What have those who survived lockdown lost?
Updated: Nov 20, 2020
Not only have blanket lockdown measures proven themselves to be ineffective and far more deadly than the virus itself, not only have these measures decimated our economy, prompted a global famine of biblical proportions [94] and set to double world poverty [95] but there are still so many other woeful consequences of indiscriminate lockdown to consider.
Extreme lockdown restrictions have greatly increased inequality, massively widening the gap between the rich and the poor as multi-millionaires and billionaires pick the corpse of our broken economies, buying cheap wildly undervalued assets with low interest loans amongst other capitalist tricks. A report by Swiss bank UBS found that billionaires increased their wealth by more than a quarter (27.5%) at the height of the crisis from April to July, just as millions of people around the world lost their jobs or were struggling to get by on government schemes [96, 97, 98]. The gap has also widened in UK schooling with figures from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) revealing the gap in quality of schooling England between some pupils and their wealthier peers has widened by 46% as a result of blanket lockdown restrictions [99].
Many teenagers futures have been jeopardised through them losing the opportunity to exceed low predicted grades from teachers, or those from absurd algorithms, due to their exams being cancelled [100]; children have missed out on months of schooling at crucial stages in their development (While the average learning lost was three months for all pupils, according to teachers, more than half of pupils at schools in the most deprived areas lost four months or more [99]; and university students have had their education spoiled by woeful attempts to implement courses online by flustered lecturers.
Weddings have been cancelled or postponed; tragically people have been unable to attend the funerals of loved ones; people of all faiths have been unable to attend religious services; many have celebrated their graduations and birthdays alone, essentially under house arrest; the closure of gyms, pools and sports clubs has impacted millions of peoples fitness, health and wellbeing [101, 102]; many sporting institutions and bodies have been put into financial
distress with many promising professional athletes careers cut short [103]; the performing arts of all kinds have been devastated, with many promising careers being cut short here too (in the US alone a report found that as much as $150bn in revenue has already been lost [104]); music concerts, cultural festivals and events of all kinds have been cancelled; visiting your parents for dinner has regularly been criminalised; long planned, once in a lifetime travel opportunities have been cancelled, potentially forever, the list goes on. Thousands of criminals, including sex offenders, have had their prison sentences cut short to be released early to the streets without justice for their victims having been fulfilled [105, 106].
Domestic violence, mental health issues and drug/ alcohol abuse have skyrocketed due to the toll blanket lockdown restrictions have had on people's health and wellbeing [107, 108, 109, 110].
Millions have been forced into unemployment, businesses people devoted their life and savings to destroyed irreparably by blanket lockdown measures, unskilled middle aged people forced to join the unemployment line for the first time in their life with little hope of a new career, an entire new generation of young people’s employment future smashed [111, 112, 113, 114]. Were we given any say in this? No. These decisions were made for us in a disgusting breach of our rights.
Thousands of elderly people have been essentially placed under house arrest, confined to their homes in complete isolation, often tormented by dementia accelerated by lack of stimulation [115, 116] or suffering from such severely diminished mobility from lack of physical activity that they will never be able to walk again unaided, for months on end only to spend their last days on earth alone. Denied the right to live and die on their own terms. Even by extreme estimates those over 70 still have a 96.9% survival rate from the virus [117] and aren't guaranteed to contract it with proper precautions undertaken. But we now live under a despotic regime that tells us what risks we can and can't take with our lives and criminalises priorities and value judgements not in line with those mandated by the government; perhaps for many getting to hug or play with their grandchildren again before they pass is a risk worth taking, even if it may mean potentially living a few weeks or months less when they are already on deaths door. How dare a small group of policy makers and scientific advisers instruct a whole nation on how to live their lives, it makes me sick. We're supposed to live in a western democracy yet our liberties have never been so under attack.
To quote Lord Sumption, “there is more to life than the avoidance of death and if the cost of life is to suppress everything that makes it worth it then it is my belief the cost is too high… For a government to treat people as if they are too stupid, selfish or self-indulgent to act in their self-interest is both patronizing and intolerable in a democratic society. It’s also factually inaccurate.”
We are no longer spending actual money. We are now borrowing at the highest rate since we were fighting for our lives against the Germans in World War Two [118] (a debt which took us 61 years to pay off [119]). By borrowing so much money to fight an infectious but mostly non-lethal virus we have stolen from the future generations who will have to repay these massive debts. How dare we borrow from their future when they may need to borrow to fight their own environmental catastrophe, war or, inevitably, far more deadly virus? We have all acted like irrational, selfish cowards with no foresight, now I pray we at least have hindsight enough to end this madness and attempt to limit the horrendous damage we are doing to our country and young people’s futures.
"Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad." - George Orwell, 1984
References:
94. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200528-why-most-covid-19-deaths-wont-be-from-the-virus
95. https://nypost.com/2020/10/11/who-warns-against-covid-19-lockdowns-due-to-economic-damage/
98. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/pandemics-poor-rich-economics-coronavirus-covid19/
99. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/sep/01/disadvantaged-and-bame-pupils-lost-more-learning-study-finds
100. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-53767773
102. https://themedium.ca/sports/how-gym-closures-can-significantly-impact-mental-health/
103. https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/2020/05/covid-19-sport/
104. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/brookings-report-lost-art-covid-crisis
106. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/us/coronavirus-jail-inmates-released.html
107. . https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/19/lockdown-may-cost-200k-lives-government-report-shows/
108. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8863445/One-ten-people-suffered-suicidal-thoughts-Britains-lockdown.html
109. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-deaths-suicides-drugs-alcohol-pandemic-75000/
110. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/world/coronavirus-domestic-violence.html
111. https://obr.uk/coronavirus-analysis/
112. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52660591
115. https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1349820/Coronavirus-news-hidden-toll-25000-extra-deaths-private-homes
116. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5764000/
117. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02483-2
118. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52662613
119. https://www.politics.co.uk/news/2006/12/29/britain-finally-pays-off-wwii-debt