Hancock’s using crude propaganda

THE Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, seems to be entirely unaware of many important facts which have become clear over the past few months. Especially, he has not noticed that wild predictions of mass deaths, made in Sweden and this country in March, were not borne out in reality.

The important thing about this is that Sweden did not follow Mr Hancock’s policy of severe compulsory restrictions of normal life. The Swedes did not ‘let the virus rip’, as the zealots like to claim. They took moderate precautions.

Yet the predicted deaths did not take place. In fact, evidence from around the world still shows no connection between dictatorial, punitive rules and lower deaths.

Yet in Parliament on Thursday, Mr Hancock sneered at one of his rare Commons critics, the Shipley MP Philip Davies.

The Minister said: ‘It is perfectly reasonable to make the argument that we should just let the virus rip; I just think that the hundreds of thousands of deaths that would follow is not a price that anyone should pay.’ Mr Hancock, whose grasp of fact seems to me to be sketchy in general, has no reason to say that ‘hundreds of thousands’ of deaths would follow a wiser, more proportionate policy.

He could say it was possible, or that he thought it likely, but he does not know that it would happen, and he must be aware of the work of eminent scientists who think it would not happen.

And the caricature, that critics wish to ‘let the virus rip’, is shameful, crude propaganda rather than an argument.