The trial of the century

In February 2030, a month-long trial takes place at the United Nations in Geneva. On trial are the surviving leaders and scientists who in 2020 and 2021 instigated the most draconian public health response in history, which went on to have profound and overwhelmingly negative consequences in numerous different areas of life.

Day 1

The leader of the Chinese Communist Party in 2020, Xi Jinping, was assassinated by his own comrades in 2025, so cannot stand trial for wilfully covering up the origins of Covid-19 and seeding it throughout the world by failing to stop international flights out of China. The current leader of China, his cousin, Ming Chai, refuses to attend the trial, sending instead an elderly scientist who is said to have worked at the Wuhan lab of Virology. He fails to say a single word in response to questions, so the first day concludes unsatisfactorily.

Day 2

Footage is shown in court of Chinese people collapsing in the street in early 2020, footage that had been beamed around the world. A number of disease experts are called, and say there is no possible way the virus could have caused people to die like that. The Chinese scientist remains silent.

Day 3

Internet experts are cross-examined about social media messages calling for other countries to lock down in early 2020. They unequivocally state that the vast majority of these came from Chinese sources - masses of bots copied in the names of world leaders and urged them to follow China. The court is also interested to know why PCR tests were, for the first time ever, used in mass testing, and why the CCP/WHO recommended they were set at such a high number of cycles, which vastly increased their sensitivity. Also, why did the Chinese stop citizens from leaving Wuhan for other areas of China but didn't stop international flights? The Chinese scientist remains silent.

Day 4

The prime minister of Italy in 2020, Giuseppe Conte, appears before the court. He is charged with bowing to pressure from China to declare the civilised world’s first ever ‘lockdown’ in February 2020. Under questioning Conte is asked why he acted so. He blames the Press: “We had asked our gravediggers to quarantine because of the virus, and that is why our military moved in to bury the dead. This was shown on the news. It looked like our health service was collapsing! I had to do something!” 

Day 5

Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo is brought to the stand. Prosecutors ask him why he discharged thousands of Covid patients into hospitals in the early stages of the pandemic. Cuomo angrily denies he did so, but facts defeat him. One wag comments that he was probably too busy writing his book Leadership Lessons From The Covid-19 Pandemic to keep an eye on what was going on.

Day 6

Professor Neil Ferguson takes the stand. Prosecutors first furnish the court with his previous predictions - in 2002, he predicted up to 150,000 deaths from CJD; the actual death toll was 2,704; in 2005, he predicted that bird flu could kill up to 200 million people; the actual death toll was 455 - before taking him to task for his Imperial College modelling for Covid. It is put to him that he forecast 600,000 deaths in the UK, whereas there were eventually around 130,000. Ferguson confidently states that the figure was not reached because of measures put in that he recommended, at which point the prosecutor brings up his college’s modelling for Sweden, which did not take any of the measures recommended by Ferguson: 85,000 deaths were forecast, whereas in reality there were around 15,000. Similar tables are produced for US states Texas, Florida and South Dakota, along with countries like Finland, Switzerland and Denmark, which had light restrictions for a short amount of time and did not suffer anything like the amount of fatalities that Ferguson’s model predicted.

Day 7

Ferguson is asked why, if he believed in his own restrictions, he chose to break them by having sexual relations with a woman outside his ‘bubble’. He retorts that he resigned because of his conduct. It is then pointed out that within weeks he was back in essentially the same post. “I couldn’t help it if the BBC kept wanting to interview me!” he wails.

Day 8

A morbidly obese Boris Johnson waddles into court. He had been trying to hide away in Monte Carlo with his fifth wife, but international law brought him to Geneva. Questioning starts with his conduct in early 2020, when he boasted about shaking hands with everyone he met on a hospital visit, apparently ended every Cabinet meeting with a grin and a thumbs up, and was too busy in the divorce court to address the threat coming out of China. In a rambling 15-minute monologue, he manages 14 hesitations, 18 repetitions and 33 deviations.

Day 9

Johnson is straight up asked: did he consider the implications of shutting Britain down on 23 March, 2020? Did he do any cost-benefit analysis whatsoever? Did he weigh up the cost to the economy, to education, to other health conditions, including mental health? A meandering 10-minute exercise in bluster ends with the word “no”.

Day 10

Prosecutors today quiz Johnson on his U-turns and lies. Why in March 2020 did he say it would be just “three weeks to flatten the curve”? Why did he say that the UK “can turn the tide on this in 12 weeks”? Why did he say a second lockdown was “a nuclear option” and then have one? Why did he say to cancel Christmas would be “inhuman” and then do it? Why did he say masking schoolchildren would be “nonsensical” and then do it? Why did he say on 4 January, 2021 that schools would remain open and then close them on 5 January? Why did he initially say vaccines were the way out of Covid and then later say it was lockdowns that had helped the UK beat it? Why did he constantly rule out vaccine passports and then try to introduce them? Johnson’s most coherent response is: “Fuff fuff fuff mmmm ah, well… jolly blighters… um… inverted pyramid of piffle… well, Matt Hancock was f***ing useless.”

Day 11

Johnson is confronted by a barrage of data on things that resulted from his lockdowns: an NHS waiting list that was 35 times longer at the end of the crisis than the start of the crisis; a national debt that ballooned to 100% of annual GDP; steep tax rises throughout the 2020s; at least 20,000 children disappearing from school rolls in 20/21; spikes in alcoholism, depression, suicide, dementia and domestic abuse; the much wider gap between rich and poor that marked his premiership; the subjugation of Parliament; his turning of Britain into a virtual police state with the Coronavirus Act, and vastly more besides.

Day 12

An increasingly poorly looking Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is interrogated about exactly what public health messaging he signed off on. Did he sign off on the advert, withdrawn by the ASA, that said joggers are “highly likely to have Covid”?  What about the one where people swerve around each other in the street, even though by that point it had long been known that outside transmission in that fashion was unheard of? What about the “look into her eyes” posters, were they signed off by him? Or the one which said “If you go out, you can spread it. People will die”? Or the “Anyone can get it” messaging, even though it was long known by that point that people in their eighties were literally 100 times more at risk from this disease than those in their twenties. And was it wise to tell an already paranoid population to “Act like you’ve got it”? Was any of this ethical? Was that aspect even considered? Johnson begins careering around the court wildly, incoherently barks phrases like “f*** business!”, “build back gender-neutral!”, “what’s wrong with woke?” and “where’s my teddy bear?” and is eventually led out, weeping.

Day 13

British health secretary at the time Matt Hancock, now a road sweeper, is brought before the court. He is first asked why Britain had such problems acquiring adequate PPE; he is then asked why he discharged Covid cases into care homes. He is next asked why from March 2020 people could be sectioned on the advice of a single doctor rather than two doctors, as previously. Later he is asked why he withheld vital good data from the prime minister in June 2021, ensuring that Johnson delayed ‘freedom day’ by a month. He is also asked why he gave a lucrative contract for Covid test kit work to a friend who owned a pub who had no experience in medical supplies. He is asked why he said he would “cry freedom” when all vulnerable groups had been jabbed but then didn’t declare it when they were. He is asked why, when around 70% of infections were picked up in hospitals and care homes, was hospitality shut down (which accounted for 2% of transmissions). He is asked why he wore a mask in the open air in Downing Street but was pictured immediately removing it on entering the building. Why, when it was known that fresh air, sunshine and exercise were good for you, did the government stop people going out? He is asked why he kept people from making love, or holding the hand of a dying relative, or seeing their lonely friends, while he conducted an affair with one of his colleagues. He has no answers.

Day 14

Michael Gove enters the courtroom but everyone else leaves because he is so repulsive.

Day 15

Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance take the stand. Vallance is asked why he later seemingly deviated on statements he made on 13 March, 2020, such as: “When you look at infections across whole communities, when you get up to about 60% who've had it, you get something like herd immunity which means we're then all a bit protected from it”, “We're going to be asking people to be isolated for long periods of time. And that in itself comes with risks and hazards in terms of their own health from other things”, and “We know that the people most likely to get most seriously ill are the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions.” Whitty is asked why he U-turned on this statement he made around the same time: “In terms of wearing a mask, our advice is clear: that wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all. So we do not advise that.” The gentlemen are then quizzed as to why in November 2020 they presented a forecast live on national television that said that unless there was another lockdown there would be “4,000 deaths a day”, which, as the prosecutors pointed out, would be more than Brazil, a country of 150 million more people than the UK, had at its peak earlier in the year.

Day 16

The prosecutor asks about Vallance’s politics. Vallance says it is none of his business. The prosecutor says he only mentions it because he heard a rumour that Vallance was a far-left socialist and perhaps saw lockdowns as a way to usher in big-state socialism. Vallance says this is preposterous. The prosecutor asks whether Vallance holding shares worth £600,000 in pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline was not a conflict of interest as the company was contracted by the government to develop a Covid vaccine. Vallance goes purple with rage. 

Day 17

Dr Anthony Fauci, now 90 years old and held up by a bamboo cane, is cross-examined. Why did he deny that US money was used to fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, when there is proof that it was? He is also asked why he changed his mind on masks, and why he said the following on 8 March, 2020: “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is.” The court cites the lack of evidence for the efficacy of masks and the wealth of evidence about the deleterious effects on children’s health from wearing them, and asks Fauci why in July 2021 he recommended that children three and older should wear them. A further blizzard of accusation and counter-accusation ensues, until the exchange resembles a scene from The Sopranos.

Day 18

Joe Biden has sadly resided in a nursing home since 2022, but the person who replaced him, Kamala Harris, is on the stand. She is asked to justify anti-vax statements from the US Democratic Party. She is asked why in 2020 Biden said: “If and when the vaccine comes it’s not likely to go through all the tests and trials that are needed to be done” and “When we finally do, god willing, get a vaccine, who’s going to take the shot? You going to be the first one to say sign me up, they now say it’s okay.” Harris is also asked why she said: “If Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, I’m not taking it.” Was this not dangerous “misinformation”? Her answer includes the word “Trump” on 17 occasions.

Day 19

The World Health Organization is grilled. The main focus of the questioners is why it hurriedly jettisoned its 2011 Pandemic Preparedness Plan, based on decades of scientific input, in March 2020. Why did officials change their mind almost literally overnight on everything from international travel, business closures and stay-at-home orders, and later, mask mandates? The prosecution calls on several witnesses who testify under oath that the WHO did so because it was in the pocket of the Chinese Communist Party. Officials are asked why they ignored warnings about the virus from Taiwan in early 2020, but claim not to understand the question. At this point there is an electrical fault, everything in the room stops working, and the proceedings have to be adjourned.

Day 20

More international leaders take the stand. First up is former Australian premier Scott Morrison, deposed in a coup five years earlier, who is asked to explain his zero-Covid strategy. He claims he was only doing the best “for my people, who I dearly love”. Prosecutors pontificate that it’s a strange sort of love that prevents millions of people from hardly leaving their home for months on end, stopping them from seeing relatives abroad for several years, wrecking one of the world’s fastest growing economies, and leaving his population susceptible to all manner of infections for most of the 2020s.

Day 21

Former Canadian premier Justin Trudeau is in the limelight. His cross-examination includes the poser: “Why did hospitals in Quebec insist that women giving birth should wear a mask?” 

Day 22

Ex-South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa is grilled about his coronavirus strategy, which led to the acceleration of the collapse of his country. The prosecution contends that his lockdowns stoked violence, widespread looting, rioting, and land-grabs of farms, while exacerbating poverty in an already poor country that could not afford nearly 500 days of mandatory stay-at-home orders. 

Day 23

It’s now Emmanuel Macron’s turn. Why, the court asks, did he stop unvaccinated citizens from being able to access restaurants, bars, trains and planes, and how does he not feel responsible for the collapse of French society that this ushered in, with ethnic minorities among those rioting night after night to demand the restoration of their basic liberties. Macron gives an especially French shrug.

Day 24

Now it’s the international media in the dock. Officials for British media regulator Ofcom are questioned over their advice in March 2020 to broadcasters, which included the sentence “we remind all broadcasters of the significant potential harm that can be caused by material relating to the Coronavirus”, while BBC apparatchiks are asked to what degree they adhered to it. The BBC is asked to justify the way it continually focused on bad news, rather than good. One report cited is from July 2021 by health editor Hugh Pym, titled "Covid: Medical staff ‘distressed’ by third wave" on its online news page, and featured as a segment on the national 6 o’clock and 10 o’clock news as well as on regional bulletins. Staff at a north-eastern hospital were filmed saying that they were “exhausted and distressed” by critically unwell patients, and there were extremely alarming and downbeat statements from local politicians; an independent journalist then did some research and found that there had not been one single Covid death in the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust for the past seventy-six days.

Day 25

Print publications are asked to justify some of their headlines from the period. Britain’s Daily Mirror is considered to be one of the worst offenders, with dozens of front pages that a psychologist says “will likely have had a profound and severely negative impact on ordinary people’s mental equilibrium by a distortion of statistics and the presentation of data in a maliciously skewed fashion.” 

Day 26

Big tech is now under the microscope. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is asked why his website banned all discussion of the lab leak theory from the Wuhan Institute for over a year, despite investigators later concluding that it was an extremely plausible explanation (the true origin of the virus has never been discovered, as the Chinese accidentally destroyed or mislaid evidence). YouTube bosses are asked why they ’shadow-banned’ several scientists and journalists who were sceptical of the efficacy of lockdowns, or just removed videos altogether, even if they included the likes of Nobel Prize winner Michael Levitt and Karol Sikora, a former director of the WHO Cancer Programme. Twitter’s Jack Dorsey is pressed for information on why Twitter took down thousands of accounts that “violated Twitter’s rules regarding misinformation”. Google bosses are asked why the results at the top of their searches "tended to promote a lockdown narrative”.

Day 27

A day spent examining technical issues. The court wonders why governments made such a major issue of asymptomatic transmission, when evidence suggests that fewer than one in ten infections may have been picked up in this manner. Also, why, for the first time in medical history, were positive PCR tests referred to as 'cases'? A prosecutor speculates that it is almost as if governments deliberately terrified their own people to control them. And how many people around the world died with Covid rather than of Covid? After years of being obstructed in their research, investigators believe they roughly know the numbers. And it does not make pleasant reading for those who claimed Covid was as bad as the Spanish Flu.

Day 28

The final day of the trial. Or, at least it was meant to be. The judge, in his summing up, contends that the proceedings have “barely scratched the surface”. He advises that another trial, lasting for a full year, should be instigated at the earliest opportunity. His closing statement is as follows: “I believe that the actions taken around the world at the start of this decade may have been the most disproportionate ever taken in a public health crisis. Governments could well have broken a plethora of international laws, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The negative effects on the development of children, and their education; the wilful neglect in many countries of patients who were suffering from conditions other than Covid; the plunging of 100 million of the poorest people in the world into further poverty; the way numerous governments used Covid as an excuse for authoritarianism; the way the media, both the mass media and social media, deliberately stoked hysteria and then proceeded to censor those who did not go along with whatever the official government line was at the time … These things can never be erased from history, but humanity must ensure that a response of this nature is never seen again. Sufficient thought - possibly no thought - was not given to the very serious implications of government actions that were taken in the heat of the moment, and once these actions had been taken, governments seemed reluctant to reverse them for fear that what they had done early on was seen to be mistaken. This might have been one of the most monstrous crimes in the history of the civilised world.” With these words hanging in the air, he exits the court room.