Talking points NEWS 21
9 April 2022 THE WEEKConversion therapy: a tricky compromise
“Have you ever noticed
that anybody driving slower
than you is an idiot, and
anyone going faster than
you is a maniac?”
George Carlin, quoted
on NBC
“A man is only as faithful
as his options.”
Chris Rock, quoted in
The Times
“Confidence is 10% hard
work and 90% delusion.”
Tina Fey, quoted on
Good Reads
“Monsters exist, but they
are too few in number to be
truly dangerous. More
dangerous are the common
men, the functionaries ready
to believe and to act without
asking questions.”
Primo Levi, quoted on
NextDraft
“We shape our buildings,
and afterwards our
buildings shape us.”
Winston Churchill, quoted
in The Atlantic
“Those whom the gods
wish to destroy, they first
call promising.”
Cyril Connolly, quoted
in The Times
“He knows nothing and
thinks he knows everything.
That points clearly to a
political career.”
George Bernard Shaw,
quoted in the
San Francisco Chronicle
“If everybody always lies to
you, the consequence is not
that you believe the lies, but
rather that nobody believes
anything any longer.”
Hannah Arendt, quoted in
The Washington Post
“You cannot protect
yourself from sadness
without protecting yourself
from happiness.”
Jonathan Safran Foer,
quoted in Oprah DailyThe plan to begin “living with
Covid” sounded great in theory,
said Charlotte Lytton in The Daily
Telegraph. In practice, though, it’s
proving problematic – as anyone
who has tried to take a trip
abroad lately will be all too aware.
Covid-related staff absences
caused massive delays at airports
this week, and the cancellation of
hundreds of flights. And with
Covid case numbers at an all-time
high in the UK – almost five
million people are estimated to
have the virus – other sectors are
also struggling to function. Offices
and schools are facing continuing
disruption, and the NHS is feeling
the strain as admissions and staff
sickness rise. In a further sign of how far we are
from living in a “post-virus world”, the NHS
updated the official list of Covid symptoms this
week to include nine new symptoms, including
loss of appetite, feeling tired, achey or sick, or
having a sore throat or headache.
Covid is a long way from being “over”, agreed
Christina Pagel in The Guardian. The common
assumption that the virus has become “endemic”
- just another seasonal disease like flu that we’ll
have to get used to living with – is wide of the
mark. In epidemiology, that term is generally
used to describe diseases that have become stable
and predictable. Covid is neither of those things
yet. We’re still being surprised by new variant
waves – the latest to hit Europe is Omicron
(BA.2) – that are causing
significant surges in infection.
And future variants could be
more lethal. The idea that
viruses always evolve to
become milder is another myth.
“Trying to ignore a disease that
is still so unpredictable feels a
bit like turning your back on a
hungry tiger in the
undergrowth.” Alas, the
Government has done just that,
said The Independent, by
prematurely scrapping the rules
on face coverings and
mandatory self-isolation, and
by ending free Covid testing for
all but a small number of
vulnerable people.Ministers should ignore the “predictably panicky
response from certain quarters” about the recent
jump in Covid infections, said The Daily
Telegraph. We couldn’t afford to keep universal
free Covid testing, which of course was never
actually “free” but was funded at great expense
by taxpayers. Britain spent over £15.7bn on
testing, tracing and isolation in 2021-2022. The
Government has rightly decided that Covid has
gone from being “an emergency to a manageable
problem” best addressed through vaccines. If this
requires rolling out another booster programme
across all age groups at some point, so be it.
“What we absolutely cannot do is return to
restrictions. Those societies that have taken
longer to lift them will pay a greater price.”Covid: were restrictions dropped too soon?
Debates over gender and identity are now
among “the most heated in our politics”, said
Robert Colvile in The Sunday Times. That’s why
“all hell broke loose” last week when the
Government indicated it was planning to U-turn
on its promise to ban all types of “conversion
therapy” – whether aimed at changing a person’s
sexual orientation or their gender identity. It
finally settled on a compromise: to outlaw gay
therapies, but not trans ones. Its reasoning is as
follows. Imagine two children: the first develops
feelings for someone of the same sex, and is
dragged by their conservative parents before an
“authority figure” to “crush” their inclinations;
the second is unhappy in their gender, but their
“tolerant” parents still want them to wait before
having irreversible medical treatment. The
Government is keen to “prevent the first scenario
without criminalising the second”. And polls
show this is in line with public opinion. Most
people support trans adults’ right to identify “as
they wish”, but feel changing gender should be a
considered process. We may not live in a utopia
for LGBT people, but neither the public nor the
Government is “viscerally hostile to trans rights”.
In which case, why is the Government willing to
let trans people undergo conversion therapies,
said Jayne Ozanne in The Guardian. As one who
suffered nearly 20 years of “healing prayer” and
even exorcisms to purge my attraction to
women, I know how harmful such therapy can
be. It’s even worse for trans people: the Govern-
ment’s own 2018 LGBT survey found they’re
nearly twice as likely as lesbians and gays to be
offered and to undergo interventions; and these
interventions, it found, may include beatings,
deprivation and verbal abuse. Trans conversion
therapy is banned in Brazil, Switzerland and
Germany, said Emma Flint on The Independent.
Here, however, the Tories regard the desire to
transition as they once viewed homosexuality:
as a disease that needs to be cured.But it’s wrong to treat gay rights and trans rights
as equivalent, said Lucy Bannerman in The
Times. No one in the gay rights movement has
sought to redefine “who is gay and who is
straight”. By contrast, “extremists in the trans
movement”, by prioritising “gender identity”
over biological sex, have tried to reclassify “how
humans are categorised” in various walks of life.
Some charities may see no problem in setting
trans-identifying young people on a path of
“experimental hormone treatments and lifelong
medication”, but it isn’t abusive for professionals
to question such practices even if others choose
to call such questioning “conversion therapy”.
On this difficult issue, “a variety of clinical
opinions” should be encouraged, not proscribed.Statistic of the week
More than one in four bus
services in England have
vanished in the past decade.
Between 2019 and 2021, the
number of miles covered by
bus routes dropped 18%.
Daily MailWit &
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