The international covid shutdowns were among the worst public policy disasters (or crimes) of modern times, and yet there has been no accountability. In the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan sums up the effects of the shutdowns on Britain: “Six years on, the Covid lockdowns are still ruining our lives.”
Was there truly a legal argument about whether a Scotch egg counted as a meal? Were we actually offered guidance on the correct way to have sex (avoid kissing and, if possible, keep your mask on)? And that weird ritual whereby, when restaurants reopened, we would put our masks on to walk to our table and then remove them. Did we really do that?
Yes, we did, on pain of criminal sanction. Six years ago this Monday, we were confined to house arrest – something which, in law, normally requires a high burden of proof. Faced with Britain’s only genuine mass suspension of human rights, our human rights lawyers, so loud in their defence of foreigners and scoundrels, were silent.
It was similar in the U.S. In my state, Governor Tim Walz issued an executive order barring all residents from leaving their homes except as authorized by him. To my recollection, not a single voice from the “civil rights community” was raised in protest.
[T]he lockdown remains the central fact of our lives, explaining not just our catastrophic levels of taxation, inflation and debt, but also the surge in welfare claims, the rise in shoplifting and littering, the decline in school standards, even the surge in immigration. It lies behind our low productivity, our contempt for the law and our slide in world rankings. It is a brooding, malevolent presence, always there, never acknowledged.
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In precisely the same way [as the aftermath of World War II], the lockdown increased voters’ demand for government assistance even as it exhausted the government’s resources. A poll published on Friday suggested that most British adults thought the state could afford to subsidise energy bills and end homelessness while also introducing a universal basic income. Any sense of basic economics we once had has been lost.It is worth going through the ways in which Long Lockdown continues to debase our public life. Consider, first, the basic price tag. The National Audit Office reckons we spent £376bn, the International Monetary Fund says £407bn. Either way, these are only the direct costs of the furlough, the business grants and so on. The secondary costs – lost productivity, disrupted education, prolonged absenteeism – are much harder to quantify.
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[N]o one now believes that the supposed emergency-spending levels of [2020] will ever be fully reversed. The Government is borrowing £150bn a year, two thirds of which must go on servicing the interest on past debts. In February 2020, we were on the point of making our final mortgage payment; now, we are visiting payday lenders simply to fend off past creditors.Having spent the better part of two years consuming without producing, and printing money to cover the difference, we created a surge in prices. Inflation peaked at 11.1 per cent in 2022, and still has not fallen back to pre-pandemic levels. This should not surprise anyone, but human nature being what it is, we would rather blame the politicians than the 93 per cent of the population who wanted the lockdown.
Lockdown introduced many working people who had never before claimed benefits to the process of getting money from state departments. Some found that they liked living that way. Around 3,000 adults are now being signed off as too sick to work every day and, as Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell revealed this week, the amount of money going on benefits to working-age adults (£333bn) is now higher than the amount raised by income tax (£331bn).
More at the link, including how the lockdown of 2020 contributed greatly to Britain’s immigration crisis. Our experience in the U.S., if not identical, was similar. Hannan says that the U.K. shutdown was supported by 93% of the British people. I don’t know what the figure would be here, but certainly a majority. It was shocking at the time, and it remains shocking, to realize with what ease a large majority of Americans were happy to give up their freedom.
