Brits plot their escape to the countryside: Fears mass exodus from Paris will be repeated in London as Boris prepares to announce second lockdown

As someone who enjoys history, we have seen this before throughout history.

31 Oct: MSN: Daily Mail: Sunetra Gupta reveals how crisis has been ruthlessly weaponised
by Professor Sunetra Gupta, infectious disease epidemiologist and a professor of theoretical epidemiology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. Her fee for this article has been donated to The Childhood Trust, a charity which fights to alleviate the impact of child poverty.
Lockdown is a blunt, indiscriminate policy that forces the poorest and most vulnerable people to bear the brunt of the fight against coronavirus. As an infectious diseases epidemiologist, I believe there has to be a better way...

I expected debate and disagreement about our ideas, published as the Great Barrington Declaration...
But I was utterly unprepared for the onslaught of insults, personal criticism, intimidation and threats that met our proposal. The level of vitriol and hostility, not just from members of the public online but from journalists and academics, has horrified me...

Of course, I do have deeply held political ideals — ones that I would describe as inherently Left-wing. I would not, it is fair to say, normally align myself with the Daily Mail...

At the heart of our proposal is the recognition that mass lockdowns cause enormous damage.
We are already seeing how current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health.
The results — to name just a few — include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health.
Such pitfalls of national lockdowns must not be ignored, especially when it is the working class and younger members of society who carry the heaviest burden...

I was also deeply concerned that lockdowns only delay the inevitable spread of the virus. Indeed, we believe that a better way forward would be to target protective measures at specific vulnerable groups, such as the elderly in care homes...
I am certainly not pretending I have all the answers, but these issues need to be discussed and thrashed out thoroughly.
That is why I have found it so frustrating how, in recent weeks, proponents of lockdown policies have seemed intent on shutting down debate rather than promoting reasoned discussion...

This refusal to cherish the value of the scientific method strikes at the heart of everything I, as a scientist, hold dear. To me, the reasoned exchange of ideas is the basis of civilised society.
So I was left stunned after being invited on to a mid-morning radio programme recently, only for a producer to warn me minutes before we went on air that I was not to mention the Great Barrington Declaration. The producer repeated the warning and indicated that this was an instruction from a senior broadcasting executive.
I demanded an explanation and, with seconds to go, was told that the public wouldn’t be familiar with the meaning of the phrase ‘Great Barrington Declaration’.

And this was not an isolated experience. A few days later, another national radio station approached my office to set up an interview, then withdrew the invitation. They felt, on reflection, that giving airtime to me would ‘not be in the national interest’.
But the Great Barrington Declaration represents a heartfelt attempt by a group of academics with decades of experience in this field to limit the harm of lockdown. I cannot conceive how anyone can construe this as ‘against the national interest’.

Moreover, matters certainly are not helped by outlets such as The Guardian, which has repeatedly published opinion pieces making factually incorrect and scientifically flawed statements, as well as borderline defamatory comments about me, while refusing to give our side of the debate an opportunity to present our view.
I am surprised, given the importance of the issues at stake — not least the principle of fair, balanced journalism — that The Guardian would not want to present all the evidence to its readers. After all, how else are we to encourage proper, frank debate about the science?

On social media, meanwhile, much of the discourse has lacked any decorum whatsoever.
I have all but stopped using Twitter, but I am aware that a number of academics have taken to using it to make personal attacks on my character, while my work is dismissed as ‘pseudo- science’. Depressingly, our critics have also taken to ridiculing the Great Barrington Declaration as ‘fringe’ and ‘dangerous’...

Yet of all the criticisms flung at us, the one I find most upsetting is the accusation that we are indulging in ‘policy-based evidence-making’ — in other words, drumming up facts to fit our ideological agenda.
And that ideology, according to some, is one of Right-wing libertarian extremism.

According to Wikipedia, for instance, the Great Barrington Declaration was funded by a Right-wing think-tank with links to climate-change deniers...
https://www.msn.com/en-au/health/mindandbody/sunetra-gupta-reveals-how-crisis-has-been-ruthlessly-weaponised/ar-BB1ayBze?ocid=msedgdhp

Totalitarian government in real time.

JoMa

Another leftist idiot screaming “I’m on your side” through a broken window.

Isn’t Leftism/Marxism grand...

God-given human immune system deniers. I know that’s not catchy but that’s what I see happening. Ignore defficiencies in vitamin D, zinc and probably other things and we gave a population ripe for a plandemic.

Macron has been effing up hard for his entire tenure.

Gee, who didn’t see this coming, Boris, Macron, Cuomo, Newsome, Pritzker, etc?

Biden is campaigning with a promise to do this exact thing in this country.

Madrid locked down a week or so ago...and they had police blocking the highways so madrileños couldn’t flee.

Lock downstairs or fleeing to countryside?

Lock downs or fleeing to countryside?

Kinda like what’s going on in NYC and all of CA.

To be fair to Boris, he has an additional problem that Trump doesn’t: The NHS.

The NHS is the UK’s largest employer, and it has the UK by its short hairs.

The Daily Mail is 97% cluttered with ads. That *site* should be locked down.

I love that part of the movie. Thanks.

JoMa

As someone who enjoys history, we have seen this before throughout history.

We have never seen anything like this before. Ever.

I fled to the countryside 18 years ago.

Just ahead of my time, I guess.