Lockdown

[Frank]

"Sumption has been highly critical of the British government's use of lockdown to curb the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing against restrictions on the public, in defence of the rights and civil liberties of the private individual.[35] As he is a former Supreme Court judge, Sumption's criticism is a notable addition to the views of other high-profile critics such as Peter Hitchens and Toby Young.[36] On 30 March 2020, Sumption gave an interview on The World at One about the then recently implemented full restrictive lockdown on the population on 23 March 2020. He argued that the full restrictive lockdown would have serious negative consequences as a result of restricting civil liberties, locking down a healthy population, and stalling a healthy economy.[37] He questioned whether the virus was serious enough to "warrant putting most of the population into house imprisonment, wrecking our economy for an indefinite period, destroying businesses that honest and hard-working people have taken years to build up, saddling future generations with debt?" He argued that the lockdown would have serious health costs on many people causing "unbelievable distress inflicted on millions of people who are not especially vulnerable and will suffer only mild symptoms or none at all, like the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister".[38] For these reasons, Sumption believes the lockdown as a 'cure' for the virus may be worse than the effects of the actual virus.[39]

He has criticised the actions of the police forces during the lockdown measures because he argued that they followed the wishes of ministers instead of just the law, when the ministers themselves were simply reacting to public pressure in applying stringent lockdown measures. Furthermore, in The Sunday Times of 17 May 2020 he remarked that "Free people make mistakes and willingly take risks. If we hold politicians responsible for everything that goes wrong, they will take away our liberty so that nothing can go wrong. They will do this not for our protection against risk, but for their own protection against criticism".[40] In The Spectator, he wrote of his concerns that Britain risked becoming a 'police state' and queried whether the "severe" police reaction was justified.[33]

In a podcast interview in July 2020, Sumption claimed evidence existed indicating the virus was very mild compared to other pandemics in the 20th century. He said a Cabinet Office paper which showed pandemics in the 20th century with the Coronavirus at the lowest in terms of infectiousness and mortality levels. He argued that a coronavirus inquiry is needed because there will be worse pandemics in the future. In the same interview he also added that MPs had privately thanked him for speaking out against the lockdown but did not "dare open their mouths" to publicly speak out about it.[41]

Sumption has argued that the lockdown response to the pandemic could threaten democracy. He has said this is because people have been giving up their liberties because of their fear of the virus, and despotisms arise not because liberty is forcibly taken away by tyrants but because people voluntarily surrender their liberty in return for protection from some perceived threat and it's in the interests of governments to exaggerate that threat in order to procure compliance.[42]

Furthermore, he has noted that advocates of human rights "have been extraordinarily silent" about the lockdown. Sumption has said that his view on the virus vindicate the views he expressed in his Reith lectures and in his book Trials of the State: Law and the Decline of Politics (2019) which was "remarkably prescient" about it.[43]

In a podcast aired on 10 September 2020, Sumption told journalist Allison Pearson of The Daily Telegraph that the "lockdown and the quarantine rules and most of the other regulations have been made under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984", not the Coronavirus Act 2020 itself. Sumption further observed that the only language contained in this Act which confers specific powers over an individual's liberty relate to individuals who are believed "on reasonable grounds" to have contracted an infectious agent, and that thus the powers purported by the Johnson government to enforce lockdown measures on the whole population are in fact ultra vires and of vanishing effect on the vast majority. He found the deliberate employment of this Act to enforce a lockdown a "drastic decision" and "profoundly controversial".[44]

On 13 September 2020, Sumption told Tom Swarbrick on LBC?s Sunday show that he thought the new coronavirus social distancing policy of rule of six was unenforceable: "You can enforce it if you're sufficiently intrusive – you can put spies on every street, you can have marshals watching through windows but unless you do that people are not going to respect it unless they think it's a good idea."[45]

On 27 October 2020, Sumption delivered at University of Cambridge the annual Freshfields lecture, which he entitled "Government by decree - COVID-19 and the Constitution". In it, he decried the executive's bypassing of Parliament via the Public Health Act 1984, which allowed it to introduce lockdowns and other measures without scrutiny. He expanded by stating that the executive gave police unprecedented discretionary enforcement powers, some of which were used to suppress opposition to its policies, including via new quasi-criminal offences brought into being on the 'mere say-so of ministers', with fines of up to £10,000, through the 'language of impending doom... alarmist projections and statistical manipulation'.[46]

On 17 January 2021, Sumption appeared on The Big Questions to discuss the question of whether the lockdown was "punishing too many for the greater good".[47] He did not accept that "all lives are of equal value".[47] He said that his children and grandchildren's lives were worth more "worth more because they've got a lot more of it ahead".[47] Deborah James, who has stage 4 metastatic bowel cancer and hosts the You, Me and the Big C podcast said "With all due respect, I am the person who you say their life is not valuable."[47] Sumption interrupted James, saying "I didn't say your life was not valuable, I said it was less valuable."[47] James then said "Who are you to put a value on life? In my view, and I think in many others, life is sacred and I don't think we should make those judgement calls. All life is worth saving regardless of what life it is people are living. I'm fully aware and I've seen first-hand and said goodbye to best friends in terms of the collateral Covid is causing, but at the same time I'm incredibly grateful to be somebody who is kept alive because of the NHS."[47] Catherine Foot of the Centre for Ageing Better challenged his views, saying she "shuddered" at his comment that not all lives were equal.[47] She said that the crisis required drawing red lines and that one was "every human is equal".[47] Sumption argued that his idea was 'axiomatic' and widely used in evaluations of medical intervention (quality-adjusted life year). He also said that only the "old and vulnerable" should isolate.[47] Host Nicky Campbell asked if this was "utterly simplistic as vulnerability includes a broad range of people and people of all ages interact.[47] Sumption also claimed that government action had "virtually no impact" on mortality rates, since he believes lockdowns simply 'push' deaths forward into the period when society opens up. Thus he believes the only legitimate justification for a lockdown is to buy time to prepare the health service. This view was criticised by Calum Semple as "plain wrong".[47] Semple also pointed out that "the value of life doesn't change at the age of 70".[47]"

Makes sense to me.

[clau clau]

[47] James then said "Who are you to put a value on life?

Sumption should have said.  I am a judge.  Judges put a value of life all the time.

[King Wenceslas]

All of these lockdowns and witches brew vaccines will mean nothing when fall comes along with the more deadlier Covid variants. That is when the real fun starts.

Looking back, life in 2019 is starting to look like the good old days.

[lauermar]

The "witches brew vaccines" may provide some cross-reactivity to the new Covid strains. If there is a breakthrough infection, it may not be life threatening enough to send the patient to the ICU on a ventilator. Our local blood bank told me they haven't had any demands for convalescent serum in months since few people are on ventilators at the hospital anymore. They credit the new treatments and vaccines to the decreased demand for serum.

In the coming months, there will be a rise in all kinds of illnesses as the illegal immigrants move from the border to the rest of the country. They come from countries where poverty limits their access to medicine and vaccinations. Some of the diseases that we have decreased in the USA are still active there. For anti-vaxxer Americans who haven't had them, these illnesses will catch them by surprise. Not just Covid-19, but measles, mumps, rubella, diptheria, pertussis, polio, shingles, etc. This will brew up trouble all right.

To wit:  "Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg and howlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble. Cool it with a baboon's blood, Then the charm is firm and good."

[james03]

Not having a lock down is not determining the value of life.  It instead insists on personal responsibility.  Those who want to isolate and/or wear muzzles can make that choice. 

Luckily we didn't have muzzle mandates or social distancing where I live.  I still don't know anyone who died.  I know a guy at work on an oxygen concentrator who got it and lived without repercussions.  Type 1 diabetic got it and lived, no problems.  I talked to day to a man whose 77 yr. old dad with COPD got it and recovered in 5 days.  I got it and spent 2 days in bed.  I know of a woman who tested positive and didn't know she had it.  Kids who get it usually show no symptoms.  The UK is insane.

As far as value on human life, what about all of the suicides and a life long of worse suffering for the poor who have to now pay higher prices after the deranged money printing that funded this insanity?

[King Wenceslas]

Professor Dolores Cahill is a geneticist and immunologist at the University of Dublin she is part of the ACU 2020 collective.

Professor Cahill explains that the effects of mRNA vaccines will manifest themselves months later, and that we don't want them labeled as Covid deaths, when in reality they die from the effects of mRNA vaccines.

The antibodies that will react to the presence of new coronaviruses and its external proteins will activate by spotting this protein and they will find it in your organs (ed. also) because with the mRNA from vaccines, your body synthesizes it.

So the anti bodies will attack all the organs that have this protein and destroy your organs leading to death.

Death which will be attributed to the Covid while it is a consequence of the vaccine.

Only an autopsy will reveal the true cause of death, such as inflammation from a cytokine storm caused by the vaccine.

If this is true all hell might be breaking out in the next 3 or 4 months not November 2021 as I thought. The mRNA "vaccines" would truly be a witches brew.

The deaths from the cytokine storm would not be reported as such but would be declared deaths due to Covid. A new hysteria would brew up with lockdowns. Wash, rinse, repeat.

With the flood of illegal children coming over the border with their many diseases this will fuel more hysteria. Pro vaccers will become draconian crushing all opposition.

Don't think we are ever going back ever to "normal" times. Seems to me this will be the end of the American dream by 2030. When or if everything falls apart those illegals will be flooding back to where they came from and happy to do it. America will become a hellish landscape of plagues, economic collapse, revolts, and wars. God won't have to lift a finger to punish us; we will do it ourselves.

[james03]

This might work out to be a good thing.  Most people who don't get vaxxed are right wing.  So maybe God is doing us a solid here.

How do you become immune?  Get the disease and deal with it naturally.

[diaduit]

I know a woman who was on her deathbed from cancer after many years, got covid, recovered and still lived for 7 more weeks.  A public health nurse I know, male, told me of a terminal cancer patient who got it and survived...said male nurse tells all his clients to forget the paranoia and go out.

As for lockdown, our government must be realising they are pushing us to the limit, they are easing restrictions and allowing non essential businesses to re open May 4th....they will pull the plug on our freedoms in time for roll out of vaccines for ordinary joe which will be about June.  So far the vulnerable and frontline workers got jabbed.

[clau clau]

PRISONER 1: What are you in for?
PRISONER 2: Murder. What about you?
PRISONER 1: Menopause.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVs-lu-hvP0[/yt]

[Elizabeth.2]

  that was scary, Clau Clau.

[MaximGun]

As much as I resist the vaccine and ignore lockdown when I am healthy, going out into public when you have a high temperature is darned irresponsible, since you are likely currently to have that virus.

If the Chinese have cops with thermal imaging cameras, that is one of the least bad things they do in China.

The Chinese can be a very pagan, selfish bunch of people who care very little for the strangers around them.  I won't follow bad laws but good laws need to be followed.

[Miriam_M]

If this is true all hell might be breaking out in the next 3 or 4 months not November 2021 as I thought. The mRNA "vaccines" would truly be a witches brew.

ACT IV, Scene I

The Tragedy of Macbeth, by William Shakespeare

For a charm of powerful trouble,

    Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

  THREE WITCHES: Double, double, toil and trouble;

    Fire burn and cauldron bubble

[ChairmanJoeAintMyPrez]

As much as I resist the vaccine and ignore lockdown when I am healthy, going out into public when you have a high temperature is darned irresponsible, since you are likely currently to have that virus.

You're not.  You're just as likely to have a seasonal flu, a common cold (yes, the cold can cause a low-grade fever), or any number of other diseases, some transmissible and some not.  You may have a thyroid condition or just have finished a strenuous workout.  You might be withdrawing from alcohol or benzos (which is actually dangerous, unlike this "disease", but withdrawal is not transmissible.)  You might even have a Fever of Unknown Origin.  (Yes, that's a thing.)  And unless you would have quarantined yourself for those, there's no reason to quarantine yourself for this "disease".

I won't follow bad laws but good laws need to be followed.

"You are not allowed to participate in normal life if you have the sniffles" is not a good law.

[GiftOfGod]

As much as I resist the vaccine and ignore lockdown when I am healthy, going out into public when you have a high temperature is darned irresponsible, since you are likely currently to have that virus.

You're not.  You're just as likely to have a seasonal flu, a common cold (yes, the cold can cause a low-grade fever), or any number of other diseases, some transmissible and some not.  You may have a thyroid condition or just have finished a strenuous workout.  You might be withdrawing from alcohol or benzos (which is actually dangerous, unlike this "disease", but withdrawal is not transmissible.)  You might even have a Fever of Unknown Origin.  (Yes, that's a thing.)  And unless you would have quarantined yourself for those, there's no reason to quarantine yourself for this "disease".

I won't follow bad laws but good laws need to be followed.

"You are not allowed to participate in normal life if you have the sniffles" is not a good law.

Common courtesy to your fellow man is to not spread your germs when sick. Some cultures, such as Japan, are highly evolved in this area which is why their sick people have been wearing face masks for decades.

[MaximGun]

"You are not allowed to participate in normal life if you have the sniffles" is not a good law.

It it not the sniffles.  Covid is a man made virus more dangerous than the regular flu and which makes normal working age people breathless and fatigued for several weeks to over a month. You should not go out into enclosed public spaces when yoy have the flu either, it is anti-social.  If you have a cold sneeze in a tissue and wash your hands.

If people took more responsibility with their health we would not be a world of as many stupid sheep looking to polticians for solutions.  We could wash our hands, use common sense, stay as home when we suspect we have a virus and say no when the government locked down entire populations most of whom are healthy.

Monitoring people's temperature is smart.  They are not walking through the countryside getting some exercise and at now danger of infecting others, they are bloody well shopping which they can do on line or wait or ask someone else to do.