Notes on Brendan O’Neill with Peter Hitchens (Episode 18 on April 3, 2020).
The episode can be found in its entirety here: https://www.spiked-online.com/podcast-episode/in-this-lockdown-dissent-is-a-moral-duty/
or, of course, on iTunes or Youtube if you search. Here is a (far from exhaustive) summary. Keep in mind much of this is about the UK. But there is little difference in policy between the UK and most Australian States even if there is a chasm of difference in circumstance. So the points these two make are even more relevant here in Australia where the lockdown is as severe but the COVID situation far from as serious. Brendan makes much of his Marxist credentials - as he says he "likes the older stuff" where Marx praised capitalism. These days he is a real defender of liberty and free speech. Peter is an erudite conservative. I recently referred to him on Twitter, with affection, as a contrarian: he took some umbrage as I guess a good contrarian would :)
Whatever the case about disagreeing with Peter on whether "contrarian" is a complement (willing to stand up against received opinion) or insult (taking an opposing opinion for the fun of it), Peter's voice at a time like this is needed. The following notes sometimes distinguish between who says what and sometimes not. These are not supposed to be highly polished sources for quotes - more just a rough summary of ideas:

• We are all under some form of house arrest. Peter is distressed and aggrieved that people did not stand up to the bullying and that people are conformist. Parliament just folded up and no institutions seemed to stand against these sudden changes. There is only one “official” point of view such as in the Soviet Union.
• The virus causes great harm to older people and vulnerable people. But for the first time we have stored up “immeasurable” suffering for the future. Peter says: the way to solve this seems to be to strangle the economy. Compares this to a doctor treating a measles patient by cutting off one’s leg and then, once recovered from both declares “how wonderful - it worked”. (I note here my friend Scott had the criticism of this analogy which is that if the man had pneumonia and was treated with antibiotics but had complications from the antibiotics: this is more like it. Which is quite right. We might also add to this: an *untested* antibiotic which could indeed cure the disease but also cause some even worse outcome long term).
• Many countries did different things - South Korea vs the UK vs China vs Singapore. There is a lot of post-hoc ergo procter hoc fallacies going on (we did “X” and then “Y” happened so therefore X caused Y).
• Is this serious enough to put people into house arrest, destroy business, saddle people with suicides, heart attacks and distress and require future generations to pay off? All inflicted on people who will suffer no or very mild symptoms whilst those others could have been effectively quarantined?
• The failure to debate all this is frightening.
• What about the healthy old who, in their twilight years, are deprived of many of the things that make life worth living? (I might add: can we account for the number of people effectively killed by the lockdown? Who fall and are not found? Who just lose the will to continue? Whose depression causes their immunity to lessen or the tumour to grow, etc, etc).
• There is a shutting down of the discussion by those who wish to say “you do not care enough about lives when you speak of the economy” as if it is an either/or. No, it’s lives vs lives.
• How do we pay for hospitals and doctors in the future if we are in such debt?
• Certain experts who convey “correct opinion” are plucked out and thrust forward, whilst others, even if equally qualified, are ignored because they are too libertarian.
• A certain strata of society may be so aloof from daily economic life that they do not understand the importance of work and production.
• Peter saw what happened in the Soviet Union when middle class people, out of work for an extended period were forced to the side of the road selling their possessions. It is not like this is impossible in the modern world and it’s just been made more possible. Economic collapse is not like nuclear war: people are instead left alive to see the ruination of their lives and the ghosts of their former selves.
• It is the extreme safety and comfort of the modern world that has made it very hard for people to see the danger of economic collapse.
• Brendan: there seems to be a relish for dystopia - almost a glee some are taking in the newly authoritarian nations we find ourselves in. There is a welcoming of authoritarians - a desire to be ruled and told what to do and to be instructed by Chief Medical Officers none of us ever voted for. Few people bristle at this - instead certain sections welcome it.
• Peter: People have not been brought up to be free. Social media makes people more conformist: there is one way to look, talk and view the world. In the past we were proud to be free and individualistic. We were proud the police knew their place.
• A country that shuts itself down will be less able to afford protective equipment for its doctors in the future.
• Police overreach: police telling people not to buy non-essential items and not to visit parks. Some police respect the old traditions - but others seem to enjoy the new officiousness. Can people appeal to the bill of rights of 1689?
• Peter doesn’t like metric measurements :) 
• Peter says he feels being part of a country that has adopted a new religion to which he does not belong. He dons a scarf to hide his face when at the Supermarket and does keep his distance in a long queue outside the store and thanks the staff for taking risks. He does all this as he would in any foriegn country: respect it’s traditions whilst inwardly thinking “so much of this is ridiculous”. Even to say hello to someone coming the other way on a public path can be treated with a sharp turn of the face.
• Brendan: people reporting their neighbours for leaving their homes more than once a day.
• Peter: we may never recover from it. The civil courage of the country is lost. The closing and locking of Churches has not happened since King John. Even in congregations where there is almost no one attending services anyways - those churches were closed.
• Peter “This is what has happened to the country of Magna Carta and The Bill of Rights and Habeas Corpus: we are actually supine under the stern gaze of the supposedly benevolent state.”
• Once you have gone under the yoke you have lost some virtue that you may never be able to stand up again to it.
• Authorities may have some problems in the “less socialised” areas sooner or later.
• Brendan: Intellectual conformism. People conforming to some emergency measures is, of course, for the good. But the intellectual conformism is chilling. People are being vilified and demonised and shamed for objecting at all to the lockdown. Surely now dissent is more important?
• Peter: It’s a moral duty to dissent if you think things are wrong. In any case, there is no policy ever devised which cannot be improved by being debated and which cannot be improved by being exposed to opposition.
• Peter on the Queen Mother’s constitutional theory: The best government is “A good old fashioned Tory Government with a strong Labour Opposition. That’s the ideal” ;)
• It’s the STRONG opposition that is the crucial part of that quip.
  

You can return to my series of notes from podcasts on Corona here