Resisting the Biosecurity State

By | 29th April 2021

These are extraordinary times, and not just because we are coming through the greatest national trauma since the Second World War.
The vaccination programme is something close to a modern miracle. There is further good news in the startling success of the treatments we are pioneering for coronavirus patients. The UK is leading the world in these areas.
Yet, as the past week has shown, the nation is facing another threat – one which is both unprecedented and deeply troubling.
We are witnessing the birth of what you might call the ‘biosecurity state’, a new world in which politicians and the scientists who advise them decide that suppressing disease is more important than the human freedoms we take for granted….

It is time for the Prime Minister and his advisers to level with the public and admit that some risk of sickness and death is the price we pay for leading normal lives. .. Or have those in power now privately concluded that the ‘new normal’ means permanently sacrificing our liberties in order to control disease, something that has never been a proper role of government? Will we be compelled to wear face masks in the winter months, but this time to guard against flu?
We must resist such calls. Democracies no longer die at the hands of men with guns but from within – at the hands of their elected leaders.

A Social Science Space blog

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