Well perhaps, except that Corona was – almost certainly – not a ‘natural disaster’. It – almost certainly – arose as a consequence of ‘gain of function’ research in the lab in Wuhan, this type of research having been been banned in the US and transferred to the lab in Wuhan.
There were suggestions that, allegedly, Dr Faustus, sorry Fauci, was involved with the funding of this transfer. Even the always wrong and ever duplicitous NTY has started to cover the ‘lab leak hypothesis’.
So let me get this right. The US in the form of Faustus-Fauci outsources some dangerous and illegal ‘Quatermass ‘ type experiments to the Biological Warfare Establishment in Wuhan.
The Chinese blunder big time and behold Corona Virus!
That sounds so grotesque it must be true.
This is what has been suggested by perfectly credible people such as Bret Weinstein. It is certainly the case that under Obama the US banned this form of ‘gain of function’ research. It is certainly the case that this research continued at the Wuhan lab, It has been alleged/suggested that this was funded by the US, with the help of Fauci.
Nobody is suggesting that the leak was deliberate.
I suggest you watch Bret Weinstein – a highly credible, careful and progressive evolutionary biologist – discussing the ‘lab leak hypothesis’ on his Dark Horse podcast and on Real Time with Bill Maher.
I don’t doubt the credibility of Weinstein , who I admire in as far as I know him. But it is a suggestion. And should be investigated if/when it can be established that the virus was developed and escaped from Wuhan. Which is the only thing we know at the moment ( from the timeline of infections.) Not everyone has the same weight of responsibility in a disaster.
This was common knowledge in the US courtesy of State Dept leaks a year or so ago. The Wuhan Lab gave the Americans huge cause for concern due to poor security. They sent in teams of scientists several times in a very short period – weeks. In early October 2019 there was a cyber incident which may have been the security breakdown which had been feared.
Wile the leak appears not to have been deliberate the CCP recognised a beneficial crisis when it saw one.
More important than the origin of the virus itself, is the origin of our very damaging response to it. Had we stuck to the original pandemic response plan (forged in the mid 2000s) mortality would have been no worse (and arguably better), while the self-inflicted social and economic harm would have been avoided.
I can’t emphasise enough how the lockdowns etc were an unprecedented experiment in pandemic management. Why did we import this idea from China? Why did we stick with it when the data indicated that, at best, it did nothing useful re hospitalisations etc.?
“Had we stuck to the original plan …”
Nice idea but politically impossible. You’ll remember the media hysteria last April as deaths rose inexorably towards the then unimaginably awful 1,000 per day. Now imagine that hysteria encountering a government that was saying, despite the lockdowns across Europe, that we didn’t need a lockdown and weren’t going to have one.
A feasible approach in Sweden perhaps, but Britain is not Sweden.
David Barnett
3 years ago
There is a big difference between Laki and 1783 and Covid-19 in 2020. Almost all the damage in 2020 was the result of our unnecessarily hysterical response to Covid-19 rather than the virus itself.
I take two things from this article.
The first is that the UK has been lucky with its vaccine. If the French one had worked, but ours had not, then the boot would be on the other foot.
The second one is that the present gentle Global warming is good. It might even mitigate from more volcanic eruptions and hence Global cooling.
We should be optimistic about life as we live in a lucky time, in a lucky country.
Yes, gentle global warming is, on the whole, a good thing.
Basil Chamberlain
3 years ago
“The discourse surrounding the origins and course of Covid-19, for instance, demonstrates just how difficult it is for the modern mind to deal with contingency. There is a deep need to believe that nothing happens by chance.” Surely this is a deep need of the human mind, not the modern mind. Before modernity, people simply believed that things happened according to the will of God or the workings of fate.
The other advantage of God or Gods is that it offers an escape from death, or at least some form of after life.
However for some non believers it can be rather bleak, knowing that nothing-nihil awaits them. Hence the current neurosis over such an inefficient killer as C-19.
You never know! You might one day be surprised to find yourself waking up in the Elysian Fields!
The point you make about the anxieties of non-believers is true, and I think I’m probably no less frightened of death (and perhaps a bit more) than the next man. But I’m damned if I’m going to be frightened of life.
That’s the spirit!
However it is illogical to fear death because how can one fear nothing?
Additionally we have plenty of practice. Every night when closes one’s eyes there is no certainty that one will ever open them again; And one day we won’t.
Yes, indeed, it is illogical, but since when were people’s feelings logical?
“And specious stuff that says No rational being / Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing / That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, / No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, / Nothing to love or link with, / The anaesthetic from which none come round.”
Apparently it was an American critic called Eric Homberger (the Wikipedia entry, however, says that Homberger was echoing Randall Jarrell; I’ve not been able to trace Jarrell’s original sentiment yet).
Larkin’s sadness, eloquently versified, tells part of the truth about the human condition. That’s enough, surely!
No, it looks quite normal. Narrower, because the left-hand margin shifts right when you reply, but still several words on a line!
Christopher Wheatley
3 years ago
Up until WW1 Britain was always at the top of everything. It wasn’t a democratic country but it was rich and the ‘trickle down’ theory just about kept the peace. WW1 changed everything because we might have ‘won’ but it didn’t feel good to win. Up to that point it was sufficient to have a charismatic, brave leader who did what he/she thought was right for the country – and they kept winning and people kept cheering.
Then came universal suffrage and decline, not perhaps related. The loss of colonies meant that cheap metals and minerals were not really available any more. Grey men took over at the helm.
Over about 30 years this was a huge change but our systems didn’t change to handle the new world order. We were still a monarchy, our leading politicians either came from public schools (so we were supposed to respect their erudition when they explained things) or from working class roots (so we were supposed to respect their sincerity). The world became more complex and still we kept the same system. The only change is that the politicians have surrounded themselves with specialists, who might or might not know what they are doing but the answer has to be the answer the paymaster politicians want. These advisers are not really advisers, they are like the props in a scrum – they provide force to the argument whether they are right or wrong.
We need a new system and a mechanism for getting there. UnHerd contributors will ‘know’ what we need but they will represent just one side of things, one older generation. We need to debate:
Should we continue to be a monarchy?
Should we keep a House of Lords – what would replace it?
Is our voting system fair? More referenda? PR? A federal Britain (not just Wales and Scotland but also Yorkshire, London, Lancashire, etc.)
Should the PM be selected in a more democratic way. Do we have a president and what are his responsibilities?
We must change before it is too late.
Not much approval for this but it deserves some thought, certainly the last sentence is true in my view.
The reference to specialists is exactly what Eisenhower warned about with the term military-industrial complex. The politicians have given up thinking and policies are determined by unelected academia, business and government bureaucrats.The politicians are not responsible to us, they are controlled by the group thinking of political parties.
You mention universal suffrage. This resulted in a belief that true democracy was finally achieved. This is a delusion. All we have is a system where taxation and welfare buy votes and we on a slow decline to increasing dependence on the state which ultimately is not sustainable, as Ancient Rome discovered.
I agree with your point about suffrage not equalling democracy. To my mind, though, of the three it is business that has the greater power over government or academia. Business supports the extension of the state in that the state creates the environment in which business can thrive and fulfil its sole objective- the creation of economic surplus as profit. is then used to increase the wealth of those who own the business. Academics like to debate ideas and morals, governments have to persuade voters to vote for them. Business just has one objective and the welfare of humans isn’t it.
David Bell
3 years ago
When similar events happen today we only hear the words “man made climate change”.
Edward Seymour
3 years ago
Very interesting piece. I was unaware of decades of crop failures in France before 1789. How interesting that in their bemusement and ignorance the peasantry, informed by the intelligencia, turned to conspiracy theories for an explanation. In our covid time the “peasantry” are listening to covid deniers who prefer to think Davos, globalists and Bill Gates are trying to “re-set” the world. Some even believe that the vaccines are all part of the same plot. The endurance of ridiculous conspiracy theories along with the modern proclivity to emote, virtue signal and panic makes the Western world “scared to death” as Booker et al once wrote.
barbara neil
3 years ago
I’m looking for the point of this article. Yes, luck/chance is important, amongst other things like good management, effort, intentions etc. Yes it’s very hard for we humans to live with the lack of control that is the element of chance. Always has been. But the example of the Corona virus and its origins got my nerves jangling. This is the point? Really? Should we just put it down to curiosity killing the cat? ( And while we’re at it let’s head off any further inquiry by introducing a cancelling-out American involvement.)
Clay Trowbridge
3 years ago
Back long ago, (until the middle of the last century humanity had to depend on natural events in order to reduce populations. Heat, cold, dfought, flood, famine, plague, quakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis.
Today, in a technologically advanced world of seven billion, some of us being useless eaters in the minds of others, there are those effectively bringing this about. It is no longer but a dream for some Prince to reincarnate as a virus to destroy masses of humanity, living people are working to
create viruses, bacteria, fungi, and toxins to bring it about today! And blame people for global warming so to add further control over the humanity from which he seeks separation. In the meantime, we have transhumanism. How fortunate for some that they can look in a mirror and see either nothing or something to be admired; for the rest, we are merely human.
Well perhaps, except that Corona was – almost certainly – not a ‘natural disaster’. It – almost certainly – arose as a consequence of ‘gain of function’ research in the lab in Wuhan, this type of research having been been banned in the US and transferred to the lab in Wuhan.
There were suggestions that, allegedly, Dr Faustus, sorry Fauci, was involved with the funding of this transfer. Even the always wrong and ever duplicitous NTY has started to cover the ‘lab leak hypothesis’.
So let me get this right. The US in the form of Faustus-Fauci outsources some dangerous and illegal ‘Quatermass ‘ type experiments to the Biological Warfare Establishment in Wuhan.
The Chinese blunder big time and behold Corona Virus!
That sounds so grotesque it must be true.
This is what has been suggested by perfectly credible people such as Bret Weinstein. It is certainly the case that under Obama the US banned this form of ‘gain of function’ research. It is certainly the case that this research continued at the Wuhan lab, It has been alleged/suggested that this was funded by the US, with the help of Fauci.
Nobody is suggesting that the leak was deliberate.
I suggest you watch Bret Weinstein – a highly credible, careful and progressive evolutionary biologist – discussing the ‘lab leak hypothesis’ on his Dark Horse podcast and on Real Time with Bill Maher.
Many thanks.
I agree the idea that the ‘leak’ was deliberate is preposterous.
Good old human error is the most likely candidate.
Shades of Chernobyl perhaps?
I don’t doubt the credibility of Weinstein , who I admire in as far as I know him. But it is a suggestion. And should be investigated if/when it can be established that the virus was developed and escaped from Wuhan. Which is the only thing we know at the moment ( from the timeline of infections.) Not everyone has the same weight of responsibility in a disaster.
This was common knowledge in the US courtesy of State Dept leaks a year or so ago. The Wuhan Lab gave the Americans huge cause for concern due to poor security. They sent in teams of scientists several times in a very short period – weeks. In early October 2019 there was a cyber incident which may have been the security breakdown which had been feared.
Wile the leak appears not to have been deliberate the CCP recognised a beneficial crisis when it saw one.
More important than the origin of the virus itself, is the origin of our very damaging response to it. Had we stuck to the original pandemic response plan (forged in the mid 2000s) mortality would have been no worse (and arguably better), while the self-inflicted social and economic harm would have been avoided.
I can’t emphasise enough how the lockdowns etc were an unprecedented experiment in pandemic management. Why did we import this idea from China? Why did we stick with it when the data indicated that, at best, it did nothing useful re hospitalisations etc.?
“Had we stuck to the original plan …”
Nice idea but politically impossible. You’ll remember the media hysteria last April as deaths rose inexorably towards the then unimaginably awful 1,000 per day. Now imagine that hysteria encountering a government that was saying, despite the lockdowns across Europe, that we didn’t need a lockdown and weren’t going to have one.
A feasible approach in Sweden perhaps, but Britain is not Sweden.
There is a big difference between Laki and 1783 and Covid-19 in 2020. Almost all the damage in 2020 was the result of our unnecessarily hysterical response to Covid-19 rather than the virus itself.
Well said sir!
I take two things from this article.
The first is that the UK has been lucky with its vaccine. If the French one had worked, but ours had not, then the boot would be on the other foot.
The second one is that the present gentle Global warming is good. It might even mitigate from more volcanic eruptions and hence Global cooling.
We should be optimistic about life as we live in a lucky time, in a lucky country.
Yes, gentle global warming is, on the whole, a good thing.
“The discourse surrounding the origins and course of Covid-19, for instance, demonstrates just how difficult it is for the modern mind to deal with contingency. There is a deep need to believe that nothing happens by chance.”
Surely this is a deep need of the human mind, not the modern mind. Before modernity, people simply believed that things happened according to the will of God or the workings of fate.
The other advantage of God or Gods is that it offers an escape from death, or at least some form of after life.
However for some non believers it can be rather bleak, knowing that nothing-nihil awaits them. Hence the current neurosis over such an inefficient killer as C-19.
You never know! You might one day be surprised to find yourself waking up in the Elysian Fields!
The point you make about the anxieties of non-believers is true, and I think I’m probably no less frightened of death (and perhaps a bit more) than the next man. But I’m damned if I’m going to be frightened of life.
That’s the spirit!
However it is illogical to fear death because how can one fear nothing?
Additionally we have plenty of practice. Every night when closes one’s eyes there is no certainty that one will ever open them again; And one day we won’t.
Yes, indeed, it is illogical, but since when were people’s feelings logical?
“And specious stuff that says No rational being / Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing / That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, / No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, / Nothing to love or link with, / The anaesthetic from which none come round.”
Who was it who described Mr Glum as the the “saddest heart in the post-war supermarket”?
Each to his own, although had he read ‘Greats’ at St John’s he might have thought differently?
Apparently it was an American critic called Eric Homberger (the Wikipedia entry, however, says that Homberger was echoing Randall Jarrell; I’ve not been able to trace Jarrell’s original sentiment yet).
Larkin’s sadness, eloquently versified, tells part of the truth about the human condition. That’s enough, surely!
Off course I wouldn’t deny Larkin’s eloquence.
It seem impossible to type more than one word per line?
Is this an I-pad problem?
I’ve no idea – I always use my laptop to contribute.
.Has this come at one roughly word per line?
No, it looks quite normal. Narrower, because the left-hand margin shifts right when you reply, but still several words on a line!
Up until WW1 Britain was always at the top of everything. It wasn’t a democratic country but it was rich and the ‘trickle down’ theory just about kept the peace. WW1 changed everything because we might have ‘won’ but it didn’t feel good to win. Up to that point it was sufficient to have a charismatic, brave leader who did what he/she thought was right for the country – and they kept winning and people kept cheering.
Then came universal suffrage and decline, not perhaps related. The loss of colonies meant that cheap metals and minerals were not really available any more. Grey men took over at the helm.
Over about 30 years this was a huge change but our systems didn’t change to handle the new world order. We were still a monarchy, our leading politicians either came from public schools (so we were supposed to respect their erudition when they explained things) or from working class roots (so we were supposed to respect their sincerity). The world became more complex and still we kept the same system. The only change is that the politicians have surrounded themselves with specialists, who might or might not know what they are doing but the answer has to be the answer the paymaster politicians want. These advisers are not really advisers, they are like the props in a scrum – they provide force to the argument whether they are right or wrong.
We need a new system and a mechanism for getting there. UnHerd contributors will ‘know’ what we need but they will represent just one side of things, one older generation. We need to debate:
Should we continue to be a monarchy?
Should we keep a House of Lords – what would replace it?
Is our voting system fair? More referenda? PR? A federal Britain (not just Wales and Scotland but also Yorkshire, London, Lancashire, etc.)
Should the PM be selected in a more democratic way. Do we have a president and what are his responsibilities?
We must change before it is too late.
Not much approval for this but it deserves some thought, certainly the last sentence is true in my view.
The reference to specialists is exactly what Eisenhower warned about with the term military-industrial complex. The politicians have given up thinking and policies are determined by unelected academia, business and government bureaucrats.The politicians are not responsible to us, they are controlled by the group thinking of political parties.
You mention universal suffrage. This resulted in a belief that true democracy was finally achieved. This is a delusion. All we have is a system where taxation and welfare buy votes and we on a slow decline to increasing dependence on the state which ultimately is not sustainable, as Ancient Rome discovered.
Ancient Rome managed to lurch on in one form or another for over two millennia.
We shall not be so fortunate.
I agree with your point about suffrage not equalling democracy. To my mind, though, of the three it is business that has the greater power over government or academia. Business supports the extension of the state in that the state creates the environment in which business can thrive and fulfil its sole objective- the creation of economic surplus as profit. is then used to increase the wealth of those who own the business. Academics like to debate ideas and morals, governments have to persuade voters to vote for them. Business just has one objective and the welfare of humans isn’t it.
When similar events happen today we only hear the words “man made climate change”.
Very interesting piece. I was unaware of decades of crop failures in France before 1789. How interesting that in their bemusement and ignorance the peasantry, informed by the intelligencia, turned to conspiracy theories for an explanation. In our covid time the “peasantry” are listening to covid deniers who prefer to think Davos, globalists and Bill Gates are trying to “re-set” the world. Some even believe that the vaccines are all part of the same plot. The endurance of ridiculous conspiracy theories along with the modern proclivity to emote, virtue signal and panic makes the Western world “scared to death” as Booker et al once wrote.
I’m looking for the point of this article. Yes, luck/chance is important, amongst other things like good management, effort, intentions etc. Yes it’s very hard for we humans to live with the lack of control that is the element of chance. Always has been. But the example of the Corona virus and its origins got my nerves jangling. This is the point? Really? Should we just put it down to curiosity killing the cat? ( And while we’re at it let’s head off any further inquiry by introducing a cancelling-out American involvement.)
Back long ago, (until the middle of the last century humanity had to depend on natural events in order to reduce populations. Heat, cold, dfought, flood, famine, plague, quakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis.
Today, in a technologically advanced world of seven billion, some of us being useless eaters in the minds of others, there are those effectively bringing this about. It is no longer but a dream for some Prince to reincarnate as a virus to destroy masses of humanity, living people are working to
create viruses, bacteria, fungi, and toxins to bring it about today! And blame people for global warming so to add further control over the humanity from which he seeks separation. In the meantime, we have transhumanism. How fortunate for some that they can look in a mirror and see either nothing or something to be admired; for the rest, we are merely human.