BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Moral Lessons for a Post-Covid World
"‘I very much agree that there is a great deal about this Coronavirus that we all still don't know, that experts contradict each other, and that we certainly should always be skeptical or questioning about what we're being told. But given the evidence of our own eyes about the impact of this virus at the speed of its transmission, I've been appalled by some of those on the libertarian Right, who've opposed not just lockdowns, but every single restriction on the basis that it's all a plot to seize state control over people's lives. And then these people cherry pick epidemiological evidence to claim that covid isn't a serious problem at all. Now, to me, this is astonishing, because it's a mirror image of the way over many years, the left has sacrificed evidence based reality to ideological dogma. And I think that in fetishizing, individual freedom over social responsibility, the anti state libertarian right is as dangerous as the pro state social libertarian left.’...
‘I have no objection in principle to governments introducing quite stringent restrictions on our lives to fight epidemics, but if you are going to use those very powerful weapons, they've got to be used proportionately. Now, if we were in the midst of an epidemic of bubonic plague which was estimated to have killed half the people it infected, I would agree about the use of all these lockdowns and everything but I just do not feel that we are in a disease is in any way comparable to bubonic plague or in any way justifies the level of restrictions on our freedom that were being used at the height of lockdown. And I think it's very easy to frame this debate as a sort of lives versus liberty argument. But the fact is that severe restrictions on our freedom in the form of lockdown as we have, they have their own death toll and when you look at the University of Loughborough study last week, estimated that 21,000 people were killed by the effects of lockdown. People because they weren't accessing health care, emergency health care in the way that they normally would, because they, you know, they people weren't looking after them. People weren't looking in on them, you know, lonely people who might normally be out and about. And you know, there is a very much it's death versus death, lives versus lives. Ultimately, when you come to this equation... We had a pandemic plan which had been debated, which had been published, you could read it up online. But it mentioned nothing about lockdown. It mentioned nothing about having to stay at home. It mentioned nothing about them closing schools, workplaces and everything else... I wouldn't say it was a conspiracy to seize powers over our lives. What I would say is it was panic’...
'Universalism, the idea that everyone should be treated as one is perfectly okay in theory, but in practice, it means that we treat everyone with the same chilly, bureaucratic, mathematical indifference as we do a stranger'...
‘It's interesting to me that you mentioned sort of morality, I don't necessarily see a role for the state in that because over time, it just infantilizes people and I'm not sure as well. Maybe the NHS should get us to take responsibility for one bit of our body like our elbow, or knee. Maybe financially, that's-’
‘Okay. Okay, so if we just move away from food even, and let me give you the scenario, which is that the state should intervene at times, shouldn't it, because relying on people's individual acts is an ideal. If we look back at our recent history, when we look at the smoking ban, making people wear seatbelts, making that compulsory, equal opportunities legislation, including gender equality and gay rights. All these didn't come from individual common sense or concern. They came from top down legislation.’
‘Yeah, but those are, those are social issues. Eating is a very personal thing that we all do.’
‘Eating is a social issue as well’
‘Yeah, but I don't think that it's within the state's remit. I mean, you look at what's happened in schools, a lot of schools have started doing breakfast clubs for kids. And now, you know, there’s a generation of parents growing up that don't see that as their responsibility. And every time you reach into an area that things should, people should be responsible for themselves, you kind of lose that capacity to act autonomously’...
‘I don't understand why it took a global pandemic for us to address this. I mean, a lot of people must have been going to the doctors and being told that they were morbidly obese. And for some reason, that didn't scare them. And yet this sort of more abstract threat, has clearly got people out jogging and thinking about it and I don't know, was it was it doctors being too timid to actually have that conversation? I don't know why it's taken this.’...
‘Without experts to guide you on something like this, on the the likely trajectory of a virus, you can't really make informed decisions, politicians have to make informed decisions. Now, the problem that we've seen with this virus is that the experts are themselves contradicting each other because there's so much we don't know, because some of these experts are tendentious, some are rubbish. Others are correct. We don't, the public actually know who are correct’
Ironically, the same people who hysterically rail against fat-shaming also are covid hystericists
