The Year the World Went Mad
tarahenley.substack.com
Feb 8 • 33M
The Year the World Went Mad
My interview with British epidemiologist and author Mark Woolhouse
Appears in this episode
Tara Henley
Conversations with heterodox authors and journalists from around the world, asking the questions that are not being asked.
Episode details
6 comments
In July of 2020, in The New Statesman, my guest on today’s program wrote, “I fear that history will judge lockdown as a monumental mistake on a truly global scale.” At that time, there was surprisingly little debate over an unprecedented public health intervention.
But that dialogue is starting to happen now, and my guest’s recent book is one reason why.
Mark Woolhouse is a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh. He’s also the author of The Year the World Went Mad: A Scientific Memoir.
Mark Woolhouse is my guest, today on Lean Out. Transcript to come for paid subscribers.
The Year the World Went Mad
The prevailing wisdom reflected in the plans for dealing with a global pandemic never included extended lockdowns because it was assumed that the people would not accept it. There are three reasons it prevailed:
One - the media and big tech owned and controlled by Wall Street and Wall Street managing the assets of the billionaires that also own and control the major multinational corporations including big pharma… and all of this colluding with government bureaucrats who financially benefit… and all committed to leveraging the massive financial benefits from changing consumer habits that included destroying small independent producers that compete with large consolidated corporations.
Two - massive government deficit spending to convince consumers and business to go along.
Three - Trump Derangement Syndrome causing liberals to chew off their own arms and legs only to oppose everything they can be convinced opposes Trump and his supporters.
I agree with much that the author said and certainly the sight of politicians debating the minutia of what you could and couldn't do was idiocy. But who did Mr Woodhouse think should have been making the decisions? The forecasters? The chief medical officer? The head of our health service? I am a Brit and observed these people taking the most extreme positions on lockdowns.
Left to the committee of scientist advising government the UK lockdown would have gone on much longer than it did.
My guess is that Mr Woodhouse was a lone voice amongst the government advisers. He was right, but dumping the blame on the politicians is a false conclusion.