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→ Tony Blair: lockdowns in developing world did more harm than good
Several months after interviewing Dominic Cummings, podcast host Dwarkesh Patel has bagged another big-name guest from British politics. In a new interview, former prime minister Tony Blair told Patel that, having previously advocated a strict tiered system during the pandemic, he now believes that Covid lockdowns in the developing world “did more harm than good”.
Tony Blair on:
– What he tells the dozens of world leaders who come seek advice from him
– How much of a PM’s time is actually spent governing
– What AI’s July 1914 moment will look like from inside the cabinet
– What he learned from Lee Kuan YewLinks below. Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/RwoGT28Tfv
— Dwarkesh Patel (@dwarkesh_sp) June 26, 2024
The former Labour leader added that “part of the problem was that governments weren’t sure where to go for advice,” and that leaders had “to balance [scientific advice] with the needs of their economy and the anxiety a lot of people had”. Ultimately, Blair argued, “you can’t really leave [the decision to lock down] to [politicians] because that’s not their expertise.”
In the 52-minute chat, Blair also labelled the process of governing as “a conspiracy for inertia”, and stated that “we live in a multipolar world today. Personally I think that’s a good thing. In any event, it’s an inevitable thing.” No doubt we can expect such provocative soundbites from the present Labour leader in tonight’s debate…
→ Gender-critical women split on voting Labour
Despite the Labour Party’s inconsistencies on women’s rights and the trans question, some gender-critical Labour-sceptics are voting for the party anyway. UnHerd columnist Kathleen Stock told Times Radio today that, despite not trusting Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer who has “flip-flopped around like a fish”, she will “vote Labour, much to the horror of many of the gender critical women around me, because I can see that there’s bigger issues than this one”.
“I am going to vote Labour much to the horror of many of the gender critical women around me because I can see that there’s bigger issues than this one.”
But @DocStockk says she does not trust Keir Starmer who has “flip-flopped around like a fish”.
https://t.co/3qGIG4nQ4H pic.twitter.com/lL2r1QQMb7
— Times Radio (@TimesRadio) June 26, 2024
Fellow UnHerd writer Julie Bindel may reluctantly vote for Starmer: “If I don’t spoil my ballot, which I am sorely tempted to do, it will have to be Labour.” However, many women on the Left still feel politically homeless. Writing in UnHerd this week, Joan Smith outlined why she had resigned her membership: “The party has taken an inexplicable decision to treat women, who make up half the population, as less deserving of attention than the tiny proportion who are transgender.” Can Labour be trusted on women’s rights? They might need to give David Tennant the cold shoulder first…
→ Confusion over Meta’s politics content ahead of US debate
It has been known for some time that Meta wants to avoid the political arena after the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal during the 2016 US presidential election, which tarnished Mark Zuckerberg’s reputation. But a recent change of policy shows the corporation has gone further than ever in its sanitisation of Instagram. Users have seemingly been automatically opted out of receiving political content from the algorithm ,and will need to opt in every time they open the app. This certainly looks odd on the day before the first Biden-Trump debate of the election.
NEW: One day before the first presidential debate, Instagram has reset all users settings to opt-out of political content.
Every time a user exits the app, they will have to go back into settings to opt-in to remove the political content limits.https://t.co/rZiMH7rl4h
— Kyle Tharp (@kylewilsontharp) June 26, 2024
A Meta spokesperson responded to the FWIW (For What It’s Worth) report by saying: “This was an error and should not have happened. We’re working on getting it fixed.” Best stay on the free-for-all app formerly known as Twitter for your political fix…
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SubscribeUltimately, Blair argued, “you can’t really leave [the decision to lock down] to [politicians] because that’s not their expertise.”
Yet that is only half the picture – who is entrusted and empowered to choose the experts?
That is of course the job of the politicians.
And let’s not forget that no one had the luxury of researching, debating and discussing outcomes.
Politicians are ultimately responsible for all the outcomes. You’re right about that because they chose who and who not to listen to.
Well exactly, unsure why people are disagreeing. Do they expect the ‘experts’ to appoint themselves? This website is riddled with ridiculous nutjobs.
Removed
Largely agree.
As you say, anyone in a leadership position is responsible for recruiting and making sure that their staff are competent – and getting rid of those who are not. And also being competent enough to assess their advice and reports and know what to believe and what to question. Otherwise, you’re incompetent and in the wrong job. Unless, of course, you are Paula Vennells.
But there were several months before lockdowns were introduced. And there was discussion and debate in that period. And the opportunity to examine some of the models being used (I seem to remember Ian Ferguson’s Imperial College model being checked by software engineers and found to be of such ludicrously poor code quality that it couldn’t be properly checked or maintained – and this took only a short code read to identify).
To this day, Wikipedia is full of crap about the Great Barrington Declaration. These people are fundamentally incapable of admitting their mistakes.
I would like to add one more, albeit cynical, consideration that occurred to me when, at the beginning of the pandemic, I saw on one website a tragic martyrology of celebrities who had died from Covid.
Person A, 85 years old.
Person B, 78 years old.
…
Person X, 76 years old.
This death count is fundamentally incorrect. It is necessary to count by the number of years lost by society. A dead baby is a loss of more than 70 years. The death of an 80-year-old man, with the most biased statistics, is a loss of two to five years.
You can claim that I’m a cannibal all you want, but “women and children first” is the code of conduct for the men that progressives hate so much.
.
PS. I’m 70 and my life is cheaper then life of my granddaughter
Of course, I’m 58 and hope to live for many years but without question, the young matter more.
In the England and Wales an 80 year old man will live on average for another 8.16 years. You’re underestimating it a bit there.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/datasets/nationallifetablesenglandandwalesreferencetables
It was the principle, not the precise description of the algorithm
Lockdowns hurt poor people – period end of story. The poorer you are, the worse it was. That’s why 165 million people were pushed into $2 a day poverty in the developing world. But poor, working class people in wealthy nations suffered as well. And inflation and high interest rates are crushing everyone but the wealthiest people today.
They were particularly unnecessary in the developing world where the median age is decades lower than it is the the developed world, but where was Phoney Blair on this issue at the time? He was just as much an advocate for global lockdowns as all the rest. Why any bothers to listen to that war criminal hypocrite is beyond me.
It has to be the politicians who make the decisions. Who else is going to balance the arguments from epidemiologists and economists?
Ultimately the economists did not present any case for the economy, apparently being excited by the prospect of lockdowns?
The economist magazine also evaded the lab leak issue – persistently supporting tendentious arguments for a natural origin, and they have no excuse, they are supposed to be brainy.
Indeed. If not politicians (who’re ultimately responsible to their electorate in democracies, however obtusely) then who?
Yes… WHO! The World Health Organisation, run by a bunch of elitist left-leaning (if not downright Commie) autocrats with some kind of medical background.
I think not!
The Economist magazine has disappointed me since Brexit.
Did he also tell that we need to be prepared for the next global pandemic and therefore we need a digital infrastructure with QR-codes to check our vaccination status. Because that is what he is broadcasting in Davos? Are people still trying to make a citizen’s arrest when he shows his face in public?
“More harm than good.” If only someone had warned that would be the case in EVERY nation, not just developing countries. And nothing will happen to the villains behind that and the other dystopian tactics that cause harm to this day.
COVID-19 management should not be solely attributed to politicians but rather to public health experts. Similarly, the development and ethical use of AI should be guided by the technologists and researchers creating these systems, not just by policymakers.
So why bother to vote? These groups in bold already have jobs and power!
Stock and Bindel voting Labour? It’s ’Chickens for KFC’ all over again…
Eventually he may catch up and shorten his sentence (IIRC he was a great fan of shortened sentences, often dropping verbs) to simply: “lockdowns did more harm than good”.
That’s not saying that their wasn’t some case for trying them, at the time. Just that it’s likely that they caused more problems and costs than they solved and saved. Perhaps one day we’ll get some figures about the excess deaths due to the NHS partly giving up on its day job to focus on Covid. To say nothing of the economic costs. Or the massive fraud in lockdown support claims.
Test
While I fully respect people’s voting choices, gender critical women writers also must accept that, by voting Labour, they sacrifice their credibility and compromise their own voices on such matters.
There’s a price for everything.
Oh dear KS how naive are you? Starmer is not trying to “walk back out of the corner he has painted himself into”, he is trying to pretend he is not in that corner so mugs like you and JB won’t lead a feminist revolt against him.
It is really clear that on this issue he is completely ruled by LGBT Labour and when push comes to shove all the recent guidance to schools will be completely scraped (it is not that long ago that Labour were denying there was even a problem in schools and it was all made up by Tory culture warriors). There will be defacto self id (reform of the GRA is a bit of an irrelevance as a GRC is not a free pass into women’s spaces anyway) as the transphobic hate speech laws that will be introduced will mean the men will just barge their way into wherever they feel like and call the police if anyone says anything to stop them.
Don’t vote for it and then spend the next 5 years whinging when you get what you voted for. Exactly which bigger issues does KS think Labour has a better answer to? Mass immigration (legal and illegal)? No, Not bankrupting the country even quicker with net zero? No. Decreasing the grip of DEI on employers? No
Well quite! I can’t understand why they bothered kicking up such a fuss if they are still going to vote for the one for a party dedicated to handing over women to a bunch of dedicated misogynistic men to do with at they wish.
Vote labour end women.
Shocking to see the new British conservative voices present here vote for Eurofederal social democrats. What appalling tribalism and completely counter-intuitive to the debate taking place on this site.
I suppose voting Tory is not much better, but why on earth do they think Labour’s going to help their (non-conformist) cultural causes? They will do precisely the opposite when in power. The Authoritarian Left will be active uniquely on culture; the rest is just forcing up taxes to maintain the NHS moneypit while working their political coalition towards single market membership and the euro.
It didn’t d much for the developed world either!