This Day in History: English journalist and author Peter Hitchens was born on this day in 1951. He is also the brother of Christopher Hitchens, one of the New Atheists and author of "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." Peter Hitchens is a Christian and a member of the Church of England, and he reviewed "God Is Not Great" which led to a public argument between the brothers. In the review, Peter claimed his brother's book made a number of incorrect assertions.
Lately, Peter Hitchens came out publicly against the government lockdowns in response to the coronavirus. According to Wikipedia:
He has referred to the UK government's Coronavirus lock down policy after 24 March 2020 as "the Great Panic" and was shocked by the enthusiastic embrace of it by the British public. He joined other high profile critics such as Lord Sumption and Toby Young in arguing that the full restrictive lock down after this date would have serious negative consequences as a result of restricting civil liberties, locking down a healthy population, and stalling a healthy economy. He argues that the government should have carried on like Sweden because, “the evidence from Stockholm, which has so far pursued a rational, proportionate, limited policy, still suggests that Sweden will emerge from this less damaged by far than we will.”
He cited examples of what he saw as questionable advice and information that the UK government had taken in the final decision to go into full lock down on 24 March. There were many "dubious statistics”, especially those from Imperial College London given by Neil Ferguson who claimed that there could be up to 500,000 COVID-19 deaths if the government did not impose a full lock down. In his Mail on Sunday blog, Hitchens identified Ferguson as being “one of those largely responsible for the original panic”.
Another "dubious statistic” he sees is that there was an inappropriate recording of cases and deaths relating to the virus. This was a result of a lack of differentiation in the death certificates between someone dying “of” the virus or “with” it. In his Daily Mail article on the 28 March 2020, Hitchens pointed out that when a patient died, hospital staff recorded COVID-19 on the death certificate even when the patient had died of other causes. He argues that the statistics about how deadly the virus had been skewed by not making the distinction between those who die as a direct result of the virus, and those who caught it but would have died anyway, or whose death was related to it but not directly caused by it.
See also: The Price of Panic
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