There are growing concerns, not only of the British Government’s “herd immunity” statement, but of the media’s reaction to it, and the casual way terms are being redefined.
We’re facing a pandemic, countries all over the world are shutting down, closing schools, banning gathering, all in an effort to contain and limit the spread of the virus, and any associated deaths. But not the UK.
Robert Peston wrote for The Spectator on the 12th of March 2020, and stated that “The strategy of the British government in minimising the impact of COVID-19 is to allow the virus to pass through the entire population so that we acquire herd immunity”.
He clarifies what he means by herd immunity: “what happens to a group of people or animals when they develop sufficient antibodies to be resistant to a disease”.
But allowing “the virus to pass through the entire population” will not create herd immunity, just like the bubonic plague passing through London didn’t either.
Did humanity ever get “herd immunity” from polio for the thousands of years it plagued mankind? No. That virus killed and maimed and killed again. For ever. Until a vaccination was made and distributed.
What the government is proposing is in no way shape or form “herd immunity”. What is actually being advocated is “survival of the fittest”, plain and simple.
This is eugenics against the weak, and, like all virus infections, the unlucky.
A report published in 2019 stated that Austerity was to blame for 130,000 preventable deaths.
Is it any surprise that this government would consider killing more of the sick and the frail?
And we have journalists who are quite on board with the idea, as Jeremy Warner wrote on the 3rd of March 2020, “not to put too fine a point on it, from an entirely disinterested economic perspective, the COVID-19 might even prove mildly beneficial in the long term by disproportionately culling elderly dependents.”
But it won’t just be our “elderly dependents” – as if this wasn’t bad enough – people who have paid their taxes all their lives and are now seen as a burden you can all too easily dispose yourself of. This would also affect your impaired children. The immunocompromised. The weak, essentially. The unfit. Those who were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
This government seems keen to be taking advantage of this pandemic as an apparent opportunity to lighten to load on the welfare state by changing the definition of the term “herd immunity”.
And yet this belief, if that really is what they are contemplating, ignores all the hundreds of thousands who will require intensive medical care because of this government policy. You don’t just die or don’t die. How will the NHS, which is already on its knees after years of underfunding, cope with all those critically ill victims of COVID-19 who will need medical attention if they are to survive? Or will they also become acceptable losses for this government?
According to them and their MSM advocates, “Survival of the Fittest” is now “Herd Immunity”.
It’s dangerous, irresponsible, incompetent, and callous. No doubt the new catchphrase, “Get Herd Immunity Done” will be heard far and wide across this majestic land before long.
Welcome to New-speak 2020.
1984, austerity, Boris Johnson, coronavirus, covid-19, featured, herd immunity, Jeremy Warner, Robert Peston, Telegraph, The Spectator
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