by Dr. David Livermore, Daily Sceptic:
Brian Monteith’s article in the Scotsman, highlighted here on Monday, makes a good point. None of our political parties care to talk about lockdowns. None remind us of how fervently they supported masks, social distancing or the Rule of Six. The Tories don’t wish to remember how stringently they enforced futile strictures. Labour and SNP don’t care to recall how they demanded greater restrictions. You could be fined £6,400 for persistently not wearing a mask on a train. Or £10,000 for a birthday party. Remember? They have taken a vow of silence. Including, in the SNP’s case, about the notion of lopping six inches off schoolroom doors to blow the virus away.
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This is understandable. In civvy street, it’s becoming hard to find anyone who still thinks that lockdowns were wise. Everyone sees the wreckage – of educations, mental health, livelihoods, the work ethic and healthcare. The NHS stumbles on, less productively than pre-pandemic, whilst facing a backlog of sicker folks with delayed diagnoses. Inflation has impoverished us and driven interest rates higher. These, in turn, cause vast losses on Government bonds that the Bank of England bought during lockdown’s Quantitative Easing. We, as taxpayers, are on the hook for the tab. Raised taxes will cover debt interest, not better public services.
Pro-lockdown views are becoming confined to fanatics, unable to grasp any wider horizon. One such lodged a ‘formal complaint’ against me after I asked a lockdown-critical question following her lecture at ESCMID Global in Barcelona, alleging ‘harassment and distress’. How can I ‘harass’ anyone with a single question, articulated in a minute? Only if I prick a mental bubble, maybe?
What’s more interesting, and Mr. Monteith fails to mention, is the equal omertà on Covid vaccines. Unlike lockdowns, sold as a painful necessity, vaccines were touted as great achievements by Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, Rishi Sunak, the BMJ, and the press at large. The FT – no friend of Boris – wrote in February 2021 that vaccines gave the then PM a second chance. Ahead of the May 2021 council elections Keir Starmer opined that the vaccine rollout gave Boris a “very significant boost”. Developers and deployers received public honours.
As late as February 2023 the PM began his response to a Parliamentary Question (apropos a vaccine-injured constituent) by saying:
It is important to start by recognising the importance of vaccines in protecting us all, not least the fantastic roll-out of the Covid vaccines across the U.K.
Now, come the election, no candidate hails the vaccines or the rollout. Nary a word. This is odd, to say the least. This Government hasn’t much to crow about. So, you’d think it’d highlight what, three years ago, was hailed as a world-beating success? Is it an admission it has all gone sour?
The vaccines’ mediocre efficacy was evident by the summer of 2021, as people found themselves infected despite recent vaccination. Nevertheless, most people dutifully queued for a third shot, bamboozled by propaganda that this would do the trick. It didn’t. Omicron struck and vast numbers, vaccinated or not, were infected.
Fewer punters have presented for each subsequent shot, and mistrust has multiplied. The comments below any newspaper article on Covid vaccines are now predominantly negative. Among frontline healthcare workers only 30.2% received a Covid vaccine in the six months between September 2023 and February 2024, compared with 42.8% who accepted the flu vaccine; corresponding figures for workers in GP practices were 44.9% versus 61.8%. These figures tell much about professional scepticism especially as the comparator flu vaccine is only modestly effective and widely declined.
Had the Government stuck to its original plan of vaccinating only the over-50s and the vulnerable it’d be able to claim success. The ratio of deaths to infections fell after the early stages of the rollout. I, doubtless now annoying some readers, continue to believe that some benefit was achieved, though the age bar should have been higher.
