Jonathan Sumption was once the epitome of the Establishment â a brilliant barrister who represented the Government in the Hutton enquiry, Supreme Court Justice, supporter of the Remain campaign and esteemed historian of the Hundred Yearsâ War. But then Covid happened.
Over the past year, his unabashed criticism of lockdown policies has turned him into something of a renegade. It is a development that mystifies him; as he sees it, his views have always been mainstream liberal, and it is the world around that has changed.
In the course of our conversation, the retired judge doesnât hold back. He asserts that it is becoming morally acceptable to ignore Covid regulations, and even warns that a campaign of âcivil disobedienceâ has already begun.
You can read what he really thinks below. And watch our interaction on Lockdown TV â it was a fascinating conversation.
Podcast version:
On civil disobedience:
“Sometimes the most public spirited thing that you can do with despotic laws like these is to ignore them. I think that if the government persists long enough with locking people down, depending on the severity of the lockdown, civil disobedience is likely to be the result. It will be discrete civil disobedience in the classic English way â I don’t think that we are likely to go onto the streets waving banners. I think we will just calmly decide that we are not going to pay any attention to this. There are some things you have to pay attention to: you can’t go to a shop if it’s closed. On the other hand, you can invite friends round for a drink, whatever Mr Hancock says. People are doing that to some extent already.
âEveryone will have their own different threshold. But I think that in the eyes of many people who disapprove of the lockdown, and some people who approve of it, we’ve reached that point quite a long time ago.â
On the ethics of law-breaking:
“I feel sad that we have the kind of laws which public-spirited people may need to break. I have always taken a line on this, which is probably different from that of most of my former colleagues. I do not believe that there is a moral obligation to obey the law⊠You have to have a high degree of respect, both for the object that the law is trying to achieve, and for the way that it’s been achieved. Some laws invite breach. I think this is one of them.â
On sacrificing civil liberties:
“[Thomas] Hobbes believed in the absolute state â it didn’t have to be a monarchy, but it had to be absolute. He said that there was nothing short of the state actually killing people that the state should not be entitled to do. He was not, let us say, a believer in liberty. This is because of his experience of the anarchy which flowed from the civil war in England. Hobbes believed that we resign our freedoms unconditionally and permanently into the hands of the state, in return for security. Now, this is a model which ever since the rise of a recognisable form of modern Liberalism in the middle of the 19th century, has been almost universally rejected. But we have tended to revert to it during the current crisis. And I think that that is a very striking and very sinister development.
On the dangers of public fear:
“John Stuart Mill regarded public sentiment and public fear as the principal threat to a liberal democracy. The tendency would be for it to influence policies in a way that whittles away the island within which we are entitled to control our lives to next to nothing. That’s what he regarded as the big danger. It didn’t happen in his own lifetime; it has happened in many countries in the 20th century, and it’s happening in Britain now.”
On the fragility of democracy:
“Democracy is inherently fragile. We have an idea that it’s a very robust system. But democracies have existed for about 150 years. In this country, I think you could say that they existed from the second half of the of the 19th century â they are not the norm. Democracies were regarded in ancient times as inherently self-destructive ways of government. Because, said Aristotle, democracies naturally turn themselves into tyranny. Because the populace will always be a sucker for a demagogue who will turn himself into an absolute rulerâŠ
“Now, it is quite remarkable that Aristotle’s gloomy predictions about the fate of democracies have been falsified by the experience of the West ever since the beginning of democracy. And I think one needs to ask why that is. In my view, the reason is this: Aristotle was basically right about the tendencies, but we have managed to avoid it by a shared political culture of restraint. And this culture of restraint, which because it depends on the collective mentality of our societies, is extremely fragile, quite easy to destroy and extremely difficult to recreate.”
On being a liberal:
“IÂ regard myself as a liberal with a small L. Until the Covid outbreak, that was a very middle of the road position to be in. Since the outbreak, itâs become controversial, even in some peopleâs minds extreme. This is, I think, some indication of how far our national conversation has moved.”
On what the Government should learn:
“My first proposal is that governments should not treat information as a tool for manipulating public behaviour. They should be calmer than the majority of their citizens; they should be completely objective. My second lesson would be that governments dealing with scientific issues should not allow themselves to be influenced by a single caucus of scientists. They should always test what they are being told in a way that, for instance, judges test expert opinion by producing a counter expert, and working out which set of views stacks up best.”
On his critics:
“IÂ would very much have preferred the kind of points that I have been consistently making for the last year to have been made by just about anybody else. Those colleagues or former colleagues who disapprove of what I’ve been doing have got a perfectly good point. But there are some issues which are so central to the dilemmas of our time, which are so important, where I think that you have to be prepared to stand up and be counted.
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SubscribeLord Sumption has been a rare shaft of light over the last year. There certainly ought to be mass civil disobedience in the fact of the despotic measures taken by our evil government, but the vast majority of people seem to be willingly compliant. And now that those in power know how compliant most people are, many more freedoms will be stolen from us.
There has been mass civil disobedience from day one, especially in certain parts of the country and amongst certain communities. Any correlation with severe outbreaks of disease is, of course, coincidental.
Well I too, along with a few others, have been disobeying the rules almost daily, with no adverse health effects beyond those relating to the liver.
Yes, I think it should be more a case of the individual making their own risk assessment. But some things are common sense without the government having to say so: e.g. not shouting or speaking in a raised voice to someone in a supermarket (or in a restaurant or pub when they do reopen) without a mask on at a distance of only one or two feet away, as that could spread Covid even if the person is asymptomatic.
People need to take off the masks. They are a symbol of subservience and compliance. Science is simple really. You breath in oxygen and you breath our carbon dioxide (waste matter). So, by wearing a mask, you are seriously compromising your immune system. Oh the irony. I wish people would get educated, then this would be over tomorrow!
I’ve never worn a mask, and I never will. I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.
People need to wake up to the fact that we have a rogue government in power and Labour, under Starmer (think Rotherham) are no better! Wakey wakey people!!
Well said caroline2
I do wish you could exercise your immune system without insisting on exercising mine by your presence.
In fact, the sooner you exercise your immune system beyond that point of no return the sooner other people who are not like you – will be safer and less fearful
As for your conflicting choice between dying on your feet or living on your knees, be my guest! Lonely are the brave!
Should we stop wearing our seatbelts too? What about abiding by the speed limit? Queing for anything? Let’s dump all health and safety regulation ‘individuals can do their own risk assessment’
It’s a matter of balance. Masks are minimal intervention / cost / loss of liberty with a reasonable prospect of benefit.
There have been no outbreaks of severe disease outside of care homes and hospitals. Covid is what every other year weâd call a cold. Though this year theyâve subsumed flu under Covid, which is severe though we donât normally bat an eyelid over it.
This is false: https://fullfact.org/health/flu-covid-phe-not-combined/
Those Fact Checking Website are covers for Govt ie BShit!
Really, Sean? There are some intelligent arguments to be put for what I take to be your point of view and Irene Polikoff has done a good job of it above. But you are weakening your own case’s credibility when you tell what are obvious lies.
The data, when looking at deaths show the vast majority of deaths are in hospitals and care homes. If Hancock was a true leader he would have enforced the prophylactics and treatments for covid to prevent 80 odd percent of people getting into hospital in the first place.
Cases are irrelevant as most of us recover or don’t even get ill.
Yes fear is the great motivator and he says so in this interview. It appears we are going at any length to prevent even one covid death but meanwhile many others are dying from other things. It is truly bizarre.
Yes and this fear is being aided and abetted by much of our mainstream media, and quite often by the BBC with their listing of Covid infection and death statistics on every showing of their TV News.
In a state of fear, we are more easily manipulated and more compliant. Ask the Psychologists (from the Tavistock Institute) on the Sage Group who have been advising the government on inducing fear in the populace and gain compliance.
This is a reproduction of the infamous Milgram experiment from 1962 except now it’s happening for real! There has been a deliberate campaign of fear orchestrated from the very beginning to coerce people into taking experimental MNRA gene therapy jabs. The consequence of this irresponsible and criminal act will be seen for years to come.”The MNRA vaccines will override your innate immune system rendering it useless in future to future covid attacks.This is a threat to humanity!” These are not my words but the words of Dr Guurt Vanden Bossche one of the most eminent vaccine designers in the world. It seems Boris Johnson will have his wish and start reducing the world’s poputation by starting with the UK population.
Vaccine passports I believe are a very bad idea. What this government is doing breaks almost every rule in the Nurenburg code on vaccines.
The degree of compliance is very hard to judge. All I am certain of is that, immediately after the start of the Jan 2021 lockdown, our local busy secondary road was about as busy as I have ever seen it. Maybe we have an awful lot of keyworkers or an awful lot of hypocrites in my area.
I think most people have twigged by now that the whole thing is a giant racket. Quite frankly, I don’t know what took them so long.
Apparently quite a lot of people who are furloughed have been taking up second jobs. And why not? If the govt is dumb enough to give out free money while you do nothing, why not take a another job as well?
Give it time, Fraser. Tik-tok. Don’t forget there is the Worldwide freedom march coming up on the 20th March.
A bit disappointing. It started of well but it appears his resistance is strong on lockdown alone. He simply seems to despite that particular lack of freedom . He does not think that that vaccine passports are sinister so long as the lockdown can end. On the other hand he recounts how wartime passports became purposeless after some time. Does he think vaccine passports will go the same way?
Also how will disobedience work with them? It is not an insignificant issue. To be coerced into taking a foreign substance into your body by preventing one being able to do all the things one calls normal!
It appears that for LS tyranny stops when lockdown ends because he feels the pain of lockdown. Beyond that …. every person for him/herself.
I agree. I was also disappointed that his argument for vaccine passports was that we basically have to cede bodily autonomy (in practice, given that anyone unvaccinated would become an outcast) to assuage the fears of others. If it were guaranteed that the vaccine stopped transmission, this would be an argument; however, as things appear to stand at the moment, if the vaccinated can still catch Covid and pass it on, such fears are in fact irrational.
A good interview, though – thanks, Freddie!
If it stops transmission it still matters not because the only person arguably at risk is the person who has chosen not to be vaccinated.
Oh, I agree, on a philosophical level. Just pointing out that the basis upon which Lord Sumption expects us to give up one of our fundamental civil liberties is actually irrational.
And really surprising.
That is not the case for tourist receiving countries as mine, Greece. We donât want summer visitors getting severely ill hence overloading our health care system.
For that reason I believe we have the right to require vaccine passports from our guests
Rather a spurious argument as the vaccines are not shown to stop transmission nor catching covid. The vast majority of people going on hols to Greece will, at worse get a sniffle. And in the season that most will go on hols will be high vit D season – summer. Covid is seasonal.
With the MNRA gene therapy jabs the vaccinated are more like to get sick than the unvaccinated as their innate immune system becomes rendered impotent to fighting certain diseases.
Vaccines do generally inhibit transmission. Why else would, for example, Yellow Fever vaccination certificates be required to enter certain countries?
The Government has been (unusually) conservative about claiming the Covid vaccines inhibit transmission while the results of research are awaited, but it very probably does.
However, once the great majority of adults in the country are vaccinated, the utility of certificates for domestic purposes seems rather low.
â Why else would, for example, Yellow Fever vaccination certificates be required to enter certain countries?â
Because those are actual vaccines, non of the current crop of COVID medications fulfil the definition of a vaccine, or certainly what used to be considered the definition, despite the continued use of the word. As an aside, I had the AstraZeneca variant 2 days ago; I have lived and worked all over the world so Iâve had my fare share of inoculations, never have I been given one which didnât come with a list of side effects and a path for reporting any side effects experienced until now.
The leaflet you get with it in the UK tells you the side effects to expect and where to report them.
I got mine yesterday and was feverish overnight, now just a bit tired and HÌŽÌœÍÌœÍÌAÌ”ÌÍÌ ÌŠÍIÌŽÍÌżÍÍÌÍLÌžÍÍ̜̫ÌȘÍ BÌ”ÌżÍÍÌ IÌŽÍÌÌąÍLÌŽÍÌœÌÍÌąLÌžÍÍÍÍ GÌžÍÍÌÌșÌșÌŠAÌžÍÍÍÌșÌÌTÌ”ÍÌÌÌ̌̊EÌŽÍÍÍÍÍÍSÌ”ÌÍÍÌșÍÍ.ÌŽÌœÍÍÌĄÌÌ BÌ”ÍÌœÌÌ«ÌŒÌUÌ”ÍÍÌÌÌ«IÌŽÍÌÍÌąÍÌĄLÌ”ÍÌÌÌÌŠÍDÌžÌÌÍ Ì«Í TÌŽÍÌÌÌÍHÌžÍÍÍÍÌÌ»EÌžÍÌÌÌŒÍ 5ÌžÍÍÌŸÌÌąÍGÌžÍÌŸÌÍÌąÌș MÌŽÌÌÍÌĄÌA̟̔ÍÌÍÍSÌŽÍÌŸÌŸÌąÍÍTÌžÍÌÌœÌÌȘÍ TÌŽÌÌÍÌșÍÍOÌ”ÍÍÌ»Ì«Í HÌ”ÌÌœÍÌÌĄÍEÌ”ÍÍÍÌŒÍLÌžÍÍÌÍÌLÌŽÍÌÍÍÌ«ÍVÌ”ÍÌÍÌ ÌșEÌŽÍÌÍÌąÌŒNÌžÍÍÍÍÌąÌ.ÌŽÌżÍÌÍÌÍ.
I’m putting myself last for the vaccine. I’d rather the most fearful take it first.
Same here, and Iâm aware of some of the potentially vulnerable who have had them (at least the first dose). It had a positive psychological effect, at least. Iâm familiar with the 12 page leaflet that comes through the post encouraging their use, and have decided not to for the time being. The leaflet is a classic marketing one, or like a candidateâs leaflet (albeit with no name or address for the Agent!).
I wholeheartedly agree. If the fearful feel protected, they will be bolder and buttress up society.
Sorry Brian but I’m last!
Excellent graphics!!!
Why did you accept then an unknown & unproven Vaccine ?
I don’t believe this, it reads like paid trolling to me. As a contemporaneous response pointed out, it’s a lie to claim that vaccine recipients are not advised of side effects, millions of leaflets handed out to each one of them demonstrate otherwise. It’s also a straight lie to assert that there is no path for asserting side effects, it’s called the Yellow Card Scheme – as I feel sure this liar knows. “I have lived and worked all over the world” – yeah, sure you have.
Dougie â Vaccines do generally inhibit transmission. Why else would, for example, Yellow Fever vaccination certificates be required to enter certain countries?â
Yellow fever can only be caught from mosquitos, it cannot be transmitted person-to-person.
Where is the data on the efficacy of vaccination (each type) and actually getting the disease? (I’m in US but the data from anywhere might be insightful.) Is there data on level or efficacy of antibodies in an individual in either of these situations? What about someone who got covid-19 and then was vaccinated? If there is a 99% survival rate of those under 80 yrs (pick your age), why take the risk of these rapidly created vaccines, before taking the risk of covid-19? And there are risks of the vaccine- not saying the risks are small or large, but they are not zero.
The known risks are ‘pretty low’, but for most of us short term adverse events are more than we’d get from covid. My neighbour had astra vax last week then spent two days feeling awful. A bit worse than when he caught covid last year. Problem is, when we started mass vaxxing the deaths rocketed up, especially in care homes and now they’re dropping along with ‘cases’. Hancock hails this as a massive vax success. He seems to ignore the fact that the same is happening all around the world, whether vaccination has progressed or not, whether countries are locked down or not. It’s called seasonality.
The longer term adverse events are unknown. The potential binding antibody problem and the scenario that the Belgian doc Dr Geert Vanden Bossche outlines being just two. Let’s hope they don’t come to fruition or at least not across all those vaccinated or else we’re right in the mire.
It’s my belief this is a deliberate attempt to CULL the ederly and the long term sick. I hope I’m wrong but Boris Johnson made his view on this pretty clear in an article he wrote back in 2007!
https://www.boris-johnson.com/2007/10/25/global-population-control/
Even known cheap ways of treating the disease were kept from our doctors. That’s what’s criminal in all this. Many who died could easily have been treated at a cost of about ÂŁ20 pounds per patient and no need for hospitalisation. Unfortunately those wanting to share this were silenced!
If you have had Covid then your body has already built up an immunity with your innate immune system. In this case you should NOT be given the vaccines. Prof Delores Cahill says that if you take the vaccine in this case your innate immune already has already protected you. If you are given a MNRA jab my understanding is your innate immune protection is overriden. The next time you come in contact with another Covid variant could be deadly as your own immune system could end up destroying your own internal organs.
You’re comparing apples wih oranges.’Probably’ …..the mainsream narrative from the start.
The risk to you or me, unless in that small group and obese from covid are virtually nil. Less than a cold or flu. Certainly less than heart disease or cancers. What’s the problem?
That’s because the MNRA gene therapy jabs are not by definition vaccines. They are potentially lethal to those receiving them as their innate immune system has been bypassed. These jabs do not inhibit prevention or transmission.
He also pulls his punches by saying that he won’t stand up and speak in Trafalgar Square or wherever. The fact is that unless or until people with his influence stand up to be counted in that way, there is no hope.
I echo this comment of yours. I was a bit surprised that he would just passively disobey. I think we have reached a point that we need to take it to the streets.
He began advocating not following the law by signing up to Lady Brenda Hale’s statement on PM Johnson’s prorogation of parliament. There is a glaring error in its first paragraph; inadequate evidence to prove the allegation; serious non-sequiturs; sloppy argumentation, and not least a judgement which was unconstitutional. Lady Hale is a militant judge, an oxymoron if ever there was one. He seems to sympathize.
Yes……this was a big black mark against him.
He’s right. We need a pragmatic solution to get us back to normal. Those that accept greater risk to do so like myself should be able to choose a quick exit strategy. I go to my clinics in person and to my London office by public transport. Those who want to stay locked away are free to do so. That’s civil liberty. Either way the good Lord’s last sentence is the key – ‘you have to stand up and be counted.’
But there is barely any risk for most people, who have good metabolic health and under 70. Trouble is many people have poor metabolic health (obesity, low vitamin D, diabetes, lack of exercise, poor diet, smokers, high blood pressure etc.). But that’s not personally my fault and I go to great lengths to avoid all those things so why should arbitrary lockdown apply to me.
In many cases it’s our health system that has failed the people with pretty poor treatment. An Eastern European doctor who I met, and worked for the NHS said “The level of health care in the NHS is very LOW level.” Having had the services of several Traditional Chinese Medical Doctors who are usually trained in Western & TCM. For long term chronic problems Western medicine is almost impotent!! What a sad reflection on what our once great institution the NHS has become. I’m not blaming the people who work for it!
Thank you for your excellent work, Professor Sikora.
This interview was fascinating. Lord Sumption talks about a very British civil disobedience in which individuals begin to make their own judgements. Such as inviting friends around for a drink, or dinner. But Lord Sumption also says that most people support Draconian lockdown restrictions and that they have been manipulated into that by State fear mongering. Those therefore who do exercise their discretion can expect to be denounced, anonymously, by their fellow citizens, who will report them to the police. They can then expect a visit by the police, who will not content themselves with a mere warning, but who can be expected to be pretty direct.
My wife recently took our dog for a walk at the local beach, which is vast. There were only eight cars. The risk of Covid in a strong easterly wind on the East Coast is zero. Yet there was someone filming them. The entrance to the drive leading to the beach carries a government sign with the injunction “stay at home”, notwithstanding our apparent right to some exercise.
I think that the public health response to Covid will not just have damaged democracy and our civil liberties. There will be societal damage as well.
I opened a business in East Berlin shortly after the wall came down. Most of my staff were East Germans. I was very aware of the legacy of the Stasi and the veritable army of IMs or informelle Mitarbeiter (informal staff members), namely snitches and narks who denounced their fellow citizens, and even family members, for transgressions against state orthodoxy. It leaves a very enduring mark.
Yeah these snitchers were encouraged by the communists so that they could control the people. There are some in the UK who do it who imagine that they serve the government but all it is is imposing their views and trying to control other people. It would be different if they were stealing or causing damage.
As Michel Foucault would say “We don’t need the Police to Police us, we Police ourselves” Sad but true. History has taught us nothing.
Thank you, Karol, for standing up publicly against the Covid tyranny on Unherd and Talk Radio etc.
The name Karol Sikora is well known even in my home country at the tip of Africa. Thank you for your well reasoned and informed push back against mainstream fear mongering, draconian measures employed, liberties lost and ultimately destruction of countries.
Spot on! I cannot fathom why the fearful are being given centre stage and are being made to seem right across the board. Our species never would have come this far had the fearful run the tribes or instructed their people to stay in caves.
Lord Sumption says that people should be able to make their own risk assessments. Does this mean allowing those under the age of 60 to generally go back to work and supporting those older with help and advice to look after themselves? What happens if they still make inappropriate decisions? Would the NHS be overloaded? Some under 60 are vulnerable due to obesity etc. How would employers and fellow employees react if such people were allowed to furlough? Would they be victimised?
I agree that the effect on the young has been terrible and they should have stayed at school, but what would happen if some teachers just refused to go and teach due to fear for themselves?
I have considerable sympathy with Lord Sumption’s and Karol Sikora’s views, but just worry about the unintended consequences…
The ‘unintended consequences’ of lockdowns are horrendous as made clear in many papers.
If people choose to be obese, any reason I should be locking myself in prison for them? Are we now tring to stop people getting ill?
Ask Hancock why he has not been promoting and forcing th nhs to use well established and efficacious treatments and prophylactics to stop people getting il and into hospital in the first place. Vit D, HCQ/zinc, Budesonide, Ivermectin, Vit C etc are all proven to prevent/treat covid when used at the correct time for the treatment in the correct dosage.
Thank you Dr Sikora for your brave work to debunk the covid scam ! I cant but sayhow sad i am to see the civil rights everywhere being dismantled or reversed into more of a totalitarian dictatorship under disguise of emergency … now the governments can make new laws and regulations with no opposition or critics in the name of the covid measure concensus ….
I don’t take public transport because I do not want to be a danger to others. This is not a civil liberties issue, it is a public health issue.
Good for you! Look at Dr Zelenko in the USA. Treating patients in the USA whilst he has cancer and taking treatment for it. A ‘high risk’ if ever there was one. He has faith in his own prophylactic and treatment protocol.
This was dissapointing indeed, but it goes to show how little most people understand how this vaccine works and how the media keeps it vague as to keep perpetuating the misunderstanding.
Yes this is not the type of vaccine that people have become accustomed to. But of course, media, government or health policy people are not explaining that for all the world to see. This experimental jab is a way for government and public health to back themselves out of the great hole they have created but it is a barbaric idea.
Agree with you, Elizabeth, to an extent, but I think it’s going too far to say it’s a barbaric idea otherwise why have a good 75 to 80% taken up the vaccine so far that has been offered? Did anyone say that the flu vaccine was a barbaric idea? The trials indeed have taken only a year, or slightly less, but almost all of major scientists and epidemiologists think it is perfectly safe. However, I do agree with Trish Castle that no-one should be coerced into having one and nor should there be vaccines passports in this country. Agree that this government are trying to back themselves out of a ‘great hole’.
I know I’m digressing a bit, but if the government had closed our borders for a month or two (which should have been not difficult as the UK is an island) in the early stages of the pandemic – say from early February until early April 2020 – and banned Brits from holidaying abroad, then we wouldn’t have had the need for a vaccine (or not a widely used one anyway, and we could have developed one over a longer period of time to be used as an optional booster). The reason Johnson’s government didn’t do this is, I think, that they knew they would be perceived as ‘isolationist’ after the behaviour of Brexiter members of the cabinet – which I think is almost all of the current ministers – during our Brexit process, and they wanted somehow to counteract this.
âThe trials indeed have taken only a year, or slightly less, but almost all of major scientists and epidemiologists think it is perfectly safe.â
There are many senior scientists who dissent but their views will not be represented in mainstream media. The most prominent perhaps is BMJ associate editor Peter Doshi.
Thanks for that name and association. Reading some of Doshi’s articles has shifted my assessment, not to the opposite extreme but at least to more uncertainty for now. Now that I’m more aware of the complications he brings up, I can be more alert to the need for more information in either direction. Previously I had thought it well enough settled and not needing further investigation (we all have to allocate our attention and prioritize following some questions over others).
Opinions should be constantly subject to possible reassessment with new information.
What exactly are ‘major Scientists and Epidemiologists’? First epidemiologists have no special knowledge of the techniques employed in vaccination, especially these new concepts (the same is true in reverse of Fauci). Second, what ‘major’ generally means are either Science Bureaucrats (who are not Scientists in general, whatever their degree), or Scientists beholden to the ‘establishment’, in this case the Multinational Pharma Giants. Medicine has been corrupted by money.
THINK. Vaccines are generally tested for at least 8 years once they get to that point. Great analogy someone gave me – difference between fully testing a vehicle and all of the individual components and driving it round the block and saying ‘it didnt break down’
Meanwhile in the real world… It’s fine for you to suggest eight years of testing is the norm and, I guess, desirable, although why eight years and not nine or twenty, I don’t know. But you do need to consider what economists would call the opportunity of cost of such a long delay – a lot more people dying and/or a lot more social restrictions and economic damage over a longer period. Then you need to balance the risk of early vaccine deployment against the benefits.
Anyone remember a drug called Thalidomide?
Yes, and (like most vaccines) it’s dangerous only when given to pregnant women.
The âbenefitsâ are great profits for the pharmaceutical companies only. What is the point in taking a jab for a disease with a fatality rate of 0.2% at most?There are spikes in death rates around the world as a result of injection programmes, all Covid19 âvaccinesâ are still experimental.
Your 0.2% number is total misinformation. As Sumption alluded to, best estimate from Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter et al is that fatality rate is around 1% overall in UK.
The HIN1 vaccine became available within a year of that outbreak, in 2009. I got the vaccine (along with an ordinary annual flu shot) that fall, when I was working at a university in China; it was made available free for all staff, but was voluntary. I found out later that only about a quarter of the Chinese staff had gotten either vaccine.
I saw a really good meme which said – Rat turns to his friend and says “hey, you gonna take the vaccine?” to which he replied “I’ll wait and see how the human trials go first” This would be funny if it wasn’t so serious!
So which countries did close their borders from early February 2020? None that I can think so. So your reason for why the UK did not does not sound very credible, to put it mildly.
Australia. I’m here, we closed the borders, and Australia now doesn’t have Covid, I am not in lockdown, there is some vaccine thing vaguely going on (the prime minister had it the other day) that I don’t really have to bother about, and life is more or less back to normal.
Meanwhile back in the UK (where I grew up, left ~20 years ago) millions upon millions of people continued to come and go and now, even with all this vaccine program, you’ll be locked up for months still.
I have no political axe to grind (I am a progressive conservative, or vice versa, i.e. I disagree with everyone…) But the simple, irrefutable observation here is that the country that stopped people coming and going doesn’t have the problem, while the country that talked and talked about “taking control of our borders” but didn’t actually do it when it counted is screwed. (Not the only one of course, but one of the hardest hit.)
I am truly sad for what I see happening in my once proud land of birth. But the results are in, and the conclusion is clear – the choice was lock down your borders or lock up your population, and I’m happy and lucky to be in a country that did the former.
….and Auckland NZ goes into lockdown because of ONE new ‘case’. Must be pretty serious then I guess /s.
Yep, you can discuss and debate the severity of the “tactical” lockdowns in response to the tiny number of cases that have happened recently in Oz and NZ. Fact remains, these have been (a) much shorter and less restrictive than countries that didn’t control their borders and (b) only required when there were problems in those border controls – i.e. “quarantine leaks”. There are many in Australia that wonder why we don’t use the existing – and expensive – infrastructure in remote areas to process inbound arrivals, instead of quarantining them in the middle of our most populous cities and have to panic every time the inbound travellers get frisky with the quarantine staff.
Both Britain and Australia are islands, albeit on different scales and proximities, but one used its island status to advantage, the other – after years of rhetoric about controlling borders – didn’t.
Setting aside the efficacy of strict lockdowns for the moment, Australia has come under sharp criticism for human rights violations stemming from intense efforts to control the populace. Remember when police were filmed arresting a pregnant woman for incitment due to organizing an anti-lockdown protest on Facebook? Rights should not be completely abandoned during a pandemic.
Interesting. But what about opening the borders again? Only allowed for corona-free people? So, the question is: what thoughts do you have about corona and the future? Irrefutable observations deep into the future? Being immunized by vaccins?
You obviously don’t live in Victoria.
One slight problem, Tim, is that sooner or later as you open up your country again (assuming you don’t want to remain isolated for ever on your wonderful continent!), the virus will return. However, our experience here of the vaccines so far is astonishingly positive as they presumably will be for Australia, too. Then we all must return to the norm, viz. that life is not a zero risk business: we will have to go back to living that life with an acceptable level of risk.
“However, our experience here of the vaccines so far is astonishingly positive as they presumably will be for Australia, too”.
Easy tiger, we have no idea how these vaccines will perform, and in the case of the mRNA vaccines, they are not vaccines per se, but operating systems. They have been duplicitously labelled ‘vaccines’ to get round the FDA laws, moreover, they are being prescribed under ’emergency’ protocols.
As far as I am aware, there have been at least two major real world surveys which have shown a minimum of an 85% protection against serious illness and/or death for both the Pfizer and the Astra Zeneca. There has also been clear evidence published that shows the vaccine shows that should a vaccinated person become infected, even asymptomatically, they do not pass on the virus. Lastly, what term you use is purely a matter of semantics as the result is the same!
Life pretty much back to normal??? You canât leave the country without Soviet Union style approval from the government. Most which are being rejected. Your basic human rights of freedom of movement is severely restricted. 40,000 Australian citizens stranded abroad as entry is massively restricted. States have closed borders to other australian states. Life back to normal??? I think you have forgotten what normal really was my friend.
In all this talk about closing borders, the point seems to be missed that this pandemic originated in a single city in a single country: Wuhan, China.
I first read about the outbreak in Wuhan on or around January 1, 2020. At that time, all the confirmed cases were still in that area.
Why didn’t China halt international travel out of the country, or at least out of Hubei province, as soon as the severity of the outbreak was known?
We are all screwed. Look what microsoft has done. Bill Gates has been telling lies. We are all getting the covid passes. Not just to travel. To go to school. To go to work. etc. They are rolling it out now. Watch the top video. Kids are going to have to get their testing tracker to attend Los Angeles public schools. Brought to you buy Microsoft!
https://achieve.lausd.net/covidresources
Los Angeles Unified Daily Pass
David Dreebin,
I am shocked to read how wrongly you are informed.
There is no virus.
The CDC nor anyone else has proven the virus to exist.
The so called PCR test is not a test.
It is fake- fraudulent.
No one has ever contracted the cv.
No one has ever died from the cv.
Everything you hear on MSM is lies and propaganda.
Everything you need to know about the covid fraud is here:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/8aesRBKk7luP/
You’ll get no purchase here, Dave. Think MK Ultra!
Where vaccines were tested in Israel there are signs that many people go on to heart problems or strokes months after a vaccine.
Your source, please. All I could find was that one â75-year-old with cancer and history of heart attacksâ died 2 hours after vaccination. His death is considered unrelated to vaccination.
Did you find that on Google? I’d go to DuckDuckGo!
I think you’re missing the point, David. In my opinion, this is all about money, and lots of it. You only have to do a little digging into Chris Whitty’s background to realise that there is a major conflict of interest with his position. This is about big Profits for big Pharma and nothing else. Sadly, we are their guinea pigs! What could possibly go wrong?
I’m amazed at the number of conspiracy theory nutters like you around. Quite amazed.
What on earth is barbaric about it? Are all vaccines therefore ‘barbaric’? Polio, ‘flu, yellow fever et al? What is about these vaccines that have caused so many to leap onto barmy conspiracy theory bandwagons?
Nit picking there Fran. The issue is huge, you worry about the minutia.
This is a very important distinction and nuanced point. Apartheid, Jim Crow and countless other heinous crimes in history have all been legal. Whilst I am certainly not comparing lockdown laws to those ones, it is an important distinction about legality and what the right thing to do is when laws are questionable.
Abortion is legal, but is it moral?
As is adultery (currently legal and widely not considered moral)
There is a lot of good sense here, but supporting ‘Covid Passports’ is not one of them. First that will result in tremendous coercion to obey. Second, one does not need to be an ‘Anti-Vaxxer’ (a term of propaganda and coercion itself) to wish to decline an experimental technology (I have a lot more expertise here, than Lord Sumption) for an illness, depending on your age that is of no risk. Forcing a 20-year old to get a vaccine for this is criminal. And, he seems to not realize that this will lead to every citizen of every age getting a couple of new vaccine shots … maybe every 3 months for the rest of their lives. This is a road we must NOT go down.
The logic is plainly moving towards a
permanent vaccination model. You get Version 1 early in 2021. But, of course, as new strains of COVID appear, you will have to get Version 2 late in 2021, Version 3 in the spring of 2022, etc. No wonder Bill Gates is involved. It’s like a dream software marketing strategy where everyone is forced to buy Office and every new version for the rest of eternity.
The vaccine situation can be explained easily. Just like the mask situation. One can only wonder why there is lack of clear scientific information in the media on either of these topics. There are sterilizing vaccines and protective vaccines. Sterilizing vaccines kill the virus so a vaccinated person never becomes infected. Protective vaccines (a very common type) do not prevent a person from becoming infected, they prevent a person from becoming sick from the infection. Thus, a vaccinated person could carry a virus and, potentially, infect others. However, because they are vaccinated, their body will kill the virus pretty quickly. Thus, the time during which they may be infected (and infectious) is considerably shorter than the unvaccinated person. They are also likely to be less infectious during this time than unvaccinated people.
Once Covid vaccines are broadly available, whether they are sterilizing or only protective, shouldn’t really matter from the public health policy prospective. It is up to each individual to decide if they want to use a vaccine to protect themselves. It is not a responsibility of a person to protect other people by getting vaccinated. Other people can protect themselves. Yes, there may be a very tiny category of people who, for some medical reason, can’t take a vaccine. This is the case with any vaccine. The right of the other 99+ % percent of people to make their personal health decisions should not be subservient to the notion of possibly protecting this tiny minority. Public health policies are not and can not be about 100% protection for everyone. When I make my health decisions, I am focused on myself and my health. If this could be interpreted as me “being selfish”, I have a well founded legal and moral right to be selfish when making my health decisions.
Given that this disease has 99.5% to 99.998% survival rate for those under 65 and that, at least in the UK and the US, vaccine is now well available for the over 65 crowd (and quite a number of other categories of people as well), it is shocking and a clear violation of basic human rights for governments to claim they can mandate what people are able to do based on their vaccination status or, more generally, to limit anyone’s rights on the grounds of Covid pandemic. Whatever slim excuse they had before is now completely gone.
“There are sterilizing vaccines and protective vaccines. Sterilizing vaccines kill the virus so a vaccinated person never becomes infected. Protective vaccines (a very common type) do not prevent a person from becoming infected, they prevent a person from becoming sick from the infection.”
This is not quite right. A vaccine induces an immune reaction – an entirely ‘natural’ phenomenon. The nature of the immune reaction – the type and ‘accuracy’ of the antibodies produced – is what determines the effectiveness of the vaccine.
Last month I studied ‘the ethics of vaccination’. In there your point of view is more less explored. I make it short: to protect the vulnerable it can be demanded by government that the environment of the vulnerable should be immunized by vaccins to prevent the vulnerable will die or getting ill. A rather complex situation. Complex, as it is bind to the believe how the world should be, being sure that vaccination does what is promised and all hidden assumptions not mentioned. I am still reflecting about it.
Well said, Irene.
Absolutely spot on Trish. This whole point seems so blindingly obvious to me that I don’t understand how Lord Sumption could miss it. As he seems so incredibly astute in many other areas it actually makes me question my own view – am I missing something?
It was also disappointing to hear him refer to those not wishing to take the covid “vaccine” as anti-vaxxers. I believe most people that have issues with the covid “vaccines” have had all the regular childhood vaccines and have had their children vaccinated. If you are at very limited risk, why would you take any drug to combat that limited risk if that drug itself has a degree of risk (as ALL drugs do)? As you have stated, if those at risk have taken the vaccine (and assuming it protects the recipient – i.e. “works”) then the whole argument of taking it “for the greater good” flies out of the window.
I am not sure that he was using ‘anti-vaxxer’ in the way you think. I think he was being very specific referring to people who are against taking this vaccine, not meaning those people who have some conspiratorial view about all vaccines. In the same way as ‘anti-lockdown’ in this context refers specifically to the Covid lockdown rather than other examples of people being deprived of their liberty. I might be wrong but that is my view. It was an unfortunate choice of words and nothing more.
Absolutely spot on you David. I would not be seen as the “anti-vaxxer” stereotype at all – I am grateful for my childhood vaccines and would have liked to have had the opportunity of a measles vaccines as that particular illness nearly killed me, and I have all my children vaccinated for all the illnesses of childhood – and yet I still disagree that this so-called vaccine is necessary. Lord Sumption had me wholeheartedly on side in his views on liberty etc, but on the vaccine (and he did look somewhat sheepish when he spoke about this I thought) he appears to have retreated to the typical mindset of the scared elderly person so prevalent at the moment. His apparent resignation about the associated loss of liberty and rights in the face of mandatory injections and health passports was very confusing. Like you David, from such an intellectual, informed man it makes me think, am I missing something here? Please Lord Sumption, can you clarify why this inconsistency in your views that seems so glaring to us?
That may be true of you, but most of the people on here are full on tin-foil hat wearers whom I suspect share links to Unherd articles mentioning vaccines on their own forums and “brigade” them. In particular Elizabeth W, Sean L and John Stone are conspiracists who think Bill Gates controls the world from his secret underground lair. It’s unfortunate that we can no longer click on people’s names to see their other comments, otherwise it’d be more obvious the sort of astro-turfing that’s going on.
Zuckerberg is a lizard and Gates wants to chip you, these are facts.
I am sure Zuckerberg is not a lizard but as for Gates wanting to chip us:
Take your hand and slap yourself hard around the face – wake up. You’ve been brainwashed by the MSM. Look up Operation Mockingbird and stay off of the MSM to get better informed!
Also, people who use the phrase “MSM” are almost invariably nutters.
I looked up Operation Mockingbird and learned it’s a favourite of the Q nutters. Are you one of them, by any chance?
I’ll have you know I am fully protected by MindGuard, an elegant software solution which is much superior to your own outdated hardware (i.e. that tin-foil hat).
I totally agree with your comments, Sarah. And why take a vaccine for a disease which you have a 99.7% chance of recovery from if you are in good health to begin with, against a vaccine with a 95% efficacy?
You do realise that a 95% efficacy means that the risk of contracting symptomatic Covid is reduced by 95%, not that one has a 5% chance of contracting symptomatic Covid, right?
Yes, this is deeply disappointing, partly because it regards vaccines as God-given rather than industrial products which could go wrong – and if they do go wrong you will be gaslighted by almost everybody, and most particularly judges. In a letter to BMJ last year I highlighted how the vaccine industry had led the campaign for the exclusion of the criticism of its products from social media âRegarding the use of the term âAnti-Vaxxer (27 August 2020)â:
âThank you Karyse Day… for drawing attention to the problem of the bias and intimidation inherent in the term “anti-vaxxer”. The term has been around perhaps since the 19th century but has evolved a new context. Three years ago I drew attention to the remarks of Seth Berkley, director of the vaccine lobby organisation GAVI, in the Spectator proposing that “anti-vaxxers” be excluded from social media, which meant in effect not only that certain people should not be allowed on social media but that criticism of vaccines should not be allowed on a generic basis – an extremely serious matter…â
It should be noted that this was in the context of the news report by Helen Haskell, âCumberlege review exposes stubborn and dangerous flaws in healthcareâ which is about the systematic gaslighting and abuse of patients who have suffered harm from medical interventions. I do not know whether Sumption has swallowed whole the unscientific rubric that vaccines are âsafe and effectiveâ (apparently simply by belonging to that class of product) but he ought to question perhaps how much he really knows about it, and that actually the creation of a class of untouchables âanti-vaxxersâ few of whom have ever identified themselves as such would be a human rights atrocity which would hand the world over to the arbitrary machinations of an already over-powerful industry. I beg him to reconsider.
He must understand what heâs doing here…..using one tyranny (lockdown) to distract from a bigger one (coercion of population into a dangerous and dubious and highly profitable gene therapy experiment)
“the whole argument of taking it âfor the greater goodâ flies out of the window”
It doesn’t because a vaccine could work on those at risk by reducing it to them without eliminating it entirely, so others taking it for the greater good is still valid. Not even spot on, then, Sarah – let alone absolutely.
NOTE FOR UNHEARD: please get rid of “DW” in my icon!
Really – reduction of viral load in the ones with the vaccine, the confidence it gives the frightened so society may act more normal, the way it forces teachers unions (who have proven they hate children) to do their job, a thousand reasons vaccine uptake will help! Although I will not get it,( the fact J&J vaccine is made from dead, aborted, babies shines a light on it all)
Bravo, well said!
Excellent interview and Freddie always asks such insightful, probing questions. However, the weakness in his reasoning, as others have pointed out is 1. He knows that Covid is not serious enough for the vast majority to warrant the measures taken. 2. The govt is using “the vaccine works but it also it doesn’t work” position to maintain the fear based coercion of behaviour, but then 3. He thinks vaccine passports are OK because people need to be encouraged to go out again!!!
Hold on…tackle proper public understanding of the truth about 1. and 2. plus vaccine all the vulnerable types (mentally and physically!) and 3 goes away dunnit?
Am I supposed to take experimental pharmaceuticals and carry an ID card against my will to cover for lying politicians and the intellectual weakness of people who would rather watch “Strictly” than do their own research?
Well said
Re vaccine passports he is pretty glib about the implications. I hazard it is about the most coercive of the options and effectively forces people to have a still experimental mRNA gene therapy as the ransom for retrieving their freedoms. That large numbers of people agree with coercion is no reason to pursue it. Morality is not a democracy. Pragmatic is really code for laziness and cowardice. A genuine option is to apply some rational context and scrap any idea of passports entirely.
Well said. You’ve put most of the cogent arguments in one small space to copy and paste.
START PUSHING-BACK……TODAY.
The first thing to do is to ask Lawyers for Liberty to send one of their letters to your childâs school……
https://democracydeclaration.com/lawyers-for-liberty/
…..masks in class-rooms and testing healthy pupils in the canteen or sports hall is a sign of a totalitarian government at work…….oh, itâs âoptionalâ alright, but they know that peer-pressure and fear of being thought âuncaringâ about teachers, and of revenge from the head teacher…….MAKES IT COMPULSORY……W/O ANY SCIENTIFIC JUSTIFICATION.
In the last 12 months, look at what the government has done to university and school kids…….locked them up for no reason and blackmailed them morally……
…….Goveâs Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights Team and woketard ghouls on SAGE like Susan Michie are waging psychological warfare against Britainâs young – to condition them for future oppression.
RESIST.
Take your meds. Voluntarily, of course. But for your sake take them.
Maybe you need to read up on the history of totalitarianism. You can do this in your own home, without fear of a visit from the secret police.
In regards to coercive vaccination, consider My adult son says he won’t have the vaccine â how can I convince him he’s wrong? in The Telegraph.
The adult son isn’t wrong…
It’s diabolical that young people and others not at risk of the virus are being pressured to have these experimental vaccine products.
It’s one thing an elderly person frightened of the virus taking the vaccine, they have limited years ahead.
It’s another thing entirely to press these experimental vaccine products on young people and others with many years ahead of them, and with no idea of the long-term cumulative consequences of these vaccines, against a virus which isn’t a problem for most people.
This goes back to ethics, what went on in the ethics committees that approved the protocols for the vaccine trials, why didn’t they pick up on this issue of people not at risk of the virus being pressed to have the vaccine?
I suggest this contravenes the Helsinki Declaration, i.e.
“Medical research involving human subjects may only be conducted if the importance of the objective outweighs the risks and burdens to the research subjects.”
It’s not justifiable to make people not at serious risk of the virus submit to a lifetime of coronavirus vaccination.
That the fact the Jonhson and Johnson vaccine, (and Astra as well maybe ?) is made from a murdered, aborted, baby, is too weird for me – look it up, this is a terrible world where this goes on.
The vaccine is made with a cell line that’s been around for decades, which originated in an aborted fetus from the 1970s or something. The vaccine itself doesn’t contain the cell line, it’s used to grow the virus for the vaccine. So, even if you disagree with abortion under all circumstances, you are not encouraging further abortions by taking it, since the production of the vaccine doesn’t need further abortions.
Don’t you just love that the reason we should all comply, is to encourage people back out into the world, to enjoy themselves, while we remain inside? How about the people that are so scared, even when they’ve been vaccinated, stay home and be safe, while the rest of us get on with our lives? That is democracy.
It’s all very well to support placing the entire healthy population under house arrest in order to “save lives” or “protect the NHS” or whatever your particular angle is.
However, it is not okay to tell someone that “you may not open your business and trade” without providing them with full compensation for remaining closed.
Likewise, it’s all very well to tell someone that they have tested positive or that they have been in the same vicinity as someone who has tested positive and that therefore, they must self-isolate for some number of days. It is not okay to tell someone to self-isolate and then not compensate them for loss of income during that period.
Those who have been the most ardent supporters of the long-running lockdown in the UK include those who have been furloughed. It’s all very well to sit at home binge-watching Netflix and getting pissed while being paid to do so. It’s quite another for the 3 million or so who have received zero support or all of the people who have no choice but to continue working because they get, at most, statutory sick pay, or no pay at all if they are required to self-isolate.
Lord Sumption has a good point in questioning the logic, legality and morality of stripping us of our civil and human rights in the application of a novel form of epidemic control never before attempted. At least, not attempted outside of Communist China.
In the words of the world’s worst C programmer, Neil Ferguson:
In January, members of Sage, the governmentâs scientific advisory group, had watched as China enacted this innovative intervention in pandemic control that was also a medieval intervention.
âThey claimed to have flattened the curve. I was sceptical at first. I thought it was a massive cover-up by the Chinese. But as the data accrued it became clear it was an effective policy.â
Then, as infections seeded across the world, springing up like angry boils on the map, Sage debated whether, nevertheless, it would be effective here. âItâs a communist one party state, we said. We couldnât get away with it in Europe, we thought.â In February one of those boils raged just below the Alps. âAnd then Italy did it. And we realised we could.â
Thus, we became trapped in the grip of an unholy trinity, Government, Corporate-owned media and the Medical-Industrial Complex. Now we’re being told that the only way out is to meekly submit to annual or even bi-annual shots of experimental vaccines.
Yes, civil disobedience is the only alternative to the blend of “1984” and “A Brave New World” that the unholy trinity has thrust upon us.
Neil Ferguson et al’s Report 9 has had a massive impact, not just in the UK, but around the world. For example Ferguson et al’s modelling was also influential on modelling* that put Australia into lockdown last year.
Consider this from the summary of Ferguson et al’s report:
We show that in the UK and US context, suppression will minimally require a combination of social distancing of the entire population, home isolation of cases and household quarantine of their family members. This may need to be supplemented by school and university closures, though it should be recognised that such closures may have negative impacts on health systems due to increased absenteeism. The major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package â or something equivalently effective at reducing transmission â will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more) â given that we predict that transmission will quickly rebound if interventions are relaxed. We show that intermittent social distancing â triggered by trends in disease surveillance â may allow interventions to be relaxed temporarily in relative short time windows, but measures will need to be reintroduced if or when case numbers rebound. Last, while experience in China and now South Korea show that suppression is possible in the short term, it remains to be seen whether it is possible long-term, and whether the social and economic costs of the interventions adopted thus far can be reduced. (My emphasis.)
The question is, why was ‘a vaccine’ seen to be the appropriate response to this virus? Particularly when it became apparent that the virus wasn’t a threat to most people?
This needs to be tracked back now, there needs to be retrospective critical analysis of the ill-targeted and disproportionate response to this virus.
*Robert Moss et al. Coronavirus Disease Model to Inform Transmission-Reducing Measures and Health System Preparedness, Australia. Emerging Infectious Diseases. Volume 26, Number 12 – December 2020.
Why a vaccine response? Follow the money. Imperial College is funded in part by……..yes youâve guessed it, B & M Gates Foundation! Next question: Who benefits financially or attains more power from a mass arguably mandatory repeated vaccination programme? Well thereâs a long list, but near the top are China, big pharma and well globalists the world over.
I have found it quite amusing that over the last few months there have been huge protests in several EU countries with people chucking stuff at the Police and the Police water cannoning and arresting protesters.
In the UK we just had illegal raves.
Quiet disobedience?
and the Dutch appear to have blown up a testing centre!!!
Particularly disappointing that Northern Ireland, which normally sets the pace with civil disobedience, has been so supine on this occasion.
I believe they tried to kneecap a Covid molecule but it was beyond their technical capability.
Although, sadly, I am far too old for raves illegal or otherwise, the fact that they took place were the few grounds for optimism during lockdowns.
A wonderful and reassuring interview with a brave, sharp-minded and modest man. Quite obviously a reluctant spokesman for the arguments that (surely?) a substantial, unrepresented, number of people are thirsting to be put and for which there is almost no platform. Mainstream media -nothing. Even outliers like The Spectator which dared to contradict the culture-of-fear-and-repression narrative earlier in the “crisis” have been totally silenced … to the point that within 12months the centre-line of political thought is now regarded as so extreme it is almost off the scale of acceptability.
I can’t see anything to criticise about the view that liberty can be acceptably constrained by what a majority of fellow citizens believe is practical (vaccine passports). His views seem to me both nuanced and based in the real world. I don’t think he has contempt for his fellow citizens as some of the comment below believe, I think it’s more that he is deeply suspicious and regretful about the manipulation the population has been subjected to by its immoral government.
I agree. I tried to raise make the point on Facebook that the impact of the lockdown unfairly and disproportionately affected the young and caused great economic harm. I was ridiculed by an old friend who is a retired physio and has a working social worker wife, plus many others. I had to withdraw meekly to avoid further vileness and stupidity from people I thought were educated and my friends. I didn’t even say I was against all forms of lockdown or restriction. The world has gone mad and I feel like I am a minority, despised by the woke and the sheep. Good for Lord Sumption for sticking to his guns on this.
You are not in a minority.
Agreed. Media and polling companies are all sponsored by the gangsters behind the racket. People have been ignoring the absurd restrictions for months now.
The polling sways people’s opinions. ‘They’ know exactly what they are doing when they release these poll results.
I hadn’t thought of that before, Elizabeth, but perhaps you are right: that the polling itself is influencing people’s opinions.
I’m here too David.
Your argument will hopefully soon hit home when the UK (and other countries) begin the big payback and the effects of lockdowns start being felt more aggressively. It has been astonishing to me that so many millions of people have been unable to equate the health of the economy with the health of the nation. Sadly, I think many of these people may still not be able to connect the dots between lockdown and destruction of the economy because timing may make them look for other scapegoats.
Don’t knock being despised: its the price you pay for being not woke but awake.
Theyâre all bought and paid for. Listen to Catherine Austin Fitts. How much Bill Gates is into the Telegraph for is published on Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website. My prediction is that Bill Gates will end up in prison, taking a good few politicians and media-friendly scientists, possibly some journalists with him.
As the scale of criminal corruption becomes known the public mood will turn. Internet means truth canât be suppressed. There was no more fervent sponsor of the internet than Gates. It is fitting that the technological revolution responsible for his emergence as a global figure should also spell his nemesis.
I hope you are right Sean – that Bill Gates and his merrymen and women are in prison – and let’s hope soon. Goodness knows they deserve to be.
Would that were true, unfortunately he’ll never even be tried let alone imprisoned. It’s definitely not part of the Great Davos Reset plan is it?
Who is going to put Bill Gates in prison – when via the Gates Foundation, he has all of the governments, politicians, media and almost all scientists on his pay roll?
So, am I a brainwashed sheep because you guys sound a little bit paranoid?
Nice! I like it đ
Very well put, Graham.
Only thing I’d like to add is that the Daily Mail, although in general I’m not a fan of that newspaper, is still querying the culture of fear from time to time – e.g. in its front page headline a few days ago which went something like “The Truth behind Covid-reported Deaths”, implying that many of the registered Covid deaths reported are not actually due to Covid-19 as its main cause.
Extremely disappointed. The coercion should not happen in the first place for what, as he acknowledges, is not a significant disease in terms of risk and number of deaths. How on earth can a compulsory untested vaccine be less bad than f***ing house arrest? WHY should I put something unknown in to my body to ‘tempt’ someone out of their home because they have an irrational fear? The Govt should take responsibility for causing that irrational fear. It is not a SOLUTION to a problem
Couldn’t have said it better myself. On this, Sumption has got it the wrong way around. If people have an irrational fear, they should do whatever they need to do to combat it or live with it. This may mean having a vaccine (which does not stop you catching covid anyway) or not leaving their own home ever again. Why should I and my children be forced into an underclass to make these people feel comfortable enough to go to the pub!?
I think this definitely reflects other recent undesirable changes in our society, such as allowing anyone who identifies as a woman into women only spaces, in which a small vocal minority forces change on others who do not desire it. In both situations there are legitimate questions about the sanity of the vocal minority. Why do we give into them!?
Last year Sumption was all in favour of destroying democracy. He despises ordinary people as much as he despises the Tory party under Johnson. He does not believe the Constitution has any force, he omitted it entirely from his Reith lectures. He barely acknowledges the Monarch as the head of state, believing her a nodding dog and rubber stamping machine. He believes in something he terms âthe Sovereignty of Parliamentâ independent of the people, so long as that Parliament is subject to foreign powers and courts. Only now Parliament is full of people who agree with the Executive and want it, if anything to go further than it has, he is stumped. His ideological, liberal cupboard is empty.
He may have come to his senses over the past year, at last, but it is too late. When he had power and influence he used it ill, he has always been an establishment man, the establishment happens to have changed a bit on the surface, but not half so much as he thinks it has. So he is playing the part of a rebel. But he doesnât fool many people.
Could you substantiate your claim that: “last year Sumption was all in favour of destroying democracy”? I must have missed that bit in the Reith Lectures.
The Reith lectures were two years before. And I suppose it was 2019 in which he did his most public democracy despising. He detested the referendum result. He was the architect behind the second Miller case and knew the outcome, announced it on the Today Programme before the case had even started. He was all in favour of the Sovereignty of Parliament when Parliament wanted to overturn the referendum result as nearly all MPs supported staying in the EU. Now they nearly all support strict lockdown he is flummoxed. He claims people will sensibly, quietly ignore the silly laws and regulations, which is true, but up until yesterday he had no confidence in the wisdom of the man in the street.
The reason he is worked up about all this is because he wants to rewrite the Constitution, in his own lefty, liberal, hollowed out, modern, progressive, Blairite way. He did enough damage with Miller 2 and all the tricks he put Bercow up to in conjunction with Pannick.
On the other hand he has openly said the supreme Court made up new Law in declaring Boris’s peroration unlawful.
I cannot buy your characterisation of him “lefty, liberal, hollowed out, modern, progressive, Blairite” This man gave up his true love of academia, eschewed politics and the bench (until the supreme court) for a lucrative career in commercial law. He openly admits that his lifestyle took priority over high purpose.
“lefty, liberal, hollowed out, modern, progressive, Blairiteâ would appear to align perfectly with pursuing a lucrative career in commercial law.
I agree with you. I remember he said he voted ‘Remain’, and it occurred to me that it was unnecessary to say this unless one felt it slightly disreputable to have voted Leave, but he struck me as being thoughtful and reasonable, and accepting of the result, as did the majority of Remainers close to me.
I remember that he predicted that the Supreme Court would say that the pro-rogation was unjusticiable because the Bill of Rights excluded judges from parliamentary business, which was the same conclusion to which the High Court had come.
Thatâs an unnecessarily bitter synopsis of Sumptionâs recent career.
Undoubtedly he was a Quislington toad over Brexit, but that is hardly surprising given his love affair with Medieval France.
However since the start of this Scamdemic he is the only Establishment figure to make a stand against this lunacy.
Nothing from the Church, Parliament, the wretched Universities, the deplorable Media or even the rest of the pompous Judiciary.
Sumption alone has spoken out, and then to be vilified by you because the scar of Brexit hasnât healed is deplorable. In fact it serves to illustrate that all really is lost.
but that is hardly surprising given his love affair with Medieval France.Not sure thats any rationale for being a Quislington toad over Brexit,(nice description btw) I’m a big fan of whole swathes of Europe and owned substantial property in Spain for decades-it has no relevance to my views on a technocratic superstate.
He has spent the last thirty years restoring a *Chateau in the Dordogne, which I would have thought was a good enough reason to have voted remain in itself.
* Berbiguieres, 30 miles or so East of Bergerac.
I have had and still have a love affair with medieval France and inland Andalucia for that matter, but what has that got to do with Brexit?
Given the vindictive nature of the French state, any Englishman owning property in France was entitled to feel apprehensive about the fall-out from Brexit.
Seems to me that a ‘love affair with medieval France’ is no excuse for riding roughshod over the democratic will of the people. Once more the tendency for those who consider themselves our betters, Sumption, Blair et al, to override what the people decide, comes to the fore.
I enjoyed the read and am part way through the video. It seems to me as an outsider here in Australia, that Sumption and Freddy have kept this tight in regards to the number of issues they were going to cover. The major point is how easily democracy tumbles into tyranny and if one gets this, then the other issues automatically come up for questioning. So it is a “Bravo” from me.
Freddy vassilates between being against the insanity and giving it a small amount of credence. My guess is Youtube said to him that he was walking the edge a bit closely and canceling is a very real punishment to deniers.
So nice to see Freddie Sayers and his interlocutor in the same room.
I agree Trish. He made so many good points up until that point. It appears he is pushing his views of vaccination within this interview but how does that line up with democracy?
then ignore that point and worry about the big issue. You people above worrying about such a tiny issue wile missing the entire point amazes me. You all are like someone who listened to a long explanation of something vital and at the end tell the speaker ‘You’ve got a piece of spinach stuck in your teeth’.
This ignores the entire public narrative of how we were all going to be liberated from lockdown by the vaccines (and actually now how we are all going to be tyrannised by them: a captive market forever and ever to the advantage of a powerful industry which wants to silence dissent and scrutiny).
Hear, hear!
I love that analogy but I donât agree that this issue is tiny.
And your point is, caller…?
I like the fact that I can agree with him on some things and disagree with him on others. It gives me an opportunity to step back and carefully examine my (very strongly held) opinions. I find that whenever I hear the crazy left I tend to get more entrenched and think less. He does have a good point in talking about picking the least-worst scenario. It’s a viewpoint I hadn’t considered. I don’t necessarily agree but will certainly mull it over the next few weeks.
Everything that this government has done over Covid 19 has been wholly deliberate, planned long ago by those running the Corona operation across the Western world and beyond.
Do people seriously think that governments ruling that anyone who dies â of any cause whatsoever, including being run down by a bus â must be listed as a âCovid deathâ, if they tested positive for Covid 19 within the previous month â do they seriously think that such governments do not have an agenda to massively exaggerate the number of Corona deaths?
The lockdowns, the use of fraudulent âCovid testsâ by all governments to produce wholly fraudulent vast numbers of âcasesâ to keep the âCorona crisisâ going â do people seriously think this tightly coordinated operation across the Western world happened by accident â where all governments do and say exactly the same things at each stage of the âCorona crisisâ?
Such coordination across so many governments, where they all parrot the same lying narrative; where they all lock down using the same totally fraudulent âdeaths projectionâ supplied by the serial fraudster âProfessor Fergusonâ & Imperial College; where they all list as âCorona deathsâ people who get run down by a car, or who fall off a roof, or who die of cancer â that does not happen by accident. That takes years of planning between the governments concerned to get all of their lies coordinated and timed for each stage of the Corona operation.
Is not the fact that influenza â which kills vast numbers every year â has totally disappeared, with no one listed as dying of it, anywhere â enough to wake up even the most brainwashed, unthinking sheep?
Clearly not.
The âCorona crisisâ was in the planning stage at least five years ago, when Fauci approved US government funding of the Wuhan laboratory to develop a âgain of functionâ for the bat Corona virus to modify its DNA to be able to penetrate the cell walls of humans, to infect them with the virus now called âCovid 19â.
The agenda of the governments is to inject every single human on the planet with their supposed âvaccinesâ.
Covid 19 and the âCorona crisisâ is the means to achieve that objective â along with the installation of an Orwellian ânew normalâ global Police State, via their Great Reset.
The Great Reset requires a âjustificationâ â just as injecting everyone with their âvaccinesâ required the âjustificationâ of Covid 19; and the deliberate trashing of the economies and countless millions of jobs, throwing as many people as possible into total dependence on welfare, is the âjustificationâ they are lining up for the imposition of the Orwellian âGreat Resetâ. A universal basic income is coming â receipt of which will be conditional on being injected with whatever they order people to submit to, and total ideological obedience, and a Chinese-style social credit score system to ensure total conformity, is what is coming.
As a sample of the horrors to come from injecting everyone with their âvaccinesâ, people should watch this item, I suggest, about aluminum â a known neurotoxin â in the âvaccinesâ being deliberately facilitated by other âvaccineâ ingredients to enter the brains of everyone who is injected. Skip the first couple of minutes.
https://www.brighteon.com/e4003441-b383-43d5-82b5-ab9f916f9518
Seems to me that some people find it easier to accept a conspiracy theory that accept what I see as the ‘truth’. I feel that conspiracy theorists like Richard almost have a need for someone to be ‘in charge’ and that it’s somehow more comforting to feel that the democratic party is controlled by a group of baby eating paedophiles addicted to a drug made up by Hunter S Thompson (for example) than to accept reality as I see it.
Which is that a ‘great reset’ requires a level of competence and coordination across a huge group of people (the elites) that simply doesn’t exist. The truth is that no one is in charge, we get old and die, we’re all a lot less sentient than we care to think, there is no God and the larger a group of people gets the greater the level of collective stupidity.
I feel sorry for you! Next, you’ll be saying that 9/11 wasn’t an inside job, and before you cry “tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist”, three buildings fell that day. Look up WTC7. That’s your smoking gun right there! I digress…
The modern media landscape is incredibly complex and hard to navigate. We’re bombarded by images, narratives and ‘alternative facts’ from all sides. The explosion of narratives gradually started about 60 years ago and has skyrocketed with the widespread adoption of the internet. It’s a new thing for the human mind to deal with and we all now have the option to choose our own truth as there are so many narratives out there to be found. You’ll find evidence to back up whatever you are predisposed to believe.
I’m not going to mock you for the path you are following and thanks for the sympathy, but I’m going to stick with my view. There just isn’t enough competence in the world.
Some of the responses to this interview are nothing short of tragic. Leave COVID alone to run itâs course and the IFR is less than 1%. Therefore trainwrecking your economy, stopping schooling, bankrupting businesses small & large, seeding mass unemployment, shutting women and children away with their abusers (Great Ormond Street reported an increase of 1,500% of children presenting with abusive head injuries during lockdowns last year) and wholesale removal of civil liberties is a stupid and excessive over compensation.
Iâd like to see the people who designed and signed off on the âlook into his eyes and tell him you canât work from homeâ billboard posters, look into the eyes of every victim of unemployment, every battered woman and child (and man, for that matter) and every young person with mental health problems and tell them their sacrifice is acceptable.
Iâm always amused by the war analogies that come and go, in a war the whole comes together to save the whole. During COVID, the whole has been terrified into coming together to save somewhere less than 1% of the whole.
Thank you for this. The interviewer is of exceedingly good quality, allowing Sumption to finish his points. I cannot think of a single interviewer on TV who does this.
Sumption’s point on ‘covid passports’ was well-made, but I’m not entirely convinced.
Any government that rules that by law, anyone who dies must be listed as a ‘Corona death’ if they tested positive within the previous 30 days – including people who got run down by a car, fell off a roof, or died for any other reason – any government who creates laws like that are criminals and fraudsters, plain and simple.
And all Western governments have passed that obscene law – designed with one purpose only: to pump up the ‘Corona deaths’ numbers through the roof.
But that’s a coincidence, right? Not a conspiracy!
How anyone can still believe a word that such governments say about their ‘Corona crisis’, when they know that one fact, just defies belief.
I concur 100%. My heart sank once the conversation changed to the vaccine.
After hearing his laments and arguments surrounding lockdown Lord Sumptionâs views of how we must then gracefully accept an experimental vaccine and surrender sovereignty over our body and ultimately our health seems grossly at odds with everything else he said…. startlingly so.
While he may profess to be independent of all men , somehow it made me wonder.
I have seen a trend in back bencher Conservatives that mirrors this too.
All passion and fury around the injustice of lockdowns and yet accepting of the vaccine.
This worrying, primarily because I think itâs clear to see that the real reason for extended non sensical lockdowns is to suppress the population into accepting a vaccine at any cost in exchange for our basic human rights to be reinstated.This is clearly the end goal.
So despite Lord Sumptionâs rather renegade attitude against the journey he never the less agrees with the destination.
The real question everyone should be asking is NOT HOW we should respond to lockdowns BUT WHY is the Government in the first instance implementing them with such unnecessary vigour as to actively destroy the very country they were elected to serve?
âVACCINES FOR ALLâ I hear them say.
This is not only the crumbling of democracy, itâs something far more sinister……
Great post.
The real choice should be not about accepting the Certificate Of Vaccination ID (COVID) in order to allow people live their lives normally. It should be about protesting and highlighting that this authoritative choice is unnecessary and critically anti-democratic. The focus should be on the governments and their “scientific advisers” who push this agenda, not on whether these IDs will work and how effective they will be.
And COVID (or Covid) used to be called a disease! If they go down that route, they are just wheedling through the woodwork into a dictatorial world, not operating in the interests of the general public. They are always chipping away at it; this is just another excuse.
Beautifully put, Nina. My sentiments exactly. Makes you wonder if Lord Sumption is controlled opposition. Like you, I’m thoroughly disappointed with his stance on the vaccine. He has now completely lost all credibility in my eyes with his obvious contradictory statement!
Like yourself, I am suspecting foul play. That is what my gut is telling me. And you have to ask yourself the question, pre Covid, how much trust did you plac in the Westminster motely crew? For me not at all. All of a sudden we have a ‘so-called’ pandemic and all of a sudden, the masses are placing trust in these clowns. I wouldn’t trust any of them, especially BoJo, Hancock, Whitty et al, as far as I could throw them!
I must say what an outstanding interviewer Freddie is. He is a real national treasure and has the knack of getting to the truth of a situation. Compare him to the BBC interviewers and some other channels and there is no contest. I think the point of quietly making your own responsible decision on Covid lockdown is a good one as a lot of the rules do not help in the legitimate duties we have towards others in our families and further afield.
A good interview except he has no idea that the so-called: âVaccineâ doesnât vaccinate! He ignores that taking the vaccine is objectionable to many! A forced âvaccineâ & compulsory vaccine passports are a fascist apartheid system & in direct violation of human rights! #CoviD1984
What a very disappointing capitualation
to the major tyranny going on, which isnât the lockdown, as seems to be the suggestion here, but the coercion of the population into participating in a dangerous gene therapy experiment. Lord Sumption is nobodies fool….he must realise this
My thoughts exactly. My freedom to eat out, go to a pub, go to the theatre have been removed, and they should be returned as soon as lockdown is over, NOT because other peopleâs fear overrides my desire not to be forced to have an experimental drug put into my body. Lord Sumption calls it a choice whether or not people have the âvaccineâ, and yes, it is: itâs called Hobsonâs Choice. In effect, my freedoms have been taken off the table in a sleight of hand. One minute they were there, the next, gone.
The more relevant metric for this pandemic is the number of excess deaths directly attributable to it. After deducting the self-inflicted and entirely unnecessary collateral deaths and allowing for the great age of the genuine of-Covid victims there was no pandemic in the UK in 2020. This can be read across from the age and population adjusted mortality figure for 2004 UK which were greater than for 2020 UK. When historians come to assess the god-awful fear-inspired societal reaction to Covid-19 the verdict will lie with Lord Sumption’s argument in my opinion – although not only for the reasons he states.
I cannot, and never will, accept the argument that it is better to restrict the movements of people who are not afraid, in order to alleviate the fears of those who are, especially when it is government who has instilled such fear in people’s minds. This has to be the wrong choice.
How dare he suggest that vaccinated people’s fear of the unvaccinated should hold any sway, when it is recognised that vaccines do not stop infection or transmission. Such fears are therefore unfounded.
It was striking to me that the religious question arose only in the last few minutes of this excellent conversation, since the basic theme seemed to me to be moral collapse and chaos — hence the lack of what Lord S. calls “convention.” The implosion of Christianity in Britain and indeed throughout the West means that there is really no longer a workable moral system in place; hence what Lord S. calls “despotic” government, government that recognizes no broadly agreed, if informal, limits on its powers. Further, secular people, lacking a faith to console and reassure, are especially terrified of illness and death and are thus ripe for the plucking by terror-mongers in government and media, as the last miserable year has pretty conclusively demonstrated. It is noteworthy, I think, that the least restrictive states in the USA are in the South, which is the most religious part of the country. The secular blue states in the North are still heavily locked down and masked up. The highly educated (!) people there are still mostly frightened out of their wits.
I was pleased that Lord S. pointed a finger right at China. The virus came from China; “lockdowns” and mask mandates came from China; suppression of dissent comes from China. It seems apparent to me that the global center of gravity over the past year has unmistakably shifted to China. While hollow Western societies tear their hair out about “climate change” and “systemic racism” while cowering in fear of what is essentially a species of flu, China builds coal plants lickety-split and commands the global auto industry to build electric cars. Chairman Xi has obviously read “The Art of War” and has very shrewdly read our weaknesses. He has managed to induce something like suicide into Western civilization. I would say it is later than we think and that there is little or no hope if we do not remember who we really are and where we came from.
Freddie Sayers seems to have recovered the lost art of the interview. He asked thoughtful questions, listened carefully to the thoughtful answers and used those answers to ask further good questions. I was a little worried about him after last week’s piece, in which he seemed to show signs of Stockholm syndrome.
Vaccine passports are a terrible idea. Frightened people can get vaccinated, and then they won’t get sick. If you’re not vaccinated, so what? You probably won’t get sick, either, but if you do, isn’t that a personal choice? You present no threat to the vaccinated/terrified. A non-issue. I wish Lord S. had said so.
I loved your comment until the last paragraph.
You are saying that refusing the vaccine and getting sick with Covid is a personal choice because you present no threat to the vaccinated.
Sadly this is not true.
1. Here in the UK we have about 15mln people with various health conditions, after vaccination they will only have partial immunity, if that. If people who got sick did stay home until they are free of covid, there would be no problem, This is not the case, as personal freedom and circumstances will always have higher priorities than potentially killing a passer by. Another issue is infectious asymptomatic carriers. The more people are vaccinated the less of those we would have.
2. People who chose not to vaccinate and get sick are Petri dishes for new Covid mutations, sooner or later the new one comes that renders vaccines ineffective. Vaccinating everyone resolves all the issues.
I think the main problem we are facing now is that we reached that level of prosperity and societal development where the value of human life, any human life, including lives of low economic value, is very high, disproportionately high. So either we continue to say that everyone has equal rights to live (even if it is at a high cost to the others, even if it limits otherâs freedoms), or we openly say that the young and healthy and productive, their needs and freedoms, should have higher priorities than the âballastâsâ, because thatâs the only way to ensure we can compete with systems like Chinaâs.
I just do not like the hypocrisy of anti-vax/anti lockdown people, be honest with yourself and say openly that because you are productive and healthy your freedoms and opportunities to be productive should be prioritised over lives of low economic value. Do not justify this (reasonable) demand with false claims that covid does not kill the weak, because it does.
You write: “Here in the UK we have about 15mln people with various health conditions, after vaccination they will only have partial immunity, if that.”
I don ‘t quite know how many “15min” people is, but I guess you mean “a lot.” Surely those people should be cautioned that the vaccine will offer them only limited protection, or at any rate that is what you claim. They are the people who, through the exercise of common sense and personal agency, should avoid large indoor gatherings, should wear masks if makes them feel better et cetera.
The truth of the matter is that, for the vast majority of the population, this is a mild, indeed an all but unnoticeable, disease. Large percentages of people either have natural resistance or, if they do become infected, have mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. They do not need to be, and should not be, vaccinated, let alone with a rushed and experimental potion. Let them have their natural immune response, which will strengthen their resistance to other diseases. This would be, or would have been, sensible public health policy, but, sadly, that ship sailed long ago, and we are left with a menagerie of psychopaths to run the show. They have already caused enormous harm, and they will cause a lot more if they are not stopped.
Personally, I thought Lord Sumption was inconsistent in his views on lockdown and domestic vaccine passports. He has previously, and in the interview in question here, made the case that covid-19 is not a particularly severe public health threat and that it can be adequately managed without lockdown measures. It is inconsistent of him therefore to say that vaccine passports are the âlesser of two evilsâ with lockdown measures as the alternative. He seems to justify this position by saying that the majority of the population want either vaccine passports or lockdown measures. This is another strange departure from his previous argument that just because the majority of the population support lockdown it doesnât make it right. As a liberal I expected him to take the view that in a liberal democracy the rights of minorities should be protected especially having made the case that covid-19 is not a severe public health threat that requires draconian impositions on individual rights.
Personally, I take the view that the measure of a civilised society is in how it treats its minorities and until last year, most people in the UK would have agreed with this, at least ostensibly. We now seem to be in a situation where those who do not want the covid vax for whatever reason are in a minority who face being ostracised from society by vaccine passports. I believe this is unacceptable from a human rights perspective whereby a very important principle is that the rights of the individual supersede the interests of society, or the âgreater goodâ as a whole. This is because when the rights of the individual are subsumed to the âgreater goodâ then persecution of minorities is enabled. Given that covid-19 is not a severe public health threat and those who take the vax can feel protected by it, there is no case to be made that individuals who do not take the vax are endangering others and so it should remain a personal choice.
The principle that individual rights supersede the âgreater goodâ is enshrined in such places as the UNESCO declaration on bioethics and human rights, article 3;
âThe interests and welfare of the individual should have priority over the sole interest of science or society.â
Furthermore, current UK legislation specifically prohibits provisions requiring medical treatment including vaccination (see for example section 45E Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984). As such it is difficult to see how government could legally approve a domestic vaccine passport system that would essentially amount to a âprovision requiring medical treatment including vaccination.â
Therefore, it seems to me that domestic vaccine passports are both legally and morally repugnant and I am surprised to find myself at odds with Lord Sumption in this view.
Perhaps a voluntary vaccine certificate?
In have, had a vaccine. Why should I be prevented from meeting friends who have likewise had a vaccine on the grounds that others have not had one?
The vaccine presumably reduces ‘viral load’, so matters epidemiologically. But I agree with him, I have refused to wear the mask from day one. I have lived my life in a hard way because I will not let anyone push me around on principal, I admire South Dakota, the one state which did NOT mask or lockdown. I hope all the lock down leaders end up being punished severely for doing that which was actually illegal under national, democratic and Constitutional, laws. They made the selfi taking expidition into Congress by the Trump supporters seem nothing at all in comparison to the actual destruction of the West caused by the Lockdowners violating our Constitution! Traitors, all of them.
Well said, Sanford. I think we’ll be talking crimes against humanity when the dust finally settles! I’m packing my bags. I’m off to live in South Dakota. Sounds like my sort of place!
“One of them was to Lock Up Healthy People in Our Homes.”
This it seems gets to the nub of the tactical choices made.
To advise a democracy that the evidence indicates that elderly frail are extremely vulnerable to death and that the fit and healthy between 0-60 have a very low level of vulnerability to death was all that was required. We knew this from Wuhan.
Each year the NHS deals with 16.3 million admissions. By 2016 315,000 were admissions connected to respiration.
Given this the advice should have been that those over 60 with pre existing illness should behave with extreme caution.66,000 of the 74,000 who died in hospital in 2020 fit into that category. Another 21,000 died in 2020 in Aged Care.
In the 0-60 age group both fit and unfit 18,600 have been hospitalised. Clearly well within capacity and deaths from the fit and healthy were 6 were 0-19, 68 were 20-39 and 497 were 40-59.
One of Lord Sumption’s concerns is the misuse of facts to generate fear.
A responsible government would have hammered home to the ‘at risk’ that they would be vulnerable and their immediate families should avoid contact if they became ill. Beyond that nothing more was required.It would have had credibility simply because it was true.
Long Covid is a red herring now described as anyone with a symptom after five weeks. Their is the occasional bad experience for the fit and healthy but crucially they survive, more and more studies are emerging putting damage at the 1% level for athletes with Organ damage which it is admitted may heal.
We are right to listen to Jonathan Sumption’s view of the consequences and dangers at a philosophical level but it is crucial we make up our minds how these things should have been dealt with at a tactical level.
Added to Long Covid is new more transmissible sequences. The reality in SA and UK is they have fallen away in the New Year just as other respiratory illness always does in week 1 to 6. SA Lockdown was Laissez faire and the case numbers began falling in the UK as LD was instituted. When these highly transmissible variants escape quarantine in NZ they wither on the vine just as other sequences have. None of this is coincidence it is telling us a simple truth the basics still work.
In a laboratory a sequence may manifest more transmissible qualities but it would appear that the usual precautions have worked equally well.
It is vital that Governments offer not just philosophically proportionate responses but proportionate tactical ones.
It is now well known that antibodies in the school age children are lower than in their parents. We have known from Sweden since late last spring that children do not transmit or pick up the virus in the same way as their parents indeed the indications is the direction is from parents downwards.That same report told us teachers are no more vulnerable than any other professional group of workers though male secondary teachers need to be more vigilant.
Hold on to our beliefs but hold on to the facts transmit them simply and explain honestly the vulnerabilities to this Virus are across an extremely broad range of outcomes and reactions should be planned accordingly.
What a fantastic interview!
Lord Sumption brilliantly explains the harsh realities and I agree with 95% of his opinions. I fully understand his predicament on the vax passports being the best of two evils but this is the part I do not think should happen. This is the act that will change the course of human rights and liberty and I would personally prefer an uprising. On the most basic level, mandating/serious cohesion with consequences that humans have regular chemical substances put into their bodies without full knowledge of what they contain is wrong on every level. In the wrong hands this is control over human life. I choose a holistic lifestyle and use medication only when required (rarely) and believe in host theory, freedom of choice and kindness. Life has shifted this year, friends have changed and I find myself in a level within a new (minority) group of people. They are wonderful people. Ever positive I remain hopeful that people will understand and accept the natural circle of life and that life contains risk. I do not live in fear, do not conform for the sake of it and I would love to write to Mr Sumption to say thank him for being so brave and true in expressing the realities we are facing.
He’s right. Absolutely.
Same for measles and all other vaccinations.
Thank goodness the great unwashed protect the ‘cream of intellect’ on here
You didn’t include the bombshell about vaccine passports
Qu: But different behaviours for the vaccinated and non-vaccinated in a lot of people’s minds will start making them think about vaccine passports, you know documents which show stream you’re in which poses new problems to liberty doesn’t it?
Lord Sumption: “I do not have strong views on vaccine passports. They are an invasion of privacy but the information in question is on Government computers or NHS computers anyway [as to] whether you have been vaccinated or not so I think privacy concerns are over-stated. I do not