How Governments are Handling the "Second Wave" - Tiptoeing Toward Totalitarianism

Sometimes, governments are their own worst enemies.  Now that many of our so-called leaders are either threatening or making good on their threats to lock us down again, a brief look at data, sourced from government databanks is in order.  For the purposes of this posting, I will look at the data as provided by the United Kingdom on their Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK website.

Here are four pertinent graphs:

As you can see, while the number of positive COVID-19 daily tests has risen to nearly the level that they hit back in April, May and June, the number of deaths has remained muted as shown on this graphic which breaks down the number of deaths within 28 days of positive tests for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland:

In fact, if we look at the cumulative number of deaths within 28 days of positive COVID-19 tests, the line looks very, very flat:

Looking at the raw data, back on April 8, 2020, 975 people died in England, 4 people died in Northern Ireland, 52 people died in Scotland and 42 people died in Wales for a grand total of 1073 COVID-19 deaths in one day.  Since data is not always completely up-to-date, let's look at the number of people that died in these three nations on September 15, 2020; on that day, 15 people died in England, 1 person died in Northern Ireland, no people died in Scotland and 1 person died in Wales for a grand total of 17 COVID-19 deaths in one day or 1.6 percent of the deaths that occurred back in early April 2020.  This, despite the fact that the number of daily tests which has risen from 14,419 on April 8, 2020 to 207,718 on September 15, 2020 as shown here:

 Now, let's look at very recent news from the United Kingdom:

The new measures included masks in more settings, tougher enforcement of the rules and, according to Boris Johnson, the potential used of the military to help "free up the police" who presumably will be busy handing out tickets to those Brits daring enough to flaunt the rules.   

Here is Johnson's ministerial broadcast to his subjects:

Interestingly, despite his alarmist comments on the state of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom, his own government's statistics would show that there is relatively little cause for alarm.  That said, I do like the "early closing for bars and pubs" as though the SARS-CoV-2 virus doesn't become active until after 10 pm daily.  God help us all if we happen to find ourselves in a British pub at 10:01 pm!

Here are the "new rules":

Note that the government expects that these measures will be in place until March 2021.

There is no doubt that COVID-19 has taken a significant toll on the United Kingdom given that it has the highest official COVID-19 death toll in Europe, however, despite the release of new modelling showing that up to 50,000 U.K. citizens could test positive for COVID-19 by October, the current data from the very government clearly shows that the "herd has already been culled" with the most vulnerable having already died as a result of the virus.  There are only two things that can explain the rising number of positive test results and the falling number of deaths:

1.) The "culling of the herd" has already taken place with the most vulnerable (i.e. the elderly and those with serious comorbidities).

2.) The rising number of tests.

Let's close with this video showing what St. Petersburg Russia looks like now:

And Russia is supposed represent subjugation and the United Kingdom is supposed to represent freedom?

While many would say that those of us who live outside the United Kingdom shouldn't worry about this clampdown on U.K. citizens, the fact of the matter is that, among Western leaders, there are very few original thinkers and that it is quite often a case of "monkey see, monkey do".  Once one leader has tiptoed toward totalitarianism, many of the rest of the "monkeys" are certain to follow.