Ooookay people…so this week the government has finally revealed a potential way out of the pandemic imposed lockdown that has curtailed our freedoms for far longer than we thought possible. We are now embarked upon an irreversible path to freedom unless of course, we are instructed back to our bunkers should the data suggest it, in which case, I have no doubt we will be sold the idea that a u-turn is not the same as reversing back from whence we came.
The arguments into the ‘right’s and wrongs’ of the way the government has handled this countries response to Covid-19 will extend well beyond the current political point-scoring and I have nothing useful to add. I think they have done the best that they were capable of and have learned on the hoof as is the case for many other countries around the world. What I can say though, is that I have had cause to question my own responses to this unprecedented event in our lifetimes.
I have had my first jab and like most people am relieved to think that I am now protected against the worst effects of this awful virus. I received mine at a vaccination centre and was very impressed by the speed and efficiency that large numbers of people were being processed. I have had to wait far longer to take delivery of a 99 cone from an Ice-cream van on a hot day.
Somewhat embarrassingly, I found myself profusely thanking each one of the uber-polite and smiley vaccine marshals as though they had just nursed me through three weeks in intensive care instead of pointing a finger towards the place I needed to be next. I really hoped though, that this hitherto unknown, and new breed of helpful public servant, would not disappear again at the end of the crisis to be replaced by the usual shoulder-shrugging ignorant type we had before the onset of the pandemic.
As I proceeded through pathways marked out by rope as though I was queuing for a ride at Disney world I did question my excitement in this surreal scenario. I had no real way of knowing if I was walking down the path to freedom or along the proverbial plank. In truth, the only reason that I had decided to join this queue of gratefully compliant people was based solely on the content of Sky News, especially now that Kay Burley works in a food bank instead of on her breakfast programme.
Not once did I question the safety or efficacy of a vaccine developed in record time with anyone qualified to know outside of Facebook. I had decided to take it simply because Sky News said that I might die if I didn’t. As I observed needles going into arms and knowing that this was a scene replicated throughout the length and breadth of the country it amused me to think that, in the majority at least, we were all likely there because of what we had seen and heard on TV.
Don’t get me wrong I am no conspiracy theorist. I don’t think that Covid-19 is a hoax any more than I think we will ever know the real truth behind its origins. If this virus has been used as a reset button aimed at culling the worlds populous it seems an incredibly inefficient way of doing it when half the worlds population is starving to death anyway.
As for control, how much more do the perpetrators of this supposed Global con actually need? Whoever they actually are. We are already controlled by multiple societal constructs as it is which, all these newly dissenting voices have so far happily complied with. Yet now that we are being asked to wear a mask and wash our hands to the strains of happy birthday for twenty seconds a time, we are accused of sleepwalking towards a totalitarian state..
In Tiananmen Square, the protesters made their point by laying down their lives in front of armoured tanks, whilst the armchair warriors of today quote facts they have found on the internet on their iPhones as they wait for food from Deliveroo and binge-watch box sets about the apocalypse ordered from Amazon. Don’t you just love a free society?
Ok, so what if the Covid deniers are right? What if we all suddenly did wake up to this fake virus and accepted the very well hidden agenda behind it how exactly do we rage against it? Do we form whats-app groups dedicated to the impromptu organised slapping of people who insist on taking the mask? Should we hijack social venues and throw open their doors and try to teach our misguided NHS staff members that putting a patient on a ventilator for a minor case of the sniffles is not really necessary.
Whilst we are at it why don’t we round up all those evil money-making scientists who spend their every waking hour plotting the downfall of a virus that doesn’t even exist all for personal gain? Maybe we can rehabilitate them and show them the error of their ways in that they should be hugging not mugging the bug. After all, you can only imagine the effect on the mental health of a much-maligned spike protein when everyone in the world, bar none, wants you dead.
The thing that makes me laugh the most though is the irony that having finally woken up and rescued ourselves from the freedom grabbing shadowy figures that only a minority of graduates from the University of Google (let that one sink in) even know exist, the only spoils of victory lead us straight into the arms of another theory that has also been said at times to be conspiratorial.
Extinction rebellion claim that we are in the throes of a climate and ecological emergency. This time the evidence to support the effects of climate change is a bit more substantial than a few photographs of an empty hospital corridor in the dead of night, and the opinions of the friend of a brain surgeon who works part-time in the hospital canteen.
Ice caps are melting, the earth is heating up and global habitats are suffering climatic events never seen before. My question is simply this:
What use is freedom if there is nowhere left in which to fully exploit it?
Maybe that is the reality we all need to wake up to.
I don’t know if my own route out of lockdown will take me back to the path I was already travelling along but, I do know that as long as I walk it with those I love by my side, I am already more privileged than the millions who no longer have that choice. Stay safe and sane of thought people.