Re: The parliamentary committee report on covid-19 response - an urgent need to stop the politics of fear
Dear Editor
Chris Bateman [1] is right on target, if I may quote in full my short Rapid Response of 31 August 2020 [2]. I wrote:
“According to Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Jenny Harries at Friday’s No 10 news conference “Evidence on face coverings is is [sic] not very strong in either direction”. It is therefore a random way to conduct government to make people have them, and many find them a serious nuisance rather than “supportive”.”
This is very odd, and Harries language is also peculiar - we only need to know whether the evidence is strong for doing something otherwise it is simply an arbitrary measure. And to be clear I was writing just three days after the news conference when the Deputy Chief Medical Officer said the evidence for face-masking was not strong and they were already being made compulsory. It seems like in the end the government were acting on superstition.
We cannot go living in a world where draconian policies, unjustified by strong science, are implemented by governments to maintain the appearance of effective action [3]. If they do we are just living the world of “psyops”: a world in which you cannot go out without a mask is much scarier than one where you can. Or to put it in the excellent words of Franklin D Roosevelt “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.
[[3] Deepti Gurdasani, Martin McKee, ‘ The parliamentary committee report on covid-19 response’, BMJ 2021; 375 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n2530 (Published 15 October 2021
Competing interests:
AgeofAutism.com, an on-line daily journal, concerns itself with the potential environmental sources for the proliferation of autism, neurological impairment, immune dysfunction and chronic disease. I receive no payment as UK Editor. I also moderate comments for the on-line journal ‘The Defender’ for which I am paid. I am also a member of the UK Medical Freedom Alliance
Rapid Response:
Re: The parliamentary committee report on covid-19 response - an urgent need to stop the politics of fear
Dear Editor
Chris Bateman [1] is right on target, if I may quote in full my short Rapid Response of 31 August 2020 [2]. I wrote:
“According to Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Jenny Harries at Friday’s No 10 news conference “Evidence on face coverings is is [sic] not very strong in either direction”. It is therefore a random way to conduct government to make people have them, and many find them a serious nuisance rather than “supportive”.”
This is very odd, and Harries language is also peculiar - we only need to know whether the evidence is strong for doing something otherwise it is simply an arbitrary measure. And to be clear I was writing just three days after the news conference when the Deputy Chief Medical Officer said the evidence for face-masking was not strong and they were already being made compulsory. It seems like in the end the government were acting on superstition.
We cannot go living in a world where draconian policies, unjustified by strong science, are implemented by governments to maintain the appearance of effective action [3]. If they do we are just living the world of “psyops”: a world in which you cannot go out without a mask is much scarier than one where you can. Or to put it in the excellent words of Franklin D Roosevelt “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.
[1] Chris Bateman, ‘ Re: The parliamentary committee report on covid-19 response’, 20 October 2021, https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2530/rr-0
[2] John Stone, ‘ Fostering an unnecessary climate of fear’, 31 August 2020, https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3021/rr-2
[[3] Deepti Gurdasani, Martin McKee, ‘ The parliamentary committee report on covid-19 response’, BMJ 2021; 375 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n2530 (Published 15 October 2021
Competing interests: AgeofAutism.com, an on-line daily journal, concerns itself with the potential environmental sources for the proliferation of autism, neurological impairment, immune dysfunction and chronic disease. I receive no payment as UK Editor. I also moderate comments for the on-line journal ‘The Defender’ for which I am paid. I am also a member of the UK Medical Freedom Alliance