Backing the Call to Unity: I unequivocally blame the Government for lockdowns

I fully blame the Government for the introduction of tier-four restrictions, and have opposed the lockdown measures since the beginning, believing them to be disproportionate, damaging to mental, physical, and economic health, illogical, and not to mention, draconian.

In a response to my most recent article titled ‘The Unstoppable Spread of Tier Four Restrictions’, reader Peter Price makes a very fair and very reasonable comment that we must be united in our opposition to government-imposed lockdowns. In particular, Price took issue with my article as he interpreted the piece as appearing to blame the ordinary people themselves for causing the recently introduced tier-four lockdowns. 

I wish to clear up this ambiguity. I fully blame the Government for the introduction of tier-four restrictions, and have opposed the lockdown measures since the beginning, believing them to be disproportionate, damaging to mental, physical, and economic health, illogical, and not to mention, draconian. My articles over the past many months for this magazine on the subject can attest to this. 

The purpose of my most recent article on tier-four restrictions was to show that the Government’s control over local lockdowns would lead to a national lockdown in all but name – a prediction which materialised only two days later. I did not blame the people fleeing London to spend Christmas with the family, nor the shoppers travelling to other tiers in search of open high streets, only showing that this occurrence is a natural consequence when a blanket ban is introduced on one’s way of life. I myself fled my University town a few days before the second national lockdown came into effect. I sympathised with their situation, as people should not celebrate Christmas atomised from their family, explicitly calling the measures draconian in the article. 

I admit I did ‘go native’ in my article surrounding the fate of my home county of Huntingdonshire, but it was also a good example considering it was a card in the set of the many new areas placed into tier-four over the Christmas period, as well as the birthplace of a certain Oliver Cromwell – the last English ruler to effectively ban the celebration of Christmas.I was not giving any special favours to Huntingdonshire (far from calling for the barricades to go up against tier-four areas) but to illustrate the spread of tier-four restrictions to the area and its vicinity. 

At the end, I referenced an article I wrote in November about a nation-wide lockdown happening the new year (another prediction which came true). Here, I wrote that the spread of the virus is an inevitably when opening the economy, along with families spending more time together as well as in doors. The focus here was to show that the Government would use the rising case numbers as an excuse to impose another lockdown, which is what they did to usher in the Tier-four restrictions. The problem is not the virus, nor its spread through the population, it is the Government’s heavy-handed response. 

Regarding herd immunity, I allude to herd immunity through vaccine potentially ending the lockdown because the Government sees this as the only possible option available. I agree with Price’s comment that herd immunity through exposure is the much better option. We have to learn to live with the Coronavirus, just as we do with other illnesses, such as the Flu. What other choice is there? To furlough ourselves into bankruptcy? To imprison ourselves for eternity?

To the Churchillian Boris Johnson, each microscopic particle of the virus is a Wehrmacht unit to be fired upon, or a pilot of the Luftwaffe needing to be shot out of the sky. The invention of a vaccine is seen as the equivalent of landing on the Normandy beaches, with its ongoing administration into the arms of the populace akin to crossing the river Rhine. 

To conclude, I would like to say that the article itself came from a place of unity, not division. It was to warn that many millions more would soon find themselves living under tier-four level restrictions. With that now the case, there is no other choice but for unity.