Covid Endgame?
A Human Rights First approach to tackling Covid means Prevent Every Infection.
That’s the goal in Israel, China, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand and elsewhere.
In Europe and America, however, we’ve taken, in effect, a Virus First Approach.
We’ve thought we can solve economic problems by surrendering to the virus’s diktats.
We’ve fooled ourselves we can beat exponential virus growth by Living With something that mutates all the time.
We’ve seen the consequences of this muddled thinking:
Millions of people preventably infected, sickened, killed and hurt by a neurotropic virus.
The alternative is a Human Rights First Covid Approach.
I sum this up by saying:
Prevent Every Infection.
A Human Rights First Approach’s more than that though.
Our starting point is the international legal human rights architecture we established after the second world war.
Almost every State on earth signed up to the United Nations General Assemby’s Declaration on Human Rights.
This Declaration (as well as regional arrangements such as the European Convention on Human Rights) establishes a strict hierarchy of which human rights matter first.
The right to life always comes first.
Sure, we have economic rights.
It’s a completely new idea that we “balance” any human being’s right to life with, say, a restaurant’s need to operate in a pandemic.
I invented the term Antihuman Rights Aggression to capture an idea that seeped into every aspect of our public and private lives, even before Covid
Without us even noticing it, a group of people have been operating at the very highest levels of government and the economy across the world (but particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States).
Their goal is to roll back the world war II peace settlement.
Anytime you hear “anti-woke” rhetoric that’s Antihuman Rights Aggression at work.
These people are brilliant at infecting us unknowingly with Antihuman Rights Aggression.
Since Covid, Antihuman Rights Aggression has mutated into powerful new forms.
Anytime we argue that a life is somehow equivalent to maintaining a Lifestyle or a Living (as in a business).
That’s Antihuman Rights Aggression.
We’re too rich spiritually and economically to take such a proposition seriously.
It’s not a Stringent Measures To Prevent Every Infection versus Saving The Economy dichtomy.
That’s a false framing.
It’s a troll.
By Preventing Every Infection we save the economy.
This has been proven theoretically, and practically.
Doyen of far right politicians everywhere Milton Friedman’s think-tank at the University of Chicago proved in March 2020 that saving lives is cheaper than letting people die.
The United Kingdom has been late to control every exponential growth phase in Covid so far.
As of July 2021, it’s spent £370b on Covid, and it’s had the highest numbers of deaths in Europe.
Since March 2020, the UK has printed £300b to try to shore up its economy.
It’s also borrowed an extra £260b from foreign lenders.
In early 2021 the UK, having consciously decided twice to Let The Virus Rip (in order to save the economy), experienced its greatest economic decline since 1708.
Those are all official statistics from the government!
I’ve collected them here:
The United Kingdom also experienced the highest numbers of deaths by several different measures of any other European country.
Taking a Human Rights First approach is not only the legally and morally correct way to confront Covid, it would save money.
The countries which have weathered best the Covid induced economic storm are the countries – Israel, Japan, China, Taiwan, New Zealand,… – which have worked hardest and smartest to Prevent Every Infection.
Preventing Every Infection is a win-win.
Muddled “balancing” of the economy versus Preventing Every Infection is a Fools’ Errand.
Most countries, too, signed the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights as well as on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966.
Both legal instruments commit us not to discriminate on the grounds of certain characteristics.
Every member of the World Health Organisation signed up to a legal obligation to prevent and control epidemics in the International Health Regulations (IHR):
All W.H.O. member States are legally bound also to integrate a human rights approach to managing their pandemic responses.
The poorer members of our society, as well as older people, women and children have been worst affected by the virus.
This is contrary to a Human Rights First approach.
We all have a legally enforceable right to equality and non discrimination.
If our States were doing their legal duty, we would see no difference in the demographic composition of who is infected by Covid.
Older people would not be more likely to die.
The outcome of a fair distribution of resources would be lives equally saved across all social, biological and economic classes.
The reality is very different.
Taking a Prevent Every Infection approach reduces Covid’s harms, universally.
That way, very few people die.
Very few people are infected.
It’s equally beneficial to everyone.
That’s true Levelling Up!
Instead, what we have is deeply embedded outcomes of discriminatory impacts by the virus on different classes of people.
There should be no muddled thinking about the impact of the policy choices we make in relation to Covid.
Every policy choice must be proofed against its likelihood of preventing or encouraging the violation of our right not to be infected by a neurotropic virus.
Doctors, epidemiologists, celebrities, restaurant owners, and economists of course have the right to speak on how measures implemented or being discussed to Prevent Every Infection impact on their interests.
Against this though in a Human Rights First approach world Human Rights always outweighs The Economy.
The right not to be infected always outweighs every other consideration.
Because of various cognitive biases, a Human Rights First approach must be mainstreamed into EVERY discussion on these issues in our families, sure, but also throughout our media.
We can’t afford to have any more of these false equivalences between Saving Lives and Keeping Nightclubs Open!
We agreed after World War Two that Human Rights come first, above everything.
We built an amazing architecture to help guide us in civilisationally threatening moments like this one.
Let’s use it!
The beauty of a Human Rights First approach to Covid is that by working resolutely to Prevent Every Infection, we also:
Save the economy, through stopping the cycle of endless measures when exponential Covid growth phases suddenly pop up.
Save lives, which saves money!
Prevent the erosion of our compassion: in what kind of world do elected leaders dismiss parents’ concerns about a neurotropic virus infecting their children by saying without any science to back them up:
The virus doesn’t harm children!
That British former minister is completely in the mainstream of his party in modelling both Antihuman Rights Aggression and Antiscience Aggression in one fowl swoop!
England’s chief medical officer has stated that “Covid is not a benign disease in children”:
Not only are UK ruling party politicians stating in writing that Covid doesn’t harm children, they’re promoting a policy that inexorably leads to children being infected by Covid:.
Don’t take my word for it- here’s the United Kingdom’s chief scientific officer in September 2021 warning United Kingdom members of Parliament that unless they withdrew their opposition to vaccinating children (see https://link.medium.com/zN4gpPzqimb), those children would be infected by Covid:
That’s why this is Antiscience and Antihuman Rights Aggression!
1.4m English children were preventably infected by Delta between July and November 2021.
There’s 1.4m English children harmed by a neurotropic virus right there!
This means, the virus does harm children.
You don’t get infected by a neurotropic virus without being harmed.
That would alter the meaning of “harm” to such an extent that it would no longer mean anything.
People hear this trope and repeat it.
Let’s reflect on how we would have reacted in, say, December 2019 if someone had said:
“Infecting your child with a neurotropic virus doesn't harm them.”
You’d have laughed.
Yet now because of various cognitive biases and constant repetition of this trope we’re likely to accept this crazy proposition.
Taking a Human Rights Approach protects us against this kind of bonkers inhumanity seeping into our lives and families.
A Human Rights First approach anchors us to a system of aggressively protecting human rights that’s served us very well since the end of World War Two.
The UK has led the world in promoting policies of Mass Infection.
It’s hardly a coincidence that the one thing that unites the United Kingdom’s divided ruling party is a strong belief in Antihuman Rights Aggression.
It’s such a defining ideology of the current UK governing regime that the prime minister himself and his sidekick – Michael Gove- are professional journalists whose stock-in-trade – you guessed it- is promoting antihuman rights aggression.
They both served certain media barons whose entire business model is focussed on promoting Antihuman Rights and Antiscience Aggression through their media empires.
Michael Gove even opposed the peace in Ireland because he (or the oligarchs he serves) thought a culture of human rights would infect the rest of the United Kingdom (see https://medium.com/political-risk/whats-anti-human-rights-aggression-b51dab85e545).
Those who oppose Gove and Johnson inside the UK's ruling party are also part of an international cabal whose raison d’être is to roll back the post World War II peace settlement.
This group of oligarch funded “respectable” far right politicians oppose the welfare state, national health services which are free at the point of delivery, international human rights law and any vestige of any constraint on their power.
They use anti-mask and anti-vaxx rhetoric as an organising fiction around which to rally their troops (see https://link.medium.com/zN4gpPzqimb).
I make a bit of a joke here (https://link.medium.com/aF8uD6GLRgb) of their antics as they stretched and tore the United Kingdom’s constitution to get the Brexit they wanted.
However, that list of 141 “Greatest Hits” is also testimony to how deadly serious this group of people is in achieving its goal to roll back the WWII peace settlement.
These same leaders are exactly those leaders promoting the mad trope that Infection By A Neurotropic Virus Doesn’t In Itself Harm Our Bodies AND (crucially) Our Body Politic.
Promoting the idea that harm may or may not take place after the moment of infection is what matters is proof of the antigenic drift away from a compassionate society.
Covid has been shown to maim, kill and harm the brains of children (that’s what loss of smell means).
The normalisation of such antiscience aggression and compassionless leadership is reason in itself alone to take a Human Rights First approach to confronting the virus.
Stephen Douglas studied European Human Rights law at Cambridge. He’s a graduate of Dublin, Cambridge and Oxford Universities. Since mid-March 2020 he has written hundreds of scientifically grounded articles (https://lnkd.in/d8JzW95) counselling great care in relation to Covid public policy. Stephen blogs at @DecodingTrolls, where he uses the Positive Trolling® communications’ strategy he invented to debunk hopium at scale.
