"As a mother, I detest Professor Ferguson and his recklessly inaccurate model for laying waste to my children’s prospects. I despise those senior civil servants who have secure pensions and nothing to fear from the economic danger their myopic safetyism has wrought. And I am coming to hate the men in Downing Street who are so busy eliminating risk (mainly to their own reputations) that they condemn the elderly to wither in loneliness and treat students like cattle with foot and mouth.
University term starts this week. It’s the ideal time for freshers to socialise, swap mobile details and microbes. Far from relations who may be vulnerable to Covid, they live in promisingly fetid halls of residence where they can easily get the virus during Match of the Day and be rid of it in a week.
Alas, far from seeing uni as the perfect Petri dish in which the virus can be cultured – and ultimately curbed – the authorities have imposed restrictions so draconian you wonder why any young person would want to be there at all.
Glum reports reach me from Exeter and Edinburgh where freshers have to stand two metres apart in a queue for the dining halls and then – get this – sit on their own at an exam-type desk far away from their nearest neighbour, a cordon sanitaire marked out by hazard warning tape. “My daughter hasn’t done this yet,” emails Diana, “as the thought of standing on your own followed by eating on your own is far too anxious-making. Our other daughter, who is in the second year, tells us the dining hall was the chief place to make friends. How is this going to work for our youngsters?”
“All Edinburgh courses are online,” says one dad who is worried that his shy son is isolated in distant lodgings – after the A-levels fiasco, university halls of residence were hugely oversubscribed. “So, he’s on a computer in his room all day followed by solitary dining and can’t go to the pub because he just missed out on being invited to join a group of six. And seven is breaking the rules. WHAT kind of experience is that?”" Allison Pearson in the Telegraph
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I, for one, do not want them to suffer in my name. pl
The Telegraph really nailed that one. It is an utter farce. A sledgehammer that cracks nuts all round.
No-one in the Civil Service (the politicians do what they are advised to do in the main) has done proper risk analysis.
The high risk groups, the old, the non whites, the overweight, are being treated in the same way as everyone who is not at risk.
It is so wrong.
Posted by: JohninMK | 22 September 2020 at 07:32 PM
Expecting a few hundred 18-19 year guys and girls all meeting each other in a brand new social setting with plenty of booze around, and expecting them to be 'Covid-safe' ????
I can see a Covid-safe (not) version of 'Blind Man's Bluff' spontaneously arising in the first five minutes. HA !
Posted by: PRC90 | 23 September 2020 at 12:09 AM
Strange how government policies are now exactly what our scientific advisers were saying they shouldn't be back in early March. Covering the asses of the politicians who panicked under media and lefty pressure to adopt a lockdown. Thank God for the Swedes.
The government has now doubled down on their error and reimposed many restrictions, miserable, and I am not one of the ones losing my job or business.
Posted by: LondonBob | 23 September 2020 at 05:35 AM
Politicians learned an important lesson:
People are easily panicked sheep.
My personal observations are that the fear is greatest in people under 40 - millennials and gen Z, the "snowflakes."
Posted by: TV | 23 September 2020 at 09:32 AM
JohninMK,
Not so. They did perfect risk analysis. If Trump and his supporters are not crushed and he driven from office their sinecures, pensions and social positions will all be "Gone with the Wind". Quite appropriately too since most of it has been hot air since before 1619, which even the projects Marxist founders are trying to disappear now. Even the Socialists are noticing:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/22/1619-s22.html
And adding to the howling is Trump's Tweet:
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1308539918075883523
I can't wait to see the lawyers decide they can make a killing suing all the BLM backers for discriminatory practices. Let the fun begin.
Posted by: Fred | 23 September 2020 at 09:56 AM
This is an experiment in societal control at a global scale. The use of mainstream media and social media to drive the hysteria of fear, then backed with draconian rules promulgated by governments at all levels that only apply to the controlled population. Elites and big corporate interests are of course exempt and given free reign to extort.
We have seen the future. Everyone will be tracked, controlled and manipulated. The perfect Pavlovian society. There is no resistance. The overwhelming majority comply. The dystopia of science fiction is now a reality.
Posted by: blue peacock | 23 September 2020 at 11:59 AM
Reminder ... Prof Ferguson ... is the one with the AVAAZ Director paramoor who unleashed his wildly inaccurate Imperial College of Medicine covid death model upon us, until he had to resign in disgrace after breaking his own mandated lockdown curfew with his married AVAAZ lover.
But did he start the Great Toilet Paper Hoax or does that track back somewhere else that started the covid porn hysteria so readily embraced in the US.
It is time for a re-cap - what happened to the early players and the early rumors that so many the world and especially the US Democrats were so eager to embrace? Did we in fact drive into a cul de sac with blinders on, and now we can't get out?
Posted by: Deap | 23 September 2020 at 12:35 PM
Fred, my comments were about the UK. Not sure how the US election result changes them. We don't have an election for over 4 years.
Posted by: JohninMK | 23 September 2020 at 04:47 PM
JohninMK,
Thanks for the clarification. We were quite affected here by St. Fauci and company utilizing the bad data model for weeks.
Posted by: Fred | 23 September 2020 at 06:58 PM