Much truth here, as ever. Just one small query – is British interest in the Second World War really to do with remembered “togetherness”? Surely, most impressions of that conflict are now second hand, mediated through increasingly gloopy and inaccurate films, so we’re dealing with fantasy, not memory. Back in the day, when the wartime generations still lived, and chuckled through “Dad’s Army”, they responded to jokes about rationing, made a hero of Walker, the “spiv”, and heartily disliked bossy agents of conformity such as Warden Hodges. What they admired was not “togetherness” but patriotic pride and dash. And this bring me to “our” NHS. Recently, a famous pollster found that people responded with the greatest warmth to the symbol composed of those letters – but the problem is, neither he nor any commentator bothers to enquire within. The fact is, people will always express admiration for doctors, especially in a secular age; that those doctors are wrapped up in a bureaucracy which makes them less effective is never addressed. Having observed the ways of our national horror story at close quarters and having heard many tales of its witless, heartless bungling, I am not persuaded that the British people love it and remain suspicious of the post-war mythologies which sustain it. And their terrible parent is undoubtedly the myth of “togetherness”.
mike otter
2 years ago
Johnson a classic liberal? He is as apolitical as he is amoral. Groucho Marx put it best “these are my principles, and if you don’t like them, i have others”
As that seems to be the general feeling, I suppose I agree. Although…
“It is deeply inadequate in such a crisis, because we have no individual choice during an epidemic — our risk of getting sick depends not just on our behaviour, but on the behaviour of those around us.”
Well, that anyone has any freedom means the group is less served by that person – so lets all stop that sort of thing and see if we cannot get together and form a more perfect Hive.
The quote is an observation well made. The kind of behaviour change and thus social control required to limit the pandemic is in contradiction to liberal values, a real dilemma for us as a society. Your remark about a “Hive” just seems to caricature the issue, unless I miss your point ?
Last edited 2 years ago by Mike Poppleton
David Owsley
2 years ago
I concur with many of the above comments: the title does not reflect the -albeit interesting – article. I came here to have my tuppennyworth about how ‘Freedom Day’ is not really being appreciated. Today at a major local supermarket nearly ALL the people had masks on. When taken into account the polls which suggest many want to keep restrictions and lockdowns (yes, I actually believe these polls) it is clear that the fear propaganda machine has worked to a far greater extent than our totalitarian government could have hoped for. For God’s sake, just back in March 2020 this was UNHEARD of. I fear for the future; I would have expected the English/Brits to be far more unsheepish.
I was at two supermarkets this morning, and mask-wearing was more or less universal – Tesco, indeed, still had its ‘No entry without a face-mask unless exempt’ notice prominently displayed, though the M&S foodhall had taken down all its posters. I had a text from our surgery on Friday which read, in part: “You MUST [capitals in original] still wear a face covering and observe social distancing rules whilst attending the surgery.” I don’t really mind one way or another, though the research has shown that the sort of masks most of us wear do nothing to prevent transmission, but it does make one wonder whether we’ll ever go completely back to what I naively think of as ‘normal’.
Zombification complete – wow, that was easy! Those were my thoughts out shopping this morning. When I turned to smile at the lady behind me in the PO queue she was half pulling her mask beneath her nose, looking confused, and said to me, “It’s hard to know what to do now, isn’t it?” I haven’t found it hard to know what to do for a long time now, I tried to tell her. I also presume most people out and about have had their free jabs on the NHS, and began to wonder if they were protecting me from their vaccine-induced spike proteins now? As I said, zombification complete…
I’m afraid I don’t understand what a “vaccine-induced spike protein” is. The vaccines replicate elements of the spike protein – as I understand it – in order to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies. Can you clarify your last two sentences for me? – I don’t understand what you mean about “zombification” either.
Professor Tim Spector of the Zoe app, who is not a pro lockdown zealot says their evidence shows masks do have a beneficial effect. I hate masks, they are awful if you wear glasses or have any hearing difficulties or indeed in hot weather. But I’m prepared to accept the evidence.
James Chater
2 years ago
I have read the article twice and I still cannot find its crux. Lots of riffing but no whole tune. Yes, many human beings at different stages of their lives, in many situations behave like sheep. Yes, many people will flock to pubs and clubs in celebration of ‘freedom day’. But as they are human beings they can’t really be ‘free’, can they? Is that it? The analogy of political and social views to ‘viruses’ doesn’t work. The associations of the definition of the word ‘virus’ are invariably malign. Human beings aren’t ‘viral creatures’.
Lots of riffing but no whole tune. Wow! What a great line.
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
This article is full of snippets that I trip over, as I always do in a West Article…
“University attendance makes people more Left-wing, not because students are being indoctrinated by academics, but because they’re copying their peers,”
Chickens do not so much come out of eggs, but lay eggs…
See…Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, with its Nihilism/Marxism/Freuidism, set out to destroy Capitalism by destroying the Middle Classes via indoctrinating the education industry from top down to teach they young to self loath, to loath the system which gave them everything, and to reject all classical morality, marriage, and religion. They have succeeded totally.
And so the teachers of the little children, themselves indoctrinated, began teaching this, and the next level of teachers re-enforced it, and the University teachers, themselves brought up in the system, go on to finish the indoctrination into this pathological thinking.
And thus you have these ‘peers’ all a product of the education system designed to destroy Morality and the West, all pushing it on each other, and the teachers all acting in an authority capacity, saying that it is Truth…And so our degenerate Liberal/Lefty system sows its own destruction from every angle.
Victoria Cooper
2 years ago
Really enjoyed this article, it just rang so true and so much fell into place.
Ian Barton
2 years ago
Good read – which led me to look up the word “eusocial” leading to suggestions that “eu” is Greek for good/simple.
I wonder if they still think that …. ?
Last edited 2 years ago by Ian Barton
Michael Coleman
2 years ago
It is a good analogy that ideas, good or bad, spread like disease. Hopefully, the current grass-roots efforts in the US to stop the pernicious spread of racially divisive school doctrine based on skin color initiates a much more significant review of teachers and the ideas being spread in school.
Every child before graduation should have at least a semester of fact-based comparative study of actual pollical and economic systems. It is appalling and dangerous that many young citizens know not of the murderous reigns of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or of the more recent decent of Venezuela from democratic jewel of SA to 4th world nation, while their instruction focuses on the relatively smaller issues with western politics and economic systems.
Dennis Boylon
2 years ago
It is deeply inadequate in such a crisis, because we have no individual choice during an epidemic — our risk of getting sick depends not just on our behaviour, but on the behaviour of those around us. There is zero truth to this statement. Everybody has individual choice. Some people may choose not to exercise it and go with the crowd but that is a choice. I did not partake in this nonsense. I lost friends and strained some family ties. I became a lot closer to other friends and family and made new friends. I only hung out with people who would hug, who wore masks as little as possible, and did not social distance. Masks don’t work with respiratory viruses. Asymptomatic spread is not a major driver of disease. People who are in good physical condition and have good metabolic health are not spreaders of disease. People are 1000 times safer outdoors and unmasked even in a crowd than indoors and masked. In a small poor ventilated space masks don’t help with airborne respiratory viruses. Droplet theory was fairy tale. In October 2020 the WHO finally admitted that “some” spread was airborne. In early 2021 the WHO finally moved away from droplet theory as primary source of spread. Research papers from early 2020 highlighted the airborne spread in meat packing plants were cool dry recirculated air was perfect for airborne spread of covd 19. The who and cdc largely ignored those papers and stuck with their masking and social distancing guidelines based on droplet theory. https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/coronavirus-disease-covid-19-how-is-it-transmitted
Mike Poppleton
2 years ago
Thanks for your piece. Your examples of/ evidence for “contagious”, peer-pressure social behaviours are interesting and thought-provoking. Various drivers of social behaviour will have been proposed, this is one.
There’s a jarring shift of gear in your style of argument, when you talk of BLM and health leaders describing racism as a deadly contagion. It seems a reasonable assertion to me – racism kills people and causes massive hurt – but you don’t develop this story. You launch instead into polemic abuse of said health leaders – again, without backing up why you think they are “moral cowards”.
Reading the first two-thirds of your article were a refreshing break for me from the style of most of the Unherd articles I’ve read so far – clever, ascerbic and rather nasty polemic, short on evidence and reasoned argument.
Your assertion that university attendance makes people more left-wing sounds plausible – unless it’s a conservative Christian college for example. Which in making people more right-wing would fit with your argument. Then again, you go full polemic with the “insanity spreading out of US academia”. You don’t even bother to explain this, clearly assuming that your readership will share your negative – and not articulated – beliefs about lefty wokey cancel-culturey students. Sigh.
Finally, you don’t apply the contagion theory to “Freedom Day” at all. I thought that was the point of the article, to do some interesting speculation about (say) contagion within the two groups: freedom-focussed vs risk-averse. So what IS your point ?
Much truth here, as ever. Just one small query – is British interest in the Second World War really to do with remembered “togetherness”? Surely, most impressions of that conflict are now second hand, mediated through increasingly gloopy and inaccurate films, so we’re dealing with fantasy, not memory. Back in the day, when the wartime generations still lived, and chuckled through “Dad’s Army”, they responded to jokes about rationing, made a hero of Walker, the “spiv”, and heartily disliked bossy agents of conformity such as Warden Hodges. What they admired was not “togetherness” but patriotic pride and dash. And this bring me to “our” NHS. Recently, a famous pollster found that people responded with the greatest warmth to the symbol composed of those letters – but the problem is, neither he nor any commentator bothers to enquire within. The fact is, people will always express admiration for doctors, especially in a secular age; that those doctors are wrapped up in a bureaucracy which makes them less effective is never addressed. Having observed the ways of our national horror story at close quarters and having heard many tales of its witless, heartless bungling, I am not persuaded that the British people love it and remain suspicious of the post-war mythologies which sustain it. And their terrible parent is undoubtedly the myth of “togetherness”.
Johnson a classic liberal? He is as apolitical as he is amoral. Groucho Marx put it best “these are my principles, and if you don’t like them, i have others”
Such intelligent writing.
As that seems to be the general feeling, I suppose I agree. Although…
“It is deeply inadequate in such a crisis, because we have no individual choice during an epidemic — our risk of getting sick depends not just on our behaviour, but on the behaviour of those around us.”
Well, that anyone has any freedom means the group is less served by that person – so lets all stop that sort of thing and see if we cannot get together and form a more perfect Hive.
The quote is an observation well made. The kind of behaviour change and thus social control required to limit the pandemic is in contradiction to liberal values, a real dilemma for us as a society. Your remark about a “Hive” just seems to caricature the issue, unless I miss your point ?
I concur with many of the above comments: the title does not reflect the -albeit interesting – article. I came here to have my tuppennyworth about how ‘Freedom Day’ is not really being appreciated. Today at a major local supermarket nearly ALL the people had masks on. When taken into account the polls which suggest many want to keep restrictions and lockdowns (yes, I actually believe these polls) it is clear that the fear propaganda machine has worked to a far greater extent than our totalitarian government could have hoped for. For God’s sake, just back in March 2020 this was UNHEARD of. I fear for the future; I would have expected the English/Brits to be far more unsheepish.
I was at two supermarkets this morning, and mask-wearing was more or less universal – Tesco, indeed, still had its ‘No entry without a face-mask unless exempt’ notice prominently displayed, though the M&S foodhall had taken down all its posters. I had a text from our surgery on Friday which read, in part: “You MUST [capitals in original] still wear a face covering and observe social distancing rules whilst attending the surgery.” I don’t really mind one way or another, though the research has shown that the sort of masks most of us wear do nothing to prevent transmission, but it does make one wonder whether we’ll ever go completely back to what I naively think of as ‘normal’.
Zombification complete – wow, that was easy! Those were my thoughts out shopping this morning. When I turned to smile at the lady behind me in the PO queue she was half pulling her mask beneath her nose, looking confused, and said to me, “It’s hard to know what to do now, isn’t it?” I haven’t found it hard to know what to do for a long time now, I tried to tell her. I also presume most people out and about have had their free jabs on the NHS, and began to wonder if they were protecting me from their vaccine-induced spike proteins now? As I said, zombification complete…
I’m afraid I don’t understand what a “vaccine-induced spike protein” is. The vaccines replicate elements of the spike protein – as I understand it – in order to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies. Can you clarify your last two sentences for me? – I don’t understand what you mean about “zombification” either.
Professor Tim Spector of the Zoe app, who is not a pro lockdown zealot says their evidence shows masks do have a beneficial effect. I hate masks, they are awful if you wear glasses or have any hearing difficulties or indeed in hot weather. But I’m prepared to accept the evidence.
I have read the article twice and I still cannot find its crux. Lots of riffing but no whole tune. Yes, many human beings at different stages of their lives, in many situations behave like sheep. Yes, many people will flock to pubs and clubs in celebration of ‘freedom day’. But as they are human beings they can’t really be ‘free’, can they? Is that it? The analogy of political and social views to ‘viruses’ doesn’t work. The associations of the definition of the word ‘virus’ are invariably malign. Human beings aren’t ‘viral creatures’.
Lots of riffing but no whole tune.
Wow! What a great line.
This article is full of snippets that I trip over, as I always do in a West Article…
“University attendance makes people more Left-wing, not because students are being indoctrinated by academics, but because they’re copying their peers,”
Chickens do not so much come out of eggs, but lay eggs…
See…Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, with its Nihilism/Marxism/Freuidism, set out to destroy Capitalism by destroying the Middle Classes via indoctrinating the education industry from top down to teach they young to self loath, to loath the system which gave them everything, and to reject all classical morality, marriage, and religion. They have succeeded totally.
And so the teachers of the little children, themselves indoctrinated, began teaching this, and the next level of teachers re-enforced it, and the University teachers, themselves brought up in the system, go on to finish the indoctrination into this pathological thinking.
And thus you have these ‘peers’ all a product of the education system designed to destroy Morality and the West, all pushing it on each other, and the teachers all acting in an authority capacity, saying that it is Truth…And so our degenerate Liberal/Lefty system sows its own destruction from every angle.
Really enjoyed this article, it just rang so true and so much fell into place.
Good read – which led me to look up the word “eusocial” leading to suggestions that “eu” is Greek for good/simple.
I wonder if they still think that …. ?
It is a good analogy that ideas, good or bad, spread like disease. Hopefully, the current grass-roots efforts in the US to stop the pernicious spread of racially divisive school doctrine based on skin color initiates a much more significant review of teachers and the ideas being spread in school.
Every child before graduation should have at least a semester of fact-based comparative study of actual pollical and economic systems. It is appalling and dangerous that many young citizens know not of the murderous reigns of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or of the more recent decent of Venezuela from democratic jewel of SA to 4th world nation, while their instruction focuses on the relatively smaller issues with western politics and economic systems.
It is deeply inadequate in such a crisis, because we have no individual choice during an epidemic — our risk of getting sick depends not just on our behaviour, but on the behaviour of those around us.
There is zero truth to this statement. Everybody has individual choice. Some people may choose not to exercise it and go with the crowd but that is a choice. I did not partake in this nonsense. I lost friends and strained some family ties. I became a lot closer to other friends and family and made new friends. I only hung out with people who would hug, who wore masks as little as possible, and did not social distance. Masks don’t work with respiratory viruses. Asymptomatic spread is not a major driver of disease. People who are in good physical condition and have good metabolic health are not spreaders of disease. People are 1000 times safer outdoors and unmasked even in a crowd than indoors and masked. In a small poor ventilated space masks don’t help with airborne respiratory viruses. Droplet theory was fairy tale. In October 2020 the WHO finally admitted that “some” spread was airborne. In early 2021 the WHO finally moved away from droplet theory as primary source of spread. Research papers from early 2020 highlighted the airborne spread in meat packing plants were cool dry recirculated air was perfect for airborne spread of covd 19. The who and cdc largely ignored those papers and stuck with their masking and social distancing guidelines based on droplet theory.
https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/coronavirus-disease-covid-19-how-is-it-transmitted
Thanks for your piece. Your examples of/ evidence for “contagious”, peer-pressure social behaviours are interesting and thought-provoking. Various drivers of social behaviour will have been proposed, this is one.
There’s a jarring shift of gear in your style of argument, when you talk of BLM and health leaders describing racism as a deadly contagion. It seems a reasonable assertion to me – racism kills people and causes massive hurt – but you don’t develop this story. You launch instead into polemic abuse of said health leaders – again, without backing up why you think they are “moral cowards”.
Reading the first two-thirds of your article were a refreshing break for me from the style of most of the Unherd articles I’ve read so far – clever, ascerbic and rather nasty polemic, short on evidence and reasoned argument.
Your assertion that university attendance makes people more left-wing sounds plausible – unless it’s a conservative Christian college for example. Which in making people more right-wing would fit with your argument. Then again, you go full polemic with the “insanity spreading out of US academia”. You don’t even bother to explain this, clearly assuming that your readership will share your negative – and not articulated – beliefs about lefty wokey cancel-culturey students. Sigh.
Finally, you don’t apply the contagion theory to “Freedom Day” at all. I thought that was the point of the article, to do some interesting speculation about (say) contagion within the two groups: freedom-focussed vs risk-averse. So what IS your point ?