Is this the way freedom dies? Or: Jonathan Sumption: prophet or neurotic?

2

Comments

  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Perhaps an aside, but really directed to Sumption's comments. Our Constitution, section 92 provides:

    On the imposition of uniform duties of customs, trade, commerce, and intercourse among the States, whether by means of internal carriage or ocean navigation, shall be absolutely free.

    The High Court has just ruled that that does not bar the sorts of temporary restrictions on inter-state movement that are presently in place to deal with covid.
  • To clarify an earlier point: the UK does have a written constitution, but it isn't codified (written in one place like eg the US constitution).
  • @Anteater Forgive me, but I find your position completely batty if the question is: Do lockdowns stop the spread of the Corona Virus? But I don't think that's the question you are trying to answer.

    Can you please put the question you are trying to answer again for the thickos in the thread, of which I am one.
  • RicardusRicardus Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    Pomona wrote: »
    To clarify an earlier point: the UK does have a written constitution, but it isn't codified (written in one place like eg the US constitution).

    Also the UK doesn't have any bit of law that takes precedence over any other law, and any law can be changed with a simple majority in Parliament. So, unlike the US (and pretty much anywhere with a formal constitution) there is nothing to stop Parliament from imposing any restriction it likes on personal liberty.

    (ETA: apart from the fact that the Queen could refuse to sign it.)
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    But then one of the unwritten parts of your constitution says that if her Prime Minister advises her to sign a piece of paper, she follows the advice.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    But then one of the unwritten parts of your constitution says that if her Prime Minister advises her to sign a piece of paper, she follows the advice.

    Yes, but she retains the power of veto to be used in extremis. It's constitutional MAD - if she does it the monarchy would be stripped of all vestigial power, but the government would likely fall with it so it acts as a safeguard.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Perhaps a safeguard, but we're unlikely ever to know.
  • @Anteater Forgive me, but I find your position completely batty if the question is: Do lockdowns stop the spread of the Corona Virus? But I don't think that's the question you are trying to answer.

    Can you please put the question you are trying to answer again for the thickos in the thread, of which I am one.
    Let me be clear: There is a level of reduction in the spread of COVID due to lockdown which I accept as being so obvious to common sense as to be indisputable. I have already said, more than once, that my personal guess (and like everyone I have no proof) is that the UK lockdown could have saved up to 10,000 lives and that if that level of saved lives closes the issue for you then fair enough - we just disagree. I do not accept the 500,000 deaths scenario you often hear.

    If by stop you mean reduce to zero, then I am not convinced. Each country's measures have to be judged by their citizens, and the results of the much stricter lockdown in Victoria has reduced the virus to a level close to zero. However, I genuinely believe that a lockdown of this degree of strictness would not be accepted by the British people, and you are entitled to say more fool them, since you confess to being a tad anglophobe.

    As you say, that is not the question I am trying to answer. In general I'm looking at two areas: one to do with the undesirable side-effects and the second to do with the way laws are being made, and it is this latter which is Sumption's main target, as he is after all a senior lawyer.

    It is obviously much more straightforward comparing medical benefits and medical side effects when evaluating a treatment since they are obviously related so the total effect is usually within the competence of a medical team. So we no longer prescribe amphetamines for weight control etc. Vallance and Whitty (Boris' advisors) have never denied the potential seriousness of the side effects of the COVID lockdown but they have excused themselves from evaluating these because they are not the same sort of direct medical adverse side effect. There is indirection because economics is involved as is psychology, and this makes evaluation less easy. I do not think it is wise for Boris' only to be advised as to one side of the benefit/cost equation of lockdown, and I think it perfectly believable, but never provable, that the cost in lives will outweigh the benefit. I would prefer SAGE to be widened so as to be able to give a fully cost-benefit analysis.

    Now the legal aspect. The way the laws are made is undermining of the trust between the people and the government, and this lack of trust is a major problem in making progress. Of course, Boris' came into COVID, second only to Trump in having a track record of lies, betrayals and attempts to undermine the rule of law to bypass parliament (e.g. the prorogation). So we are suspicious to start with.

    The first objection is that all the laws are open to valid legal challenge which Sumption believes should succeed, although he is doubtful whether the judiciary would show the courage. Challenges are being mounted, but not surprisingly the Administration is blocking as hard as it can.

    The second is that he has given out "rules" at press conferences which were never incorporated into law, and so blurred the line between what he wants people to do and what they are legally allowed to do. And given that the Police are not always aware of this, it means the Police are being used to stop people doing things that they are legally entitled to do. It looks like they are being given inadequate training.

    Lastly, he has encouraged a vigilante culture by making rules unenforceable. I have previously discussed face masks. You may not know but if I go into a store with no mask (I have not done so BTW) I cannot be challenged by the staff. I can simply say I am exempt and they have no further recourse. Now it is true that this is being used by people deliberately trying to undermine the rule, and you may well deplore that. But that's the way it is. And it can cause aggravation and aggression. There are better ways. Boris likes to say that he dislikes sneak-culture, but he seems very poor at avoiding what he claims to dislike.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    Anteater wrote: »
    I have always though of the Executive Branch as the Civil Service and organisations like the Criminal Justice system, so that there is a separation of powers. The political branch does not enforce law, and the executive branch does not make it.

    Sorry, but this is wrong. The whole point of Ministers of the Crown in the UK (as in Australia) is that they are both in the legislature and also members of the executive. This is part of the basis of making the executive sufficiently accountable to the legislature.

    I know people confuse the difference between 'parliament' and 'government' and all that on a regular basis, but if we're going to have a discussion about the legality of government action it's really rather important to have this stuff right. And what you say you have always thought just isn't right. In the USA there is fuller separation of powers, but in the Westminster system there most definitely is not. Ministers are the executive branch, and the Civil Service are their assistants.

  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    As for the general question, there have been plenty of rumblings here in Australia to the effect that governments can't do the various things they've been doing in the pandemic.

    And quite frankly, most of these rumblings tend to show a lack of awareness of the laws that have been previously passed that give governments those powers.

    And this includes IN the parliaments that passed those laws. I know there's a general disquiet in the national parliament, as evidenced by an inquiry that's happening right now, about the extent to which the power to make delegated legislation has been... well, delegated to the executive. And in the current context there's a lot of talk about the Biosecurity Act in particular, because that's the main thing being used in the context of the pandemic.

    But it's the parliament that passed the Biosecurity Act, and all of the other bits of legislation that say some situation or detail can be dealt with by the executive. If parliament thinks this is a problem, then it's one of parliament's making, and almost an admission that legislation wasn't read carefully enough or wasn't understood properly before it was passed.

    The Biosecurity Act does indeed give some rather broad powers to the relevant health officials, as does similar legislation in each State or Territory. That's precisely because it would be impossible to know beforehand just what sort of health emergency might come up.

    I can't comment in any detail whether the UK government is using the right UK legislation and staying within the right powers. If it's not, then the solution lies in the UK courts rather than the UK parliament, or in speeches and opinion pieces.
  • I can assure you that the undesirable effects of the lockdown are fast receding into the past in Victoria. The euphoria and continued good news concerning infections (eight days no new infections, a grand total of EIGHT active cases in the state) is palpable. We expect the restrictions on movement to end tomorrow, and internal borders in Australia to be open (hopefully) by the end of the month.

    On Wednesday, I am going to the pub with my mate. We have made a booking. We are both journeying by public transport. I intend to spend BIG, because our publican has taken a massive hit. Top shelf, here we come. I'm thinking Guinness, Red Spot, Guinness, Yellow Spot, Guinness, Red Brest, and then we will see how we are going.

    I have bought tickets already to Shakespeare in the Park in January and February - The Dream and Macbeth, and I just bought a season pass to The Bell's Melbourne season, with their indoor plays in July (the Dream again) and September (Hamlet I think). No time for obscure plays, they are bringing out the crowd pleasers in 2021.

    It is fucking brilliant mate! They are starting to whisper the "e" word for the whole country and NZ, without a vaccine. They have flying squads of infection control organised around the Ambos (I think). If a case is discovered, close contacts and contacts of close contacts go into quarantine. We are killing this thing baby.

    But here's the thing: You can too. 12 weeks ago, Melbourne, a city of 5 million, had 700 cases a day. 700 cases a day!!!! Now we have had none, NONE, NADA, ZIP, for eight days straight.

    All it takes is for Governments and people to form a collective will to do it. But the key is this, and this is not the English people's fault, you have to fix your systems in the period of lockdown, or as near as dammit, or the lockdown is wasted. That's on Boris. He's a knuckle. But you know that.

    Seriously though, bitching about economic impact (the law is fair dues, Boris fucked up), that's barking. The economic impact starts to bounce back when lockdown ends, for the businesses and people concerned. But if you don't get this stuff under control (your borders aren't closed fully yet FFS) you are just going to be bouncing around dealing with this shit for years. Dampen the virus down, get your systems in place, enjoy the benefits. Stop fucking whinging too. Bad for morale.
  • Simon Toad wrote: »
    All it takes is for Governments and people to form a collective will to do it. But the key is this, and this is not the English people's fault.

    I beg to differ. It's not like they weren't warned about the tories in general and Johnson in particular.
  • As per arethosemyfeet, there is no way that a Tory govt could achieve what Simon is talking about. Half of them are desperate to break the lockdown, and/or privatize it.
  • Simon Toad:
    Seriously though, bitching about economic impact . . . . that's barking.
    I well understand your delight, and Victoria is a good one to watch along with NZ. And maybe you'll prove a lot of people wrong. Because I think the truth is that it would indeed be barking to bitch about the economic (or general downside) of the lockdown, if it is not really significant, and presumably this is exactly what you are looking to happen.

    You know a good definition between a positive and a negative person? The best one I heard was that the negative person feels good if they are proved right. The positive person feels good if things are going well for themselves and others. Sadly, I do have a negative streak, however, I do accept that hoping for anything other than Victoria being on the up and up would be unforgivably gittish, even if a reversal could improve our chances of the Ashes.

    Enjoy your piss-up.
  • Orfeo: Thanks for your clarification which I accept.

    And as you know, the UK Parliament has passed legislation under which Boris could have removed even the possibility of legal challenge, but chose rather a different path in order to avoid parliamentary involvement.

    I've never has any intention of even considering what's happening outside really of England.
  • Anteater wrote: »
    Simon Toad:
    Seriously though, bitching about economic impact . . . . that's barking.
    I well understand your delight, and Victoria is a good one to watch along with NZ. And maybe you'll prove a lot of people wrong. Because I think the truth is that it would indeed be barking to bitch about the economic (or general downside) of the lockdown, if it is not really significant, and presumably this is exactly what you are looking to happen.

    You know a good definition between a positive and a negative person? The best one I heard was that the negative person feels good if they are proved right. The positive person feels good if things are going well for themselves and others. Sadly, I do have a negative streak, however, I do accept that hoping for anything other than Victoria being on the up and up would be unforgivably gittish, even if a reversal could improve our chances of the Ashes.

    Enjoy your piss-up.

    the point is that the economic downside of not locking down and allowing the virus to run rampant is worse than locking down and fixing your systems. If you do that, you can happily run most sectors of the economy without too much trouble.
  • I apologise for the whinging comment. We have suffered through maybe 10 weeks of that bullshit from the business community, all failing to acknowledge the obvious success of the lockdown and pleading for rubbish exemptions. They have relentlessly attacked the political leadership and the scientists with their whiney-arsed bulldust claims. So I was working out a little frustration there.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    It is strange, but the anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne seem to have been led from the extreme right, while those here have been from those well to the left. Neither had much effect on the respective governments - tight restrictions continued and with good results.
  • AnteaterAnteater Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    SimonToad
    the point is that the economic downside of not locking down and allowing the virus to run rampant is worse than locking down and fixing your systems.
    I detect no whinge. What you claim is precisely what lockdown sceptics do not believe, and if the case of Victoria evidences your claim - fair play.

    I'd like to summarize where I think we are, and then probably take a break unless my parting shot gets interesting responses.

    So the assertion that the UK Government is acting in a way that undermines the constitutional settlement we have seems generally accepted. But I think is also fair to say that not many people seem bothered.

    My parting shot is to recommend a YouTube debate between one of the originators of the Great Barrington Declaration (Jay Bhattacharya JB) and one of the contributors to what is now called the John Snow Rebuttal (Mark Lipsitch ML). I came away discouraged and mildly pissed off.

    The biggest surprise was that the essential feasibility of herd immunity was not questioned at all. The whole discussion was free of rancour and positions seemed to soften. So ML never expressed enthusiasm for lockdowns, and JB was rather in favour of facemasks. With respect to the comments by Simon Toad above, JB's main attack line was about the adverse consequences of lockdown. ML didn't really attack the existence of the consequences but more took the tack that a lot of them would happen lockdown or not, so it is more a question of how much extra is caused by lockdown. (e.g. people staying away from A&E when they would have been attended to - my example not his).

    I though JL's suggestions on how to have a selective lockdown, based not on geography but vulnerability all made sense, and were all feasible to a large extent (nothing's perfect). So instead of furloughing all staff, do it for at risk groups. However, here I got discouraged, because ML obviously agreed they were all good, but in a somewhat world (or maybe Trump) weary way just asked if there was any real possibility that these steps would be taken by an administration that has frustrated all tried and tested public health responses at every turn. And since I was off the back of watching the BBC documentary on Trump's handling of COVID (worth watching - I expected the worse but my jaw still dropped) I couldn't help but agree. These were good ideas without a snowball in Hell's chance of even not being obstructed let alone actually done. And that would be true also of UK.

    So at the end there was a lot of commonality. I'm still against the lockdown, but I have to admit that I'm probably more influenced by my libertarian views than I care to admit, because to many that attitude is selfish. I think these attitudes are easier to have when you're old, as it doesn't seem so selfish given you are in the group being put at risk.

    The main message I took away is that lockdown is the only measure that requires minimal competence from the Government. And the UK (and until early next year) the US both have Governments that either don't even try or fail in practically all they attempt, leaving maybe lockdown as the only intervention that these clowns can get to work. Sad.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    I think a lockdown according to vulnerability is an order of magnitude harder to implement than a near total lockdown because of intersectionality.

    It also doesn't cope with the apparently random group of apparently fit and healthy people who still get severe Covid, some of whom die from it, and those who appear not to get it too severely, but who then endure so-called long Covid.

    Selective furloughing of at risk staff may still leave a business unable to function depending on which staff are affected, and those who are not themselves at high risk, but live with someone who is may be rightly and understandably unwilling to expose themselves to the risk of catching Covid.
  • This discussion treats the individual and the government as if they were the only parties to it. There is another: the common good, the community - call it what you will. The government as the motive power of the state has a duty of care to the community, and the community is far more powerful, politically at least, in holding the government to account , even while it struggles to work on the legal front - particularly now that judicial review has been restricted. To me, this exclusion of the community leads to a kind of paranoi, because the extreme differences of scale between the individual and the state leads to a kind of vertigo. Recognising the existence of the community/the common good as a party to this debate prevents that kind of vertigo, whilst also creating a duty on the state and members of the community to find ways to make that real.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    @ThunderBunk, not quite. The common good, the community, can't be described as a 'party'. It isn't just being picky to say that because it isn't an entity, it can't be a party to anything. It can't sue. It can't be sued. It can't express an opinion. There's no authoritative way of determining what it thinks, what it wants or what is in its best interest.

    True, plenty of people will claim to speak for it. Politicians love to speak for 'the British people', 'the American people', 'the real people' or 'the silent majority'. As I've commented before on this threads, they, and other opinion formers love to use the 'portentous we', 'what we need is .... ', 'we ought to ....' . What they mean, though, is 'this is what I think/want etc'. You should to. It's rare, tending to never, that there is any way of determining who they're speaking for apart from themselves, their chums or how many people agree with them.

  • One of Victoria's early mistakes was to attempt to limit the lockdown to certain suburbs. Time will tell why that decision was made. It was said to be based around the communities where the individuals who were infected by working in our quarantine hotels lived.

    The decision was wrong because the virus was more widespread in the community than initially thought. It may well be that our contact tracing system was not working as well as it should have been at that point.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    A lockdown based on vulnerability is frankly discriminatory. And tends to convey the idea that well, if such people get ill, it's they're own fault for not being careful enough.

    And conversely, not in any way the fault of the people who spread it to them who weren't being careful at all.

    The notion that people who are unlikely to be badly affected should therefore just get to carry on as normal suffers from 2 faults: first, it's entirely selfish and self-centred, second, lower risk does not mean no risk and there's still the possibility of having a bad outcome.

    It should be incredibly obvious that distancing is far more effective if as many people as possible partake in it. A lockdown only for the vulnerable greatly increases the chance that there is only one slip-up between that vulnerable person and an infection. Whereas if everybody is distancing, there might be a great many steps in the chain between an infection and that vulnerable person, and the chances of the virus successfully passing along every step in that chain is significantly reduced.

    To put it another way, a small part of the population being required to practice perfect distancing is actually a hell of a lot less effective than the great majority of the population all trying to do somewhat imperfect distancing.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    And of course, the sheer logistics of trying to enforce a lockdown based on vulnerability are hugely problematic.
  • orfeo wrote: »
    To put it another way, a small part of the population being required to practice perfect distancing is actually a hell of a lot less effective than the great majority of the population all trying to do somewhat imperfect distancing.

    The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many?
  • MiliMili Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    It's impossible for many of the most vulnerable to isolate from everybody as they need care in hospitals, care homes or in their own homes. Unless all care staff and medical staff and anyone living with vulnerable people also isolate the virus can be spread to those at risk. You would also need to isolate anybody living with medical and care staff who interact with the vulnerable. It is easier to have everyone go into lock down than just lock down the very large percentage of the population who are in these categories.
  • orfeo wrote: »
    To put it another way, a small part of the population being required to practice perfect distancing is actually a hell of a lot less effective than the great majority of the population all trying to do somewhat imperfect distancing.

    The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many?

    The problem with comparing the needs of the few and the needs of the many simplistically as that not all needs are equal.

    My need to go walking in the Lake District is not equal to another person's need to stay alive.

  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    orfeo wrote: »
    To put it another way, a small part of the population being required to practice perfect distancing is actually a hell of a lot less effective than the great majority of the population all trying to do somewhat imperfect distancing.

    The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many?

    I'm quite happy, as a gay man, for my need to not be persecuted to outweigh the apparent need of many 'Christians' to persecute me.

    So yes.

    The question is what 'need' we are talking about. Some months ago I saw a video of a press conference by the New York governor, where he repeatedly pointed out that the alternative was death. He was comfortable with all the measures he was enforcing, because the alternative was death.

    The needs of the "few" - a number of people which in your country would reach the millions - to stay alive can quite reasonably be prioritised over the needs of the many to go out and have dinners and social events and so forth. They can probably even be prioritised over the needs of a smaller proportion of people to have employment, provided some kind of scheme is put in place to support those people whose employment is affected.

    And then of course there's the myth that having the "few" put at significant risk of death wouldn't have an impact on anybody else. So what you're weighing in the scales needs to include all the flow-on effects of having an increase in the usual rate of death plus a health system put under strain.

    So yes.

    But let's go back a step.

    It's effectively already been mentioned, but it's worth mentioning again: economists who have done the relevant calculations have estimated that the economic cost of not having a lockdown would actually be worse than the economic costs of lockdowns. So it's not even true that you're weighing things on opposite sides of the scale.

    People keep making the mistake of comparing a lockdown to business as usual, which is completely wrong. Without a lockdown you wouldn't have business as usual. You'd have business during a pandemic.

    The needs of the few and the needs of the many actually both point in the same direction, even if the many are unable to figure that out because they can't understand the hypothetical situation that would occur.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    The basic problem of libertarian thinking is not one of principle. It’s that talking at the level of principle ignores what happens in practice (much as economic notions of rational people fall down in principle).

    Because in practice, people make bloody bad decisions. Either they don’t have all the pertinent information, or they don’t understand the information they have.

    So yes, I feel quite comfortable with authorities making decisions instead of individual people, so long as those authorities are making some kind of effort (as they ought) to gather data and consult experts and basically get the kind of meaningful input that any individual couldn’t hope to get even if that individual was completely clear-headed and rational instead of an ideologically biased self-centred fool.

    I feel very comfortable not leaving it up to individuals, given that individuals have wrong beliefs ranging from not understanding the economic impacts of a pandemic through to not understanding the benefits and risks of masks through to not comprehending that viruses and bacteria are fundamentally different through to believing that Bill Gates is using 5G and microchips.

    I’m not that keen on invocations of freedom for much the same reason that parents keep their small children away from pill bottles, button batteries, swimming pools and power points. And for much the same reason that those same parents will tell teenagers that there are rules. I don’t care if that sounds patronising if it’s going to keep you alive.
  • orfeo:
    A lockdown based on vulnerability is frankly discriminatory.
    Extensive checking of people who have close contact with others in their work is discriminatory, against minors who in this case are the vulnerable group. Would you (do you?) object to that? Rules about employment are discriminatory in a similar way. Most people accept that protection of the vulnerable is reasonable discrimination.
    tends to convey the idea that well, if such people get ill, it's they're own fault for not being careful enough.
    Only where, as most GBD proponents do prefer, protection can be politely refused. And what's wrong with that? Considering my vulnerable status, I am a chance taker, and several people on this ship have said they wouldn't touch me with two bargepoles stuck together, due to my enthusiastic dining, croquet playing and even wind (yes wind - blow, infect) band playing. Fair enough, and if I get COVID 19, I would not deny that my behaviour had increased my risk. Not everybody is averse to accepting responsibility for their actions.
    The notion that people who are unlikely to be badly affected should therefore just get to carry on as normal suffers from 2 faults: first, it's entirely selfish and self-centred, second, lower risk does not mean no risk and there's still the possibility of having a bad outcome.
    Why is it selfish to refuse to outlaw normal behaviour for people at low risk? Yes, it's not no risk, nobody said it was, but it is very low risk indeed for people under 40 who have no other condition. OK there will be those at any age with serious issues that would raise the risk level. But I'm sure that they know this, and people can decide for themselves. You seem to really dislike that idea.

    And how do you defined selfishness? I am cautious about providing extracts from articles on copyright grounds, but there was an excellent article in The New Statesman, the best centre-left magazine I know, which was mainly about how people are trying to shout down anyone who opposes the established consensus, typically labelling them right wing with no proof and despite there protests, as indeed has been done on this ship. The article is not "anti-lockdown" but does ask questions, as in the following quote:
    This is compounded by the wretched inequality of lockdowns. Most of the academics I interviewed refuted the idea that supporting lockdowns is in any way progressive, despite the fact that this position has been portrayed as a counterpoint to that of right-wing libertarians. Baral says that lockdowns are “absolutely an intervention only benefiting the rich”. He points out that they are only comfortable for people who can work at home, and that have spacious houses and the means to order in food and entertainment. “That the people who advocate for very strong suppression measures – that actually only benefit people who are financially well off – think of themselves as progressive is quite amusing,” comments Balloux. 

    Maybe you are one of those who supported lockdown despite losing your livelihood? Or perhaps you dismiss those who object to losing there livelihood as selfish. Indeed they are but to condemn all self interest is very harsh.

    It's fascinating how much effort is put into ensuring that the COVID-19 vaccine will have no bad side effects, whereas no calculation of lockdown side effects is considered relevant.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    @Anteater you've done it again. What does GBD stand for? I've had a guess, but I've no way of knowing whether I was right.

    And you've quoted from an article that we can only access by giving our details, yet in your quotation there are two names mentioned, whom I assume both that article and you claim are authorities, but I for one have never heard of either, have no way of evaluating their credibility and see no reason why it should be up to me, rather than you, to spend time to establish whether they have any persuasiveness.

    Incidentally, are you also arguing that it's discriminatory to require people who work with children to have CRB checks? This is peripheral to this thread, but it's not clear what you're actually arguing in your first paragraph, and that's a possible reading.

  • Enoch: Great Barrington Declaration? OK Sorry. Did you guess right?

    Maybe I'd hoped that, since the Ship is sort of left of centre, you may have trusted The New Statesman not to quote loonies.

    Stefan Baral, associate professor in epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University.
    Francois Balloux is the Director of the UCL Genetics Institute, and a Professor of Computational Systems Biology at University College London.

    As to DBS checks, I am arguing against the idea that discrimination is, in all cases to be viewed as a bad thing. The words has two senses:
    - recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another
    - the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, sex, or disability

    The second is the way in which the words is most widely used today. Probably ambiguous words are best avoided.

    So when a group is vulnerable, and because of that a special measure to protect them is put in place, this can be viewed as discrimination in the first sense. You are recognising something that differentiates that group, and taking action in view of that. I'd rather use another word. But then, positive discrimination is not a bad thing, and this usage is also widespread now.

    Actually there are people who think this is a bad thing, I just don't happen to be one of them.

  • RussRuss Shipmate
    If there were large numbers of deaths due to lockdown they would show up in excess death statistics.

    Maybe. Depends on whether lockdown-related deaths are masked by reductions in road accidents, workplace accidents, deaths on holiday etc. And reductions in deaths from not catching other diseases from people.

    If we took minimising deaths as the only goal we'd never go anywhere.

    Orfeo said:
    I feel quite comfortable with authorities making decisions instead of individual people, so long as those authorities are making some kind of effort (as they ought) to gather data and consult experts and basically get the kind of meaningful input that any individual couldn’t hope to get even if that individual was completely clear-headed and rational instead of an ideologically biased self-centred fool.

    I feel very comfortable not leaving it up to individuals, given that individuals have wrong beliefs ranging from not understanding the economic impacts of a pandemic through to not understanding the benefits and risks of masks...

    In an ordinary year there would be a non-zero chance of catching flu or some other disease. A non-zero chance of infecting somebody else. And a small but non-zero chance of them dying from it. Without anyone thinking that social contact is morally wrong.

    So we're firmly in utilitarian territory here - weighing up both the risks and the values we apply to what we stand to lose.

    Individuals may have wrong beliefs about risks.

    But to the extent that the government's view of the risks is based on models, those models can be wrong too. (Compare the extent to which the financial crash of 2008 was caused by widely-used wrong models of risk).

    And the values that people place on various activities, and their willingness to accept some risk of catching the disease in order to enjoy those activities, can and do vary. Those are questions to which there is no right answer.






  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    The difference from a regular flu season is that the hospitals do not usually fill up with flu patients to the extent thatbthey can no longer admit anyone for flu or anything else.

    The really vital thing is not preventing me, you or @Anteater catching it in and of itself; the odds for any of us are quite good. It's avoiding a situation where the %age of people ill enough to need hospital treatment overwhelms our ability to treat them. Then not only do they risk drowning in their own body fluids at home instead of being treated, but our ability to deal with everything else is also compromised, and avoidable deaths from stroke, cancer, heart disease and what have you also rise.

    Reducing this to personal willingness to risk Covid infection is naive.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Anteater wrote: »
    Enoch: Great Barrington Declaration? OK Sorry. Did you guess right?
    I did wonder whether that might be what the letters stood for, but there are all sorts of other possibilities.

    That the Declaration exists doesn't mean the referring to it gives any authority to anything. It happens to supports what you think. Much of the rest of the world's scientific community think it's tosh, people who have been willing to lend their names to support the piper that pays best. It isn't 'Great' because it's great. It has only got that adjective because the people promulgating it chose to do so at a place called Great Barrington.
    Maybe I'd hoped that, since the Ship is sort of left of centre, you may have trusted The New Statesman not to quote loonies.
    I don't automatically trust any person or organisation just because of their political views. I suspect you don't either. Besides, medicine, science and epidemiology are not 'political sciences'. A journal's political assumptions give it no more, or for that matter, less credibility on medicine, science and epidemiology than a person's being a famous film star does.
    Stefan Baral, associate professor in epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University.
    Francois Balloux is the Director of the UCL Genetics Institute, and a Professor of Computational Systems Biology at University College London.
    Yebbut, it's the author of the article and the arguments in it whose credibility one needs to assess, not that of the names he or she happens to drop.
    As to DBS checks, I am arguing against the idea that discrimination is, in all cases to be viewed as a bad thing. The words has two senses:
    - recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another
    - the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, sex, or disability

    The second is the way in which the words is most widely used today. Probably ambiguous words are best avoided.

    So when a group is vulnerable, and because of that a special measure to protect them is put in place, this can be viewed as discrimination in the first sense. You are recognising something that differentiates that group, and taking action in view of that. I'd rather use another word. But then, positive discrimination is not a bad thing, and this usage is also widespread now.

    Actually there are people who think this is a bad thing, I just don't happen to be one of them.
    That wasn't all that clear. Thinking about it, 'discrimination' gets used both positively and negatively. You are are right, that it merely describes an exercise that everyone sometimes needs to be able to carry out. I hadn't noticed before that for all the potential neutrality of 'discrimination' or 'discriminating', 'discriminatory' only seems to have come to be used negatively. But as I said, this is peripheral to the thread.

  • RussRuss Shipmate
    KarlLB wrote: »
    ...our ability to deal with everything else is also compromised, and avoidable deaths from stroke, cancer, heart disease and what have you also rise.

    Here in Ireland, avoidable deaths from cancer etc have risen. Because the cancer treatments were cancelled as part of emptying out the hospitals to make way for the huge influx of covid patients that never happened. Not a consequence of doing too little to fight covid, but the opposite.

    You're quite right that the consequences of catching the disease are worse if you catch it when so many have caught it that the medical systems can't cope. My point is that there's no new principle here, just a different balance of risks and consequences.
  • In the case of cancer treatment I understood that a lot was cancelled because those dealing with cancer have suppressed immune systems making visiting a hospital where covid is rife likely to shorten life expectancy even more than the cancer.
  • In the case of cancer treatment I understood that a lot was cancelled because those dealing with cancer have suppressed immune systems making visiting a hospital where covid is rife likely to shorten life expectancy even more than the cancer.

    And if cancer doesn't suppress the immune system, the chemotherapy does. Or that's what I understood, anyway.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    Russ wrote: »
    In an ordinary year there would be a non-zero chance of catching flu or some other disease. A non-zero chance of infecting somebody else. And a small but non-zero chance of them dying from it. Without anyone thinking that social contact is morally wrong.

    If you think this is the same as flu, you understand nothing.

  • orfeo:
    So yes, I feel quite comfortable with authorities making decisions instead of individual people
    I think your post raises a hugely important issue which is that trust in duly constituted authorities plays an important role in enabling government to cope with emergencies like COVID.

    I just think it is a two-way street, and that trust needs to be worked for and can easily be lost. I don't know where you live, and maybe you live in a country which is not ruled by a person with a track record of dishonestly and corruption, and who is trying to undermine what checks and balances we have.
    so long as those authorities are making some kind of effort (as they ought) to gather data and consult experts and basically get the kind of meaningful input that any individual couldn’t hope to get even if that individual was completely clear-headed and rational instead of an ideologically biased self-centred fool
    You don't mention freedom of information, but to me that is vital. An individual who was completely clear headed could get the information if it was made public, and when it is made public it can be subject to review and criticism. Secrecy corrodes trust. As to " an ideologically biased self-centred fool" it is even possible for a person like that to be running the country, and demanding your trust. Well he doesn't have mine.
    I’m not that keen on invocations of freedom for much the same reason that parents keep their small children away from pill bottles, button batteries, swimming pools and power points. And for much the same reason that those same parents will tell teenagers that there are rules. I don’t care if that sounds patronising if it’s going to keep you alive.
    Well few object to wise guidance. But in the case of parents. over-protection is seen by many as a serious problem. So parents keeping there children away from climbing trees, swimming in the sea or riding horses, all have a point. They may know people for whom this type of activity has resulted in death. That doesn't mean there is no such thing as over-protection. You are actually advocating infantilising the entire population.

    In any case I have never taken on board the full libertarian agenda. E.g. deregulation of gambling and banking (if that is not included!) is madness. Same with many other aspects of our laws. So there is no all or nothing here. We have to judge based on the information we have, or outsource our responsibility to others.
  • Let's put this another way @Anteater

    The hospital where Mrs T works is just at the point where treating any more Covid patients will result in having to turn away further patients, Covid or other.

    What is your alternative proposal to the current arrangements for avoiding that scenario?
  • KarlLB:
    What is your alternative proposal to the current arrangements for avoiding that scenario?
    We have to start from the fact that the Government has refused to do anything to increase hospital places. There are reports that the NHS made such a request to the Government but had it turned down because of our world beating (at least in terms of cost) test and trace system. I don't have the proof but it wouldn't surprise me. So increased NHS capacity would be top of my agenda, but that can't happen overnight (except in China).

    Then, such sketchy data from one hospital cannot be used, IMO, to justify a national policy. Do you have any data as to what percentage of hospitals are in that situation, and how this varies from region to region?

    If, as I suspect, it is largely confined to a few regions, why does locking down regions to avoid a scenario that is unrealistically pessimistic, to be preferred to the regional approach taken previously and still taken in Scotland?

    You could analyse what was needed, over and above the Tier 3 regional restrictions that we now have reason to believe were working. Will they, in your view, make all this difference? If so, do what Nicola Sturgeon did and have a higher category. So, given where we are I would have followed what has happened in Scotland. We didn't give the decentralised solution time to work.

    And you must know that running out of beds did not start with COVID. I could give reports about bed overflows resulting in cancelled operations, and patients being refused, going back some time. If you don't believe me I'll dig some out, but do you really think this problem started with COVID?
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    @Anteater, valid though your criticism is, it isn't an alternative proposal to say what you think should have been done six months, a year, or even five years ago. An alternative proposal is only an answer to @KarlLB's question if it's a different recommendation you, or the government, could implement now and would work better.

  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    It's a bit odd to simultaneously complain that you don't trust Johnson and also that the three tier scheme wasn't given time to work, given that the only people who ever said that the three tier scheme would work were Johnson and his cronies.
  • I would suggest listening to the first story on today's PM programme on BBC Sounds for a good survey on how stressed the health system is across the country.

    Yes, we usually get high occupancy in Winter. But this year we have it on top of a Spring and Summer where we built up a backlog. Normally thr health service can catch up a bit when it's quiet.

    Increasing hospital capacity isn't too hard in terms of accommodation and beds. Staffing's more the limiting factor, especially when you keep having staff off with Covid.
  • Dafyd:
    It's a bit odd to simultaneously complain that you don't trust Johnson and also that the three tier scheme wasn't given time to work
    Fair point, but as others will point out neither is there any point in suggesting a solution that is just theoretical. So if asked what my alternative would have been instead of full lockdown it would have been to continue with a regional approach. I think that would have been a less bad solution to what we have. So as to what to do now, it would be to revert to that asap.

    For myself, I would make all these rules into strong recommendations and avoid criminalising behaviours which to my mind is counter-productive. But I know I'll not win that argument and that it is not politically feasible. Whether I measure the democratic will of the people from opinion polls or the consensus of parliamentarians, I will get the same answer, that I am out of step with what the English people want. Very few take a viewpoint similar to mine, and SFAIK virtually none on this ship. I have to accept the majority view whether I like it or not.
  • Anteater wrote: »
    Simon Toad: Long post alert.
    Before replying to your excellently constructed post (really! - although it's schmooze as well) I would like to make one general comment about Sumption's view which is easily missed and makes it primarily a British (maybe English) point of view. It is all about the entrenched attitude, certainly of the English establishment, that it is a good thing that English law and practice is governed by unwritten conventions which "good chaps" adhere to. Famously we have no written constitution, and many aspects of parliament are governed by conventions rather than explicit rules...

    I will come to Sumption's defence here, as your post may inadvertently suggest that this is an unexamined assumption held by him. He defends his view at great length in the 2019 Reith Lectures which he gave. In brief, his view is that good governance (ie, both the making of law and administering it) comes about as a result of political debate, and this necessarily involves compromise. So he is keen on political participation, Parliamentary supremacy, and he is not at all not keen on direct referenda, written constitutions or judges having the power to override law made by legislatures.

    He gives the example of the abortion debate in the US compared with most other places, where it was legalised by legislation after political debate: in contrast, in the US, it was done without any real public debate by judges and has been enormously contentious since. In my view his points have a lot of force.
  • Anteater wrote: »
    Dafyd:
    It's a bit odd to simultaneously complain that you don't trust Johnson and also that the three tier scheme wasn't given time to work
    Fair point, but as others will point out neither is there any point in suggesting a solution that is just theoretical. So if asked what my alternative would have been instead of full lockdown it would have been to continue with a regional approach. I think that would have been a less bad solution to what we have. So as to what to do now, it would be to revert to that asap.

    Purely from a civil liberties perspective, I'm not sure a regional approach is better than a national lockdown. The regional approach still means that the PM has the power to shut down everyday life in (say) Cornwall, with relatively little accountability - he just chooses not to make use of that power.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    ... He gives the example of the abortion debate in the US compared with most other places, where it was legalised by legislation after political debate: in contrast, in the US, it was done without any real public debate by judges and has been enormously contentious since. In my view his points have a lot of force.
    That's a good point, but there is another explanation. Something that IMHO looks really odd to the rest of us about the US Supreme Court and USian political debate is that US lawyers seem to have been allowed to get into the habit of arguing that things which aren't really anything to do with the Constitution are somehow or other 'constitutional.

    There's a big difference between the arguments here last year about whether the courts had any role in determining whether the Prime Minister's proroguing of Parliament was lawful, and arguments about whether the management of health care, abortion or cakes for gay weddings might be. The difference is that what the Prime Minister's powers do or don't include is an argument about how the constitution actually works, the mechanics of it, what different bits of the constitution can legitimately do to each other.

    By no stretch of the imagination in most other countries are questions like 'whether you can have a comparable to the NHS, and if so, how it's run', 'when should or shouldn't abortion be allowed' or 'whether a cake decorator can be required to serve you', anything to do with 'the constitution'. Either they are covered by legislation, or they aren't. It's a matter for legislators to decide what they are going to allow or forbid. The only 'constitutional' questions that might arise are things like whether the legislation was validly enacted and whether the entity that enacted it did so within his, her or its powers or outside them - and that's irrespective of the moral merits of the subject matter.

    Saying this may surprise USians.

    I don't know how or why this difference has arisen or how far it goes back. I don't know much about US legal or political history. Whether this is something that has arisen by chance, whether it's a difference between the philosophical cast of US lawyers and those in other common law jurisdictions, whether the US Supreme Court has stretched its muscles to assume a power that it possibly shouldn't have done or whether it's because the federal and state legislatures have created between them a system that is so sclerotic that courts generally and the Supreme Court have been faced with a power vacuum that they have been obliged to fill, I can't say. Certainly, I would say that the three issues I've cited - and doubtless many others - are ones that elsewhere one would tend to assume that the legislature(s) would assume responsibility for debating and either legislating for or deciding not to legislate for.

    Deciding not to legislate and failing to get legislation through are as much legislative decisions as enacting something.

Sign In or Register to comment.