Lockdowns should be made illegal in international law

It’s fascinating to read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the milestone document proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948, in light of the events of 2020.

Article 26 is “Everyone has the right to education” (our schools were closed for several months); Article 19 is “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression” (Ofcom advised the BBC and its other licensees to treat with extreme caution anyone criticising the advice of the “public health authorities”, and tech giants like YouTube and Twitter suppressed views that were lockdown-sceptical); Article 9 states “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile” (millions were essentially put under house arrest); and Article 3 says “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person” (lives were wrecked, liberties stolen).

It’s definitely worth a good look because there are several other Articles that also appear to be at odds with global government diktats this year (such as Article 12’s “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence”). Can we sue?

Lockdowns are cruelty dressed up as kindness, but even the ‘save lives’ argument doesn’t stand up. The only way lockdowns can save lives is if they stop health services from becoming overwhelmed, thus stopping staff from not treating some patients, leading to their deaths. But in Britain the NHS has never been close to being overwhelmed - the new Nightingale hospitals, constructed quickly at enormous expense, were barely used, and many hospitals remain half empty. The virus will do what it does - lockdowns just slow the rate of infection (possibly), and they cause enormous collateral damage. I could show you a graph of towns, US states or countries with Covid death rates and, unless you knew already, you would not be able to tell me which had lockdowns and which didn't, so similar would the graphs be (in fact non-lockdown death rates are often lower, not to mention the economic hit being vastly lower).

The government is currently preparing for four million unemployed, while the NHS’s waiting list is at an all-time high. Mental health problems will continue to engulf a large section of the population (some of those spared will likely be bureaucrats in Whitehall, with their Zoom meetings and fat pensions), some schoolchildren may never fully recover from their forced layoff.

Out in the wider world the story is horrific too. This page brilliantly summarises the unbelievable damage lockdowns cause, but to cut and paste just a few of its points:

The World Bank estimates over 71 million will be plunged into extreme poverty due to lockdowns/quarantines.

The United Nations has warned that response to Covid is reversing decades of gains in poverty, healthcare and disease.

The Gates Foundation estimates that the response to Covid has set back vaccination 25 years.

Unicef warns on the consequences of poverty and malnutrition for kids could harm millions. 

How tragic that this has happened after the world had been improving at a remarkable pace: a UN objective of reducing extreme poverty rates by half was met five years ahead of the 2015 deadline they had set themselves in 1990. 

There can only be one conclusion: the world must come together under the umbrella of the United Nations to declare that lockdowns must NEVER again happen. 

If the UN stands for anything surely it stands for the very opposite of what has been done in reaction to Covid - surely that Declaration could not make it clearer that lockdowns produce results that are anathema to an organisation that purports to improve the well-being of people on this planet, in particular the least wealthy and the least fortunate. 

Except in truly exceptional circumstances, where all other options have exhaustively been shown to not work, lockdowns should never be considered. There is a reason that they have never before been implemented in human history. Copying the example of one of the most horrible totalitarian regimes on Earth has been a tragic mistake that should never be repeated.

Lockdowns bludgeon the human race, and the scars caused by them in 2020 will be long to heal. We must start the campaign today to make them illegal in international law.