“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”In countries like Australia, which claim to value Western democratic principles of liberty and rule by the people, the perception is that civil rights are codified into the legal framework just as they are in the US. However, there are some glaring differences and issues; specifically, Australian citizens (like many European citizens) have absolutely no means to compel their government or the elites that influence their government to limit themselves. It is these nations, in which the populations have been mostly disarmed and pacified, that any agenda for tyranny will first be established. But we will get to that in a moment...
| Serological tests on 21,387 residents of Delhi by the Indian Centre for Disease Control suggest that 23.5 per pent of the city’s population have antibodies to Sars-Cov-2, the virus which causes Covid-19. Remarkably, this is a higher proportion than has been measured in New York, where 22.7 per cent were found to have been infected with the virus. The tests in Delhi were carried out between 27 June and 10 July. Since then, the epidemic seems to have peaked and receded. The infection rate comes as a surprise given Delhi’s relatively low numbers of deaths. As the population of Delhi’s National Capital Territory is 16 million, the antibody figures suggest that 3.76 million people in the city have been infected. Up until Saturday, the Indian government had recorded 3,571 deaths in Delhi. That would give an Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of just 0.094 per cent. |
| A report from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health has reviewed the evidence on whether individuals in the community who don’t have Covid-19 symptoms should wear face masks to reduce the spread of the virus. It says randomised trials show a small protective effect from wearing medical face masks, but a nationwide training programme would be needed as incorrect use limits their effectiveness. On the use of non-medical face masks, it says there is ‘no reliable evidence’. The review concludes that, with infection rates low in Norway, ‘assuming that 20% of people infectious with Sars-CoV-2 do not have symptoms, and assuming a risk reduction of 40% for wearing face mask, 200,000 people would need to wear facemasks to prevent one new infection per week in the current epidemiological situation’. So, ‘wearing face masks... is not recommended for individuals in the community without respiratory symptoms’. |
