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Exclusive: Ministers had ‘chilling’ secret unit to curb lockdown dissent

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Exclusive: Ministers had ‘chilling’ secret unit to curb lockdown dissent

#21

Post by flagrant_taco »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #8

Surprise surprise, government can mobilise police/army to protect their citizens. Who would have thought. Come on, no one knew if it was a new black death or just a harmless virus. The hysteria about government taking valid steps in an unclear situation is childish.

We knew at the beginning of 2020 that the mortality rate was below 1%, we new it wasn't a new black death.

It was also quickly made taboo to say anything comparing it to a common cold. Many platforms silenced these ideas by censoring posts and shadow banning users.

There absolutely was hystaria involved but it was leaders, medical experts, and society responding irrationally based on fear. We did know it wasn't the plague, there were some in early 2020 raising valid points that it looked to have a mortality rate closer to 0.1% largely impacting the elderly and seriously ill.

How where these steps taken by governments valid, both legally and morally, when they were driven by fear and crushing individual rights?

Re: Exclusive: Ministers had ‘chilling’ secret unit to curb lockdown dissent

#25

Post by wsc981 »

logifail wrote: post #22

> no one knew if it was a new black death or just a harmless virus When did "no one know"? There was already data in early May 2020 showing risk by age group https://twitter.com/d_spiegel/status/1260542469256753153

Yep, I looked at Out World in Data [0] at the time and from the numbers it was very clear to me that it was a disease that was mainly risky for old people and people with co-morbidities. At that point it was clear to me that most people wouldn't need to be very scared.

---

[0]: https://ourworldindata.org

Re: Exclusive: Ministers had ‘chilling’ secret unit to curb lockdown dissent

#26

Post by turbobooster »

scrlk wrote: post #2

I'm not surprised at all. A few months back it was revealed that the Army's information warfare unit was involved in monitoring lockdown critics. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/29/armys-informatio... https://archive.is/WkAqc

[dead]

Re: Exclusive: Ministers had ‘chilling’ secret unit to curb lockdown dissent

#27

Post by throw0101b »

flagrant_taco wrote: post #21
cynicalsecurity wrote: post #8

Surprise surprise, government can mobilise police/army to protect their citizens. Who would have thought. Come on, no one knew if it was a new black death or just a harmless virus. The hysteria about government taking valid steps in an unclear situation is childish.

We knew at the beginning of 2020 that the mortality rate was below 1%, we new it wasn't a new black death. It was also quickly made taboo to say anything comparing it to a common cold. Many platforms silenced these ideas by censoring posts and shadow banning users. There absolutely was hystaria involved but it was leaders, medical experts, and society responding irrationally based on fear. We did know it wasn't the p…

> We knew at the beginning of 2020 that the mortality rate was below 1%, we new it wasn't a new black death.

And yet hospitals and ICUs were still packed. No one remember when Italy first got hit and the military had to be called in to remove bodybags/coffins?

* https://nationalpost.com/news/world/covid-19-italy-videos-sh...

* https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2020/04/coronavirus-unimag...

Even one year later morgues needed refrigerated trailers:

* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/bodies-stored-trailer-...

* https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/texas-request...

Re: Exclusive: Ministers had ‘chilling’ secret unit to curb lockdown dissent

#28

Post by AndrewDucker »

wsc981 wrote: post #25
logifail wrote: post #22

> no one knew if it was a new black death or just a harmless virus When did "no one know"? There was already data in early May 2020 showing risk by age group https://twitter.com/d_spiegel/status/1260542469256753153

Yep, I looked at Out World in Data [0] at the time and from the numbers it was very clear to me that it was a disease that was mainly risky for old people and people with co-morbidities. At that point it was clear to me that most people wouldn't need to be very scared. --- [0]: https://ourworldindata.org

I was scared because I had elderly relatives.

The idea that we should only worry about ourselves feels deeply immoral to me.

Re: Exclusive: Ministers had ‘chilling’ secret unit to curb lockdown dissent

#29

Post by fmajid »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #19
cynicalsecurity wrote: post #8

Surprise surprise, government can mobilise police/army to protect their citizens. Who would have thought. Come on, no one knew if it was a new black death or just a harmless virus. The hysteria about government taking valid steps in an unclear situation is childish.

One issue is that it's a political decision on which citizens were protected. Should we close schools semi-indefinitely to protect the elderly after vaccines were widely available (like in SF)? Shutting down debates on these issues was and is controversial.

The elderly vote Conservative, almost by definition. QED.

Re: Exclusive: Ministers had ‘chilling’ secret unit to curb lockdown dissent

#30

Post by flagrant_taco »

throw0101b wrote: post #27
flagrant_taco wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We knew at the beginning of 2020 that the mortality rate was below 1%, we new it wasn't a new black death. It was also quickly made taboo to say anything comparing it to a common cold. Many platforms silenced these ideas by censoring posts and shadow banning users. There absolutely was hystaria involved but it was leaders, medical experts, and society responding irrationally based on fear. We did know it wasn't the p…

> We knew at the beginning of 2020 that the mortality rate was below 1%, we new it wasn't a new black death. And yet hospitals and ICUs were still packed. No one remember when Italy first got hit and the military had to be called in to remove bodybags/coffins? * https://nationalpost.com/news/world/covid-19-italy-videos-sh... * https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2020/04/coronavirus-unimag... Even one year later morgues…

What happened in Italy, New York City, and others was absolutely tragic. No one should die that way and a very good argument could be made that we as society failed all of those people and their loved ones.

Death tolls in this early outbreaks did, though, show that severe illness and death was almost entirely impacting individuals with multiple comorbidities, which weights heavily towards the elderly population.

We also knew as soon as the vaccine study preprints were released that the studies were not designed to test for protecting against infection or transmission, they were only comparing symptomatic illness over roughly 30 days.

Governments coordinating censorship of any ideas that question the relative risk of the virus or the vaccine efficacy claims touted by politicians was completely unreasonable. Not only was it a massive overreach and destruction of many democratic values, it was silencing discussion of reasonable concerns given scientific information that was already available at the time (namely the population distribution of deaths and the tested hypothesis in the vaccine trials).

We were all operating at some level of fear during the pandemic, but now that we've largely moved on its time we actually take a sober look at what was known when and how the decisions made at the time actually measure up.

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