Tag: lockdowns

Lockdown has caused a mental-health crisis

What’s strange is that a mental-health lobby that has spent years redefining mental illness to include more and more people, and spent years discussing the potential social causes of this supposed ‘crisis’, is strangely hesitant to criticise lockdown. This is despite the fact that lockdown forces us into circumstances pretty much guaranteed to increase anxiety, depression and debilitating mental illnesses

A major survey by Mind, the mental-health charity, has found that two thirds of adults and three quarters of young people with existing mental-health problems have experienced worsening mental health over the course of the pandemic. In addition, more than one in five adults with no previous experience of such problems described their mental health as poor or very poor. One in four of those who tried to access support was unable to get it from the NHS.

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Sweden shows lockdowns were unnecessary. No wonder public health officials hate it

You know who isn’t worried about a second wave of COVID-19? Sweden. The stolid Scandinavian kingdom has just carried out a record number of COVID-19 tests and found a positive rate of just 1.2%, the lowest since the start of the pandemic. As Sweden’s case rate drops below Norway’s and Denmark’s, those commentators who spent April and May raging against what a Washington Post op-ed called its “experiment with national chauvinism” and predicting colossal fatalities have suddenly gone quiet.

“Sweden has gone from being one of the countries with the most infection in Europe to one of those with the least infection in Europe, while many other countries have seen a rather dramatic increase,” says Anders Tegnell, the state epidemiologist.

True, and it has happened not despite the absence of a lockdown but because of it. Sweden encouraged people to work from home, made university courses remote, and banned meetings of more than 50 people but otherwise trusted its citizens to use their common sense. The authorities judged that since hospitals could cope, there was no need to buy time by ordering people to stay indoors. That judgment has been amply vindicated.

A cause for unalloyed joy, you might think. Here, after all, is proof that a country can contain the coronavirus without depriving children of an education, piling up backlogs of non-coronavirus medical conditions, or leaving a smoking crater where its economy used to be.

But the rest of the world is far from pleased. Indeed, the tone of most foreign media coverage remains affronted, and you can see why. After all, if Sweden’s strategy was viable, the rest of us ruined ourselves for nothing. That is a disquieting thought, almost an unbearable one. But Sweden forces us to confront it.

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Nearly two decades after 9/11, the parallels between the post-terrorist attack ‘New Normal’ & that of Covid-19 can’t be ignored

Both the 9/11 attacks and the Covid-19 pandemic have dramatically shaped Western society. But the changes they wrought were devastating and unnecessary, pushed through by control-hungry governments who saw opportunity in crisis.

While both the worst terror attack in US history and the deadliest pandemic in a generation were immediately hyped as the defining elements of the era, the uncomfortable reality is that neither terrorism nor the novel coronavirus pose any risk more severe than taking a bath.

However, the media hype – fueled by think tanks and governments drooling over the possibility of adopting controls that would normally spark popular revolt – has created the same climate of fear that allowed the imposition of the post-9/11 police state, paving the way for a post-Covid regime that will make the Patriot Act look cuddly.

The shocking changes to the American “way of life” that have followed both events were in no way required, or even logical, responses to the crises in question. It took an unlikely series of what the government described as “intelligence failures” for the events of 9/11 to fall into place, and the Trump administration scrapped completely adequate pandemic response plans to adopt a regime of lockdowns and economic shutdowns that will likely end up doing more harm than the virus itself. Had governments followed their own procedures, neither catastrophe likely would have happened.

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Australia Goes Full Fascist: State Issues First Ankle Tracker for Quarantine Violator

This week, Australia took its burgeoning fascist police state to a new level, with officials in Western Australia now issuing electronic ankle bracelets and forced isolation in specially designated hotels to anyone it believes has violated the new raft of controversial new ‘COVID laws.’

A 33-year-old woman from Perth in Western Australia has become the first person to be fitted with the state’s new electronic monitoring bracelet, after allegedly violating new COVID quarantine rules imposed on the population.

According to police reports, the woman arrived home from New South Wales state on September 1st, and was then directed to ‘self-isolate’ in her Perth home for 14 days as part of Australia’s new mandatory quarantine system.

She was then caught by agents working with the state’s newly deputised COVID enforcement force known as the “Self-Quarantine Assurance Team.” Agents claim they were only conducting a “routine check” when they discovered two men visiting the woman at her own house. Agents then raised the alarm to central office who then promptly ordered the woman be removed from her home and placed in a specially designated hotel which is being used by the state as a makeshift isolation facility where she would be tagged and surveilled for a period of two weeks.

On top of the forced detention, the woman was issued with a punitive $1,000 AUD fine for interacting with the two men during her initial home quarantine order.

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Surprise! Politicians Worldwide Aren’t Following Their Own COVID Rules…

Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our weekly roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.

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‘I’m The Public Face’: Here’s A List Of Lawmakers Who Broke COVID Rules

  • Not all lawmakers have been willing to follow social distancing restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Democratic Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney was photographed dining indoors Sunday, though Philadelphia still prohibits indoor dining.
  • Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attended hair appointments despite COVID restrictions.
  • Here’s a list of lawmakers who have tried to dodge coronavirus rules. 

Lawmakers have mandated a variety of COVID restrictions to stem the spread of the pandemic, but not all lawmakers have been willing to follow the rules.

Governors, mayors and state health departments have required that Americans wear masks, social distance, refrain from spending time in large groups, quarantine after traveling across state lines, stay home from church services and much more.

But many political leaders and members of their families have failed to comply with social distancing rules. Here’s a list of lawmakers who appeared to dodge coronavirus-related restrictions.

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