First, the Coronavirus has so far killed no more people than a seasonal influenza. Bearing in mind the use of statistical methods bordering on the fraudulent, it may have killed fewer than seasonal flu. For this reason, the Lockdown and the obsessive social distancing have been grossly disproportionate reactions.
Second, the Coronavirus panic is accelerating a set of changes that might otherwise have taken a decade or a generation, and these are mainly to the advantage of ordinary people. The move to homeworking insulates us from corporate serfdom. Anyone whose work is or can be on-line is set to do very well. Children have had six months of freedom from the prison that is school, and on-line tuition and home education are booming. The retreat from a globalised economy risks higher prices or some actual shortages. On the other hand, new production technologies enable economies of scale at lower levels of output than in the past. The benefits of a more localised economy include less shuffling upward of responsibility from semi-accountable national institutions to wholly unaccountable treaty organisations. As for these national institutions, the Coronavirus has provided a stress test that shows them as broken and in need of fundamental reform. It normally takes a lost war to show up this level of incompetence.
In short, the Coronavirus is another irrational panic – rather like AIDS and Mad Cow Disease and the Millennium Bug. It is a danger for the small minority whose poor health or particular lifestyle makes it a risk. But anyone who seriously believes that, unless we turn the world upside down, the streets are about to fill with the unburied dead is a fool.
The irony is that turning it upside down is taking us into a new and better world. This is not a conspiracy by the élites to make us slaves of the New World Order. It is an opportunity for ordinary people to undo much of the harm done by the expansion of state power in the twentieth century and to take back control of their lives.
“Plandemic” or The Hand of God? This book argues strongly for the latter view.
Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- THE CORONAVIRUS: A CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE NEW WORLD ORDER?
- EDUCATION AND THE CORONAVIRUS: TRYING TO LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE
- THE CORONAVIRUS PANIC: PURE WASTE OR MIDWIFE OF PROGRESS?
- THE CORONAVIRUS PANIC: COUNTING THE COST
- EDUCATION AND THE CORONAVIRUS: A FAREWELL TO SCHOOLING?
- THE CORONAVIRUS: “PLANDEMIC” OR THE HAND OF GOD?
- UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME: SOME POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ADVANTAGES
Sean Gabb is a writer and teacher whose books have been translated into German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Hungarian, Slovak and Chinese. He also directs the Centre for Ancient Studies.
