Our Ministers Didn’t “Do Okay” Against the Coronavirus
Matthew Syed’s latest article in the Sunday Times is titled “Now we know our ministers did OK against Covid, but I hear no apologies”. And while Syed may not have chosen the title (that was probably his editor), he did write this: “The truth is that on the whole, and with only a few exceptions, ministers did their best in unenviable circumstances.”
Syed’s basic argument is as follows. The recent WHO report reveals that, in terms of excess deaths, Britain “is roughly in the middle of the bunch when compared with similar nations”. Therefore, those who slammed the Government for its handling of the pandemic were wrong, and really ought to apologise.
The article isn’t all bad. For example, Syed skewers those unhinged left-wing commentators who accused the Government of pursuing ‘eugenics’ for not locking down sooner, and chides his fellow journalists for asking ‘gotcha’ questions, rather than trying to get useful information out of politicians.
Yet for every swipe he takes at those who say the Government didn’t do enough, he also takes a swipe at those who say the Government did too much. And his basic argument – the one I outlined above – doesn’t work.
Syed writes: “Websites such as Lockdown Sceptics rose up like cancers, metastasising across the internet, sucking rationality from the debate like intergalactic debris into a black hole.” This rather lurid comparison is ironic coming from Syed, who spends much of his article lamenting the “shocking decline” in standards of public discourse.
Hint: if you’re concerned about declining standards of public discourse, you may wish to avoid comparing your opponents to metastasising cancers.
Anyway, why doesn’t Syed’s argument work? To begin with, his premise that the WHO report tells us something we didn’t already know – that it provides “new evidence” – is false. Decent estimates of excess deaths in various rich countries have been available for months.
Ariel Karlinsky and Dmitry Kobak’s estimates were published as far back as January of 2021, and they’ve been continually updated ever since. Likewise, the ONS published estimates for most of the countries in Europe in November of last year; and the rank order of countries hasn’t changed drastically in the interim.
Okay, that’s a minor point. And it’s true that Britain winds up somewhere in the middle when you compare rich countries on excess mortality. But this doesn’t mean our ministers “did their best in unenviable circumstances” – not by a long shot.
Excess mortality is only one metric you can use to evaluate government performance. And on other metrics, Britain did much worse than average.
According to the latest figures published by the ONS, Britain saw the second largest increase in government debt out of all European countries. From Q4 of 2019 to Q4 of 2021, the U.K.’s general government gross debt (as a percentage of GDP) ballooned by 19 percentage points.
Likewise, when the Economist ranked 23 rich countries for overall economic performance during the pandemic, Britain finished second from bottom.
From the very beginning, lockdown sceptics have argued that we can’t just look at Covid outcomes; we have to consider things like the economy, education and civil liberties as well. And this still applies today.
Saying that Britain “did OK” in the pandemic, while ignoring everything other than Covid deaths, would be like saying the U.S. “did OK” in the Iraq war, while ignoring everything other than U.S. military deaths. (Although America lost fewer than 5,000 troops, the war ended up costing almost $2 trillion, and sparked a decades-long insurgency.)
It’s also worth pointing out that our ministers threw the Government’s own pandemic preparedness plan out the window. As you’ll recall, the plan states that attempting to “halt the spread of a new pandemic influenza virus” would be a “waste of public health resources”.
A genuinely praiseworthy pandemic strategy is the one followed by Sweden – which boasts lower excess mortality than Britain, and far better economic outcomes (not to mention greater respect for civil liberties).
If our ministers did “their best”, I’d hate to see what their worst looks like.
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No, they did not ‘do okay’. It was an appalling exhibition of abusive, incompetent and coercive behaviour.
Just to get us used to the “New Normal”from politicians only complete fools would ever vote for again – but then that will not be a problem will it?
Why did politicians dump the well researched and documented national and international procedures written to deal with a viral pandemic? Sweden was the only western country to follow their national procedures and they came out better than the rest of the hysterical west.
Viruses cannot be fought they are far to small and numerous, you just live with them.
Why do you ask why? Because they had a Gates/WHO and Great Reset agenda they were told to follow – surely you know that by now?
Because they were reflecting the dominant ideas of the culture, green ideology has been taught for more than a century.
Interesting that your comment – the first reference to Gates etc this morning – is the first to receive those wonderful thumbs-downs. Those WEF boys are watching, bless their black hearts!
If the WHO treaty is signed then naughty boys like Sweden will have to toe the line.
Especially as I believe their Chief Scientist or similar has joined the WHO. I’m happy to be corrected if I”m wrong.
You could have been right. The Swedish Public Health Authority did announce that Mr. Tegnell had gotten a job at WHO.
Then they announced that the previous announcement had been premature but that discussions were ongoing.
And finally they announced that the job fell through – and if anyone wanted to know why, they would have to ask the WHO because they themselves didn’t know.
So in the end Mr. Tegnell is staying at the Public Health Authority but at a new position.
It all sounds quite strange, but it’s all true.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-23/sweden-jumps-the-gun-on-covid-strategist-s-new-who-job
Thanks for that. I was surprised that he’d join the WHO when Sweden hadn’t fallen in line with the rest of the world. It’s interesting that he’s also no longer in the position he had in Sweden. Maybe something to do with vaccines?
Yes but if you believe you can control the Earth’s heat-budget by +/- 1.5C with taxes and edicts, making viruses do as they are told by frightening them away with masks and squirting them with ju-ju medicine is a piece of cake.
Shouldn’t that be ‘Bo-Jo” medicine?
Not following disaster management procedures which were considered, discussed and agreed in advance seems to be a habit among those who should know better.
After the IRA bomb exploded in Bishopsgate the board of HCBC met and discussed all morning what to do. At the end of that they decided to trigger their disaster management procedures that had been delayed while the Directors cogitated. Seems HMG went one better. Having paid out for years to devlop strategies they invented a new one as they went along. When I write “government” I include all the bureaucracy and it seemed to me the politicians weakly agreed this approach on advice from well paid civil servants and academics.
I can hear covid-happy politicians all around the world saying ‘The Brits did okay? Hell, we must have been at least as good as them!’
In reality, they handled covid with the finesse of a skateboarding hippo.
“Anyway, why doesn’t Syed’s argument work? To begin with, his premise that the WHO report tells us something we didn’t already know – that it provides “new evidence” – is false. Decent estimates of excess deaths in various rich countries have been available for months.”
Yes but all that information would require him to do some actual research. The WHO send out a nice press release that he can regurgitate.
Not even worth debating the sham WHO ‘s role . Trump was right to leave and let Gates fund his pet project.
He’s not that good at reading the room inviting J&J onto the stage. Maybe the reaction might make him think twice about promoting big Pharma again.
For people like Syed it is all about belonging to a class – it may be the purpose of the class to destroy the country, so many of the criteria that Noah raises are irrelevant to him.
They are not trying to destroy the country. They are trying to save us from ourselves, just as the Bolsheviks once did in the Russian sphere.
The essential factor is mistrust of ordinary people. We are viewed only as a vehicle for their own elevated ambitions. Our foolishness cannot be allowed to derail their plans. If we are let off the leash we’ll watch too much tv, smoke cigarettes and indulge in wrongthink.
Journalists are often the saddest of the bunch as they are rarely in any inner circle. They use their megaphones to signal their understanding of the agenda and their willingness to sell it to the masses in the hope they’ll be noticed. Like an attractive waitress in a restaurant in Hollywood hoping the producers can help them get on in life.
Useful idiots of course. But it is the big shots we need to focus on, the decision makers.
Precisely the distraction they want you to focus on, something we can’t possibly do anything about, but all have an opinion on, no matter how deluded.
“But it is the big shots we need to focus on, the decision makers.”
I’m sure I remember a couple of posts on here in which someone said that if they met Chris Whitty in a dark alley they’d growl at him, and another who said that if they happened to walk past Sir Patrick Vallance in Nottingham they’d mutter something under their breath.
That’s the spirit!
Sweden did ‘okay’ and I’d argue even they went too far at times. Our politicians just did a series of yougov polls on lockdowns etc then broadly followed what the results told them.
I agree. Sweden went less insane than any other advanced country and Tegnell deserves credit for his individual strength and resolve, but in any free society what Sweden did was still an offence against liberty.
I think having a stronger constitution in place is what stopped Tegnell introducing Lockdowns, but since they’re doing well, he’s taking all the credit as a hero of liberty and keeping a cool head.
Tegnell himself gave no indication he wanted lockdown, he said or a colleague said that Sweden wasn’t experimenting, everyone else was.
He never resorted to the apocalyptic balderdash of Fauci, Whitty and company, he gave evidence for his claims and nothing he did was purposefully absurd, it wasn’t absurd at all.
The YouGov polls were biased and rigged to get the results the government wanted. It was always 70% or thereabouts that desired more restrictions or longer, sooner, harder lockdowns and masks. It was too much of a coincidence. They even unashamedly had two polls running off the same subject depending on how you answered the first question. They obviously went with the results of the one that fitted in with their agenda.
Aye….Question 1. Do you want to kill granny. Answer. No. conclusion: They want more Lockdowns.
I’m afraid I would have answered Yes.
For ‘sceptics’ it is remarkable how easily some have been taken in by ‘polls’ arranged by a ‘lying Arab’.
See below how polling really works. They took this page down from the WEF site. In this case it was WEF partner Ipsos doing the work… Bear in mind Ipsos did well in the pandemic carrying out the REACT surveys in conjunction with ICL
https://web.archive.org/web/20210907145424/https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/09/how-can-framing-decisions-impact-the-issue-of-vaccination-passports/
I’d say the only thing they did well was the (useless) vaccine rollout though as this meant you had doctors dishing out jabs at £30 a pop rather than seeing sick patients you could even question this. As for the rest, a complete shit storm of disaster from the killing vast swaithes of the elderly, giving away billions to fraudsters, destroying children’s development, creating the highest NHS waiting lists ever, making NHS dentistry unavailable to the masses and torpedoing small businesses across the country to name but a few.
Had they simply vaccinated the most vulnerable groups ASAP and then thrown everything open I may have been tempted to be magnanimous and say that they had a bad first half then turned it around.
That was obviously never the purpose of the “vaccine”. So what is the real purpose of the mass never ending ‘experimental’ vaccination programme for every living human? Apart from failing totally in its prime stated purpose, what has the “experiment” revealed?
Any guesses?
How do folks feel about the UK signing up to the Gates/WHO ordering by Mandate a new mass vaccination every month to combat all the “Germs” he keeps finding with such unbridled enthusiasm? Johnson seems very keen!
If they just watch the BBC, that would be ‘News’ to them.
The ‘vaccine’ has only just begun its rampage through the population – we need to keep an eye onthe figures and mortality rates: cardio-vascular issues, blood clots , previously unknown myocarditis in the healthy young, strokes, neurological problems, spontaneous abortions, still-births – now we even have a ‘new strain’ of hepatitis in babies to add to the growing ” nothing to see here, move on” Government list.
C’mon now folks… move along please…
If this was the CEO of a company he would have been sacked long ago, and probably prosecuted.
Exactly right.
Ginger pussy!
Yes it is off-putting when people mention the wonderful gene therapy “rollout”.
It was a success in logistics at best.
The only thing they did right was to make UvdL look an utter twonk when sourcing the vaccines.
That they then spent so much on vaccines for most people who didn’t need them rather eclipses that one, brief ‘triumph’, though.
Every time I’m tempted to think they knew what they were doing, I remember the changes of mind about which vaxxes were best (and worst) for which age cohorts.
‘Clueless’ doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Ok, when they’ve caused unnecessary misery to billions?! Many had an opposite view with proof which was ignored in favour of the global scientists, which would have resulted in excellence not ok.
Oh, there was most definitely some excellence going on. Look at all the grifters who made serious money on this scam – not just in UK, across the world. And we undoubtedly do not even know the half of it.
If one’s political model is to show the mob how things are really done, then they have exceeded excellence.
Where there’s muck there’s money.
Is matt Hancock the leader of the grifters?
I had not hitherto heard of Matthew Syed – it would appear I have not missed out on anything.
His petty swipe at LS shows he was either instructed or knows to put down non-MSM, rather than raise critical questions as to why such sites arose. I haven’t read the article, as it’s pay-walled (can’t be arsed to try the tricks to get beyond that), perhaps he goes into deeper debate on this point. If he does not, then all he does is smear any dissenting voice – presumably another ‘journalist’ like Andrew Neil has become, writing according to instruction, surrendering critical thought and integrity for the 30 pieces.
Rationality was sucked from the debate precisely because of hacks like him. It is unlikely I will ever read anything by the man, but wish him good health and hope fervently that he takes as many vaccines as the non-cancerous, acceptable sources recommend to him.
Syed is a ghastly globalist lackey who does exactly what he’s told.
Plus a few more boosters – just to make sure!
Establishment writer in establishment organ backs establishment whilst camouflaging fanboi status with ‘lessons could be learnt’.
For the likes of Syed (chief globalism correspondent at globalism incorporated) to claim that figures are only just becoming available is almost beyond belief. We’ve had innumerable data and stats available for at least two years. It took me about 20 seconds to find them when I first sensed what was coming. Hell, the Diamond Princes told us absolutely everything we needed to know before the first lockdown.
“chief globalism correspondent at globalism incorporated“
Good one.
“Syed writes: “Websites such as Lockdown Sceptics rose up like cancers, metastasising across the internet, sucking rationality from the debate like intergalactic debris into a black hole.” This rather lurid comparison is ironic coming from Syed, who spends much of his article lamenting the “shocking decline” in standards of public discourse.” Always amusing when clearly intelligent elitist authoritarian types like Syed render themselves functionally stupid in this kind of way, confusing dissent with irrationality because, basically, they are too arrogant to brook the possibility that the authorities they love so much could be questioned on any fundamental levels. As an authoritarian elitist, Syed is in exactly the right place, writing for the Times. The rest of us just need to get in the habit (or stay in the habit, for those of us who saw through our elites years ago) of ignoring him along with the rest of that rag. Noah Carl hits the correct target here, pointing out that limiting consideration to death numbers is to repeat precisely the disastrous error made in the initial panic – obsessive focus on the disease without any proper perspective or wider cost benefit assessments for the responses. If only there weren’t authoritarian… Read more »
There are now so many enemies of truth in the media woodwork – the whole edifice is now rotten and crumbling to dust.
Matthew Syed said Frank Bruno is an effeminate, helium-voiced albino dwarf with no muscle and no punch at all.
Diane Abbott goes to the doctors and says;”Dr, I need your help. I’m 68 years old and I can’t count”.
Dr says; “What I’m going to need you to do is strip naked and squat in the corner over there”.
She does so and he then instructs her to move to another corner and do the same, then to by the wall next to his university degree and then to by the window.
She says, “Dr, how is this going to help me with my counting”?
He says, “It won’t, there’s sod all I can do. But I’ve just ordered a new black leather armchair and I’m wondering where it will look best”.
I understand that this joke is shortly to be banned under the Government’s new Approved Humour Bill….
Definitely triggered me….
‘Now we know our ministers did OK against Covid…’. I’m afraid that this is an incorrect statement. Doing nothing would have resulted in less damage, and far less cost.
“The truth is that on the whole, and with only a few exceptions, ministers did their best in unenviable circumstances.” – I’m more afraid that this is a totally correct statement. We have just witnessed the very best that the Technocratic Bureaucracy (fronted by politicians) have managed to do. Next time they will have had more practice, and will probably cause more damage…
Maybe he has access to the bank statements, that would explain it!
“Websites such as Lockdown Sceptics rose up like cancers, metastasising across the internet, sucking rationality from the debate“
Syed seems to be a male equivalent of that noxious elitist the US regime have just put in as Minister of Truth:
Tucker: This the point where we have to draw the line
Matthew Syed, as a former table tennis player, has much to prove that he is a fit and proper person to hold governments to account on medical ‘pandemics’ and economic lockdowns.
If he wants to be a greasy pole climber, fine. But people should call him out on that.
Table tennis – Hall of Achievement Gold Cup perhaps? What a role model!
“Websites such as Lockdown Sceptics rose up like cancers, metastasising across the internet, sucking rationality from the debate like intergalactic debris into a black hole.”
Reading behind those lines, this means that Lockdown Sceptics had become essential reading for any journalist who wanted to know what was going on. When you get attacks like this, you know that you have hit a nerve….
“this means that Lockdown Sceptics had become essential reading for any journalist who wanted to know what was going on...”
….and they really, really hated the fact that they couldn’t beat the arguments made or silence the people making them.
Goebbels still believed Germany was winning the war when he shot his wife and bit on the capsule.
The “Great Lie Machine” continues its steady propaganda. Mark Steyn is the only MSM journalist with the courage to expose it.
While the liars congratulate each other on their web of Political and Media lies, more and more people are discovering the shocking truth every day- especially those personally damaged or bereaved by the ‘vaccines’ and abused and ignored by Media and Government alike!
Sir Christopher Chope carries on his crusade for truth and accountability (which used to be a ‘given’ in this country justa few short years ago) in the face of a wall of silence, abuse and ridicule from Parliamentary Officials.
The Queen did well to be unfit enough not to be coerced into partaking of yesterday’s disgrace of a speech, designed to crush our freedoms – however it suited “Davos” Charles very well.
‘Our Ministers Didn’t “Do Okay” Against the Coronavirus’
Perhaps, but they did very well against the population
The piece by Syed, referred to here, is a downright disgrace. If the decline in reporting and rational debate standards are your big concern, then it’s probably best to avoid guttersnipe, red-top and yellow press standards.
I read his column in the Sunday Times main paper, and whilst some of it is absolute BS, he’s written some sound stuff about, for example, the deification of the NHS and its need for drastic reform. I had thought, (wrongly, it now appears) that Syed was at least reasonably intelligent and perceptive, but this latest mudslinging garbage has disabused me of that.
One can only suppose that something has unhinged him, so that he has had a damascene conversion to the morons’ side. Whether this is pressure from his editor or proprietor, or payment in kind against favours to be rendered to him, or something else isn’t clear. The other possible explanation is that he has had a few too many lunches and dinners in the company of the rabid pro-“vaccine”, “vaccine sceptics=anti-vaxxers who must be punished” D. Lawson of the ST.
I quite like Syed now and again but this was a ludicrous article.
He quotes the data but completely fails to mention Sweden which is the screaming out take away from the numbers.
He also refers to Lockdown Sceptics as ‘cancerous’ and falls sadly for an intelligent man into the usual response of referring to something you don’t like or don’t understand in subjective and insulting terms so you can ‘dismiss’ it off hand.
Very very lazy and pathetic
“Now we know our ministers did OK (for themselves) against Covid”
Throwing away centuries of human rights, the economy, the NHS, kids educations for flu, and failing to achieve anything better than Sweden is not “doing alright”. It is an unmitigated criminal failure.
No he is not worth reading in full
I was against lockdowns from April 2020, when we knew the old and infirm were the only one’s going to “sadly” succumb. I also worried that the hokey-cokey economy was only going to store up problems for the future, notwithstanding the insane amount of deficit caused by increasingly desperate PTB. The NHS should never have been clapped, because it was already clapped-out. They should have got ready for a potential problem over winter 2020/2021 and carried on heroically.
The NHS panicked initially, because all they were allowed to use was forced air. That first lockdown was really the only time of excess deaths. They also left the old to rot in care homes, seeding the virus in the old and infirm.
It has taken until now for the MSM to finally, and partially note the things that went wrong during the supposed pandemic. They were paid to follow the consensus, and should be ashamed of themselves.
Never really believed it was a thing. Never tested. Never jabbed. Had one mask for possible emergencies, and it never really needed replacing.
Never jabbed, never tested, never masked.
I once wore a piece of cloth in summer 2020 before I read the studies that showed it was a sham … or should that be shaman?
Oh dear. There’s the reason that sites like this must be punished and the internet more thoroughly policed.
You have admitted, Citizen John001, to reading “studies”; rather than doing as you were told and following the advice of your government which reads studies for you and selects ones that do not present “misinformation”.
Mike Graham caller claims UK is being destroyed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nai-G1zF7Hs
Amanda in East Sussex claims the government is destroying the country “on purpose”, with people “still wearing masks in shops” and migrants “flooding in.”
TalkTV
A quote from one of the messages left on YouTube:
“This chap Graham it was clear had no interest in her anger, and waffled on about the Weather and inflation. Good on her! She speaks for the majority.”
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Mark Steyn mentioned him because, just like most MPs and the BBC, the vaccine damages Bill is being ignored.
The Times, with the FT and the Economist is the mouthpiece of the globalists.
What else did you expect but ‘nothing to see here, move on’.
Only the destruction of an economy, children’s education, graduate degrees, and the single greatest loss of freedom since William the Conqueror.
Can’t print that though, so ‘the government did OK’.
Still don’t know who died OF or WITH covid, still guestimates when all the other end of life conditions seemed to disappear
Wu-flu historical revisionism has sadly, and predictably, a long long way to go ….
As far as I can see, this wretched government has declared war on its own people. Not content with needlessly imprisoning everybody in their homes, forcing them to take useless and toxic injections, withdrawing healthcare from those who need it, it is now making food, heating, and travel almost unaffordable in order to chase some fairytale climate myth, robbing them through the tax system, and criminalising speech and thoughts outside the prescribed narrative. Who needs a hostile invasion when you have a government like this one?