My final blog post (probably) + INDEX
The last day of this awful, ridiculous year seems like a good time to write what will probably be my last blog post on the subject of Covid and lockdowns.
This was the year when the world went mad. Throwing out decades of scientific guidance on how to deal with a viral pandemic, most countries embraced the methods of a totalitarian communist state, with predictably catastrophic consequences. Not only was the pandemic agonisingly stretched out, life as we knew it was upended in the most tragic and harmful way, with our economy trashed, our schools emptied, our liberties stamped upon, our health service unforgivably mangled, our faces muzzled for no good scientific reason, our mental health pulverised and our future conduct in health crises put on a highly worrying footing.
The lockdown fanatics got it wrong time after time. Wise medical practitioners were not listened to, governments preferring instead to adopt The Precautionary Principle on steroids. The USA allowed its greatest rival to inflict severe, probably irreparable damage upon it, and accelerated the decline of the West. Despite no good evidence for their efficacy, governments mandated dehumanising masks and inflicted destructive lockdowns on hapless populations, cheered on by a facile media who gave up any sort of proper investigative journalism to instead foster the hysteria that has characterised the last ten months.
The British government made a crisis into an existential catastrophe. Few governments turned their back on enlightenment principles and ignored evidence as much as ours did - for instance, the evidence suggested that international air travel, restaurants, pubs and gyms did very little to spread infections, but they shut them down anyway. The government had always to be seen to be doing something, even if that something did little good and made many other things worse. Constant scaremongering was the government's chosen weapon, as opposed to offering good quality, pertinent information and allowing people to make their own choices. You never heard that just one in 100 infections occurs outdoors, or that anyone under 50 who catches the virus has a 99.98% chance of recovery, or that of all the deaths that occurred worldwide this year, just 2% were attributable to Covid, and the vast majority of those deaths would have occurred anyway, as around 94% of victims had severe co-morbidities.
I could go on. But I'm tired. Too tired to be angry any more, just about. You can't stay angry forever. I think I've got five years older this year, angry and depressed, my blood pressure soaring daily to unprecedented, horrible heights.
Still, the year could have been worse: the ghastly Lewis Hamilton could have been knighted.
Oh...
Stay alert and sceptical here.
LINKS TO ALL POSTS (OLDEST FIRST; ONES I THINK ARE BEST ARE HIGHLIGHTED)
Whatever happened to Boris Johnson?
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