“We must do something now, we must act to save lives!” This is the all-too familiar clarion call to action which circulates between the mainstream media, the public, and government, and normally in that order.
Of course, history is replete with examples of gross overreaction in state-sanctioned interventions by monarchs, dictators and democracies. It doesn’t take much for the government’s prescribed course of action to quickly undermine its stated goals. In the case of the coronavirus outbreak, we’re told that the fundamental object is to ‘save lives.’ But have Western governments really thought through the full social and economic ramifications of implementing draconian ‘lockdown’ measures in order to quarantine their populations?
Early on, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (who recently said he had tested positive to COVID-19) spoke about the need to “strike a balance” when implementing state measures to contain the contagion, but he quickly backed off this rhetoric after being savaged by a hysterical mainstream corporate media who were railing in fear that not enough was being done to protect the population. A decision was then made to shutdown the country’s real economy and society, and divert most public resources to “fighting the invisible enemy”. Businesses, schools, gyms, cafes, institutions, parks were all closed by government decree, with subjects now ordered to stay indoors for an indefinite period of time, until the government deemed it to be safe to reinstate the public freedoms and rights.
In the end, it was alarmism that won the day, and dictated official government efforts to contain the novel coronavirus.
But the real question which should have governed government policy was never really asked: exactly how severe of a threat to public health is the coronavirus?
Even today, mainstream media and government ‘experts’ are drifting out competing doomsday scenarios, each pretending to be able to project the number of dead.” The whole affair has descended into some bizarre dystopian daily weather report, with endless dashboards, decorated in ever more complex-looking mortality computer models and graphs.
Somewhere along the line, the government and its faithful supporters, egged on by a desperate mainstream media – forgot about the very real dangers of over-reacting to what might turn out to be a marginal threat compared to other seasonal outbreaks and pathogens.
Chris Davie from the UK Metro reports…
The UK has overrated to the coronavirus outbreak and the current lockdown measures put in place to contain the virus could be less dramatic, according to a former NHS consultant pathologist.
There have been 2,352 deaths in the UK due to Covid-19, while the total number of confirmed cases is 29,474. Strict lockdown rules have been put in place to stop the spread of the virus, and earlier this week, professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London claimed that the rate of hospital admissions suggests social distancing guidelines have made an impact.
But Dr John Lee, a retired professor of pathology, suggests that there has been a worldwide overreaction to coronavirus and a lack of testing means that governments have been unable to get an accurate understanding of the severity of the disease. Dr Lee also believes that current evidence suggests coronavirus isn’t much worse than seasonal flu.
‘The key point I’m trying to make is that it’s very difficult to interpret any numbers without context for those numbers,’ Dr Lee told Sky News.
‘So the numbers we’ve been hearing of deaths do indeed sound very alarming and we’ve all been seeing very alarming pictures from around the world. But the question is we can’t understand those numbers without knowing how they relate to other numbers related to deaths and disease.’
‘My point is the way we compare diseases is by comparing death rates, the number of people who die of a disease compared to the number of people who got the disease. And in this case we really have no idea at the moment how many people have actually had the disease because we haven’t been testing widely enough to actually understand those numbers.’
‘We don’t know those certain yet but certainly there’s a growing body of informed opinion that feels the severity of this disease has been overestimated. Whenever you look at the severity of the disease early in an epidemic it tends to overestimate it because you see the tip of the iceberg.’
‘What you don’t see is all the people with no symptoms or very mild symptoms. So there is evidence that this disease isn’t necessarily much worse than a seasonal flu.’
‘But what we are seeing is a synchronisation of cases, so health services are being put under great pressure, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that when we look back on this disease in six months or a year’s time it would’ve turned out to be particularly exceptional or very exceptional.
‘I think it’s very sensible to prepare, I mean obviously health services are under great pressure and we should prepare for being able to being able to deal with as many cases as we possibly can do.
‘What I’m saying is that actions have been taken only looking at one thing. The advice from the Government has been based only on the Covid figures, we haven’t had any assessment whatsoever of the harms being caused by this really remarkable action that’s been taken. Of course, countries around the world tend to copy each other. The question is what’s proportionate action? And proportionate action is quite possibly less than what’s being taken at the moment.’
‘In dealing with the Covid cases we’ve been taking resources away from other cases that are in the health services, and the impact of that really isn’t known at the moment. ‘When the Prime Minister quite rightly said nine days ago he would follow the science, I think everybody would agree with that, it’s a very sensible thing to do. But following the science is different from following one group of scientists.’
‘What you have to try to understand is that science is a discussion. And the Imperial model is based on a lot of assumptions, and on incomplete data, and it’s only one interpretation of the measurements we currently have.’
‘What I’m saying is we need to continue to critically evaluate the all data that’s already there. My assessment of the data, and as I said a great body of informed opinions’ assessment of the data, is that we are, on a global basis, overreacting to the disease.’
‘This is the first pandemic of the media age. And that has had a big effect on how people perceive the disease. ‘The numbers do seem very alarming but I think if only the Government spokespeople and the mainstream media could present a more nuanced version of the numbers it would reduce people’s feeling of panic’
‘And actually I think the numbers do indicate that we could probably contain this disease with a less dramatic form of social isolation that we’ve gone into at the moment.’
***
READ MORE CORONAVIRUS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Coronavirus Files
SUPPORT OUR INDEPENDENT MEDIA PLATFORM – BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV