Time to hold people accountable for lockdowns

It’s practically straight out of Monty Python.

After years of terrorizing people about the “deadliest virus ever,” the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a new guidance, declaring that those who tested positive for COVID-19 need not isolate for five days.

In other words, COVID is to be treated “exactly the same as a flu or other respiratory illness.” Thus, “per the new guidance, coming down with a COVID variant — which a few short years ago would have meant two weeks of self-quarantine, multiple rounds of testing, and a fear of imminent death — should now be handled by staying home when sick, practicing good hygiene, and improving indoor air quality.” (“CDC Revises COVID Guidelines, Says to ‘Treat It Like the Flu’”; Valuetainment.com, March 2024)

“Ah,” but COVID apologists will say, “the reason for is because vaccines made COVID safer.” That is a lie contradicted by many commentators, including yours truly, most recently in my column, “The fact-checkers were wrong: Vaccines can harm people” (March 8, 2024).

Another egregious lie was that COVID-19 “does not discriminate,” which was used to justify the locking up of everyone in their homes for years. This was soon exposed.

An article in The Guadian about a then-new book, The Year the World Went Mad: A Scientific Memoir by Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the Usher Institute in the University of Edinburgh College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, opens by saying:�� “There was a distinctive moment, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, that neatly encapsulated the mistakes and confusion of Britain’s early efforts to tackle the disease, says Mark Woolhouse. At a No. 10 briefing in March 2020, cabinet minister Michael Gove warned the virus did not discriminate. ‘Everyone is at risk,’ he announced.

“And nothing could be further from the truth, argues Professor Woolhouse, an expert on infectious diseases at Edinburgh University. ‘I am afraid Gove’s statement was simply not true,’ he says. ‘In fact, this is a very discriminatory virus. Some people are much more at risk from it than others. People over 75 are an astonishing 10,000 times more at risk than those who are under 15,’” wrote The Guardian.

“We did serious harm to our children and young adults who were robbed of their education, jobs and normal existence, as well as suffering damage to their future prospects, while they were left to inherit a record-breaking mountain of public debt,” The Guardian quotes Professor Woolhouse. “All this to protect the NHS from a disease that is a far, far greater threat to the elderly, frail and infirm than to the young and healthy.” (“Britain got it wrong on COVID: long lockdown did more harm than good, says scientist”; The Guardian, Jan. 2, 2022)

And the incredibly damaging effects of the lockdowns have been well documented. According to the Washington Policy Center, one meta-analysis involving 18,000 studies found “that lockdowns reduced mortality in the United States and Europe by only 0.2% on average. They also looked at forced shelter-in-place, which reduced mortality by only 2.9% on average.

It said: “The researchers had this final conclusion: ‘While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.’” (“Comprehensive Research Finds That Lockdowns Don’t Work,” Washington Policy Center, Feb. 3, 2022; citing Herby, Jonas & Jonung, Lars & Hanke, Steve, 2022, “A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality,” Studies in Applied Economic 200, The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise. See also “COVID Lockdowns Were a Giant Experiment. It Was a Failure”; The Intelligencer, Oct. 30, 2023).

Another study was even more succinct: “Many original predictions are broadly supported by the research data including: a rise in non-COVID excess mortality, mental health deterioration, child abuse and domestic violence, widening global inequality, food insecurity, lost educational opportunities, unhealthy lifestyle behaviors, social polarization, soaring debt, democratic backsliding and declining human rights. Young people, individuals and countries with lower socioeconomic status, women and those with pre-existing vulnerabilities were hit hardest.” (“How Did the COVID Pandemic Response Harm Society? A Global Evaluation and State of Knowledge Review (2020-21),” Kevin Bardosh, University of Washington; University of Edinburgh – Edinburgh Medical School; May 22, 2023).

All that — the economic and human devastation — simply because policymakers wanted to exercise authoritarian power and refused to acknowledge that a virus with a 99% survival rate has practically no effect on healthy teens or younger and of moderate effect on healthy 50-year-olds or younger.

And this is on top of the fact that the lockdowns were, in all likelihood, illegal (see my column, “Is this lockdown even legal,” Sept. 16, 2021).

Furthermore, it is utterly disingenuous to claim that when the pandemic started nobody knew lockdowns were ineffective and harmful — experts had been shouting that fact from the beginning. There is a commonsense reason why “lockdowns have not been used to such a large extent during any of the pandemics of the past century” (see Herby, et.al., above).

It is surely time to hold people accountable for this incredibly disastrous policy.

Foreign corporations should study the possibilities of bringing a suit for damages before the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID; see my column, “Foreign investment damages under lockdowns,” ����ý, Nov. 12, 2020).

For Filipino citizens and private entities, they may likely sue the national or local government, individual government officials, even private establishments, whether it be businesses, schools, or residential condominiums, for damages incurred due to illegal and unjustified COVID measures, including lockdowns, mandatory vaccination, and even mask requirements. The constitutional prescription that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law or be denied the equal protection of laws is applicable to all and the responsibility of all.

That responsibility has been further legislated specifically in the Civil Code, particularly Articles 19, 20, 26, and 32. The penal code also provides for criminal proceedings where private individuals, without authority of law, coerced people to do things or stay in a place against their will (see “illegal detention,” “unlawful arrest,” or “grave coercion,” Articles 267, 268, 269, and 286, respectively of the Revised Penal Code) or where government officials, without authority of law, coerced people to do things or stay in a place against their will (see “arbitrary detention,” “violation of domicile,” “interruption of religious worship,” Articles 124, 128, 132, respectively, of the Revised Penal Code)

Bottomline, those responsible for the incredible loss or damage to life, liberty, property, the national economy, individual livelihoods, and people’s futures should be held to account. All for what? For a measly “0.2%” benefit just so some people could satisfy their lazy dictatorial tendencies through never-ending lockdowns.

Jemy Gatdula read international law at the University of Cambridge. He is the dean of the Institute of Law of the University of Asia and the Pacific, and is a Philippine Judicial Academy lecturer for constitutional philosophy and jurisprudence.

Twitter�� @jemygatdula