5 minute read
We Are Now Rabid Dogs
The house cat is a very free creature, they come and go to their owners house as they please, they are after all curious creatures, they don’t have to worry about fences because they can easily jump over them, their owners will often insert a cat flap and leave them to their own devises to go about their daily business as they please. This is in contrast to dogs, who only go walks with their owners on a leash once or twice a day, often have to be caged up and depending on the breed of dog may have to wear a muzzle. This should not be interpreted as prejudice against dogs on my part I am a dog owner myself, it is merely an observation on the contrast between the two great animals. In the last six months the people of this country and many other countries have gone from being free cats to muzzled and dangerous dogs.
Cats take risks when they leave the house, they may be run over by a car, chased by predators or get into fights with other cats and dogs but for most these risks prove to be worthwhile, they can meet new people, explore new environments and learn more about the world around them. This curiosity is very human but in recent months we have been told not be curious or wonder about too much, we have been told not to meet new people lest we infect them or they infect us with the coronavirus.
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It all started back in March when international travel ground to a halt and vulnerable people were advised to isolate themselves for 12 weeks then, despite saying a few weeks earlier that we should not expect any major disruption to our lives, Boris Johnson imposed a nationwide lockdown on the entire population of the country. We were all to be treated like dangerous dogs, only to go out for one walk a day, to go to the shops as infrequently as possible, to seek medical treatment and provide help to a vulnerable person (although not speak to or socialize with the vulnerable person in question). Such draconian restrictions had never been imposed on this country in either peacetime or wartime. A few months later as lockdown started to lift we were all told we needed to wear face coverings around our noses and mouths or as Peter Hitchens more accurately called them muzzles, when we entered into shops and went on public transport. All of this in spite of the fact that the medical establishment had told us that wearing face coverings would do more harm than good at the start of the pandemic so why the sudden change.
There has been much debate as to whether the lockdown was necessary in the first place. Evidence showed that when provided with the facts, many people voluntarily socially distanced or stayed at home as much as possible, companies were already beginning to implement home working arrangements. It showed that contrary to government beliefs people did have the ability to assess the risk to themselves and others when making decisions about how to go about their lives.
Let us now look at two contrasting approaches to lockdown; that of New Zealand and Sweden. New Zealand was initially hailed as a success story having gone into a nationwide lockdown on 25th March and coming out of it on 13th May as well as removing all social distancing restrictions on 8th June. After 103 days of not reported cases the country experiences a second spike in August and went straight back into lockdown which ought to have rubbished the idea that the idea that the virus could simply be eliminated with everyone staying at home until it went away. Sweden, however, adopted a more voluntary approach instead of a nationwide lockdown, it placed a ban on high risk events such as gatherings of more than 50 people and advised against international travel. Sweden advised its citizens to be responsible and socially distance but did not legally require them to do so. While the mathematical modelling of the now disgraced professor Neil Ferguson showed that Sweden would suffer 80,000 deaths within six months, it has in fact only recorded 6,000 and Sweden’s chief epidemiologist is confident of avoiding a second wave, something our own medical officers are not so sure about. This is due to increased herd immunity something which countries who adopted the strategy of New Zealand won’t have.
With the onset of mass surveillance through contact-tracing, compulsory face muzzles, government now having the power to enact mass shop closures on a whim without any democratic votes and the latest hate speech legislation proposed by the Scottish government. I would suggest we are now living in the least free period of British history. Even peasants living under medieval kings and lords enjoyed more freedom than we have now. True freedom comes with anonymity, that ability to walk through the streets or go into a pub or a restaurant without anyone asking for ID papers or even knowing who you are, all of that is gone now. The British people fought for over three hundred years to gain freedom, first by making the elected parliament the sovereign body of the land and not the king, then establishing the common law principles of freedom of speech, religion and assembly and then spending over 100 years fighting to gain the right to vote for all men and women and yet we have given all of this up to fight a disease that around 99.6% of people survive.
I hope that we can once again awaken the curious house cat in all of us. That we can regain our love for the world around us and our desire to see and explore it, that we will fight to regain the freedom to go where we choose, spend time with the people that we choose and do this unmasked and unmuzzled.
