The following article is a slightly précised version of an article by Lord Sumption, a former High Court judge in the Sunday Times on 17 May 2020. I found it a very compelling piece and its conclusions can be applied widely, including to climate change.
The lesson of Covid-19 is brutally simple and applies generally to public regulation. 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.
The lockdown was originally justified as a temporary measure to protect the NHS by spreading infections over a longer period, to allow time for the critical care capacity to catch up. It was never much of a rationale. The NHS is there to protect us not the other way round.
How could this measure justify depriving the entire UK population of its liberty, pushing us into the worst recession in 3 hundred years, destroying millions of jobs and hundreds of thousands of businesses, piling up private and public debt on a crippling scale and undermining the education of our children?
Since the PM's broadcast last Sunday the lockdown has found a new rationale. The government has dropped "Protect the NHS" from its slogan. The reason is clear from the paper it published the following day. The NHS is not at risk. This is partly because the government has done an outstanding job in increasing intensive care capacity, and partly because the threat to the NHS was always overstated. The critical care capacity of the NHS has nearly doubled since January, even without the 4000 or more additional beds in seven temporary Nightingale hospitals.
Around the top of the spike in infections, on April 10, 41% of NHS general acute beds were empty. Only 51% of these were occupied by a Covid-19 patient. The current figure is 20%. The nightingale hospitals stand empty. These are government figures.
Today the lockdown is only about shielding us from the risk of infection. This raises serious questions about our relationship with the state. It should be our business to say what risks we will take with our own health. The usual answer is that by going out we may infect other people, but that no longer works as an excuse for coercion. Those who want to avoid infection can isolate themselves voluntarily. They will be no worse off than they are under the current compulsory regime.
We now know that Covid-19 is likely to be with us long term, so unless it plans to keep the lockdown permanently, it is only putting off the moment when we have to face the risk anyway. The PM told the House of Commons on Monday that his new plan was workable because the British would use their common sense. So why not allow them to do so by leaving the decisions to them?
Instead we are resorting to law, which because it requires exact definition, will always cover many things that are perfectly harmless. Thus it was ok to go for a walk in the park, but not to sunbathe. It is ok to drive to the Lake District, but not to visit your second home. It is ok to meet one person, but not two. This kind of thing is arbitrary and absurd. It discredits the law as well as those who make it.
So how has the government ended up in this unsustainable position? The answer is that having originally embarked on a sensible policy that would have avoided a lockdown, it did a U-turn on the afternoon of March 23, without thinking of the wider implications. It was in a blind panic provoked by Professor Neil Ferguson's "reasonable worst case" of 510,000 deaths. Quite apart from the fact that a worst case is by definition an unlikely one, few scientists now support this figure.
The government terrified people into submission by giving the impression that Covid-19 was dangerous for everyone. It is not. In the vast majority of cases it attacks people with serious vulnerabilities. By most estimates, between 0.5% and 0.75% of infected persons die. Of those, 87% are over 65 and at least 90% have multiple causes only one of which is Covid-19, according to the Office for National Statistics. The death rate for those under 50 is tiny. For the overwhelming majority the symptoms are mild, yet Matt Hancock inferred that by going we could die in the high point of government hype.
Lockdown is now all about protecting timid politicians backs, terrified of being blamed for deaths on their watch, but it is a wicked thing they are doing.
My thought is that there a number of parallels here with climate change. We have government that has made fantastic claims of the risk of climate change based on extreme results from computer models, and in doing so has penned itself into a corner with a hugely expensive policy of decarbonisation. They are now having to agree with the most extreme climate groups such as Extinction Rebellion. The only way out would be to admit they were wrong, something that governments never do voluntarily.
The lesson of Covid-19 is brutally simple and applies generally to public regulation. 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.
The lockdown was originally justified as a temporary measure to protect the NHS by spreading infections over a longer period, to allow time for the critical care capacity to catch up. It was never much of a rationale. The NHS is there to protect us not the other way round.
How could this measure justify depriving the entire UK population of its liberty, pushing us into the worst recession in 3 hundred years, destroying millions of jobs and hundreds of thousands of businesses, piling up private and public debt on a crippling scale and undermining the education of our children?
Since the PM's broadcast last Sunday the lockdown has found a new rationale. The government has dropped "Protect the NHS" from its slogan. The reason is clear from the paper it published the following day. The NHS is not at risk. This is partly because the government has done an outstanding job in increasing intensive care capacity, and partly because the threat to the NHS was always overstated. The critical care capacity of the NHS has nearly doubled since January, even without the 4000 or more additional beds in seven temporary Nightingale hospitals.
Around the top of the spike in infections, on April 10, 41% of NHS general acute beds were empty. Only 51% of these were occupied by a Covid-19 patient. The current figure is 20%. The nightingale hospitals stand empty. These are government figures.
Today the lockdown is only about shielding us from the risk of infection. This raises serious questions about our relationship with the state. It should be our business to say what risks we will take with our own health. The usual answer is that by going out we may infect other people, but that no longer works as an excuse for coercion. Those who want to avoid infection can isolate themselves voluntarily. They will be no worse off than they are under the current compulsory regime.
We now know that Covid-19 is likely to be with us long term, so unless it plans to keep the lockdown permanently, it is only putting off the moment when we have to face the risk anyway. The PM told the House of Commons on Monday that his new plan was workable because the British would use their common sense. So why not allow them to do so by leaving the decisions to them?
Instead we are resorting to law, which because it requires exact definition, will always cover many things that are perfectly harmless. Thus it was ok to go for a walk in the park, but not to sunbathe. It is ok to drive to the Lake District, but not to visit your second home. It is ok to meet one person, but not two. This kind of thing is arbitrary and absurd. It discredits the law as well as those who make it.
So how has the government ended up in this unsustainable position? The answer is that having originally embarked on a sensible policy that would have avoided a lockdown, it did a U-turn on the afternoon of March 23, without thinking of the wider implications. It was in a blind panic provoked by Professor Neil Ferguson's "reasonable worst case" of 510,000 deaths. Quite apart from the fact that a worst case is by definition an unlikely one, few scientists now support this figure.
The government terrified people into submission by giving the impression that Covid-19 was dangerous for everyone. It is not. In the vast majority of cases it attacks people with serious vulnerabilities. By most estimates, between 0.5% and 0.75% of infected persons die. Of those, 87% are over 65 and at least 90% have multiple causes only one of which is Covid-19, according to the Office for National Statistics. The death rate for those under 50 is tiny. For the overwhelming majority the symptoms are mild, yet Matt Hancock inferred that by going we could die in the high point of government hype.
Lockdown is now all about protecting timid politicians backs, terrified of being blamed for deaths on their watch, but it is a wicked thing they are doing.
My thought is that there a number of parallels here with climate change. We have government that has made fantastic claims of the risk of climate change based on extreme results from computer models, and in doing so has penned itself into a corner with a hugely expensive policy of decarbonisation. They are now having to agree with the most extreme climate groups such as Extinction Rebellion. The only way out would be to admit they were wrong, something that governments never do voluntarily.
Your latest post on the 21st is not selectable.
ReplyDeleteI never understood why the NHS was more valuable than people's lives ?!!!!! It should have read SAVE LIVES first - damn the NHS !! As with everything this government has got its priorities wrong !
ReplyDelete