard of clean air (the way they do with water), but there's no doubt if we at least moved towards that (even if it took decades) it would be good for all of us.

At the moment though we seem to have decided to shrug our shoulders and say that minimising a nasty new vascular disease is unnecessary even though there are perfectly good ways of doing so without lockdown. I don't really believe in conspiracies, but I do think there are vested interests that benefit from this attitude more than ordinary people will, long-term.

The point is that because they would need to interact with families and carers (not to mention colleagues, or pupils, or patients) they could not be protected from covid

I'm not sure that wasn't the case anyway despite lockdowns. The waves came. We'd have presumably have needed China style levels of lockdown to stop that.

So maybe whatever difference it actually made to infection levels wasn't enough to justify the huge damage that the measures caused.

I don't really believe in conspiracies, but I do think there are vested interests that benefit from this attitude more than ordinary people will, long-term.

Probably.

A feature of the pandemic has been vested interests benefitting at the expense of ordinary people, so this would be quite in keeping. The wealthy got wealthier. Dare I say it, if the obligation you mention did become law and businesses were required to shell out, some friend of Boris or Rishi would probably have their snout in the trough somewhere.

@Mycatsgoldtooth

zero covid I assume means getting covid infections to zero… or am I missing something. It’s such a bollocks concept I never looked into it. Zero flu, zero norivirus… all unworkable.

Not necessarily. This was an especially useful process before vaccination was available. It involves two stages: a suppression stage using measures such as lockdowns, quarantine, and border closures; and a containment stage where usual activity resumes with localised public health measures to contain any outbreaks. Places like Australia did use this successfully before vaccination became available, and their caseload and death rate is low compared to other countries. It isn't workable long-term, but in the short-term it certainly isn't "bollocks".

On the mask front, we didn’t have masks for ages and then it came in and was very strongly socially policed. I hate this government but I’m far more concerned by how quickly and easily people took to policing one another. It was really worrying to watch.

Australia doesn't have large quantities of road freight from other countries.

That aside, there has to be a balance between the severity of the illness we're attempting to contain and the harms from the containment measures. Personally I don't feel covid's IFR warranted that.

We're going to be dealing with the effects of lockdowm and the other mitigations for a long time to come.

There are really effective air filtration systems which are used in some hospital theatres. It is definitely doable for larger companies to be required to filter air and to put it in all schools and hospitals.

@FrostyFifi

Australia doesn't have large quantities of road freight from other countries.

It doesn't have any road freight from other countries, apart from trucks alighting from ships departing from overseas. Australia halted international travel in/out, although air and sea freight still carried on to a degree. That is one factor, yes. Most of Australia's freight is air or sea. The factor I mentioned above outweighs these things as the first stage measures mentioned hobbled the travel of freight around the country anyway.

@creekingmillenial I have some messages from December 2020 that i could release myself if the mood takes me. I had a man i have never physically met PM me through fb (we are both in the local fb group for the town in which we live in North Essex) he messaged me to make sure i was following the rules and to insist that the then new variant (which turned out to be the Kent one) originated in our NE town.

I totally agree with you the way people were policing each other was sickening and sinister. And my experience and others showed a lot of men trying to police womens behaviour.

He messaged me at the end of Christmas Day to ask if i spent the day with family and then again on the 27th to ask if i was still staying safe.

It wasn't the IFR that was most relevant then though. It was the much much higher hospitalisation rate that was causing the immediate problem, and just deciding that the deaths were within a reasonably acceptable range (the sort of thing governments do unfortunately have to decide sometimes) wouldn't have solved that problem.

You can make a 'deaths problem' go away by just deciding the numbers are within an acceptable margin (so you redefine it as not a problem), but you can't make the hospitalisation rate problem go away that way. That's a real-time practical problem. If you can't reduce the need for hospital treatment by reducing the circulating disease, you need to manage it either by creating resources or by artificially rationing care (which would have meant not treating far more than just extremely elderly people - it would have meant turning away even much younger people who had a good chance of recovery with hospital treatment).

It's not an easy problem to solve, and it definitely needs more than just the IFR to be considered.

I read this about the ‘left wing’ Toby Green book. I’d also be very sceptical as to why they are writing for ‘Unherd’ which are controversial right wing, and discussing their book in panels with Barrington doctors who are associated with AIER - a right wing think tank.

”One if the most frustrating and mind-bending developments during the last 18 months is the collapse of a section of the left into Covid scepticism. The class analysis went down the plug hole, and in came a laissez-faire individualism in conformity with Tory bio- and necropolitical management of the pandemic. Mask denialism, vaccine agnosticism, opposition to air filtration, there has been a straightforward take up of right wing "libertarian" talking points and arguments. Including the pretence that Covid isn't very serious, hasn't killed millions, left even more with long-term health problems, and constitutes a danger to the clinically vulnerable still. Following the publication of Toby Green and Thomas Fazi's The Covid Consensus, which attempts to put a left face on Covid scepticism while giving semi-conspiratorial arguments credence, Richard Seymour has taken them apart in his Interregnum slot on Politics Theory Other. It comes highly recommended.”

And I’ll just highlight this bit :

“Including the pretence that Covid isn't very serious, hasn't killed millions, left even more with long-term health problems, and constitutes a danger to the clinically vulnerable still.”

Which is exactly the same as what is happening on this thread. There is absolutely no acknowledgement to this extremely pertinent point.

Coupled with bandied statements about suicide that are not based proper analysis - I think this thread and it’s sentiments will just stay in the ‘fringe gutter’ which is firmly where it belongs.

I find it especially fascinating when they cry "how dare you call me right-wing!" right after citing several extreme right-wing sources. (And have a history of doing so.)

You do sound ridiculous sometimes

what is this obsession with ‘far right’?

If I recall correctly, Piers Corbyn was the biggest campaigner against lockdowns, organising the rallies.

This isn’t a left / right issue, not sure why you keep trying to slur people with the ridiculous ‘far right’ accusation. All that happens is the people you accuse of it just think you are ridiculous. It’s like you have no concept of what ‘far right’ truly is. If you think Jay Battaychara (so) is far-right, you are clearly just being daft

@hamstersarse

I’ll repeat then as I’ve already answered :

I read this about the ‘left wing’ Toby Green book. I’d also be very sceptical as to why they are writing for ‘Unherd’ which are controversial right wing, and discussing their book in panels with Barrington doctors who are sponsored/associated with AIER - an extreme right wing think tank.

”One if the most frustrating and mind-bending developments during the last 18 months is the collapse of a section of the left into Covid scepticism. The class analysis went down the plug hole, and in came a laissez-faire individualism in conformity with Tory bio- and necropolitical management of the pandemic. Mask denialism, vaccine agnosticism, opposition to air filtration, there has been a straightforward take up of right wing "libertarian" talking points and arguments. Including the pretence that Covid isn't very serious, hasn't killed millions, left even more with long-term health problems, and constitutes a danger to the clinically vulnerable still. Following the publication of Toby Green and Thomas Fazi's The Covid Consensus, which attempts to put a left face on Covid scepticism while giving semi-conspiratorial arguments credence, Richard Seymour has taken them apart in his Interregnum slot on Politics Theory Other. It comes highly recommended.”

@hamstersarse

What is totally, completely and utterly ridiculous is to comment on a politically based thread and then deny this has anything to do with politics.

It has everything to do with politics. Are you just very unaware, do you lack any type of critical thinking or are you completely naive? Or potentially all three?

www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/09/09/remarks-by-president-biden-on-fighting-the-covid-19-pandemic-3/

sorry, i accidentally posted the white house briefing here. it was meant for another thread. i'm not trying to derail this conversation.

Ultimately, lockdowns aren't a left right issue and never were. The GBD has never been especially important in the country whose politics this thread is actually about, the US centrism in that insistence is problematic, and it doesn't function as some kind of purity test as to where someone sits on the political spectrum. Mind you, Richard Seymour is Socialist Workers Party, so that kind of People's Front of Judea stance is only to be expected.

In the country this thread is about, lockdown was implemented by the same nasty right wing party who are now gleefully telling us how they want to wipe their arses on international law. That is the relevant political context here.

Another important point about why the Tories own the pandemic response here that we haven't touched on in this thread is the impact of austerity. That had a large impact all across the UK, not just England, so it also relevant in Scotland and Wales whose leaders during lockdown were left of centre.

These are messages sent by Hancock and other people who were part of the administrations that stripped so much of our infrastructure to the bone, increased inequality and left the UK so structurally vulnerable to the impact of pandemics. The Telegraph, for obvious reasons, is not going to push that angle. But the rest of us should be clear on it.

@BashirWithTheGoodBeard

Completely disagree. Look how Trump fared/his views compared to New Zealand - or Brazil, or India. Measures were implemented depending on the political views of the government in power.

This simply isn't true on a global scale though, and it says a lot that you've had to cherry pick examples continents away from the country actually being discussed. This is the problematic US centric approach I mentioned.

In England, lockdown was implemented by a nasty populist right wing party and the left had no power at that point. In Europe, the responses with the exception of Sweden were broadly similar across the continent regardless of political approach. Trump doesn't, well, trump that.