Along comes a virus
a post-modernist picture story from Britain
People with authoritarian tendencies, of which there are many in the west, admire China’s idea of social harmony & stability. For example, seeing religious people as unhealthy and wishing millions of muslims were locked up; as they are in East Turkistan. Such people reason to themselves that there are things we can learn from the Chinese. The fact that China is a police-state where freedom of expression, unions and religion are stamped out by exile, torture and death — is overlooked.
So, along comes the virus in March 2020 and we watched in amazement the TV images from China of people caught in nets and bundled off to prison for breaking lockdown rules. British leaders sat down together and said to themselves. “…well, if it’s good enough for Chinese citizens, it is good enough for our people also. The ‘great unwashed’ love a bit of strong leadership — don’t they Sir Humphrey”. “Yes Minister.”
Where social problems are concerned people talk about a “solution”. As if life has an answer like a quadratic equation. Hitler had a ‘final solution’, the Chinese have ‘solutions’. This thinking caused panic and hysteria when clinical reality, calmness and common sense were so needed — to protect the most vulnerable from infection and to protect those who would continue to be at risk from problems like cancer during the pandemic.
Leaders could not resist the temptation to stir up emotions. Health and safety fascism was surprisingly popular in free societies.
But the COVID virus was allowed to eclipse other forms of suffering and terminal conditions. Cancer, heart disease, mental health, dementia etc. Reality was not allowed to interfere with the Lockdown fantasy. Nothing else was allowed to be relevant. There was no context, no sense of reality or proportion. Perspective no longer existed. This might be described as ‘post-modernist fascism’.
In case you doubt the scale of suffering caused in the name of lockdown consider this. From the beginning of the pandemic to May 2021, 174,000 care home residents died in England and Wales spending their last weeks and days alone and abandoned. To ‘comfort the dying’ used to be a primary duty of a Christian. The Church’s complicity in the perpetration of this evil is horrifying. Test kits and vaccines were available for most of this period.
In a free society it is impossible to control a respiratory virus without taking away people’s freedoms. But, like tyranny, freedom is an ‘all-or-nothing’ proposition. But worse than that, supporters of ‘lockdown’ in government, in the civil service and in the media caused thousands of avoidable deaths from other preventable illnesses such as cancer. Dangerously stupid people in senior positions of responsibility contributed to additional deaths and caused untold suffering, much of it avoidable.
Forced vaccination policies demeaned Health workers who are, of all people, part of the solution and not part of the problem. Making their lives more difficult deterred them from working and this is a death sentence for many elderly with no one at home to care for them. Nurses and care workers are capable of reason where vaccination is concerned. They are not herd animals unable to think for themselves. The official attitude caused thousands to leave jobs in health and care when they are so desperately needed.
Throughout this farce, the British leader, Boris Johnson, behaved like a clown dictator and is now being treated like one. Lockdown was a dangerous, destructive myth peddled by a mindless press and a cynical parliament. They are now trying to unload the mess on Boris — to save themselves — but they are all complicit.
The UK has entered a crisis of leadership.
