The Covid-19 pandemic, mild compared with pandemics of the past, exposes an ancient political divide.
The divide is about 70,000 years old, beginning when humans first began to trade, and businessmen emerged under ancient chiefs. On one side of the divide are those who think ordinary people are able to make their own choices, and society works best when they are free to do so. On the other are those who think they are too stupid to make their own choices and must be controlled by a ruling elite. On the first side is liberal democracy and capitalism; on the other is feudalism, socialism, communism, fascism and slavery. Big media overwhelmingly belong to the latter.
Covid-19 seems to be about three times as deadly as the common flu on average. For the young, it is far less dangerous. I can only guess that this is because Covid-19 disrupts some part of the immune system that in children has not yet developed. For the old and those weakened by obesity, diabetes and other illness, it is more dangerous. For most of history, Covid-19 would not have been noticed. This was because it was very mild compared with the Black Death, TB, smallpox and the 1918 Flu, and because medical science could not then detect it. There would have been no lockdowns.
Today we can detect it, and many governments around the world, including our own, have reacted tyrannically, shutting down large parts of economies. This has caused untold misery, and in poor communities, such as South Africa’s, untold loss of life (through malnutrition, despair, joblessness and failure to get medical treatment for TB and other diseases). How many lives will it save in total from Covid-19? The evidence suggests none.
If Covid-19 follows the pattern of most infectious diseases, acquiring “herd immunity” as quickly as possible would be the best solution. Young healthy people should be exposed to the disease, acquire immunity in large numbers, and so prevent the disease infecting the old and the vulnerable. If there is immunity, lockdown for the young and healthy is exactly wrong. However, there are some doubts about whether you can acquire immunity for Covid-19 or, if you do, about how long it will last. In that case lockdown has some logic, but not much. Nobody pretends that it will end the disease, merely delay it, so giving medical authorities time to prepare to treat its patients. (If there is no immunity to Covid-19, vaccines would surely not work.)
Around the world most politicians and nearly all journalists think a ruling elite (themselves) should control ordinary people. They want strict lockdown. They are delighted to force people to stay at home, to wear masks while walking in the countryside (if they are allowed out at all), to close down restaurants, schools and private businesses – but not of course governments. They love imprisoning and impoverishing ordinary people. If anyone suggests that ordinary people, suffering poverty or even starvation because they cannot earn a living, should be allowed to return to work, they scream, “Lives are more important than livelihoods!” Actually, livelihoods sustain life, and lack of livelihoods kills poor people. It is not “livelihoods versus lives”. It is “lives versus lives”.
In the USA, there is a rough divide between Republicans and Democrats. Republican mayors and governors tend to favour return to work; Democrats favour lockdown. If you look at the map of Republican and Democrat local governments around the country, and deaths from Covid-19, there seems to be no clear trend as to which of their policies is more effective. Democrat controlled states such as New York and New Jersey seem to have the highest death rates per head of population but whether this is because of local demographics or bad policies I don’t know. Trump, as ignorant of medical science as other politicians, floundered at first on Covid-19 but then was no worse than any other politicians, including the Democrats, and better than many. He now wants a return to work.
In the UK, Boris Johnson, a terrible disappointment, has come down hard on the side of curtailing freedom and wrecking the economy.
Medical experts are divided. Some forecast disaster from the disease and want hard lockdown. The politicians love them. So do the big media. Others, including those behind the Barrington Declaration, say the dangers of the disease have been grossly exaggerated and lockdown will cause far more damage than the disease itself. They are ignored by the politicians and shunned by the media.
The losers from lockdown are little businessmen and poor people trying to earn a living in the marketplace, who have lost income, and suffered hardship, including hunger. The winners are those working for government, who are doing fine, receiving fat salaries as usual, getting pay rises, sometimes above inflation.
What’s the moral? Assume your rulers will always end your freedom if they can, and get a job in government. Whatever you do, do not start a private business.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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