Many MPs have tonight voted against measures to protect public health.
A majority of these did so in the name of freedom, in denial that the fast spreading Omicron variant of Covid-19 is any worse than seasonal flu. Freedom trumps all, according to these ‘contrarians’. The market is king, and the market solves all problems, so the main job of Government is to enable business to do its thing.
As is well documented, ‘doubt is our product’ is the motto that tobacco executives secretly adopted in the face of the unequivocal risk from smoking revealed by scientists, and is now the reflex modus operandi of the anti-science contrarians working assiduously to undermine experts.
It is always the same people. Whether it be smoking causing lung cancer, CFCs causing a hole in the ozone layer, action on climate change, or health measures during a pandemic, those anti-science contrarians will be voting against any regulations to protect people.
Of course the Catch-22 for those working on actions to avoid the worst, is that for the contrarians, they will use any such success as evidence that the worst projections were an exaggeration in the first place!
You fixed the roof – so all those dire warnings of an impending leak in the roof if it wasn’t retiled were just scare-mongering.
You banned CFCs, and the ozone layer is repairing – as we said there would be no dangerous levels of UV radiation.
You fix some dodgy code (the Millennium or Y2K bug) so the programs would still work after the year 2000 – You see, it was not a problem after all.
You enacted measures to reduce human contact during a pandemic – We told you, the NHS would not be brought to its knees.
You set out actions needed to avoid dangerous man-made climate change – You doomers, the dangers are exaggerated and we should wait to see who is right.
To prove the point, the public officials and experts would have to not act, to let things rip, so that disaster then strikes, and they can then say ‘told you so!’ – but of course they do act.
But the contrarians rarely totally prevent action being taken – even with the worst Governments – but they can effectively delay it. They are good at that.
Many deaths that could have been avoided result from these delays. There is no freedom for them or their bereaved families.
(c) Richard W. Erskine, 14th December 2021
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