There has been published a very interesting report entitled ‘Viral Myths’ by the Institute of Economic Affairs, a free market think tank, about the response of various nations and governmental systems to the covid pandemic. I’ve read this report and it is quite fascinating as, bearing in mind that it comes from an organisation that promotes the free market, it does praise the response of some countries that are plainly not free market economies. The report said that Vietnam, a socialist country, did better than some Western or Asian free market economies when it comes to dealing with covid, something I would not have expected to be said by an organisation that promotes the free market.

This report looks to me to be pretty fair and relatively balanced, although the reaction of the Left to this report is anything but, and goes into such matters as how the Asian nations had a ‘folk memory’ of the SARS outbreak earlier this century which may have meant that they were better prepared than for example the UK which was relatively untouched by the SARS epidemic. It also found that some countries that had healthcare systems that have heavy state involvement such as Singapore didn’t suffer as much as Britain’s NHS did and that Taiwan and Hong Kong who have greater trade and a more open border to China than some Western nations have and therefore more exposure to Covid, also did relatively well when it comes to excess deaths.

The report was pretty fair minded and the author, Kristian Niemietz and the IEA stepped out of their ideological box to a very great extent in both its study and conclusions. The report looked at what worked and what didn’t in a relatively dispassionate way and this I believe gives the report a great deal of weight.

Unfortunately, our friends on the Left when considering the report not only showed their own conformation bias against it but some dismissed it without even bothering to read it. As one Twitter lefty said: ‘As soon as I saw it was from the IEA, I didn’t bother reading further’. Because the report criticised some aspects of UK public health policy regarding covid such as not imposing border restrictions early enough when compared to some countries and pouring cold water on the idea that the NHS has been a ‘stellar performer’, the Left and the NHS worshippers started to scream. As good example of such a knee jerk biased scream can be found in the Tweet below.

The report is in my view correct. The NHS was nothing special when faced with covid. Some things it may have got correct but it also got a lot wrong. What’s worse is that the NHS got stuff wrong that other healthcare systems with heavy state involvement did not. I find it a great irony that the Lefties showed their confirmation bias over a report that to a large extent criticised such bias.

We should be able to debate big matters such as whether the NHS is fit for purpose or whether some other form of healthcare system, such as the mixed public/private system as used by the Germans or whether the state run but patient funded via compulsory insurance route as used by the Singaporeans would be better. Turning the NHS into some form of state secular religion, which both the Left and the Government have done stops Britons from having the very necessary conversation that we need to have about whether our current healthcare arrangements are fit for purpose. Personally I don’t believe that they are and instead of a flexible, agile service where patients have choices and which might have dealt with covid and other conditions better, instead we have a massive bureaucratic monster. This monster which wastes money that should be used for front line care and treats its users not as individual patients but mere impersonal ‘units’ has not performed well even when compared with other state run systems. Sadly the Left, which should welcome conversations about how best to run a comprehensive healthcare system choose to merely scream ‘murder’ at the very idea that we should have such a conversation.