I (blue) saw your (red) comment on the Nottingham Park and felt very uneasy about it but decided not to comment. However when I then saw your post on the march a few weeks later, I couldn't but highlight its incongruence.
To clarify, the march, or the issue it stands for, was not my contention. I am highlighting the issue of the right to freedom of assembly. The Nottingham Park gathering was an (albeit recreational) exercise of the natural right to freedom of assembly. Saturday's march was an exercise of this liberty and freedom of expression. So both were exercises of the right to freedom of assembly. I support and will defend anyone's exercise of their natural right to freedom of assembly; I wish you to be free to join the crowd and demonstrate what you believe in, regardless of whether I agree or not. An individual's right to freedom of assembly is a natural right that - by definition - exists naturally, regardless of any other claims (including disputed claims to moral worthiness/unworthiness).
The blind spot over the deterioration of young adults well being in the exercise of current 'emergency measures' is my criticism. Here is the context for my reasoning:
1. The rationale for the measures over the last year was early mortality prevention. But the focus on one aspect of public health (the epidemic), to the exclusion of all others is not cost free. In fact it is shown to be counter productive. We are primates and need social environments to maintain mental health, and young adults need to associate in particular group patterns to maintain healthy mental development. Prohibiting this debilitates mental health. The significant outcome of mental health issues is reduced life expectancy (source: World Psychiatry is.gd/VtDBDQ). Severe mental illness reduces life expectancy by 15-20 years (source WHO is.gd/hjTcYM, NHS is.gd/LNsdZq). About half of all young adults are now at risk of mental illness after having their natural right to freedom of assembly and association withheld from them by force over the last year (source Telegraph is.gd/wI83HN /Mental Health Million Project survey is.gd/QRbI7h). That's millions of people who will die earlier than otherwise expected, an explicit failure, if not a reversal, of the stated aim of the measures of early mortality prevention.
2. Government scientists have admitted to an unethical program of control by fear over the last year;
"You could call psychology ‘mind control’. That’s what we do",
"Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government.",
"...decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear. The way we have used fear is dystopian... Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared."
- SPI-B government scientists (source: Telegraph is.gd/tbDHJI).
This has distorted perception of the danger posed by the epidemic, and conditioned disproportionately reactive behaviour driven by an excessively precautionary belief. It has engendered a culture of misguided character judgement; individuals behaving quite normally are commonly vilified. A proportion of the population see freedom as selfish, regarding those thinking otherwise simply as dangerous disease carrying vermin - an outcome that deserves some serious reflection.
3. Practically all over 65s and otherwise vulnerable were vaccinated some time before either of the above events (source: Health Europa is.gd/Y3uMuf /UK Gov - is.gd/xJPJmO). The vaccines are (tend towards) 100% effectiveness at preventing death and serious illness from Covid (source: Monica Gandhi MD, MPH - is.gd/aAB04z). The as yet unvaccinated healthy under 65s are about as safe from Covid as they are from 'flu (source: The BMJ - is.gd/pUF6EV / Elsevier Public Health - is.gd/GIxhRg).
4. We have to accept that the virus is now endemic and we will be living with it symbiotically, just like 100s of other viruses that are commonly barely noticed to be circulating seasonally. The transmissibility of the latest variants of concern is largely still under scientific review at the time of writing. Increased transmissibility is less of a concern if immunity from mortality tends towards 100% and successful immune response builds herd immunity. With regard to prevention of serious illness and mortality - which is the true concern - no evidence of any reduced efficacy of the vaccines has been forthcoming, “...we have proven that current and incoming vaccines will cope with the control of variants” (source: Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Madrid - is.gd/rwNGol). Moreover, it is a fact of evolutionary biology that the virus will evolve in a benign direction anyway (source: New Scientist - is.gd/QOlxoZ), and the occurrence of variants of genuine concern become increasingly unlikely.
5. It has been known from quite early on that the virus is
poorly adapted for outside environments (sources: Environmental Research is.gd/jMqhBu, HPSC Ireland is.gd/XtabWv). That is why there isn't any law or even any guideline requiring masks outside. It is why the recent government
advice has been to get outside ('hands, face, space and fresh air'),
albeit about a year too late in my opinion. No resurgent wave followed
any of the beach crowds last year (source: Professor Woolhouse is.gd/zdeYwO), or the VE day parties or the BLM march or its counter protest or any of the anti lockdown marches.
So, both events were what would normally be described as 'safe' in these regards. At this stage and in this light, it would only be a demonstration of cognitive dissonance to imagine that a mass event that you don't agree with risks an epidemic resurgence and a few weeks later a march that you do agree with one hundred times the size, does not. There was in fact little if any risk of this for either event. There may have been some bawdy behaviour by some individuals at the park. A claim to a comparative moral high ground for the march is not beyond debate, given the clearer evidence of criminally violent behaviour (source: Telegraph is.gd/yWN8Ss / Standard is.gd/21U2vH), and the ensuing displays of ethnic prejudice (source: BBC is.gd/abnLX5). Given the risk of the reduction of millions of young adults life expectancy from the debilitating consequences from the prohibition of freedom of assembly, the criticism of some admittedly messy antics in Nottingham park - Freedom of assembly for me but not for thee - looked very unfair. As always I can't rule out the possibility that I am wrong.
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