Tag Archives: covid

THEY THINK IT’S ALL OVER

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I thought it was all over. I really did. I really hoped. I fully expected it would be the end of the matter and I wouldn’t have to shout and moan anymore about Covid: about the lockdown, about the masks, about the vaccine. The truth would eventually out and people would make their own judgement on the whole sorry business. The movers and shakers would finally confess to their duplicity, an amnesty declared and we could move on.

Apparently not. A letter from our Public Health Director came through the door the other day, inviting me for a winter (Covid and Flu) vaccine, explaining, in the predictable language that we have gotten used to, that this was the best protection against the disease, with the mantra “safe and effective”. My appointment was already made. It was up to me to accept or cancel.  I had a similar letter the previous year and wrote to the Director explaining my reason for refusing it and my misgivings over why the MHRA vaccine was still being promoted by our National Health Service. When there was so much concern over its safety and efficacy, why had the roll out not been halted?  I had no reply. I understood, of course, that Directors of Public Health would already have too much on their minds to respond to a dissident patient. 

So, I hesitated from responding, this time round, but decided to try again and seek a response to my concerns. In my letter I again detailed my disquiets and challenged the director to take the issue seriously. I thought it was her job to do just that. To her credit, I had a reply by return.  It didn’t answer my questions directly but pointed me to the reports and analysis which justified the continuation of the MHRA vaccine. It was the classic case of passing the buck. She has to follow the guidance offered further up the chain and wasn’t in a position to give personal opinions. Even if she had some misgivings herself, she wouldn’t feel it was in her gift to go against or challenge the given line. It is disturbing and destructive trend in much of public life when common sense is eclipsed by protocol. When “whistle blowers” have to be protected you know how deep corruption has set in. “Theirs’s not to make reply, theirs’s not to reason why, their’s but to do and die,” As someone has said.

But the truth will out and it is already seeping from the rancid bags of lies that have been festering over the past five years. Bit by bit people are quietly coming out with admissions of “errors of judgements”.  Chris Wittie now says that masks, out-with the health care environment, were always ineffective, Patrick Vallance openly admitted that lockdown could do more harm than good, Rishi Sunak protested that he was always against school closures, Pfizer admitted that they never tested the vaccine for transmission, the World Health Organisation downplayed the aerosol theory of transmission, all the key players showed, by their own lifestyles, that they never actually believed in the message, Mark Zuckerberg regretted that he supressed anti-Covid messages on his Facebook platform and Neil Ferguson confessed his surprise that they were able to get away with enforcing the lockdown. Well it seems he did and all the others too.

It is the classic state of a corrupt institution. Those who were found out, whose untruths and deliberate lies directly caused so much damage and suffering, are still there, moved sideways, perhaps, into equally remunerative posts while the much vaunted Public Enquiry trundles on tip-toing around the edge and staying clear of the real questions.  No one can speak out, it seems, or it will bring the whole thing down and the foot soldiers, those loyal to the organisation and faithful to the protocol, are left to answer the difficult questions.

I thought it was all over, but it looks like it won’t be.

A HERD OF ELEPHANTS

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It was a cartoon from a few weeks back. Looking down on the Covid enquiry we saw the learned inquisitor with his right elbow leaning on the podium, interrogating the hapless minister and in a clipped schoolmaster voice pronouncing “We are not going there Mr Gove!” The tables and some desks in the room were being knocked over and pushed aside by what turned out to be the tree trunk legs of be a gigantic elephant towering above them and bearing the banner “The source of the virus”. The great beast was seen by everyone but all connived in a conspiracy of denial, pretending it wasn’t there. Not the most clever or inventive of cartoons, granted, but hitting the nail squarely on the head, all the same. That a major public enquiry, costing millions and taking years to report, would chose to deliberately block any discussion on the likely source of the virus, – only demonstrates what an utter farce the whole pantomime is. Can you imagine the Grenfell enquiry excluding any discussion on where the fire started? No neither could I.

But the truth is there was, and is, a herd of elephants in that room. Here are just some:

The devastation of lock-down

The deification of science

The surrender to totalitarianism

The zero covid delusion

The idiocy of masks

The weaponization of fear

The illusion of omniscience

The sacrifice of children

The vaccine redemption dogma

But there will be nothing to see here. Instead the enquiry, which anyone could write, will find that we should have locked down quicker and faster.

Going Along with the Charade

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It is the end of our service of worship, on a cold, wet and miserable afternoon already getting dark, when the kindly steward, in an almost embarrassed way, encourages us to move on, not to mingle and talk, to get out of the building as quickly and as orderly as we can, while maintaining social distancing, and they begin the task of re-sanitising the building, wiping down every surface and door handle and spraying each chair. The air is now filled with that funereal alcohol scent, and I am wondering what has happened

This time last year it was different. The building was full with 250, maybe more, worshippers, some crowded up in the gallery, a disparate group of all ages and backgrounds from all continents in the world, babies and children, young families, students, internationals and a sprinkling of octogenarians. Sunday mornings, in the past often carried a cloud for me, one I only recognised when it lifted. I had probably gotten used to it. But in these last years I would wake up thinking “Yes! It’s Sunday, this is the day the Lord has made” and worship with our local congregation, ten minutes’ walk away, was always something to be eagerly looked forward to. It was the highlight of the week.

There was the praise, often led by a skilled and sensitive band, not in your face but enough to encourage you to sing your heart out. There was the psalm singing. The unaccompanied assorted voices in harmony, giving fresh articulation to these ancient songs that together cover every emotion and every struggle and have been the hymn book of the church for centuries. The music would fill the marvellous acoustics of the place, be lifted to the roof and beyond. Some joined with strong voices in perfect pitch, others that wee bit out of tune and the odd baby crying, but together, and as one. There was the public reading of scripture, with different voices and intonation, the cadence and the droll. There was the pastoral prayers and prayers for the world led by individuals each with their own insight and burden and there was the preaching; that mysterious thing, that reaches down to the basics, cuts to the bone, that challenges, encourages and comforts, that something that only comes from this Holy Word inspired by the Holy Spirit. Being present there is something I would not miss for the world. The after-service atmosphere was a buzz of conversations, introductions and welcomes, small groups in laughter others sharing news, some in silence, others distressed being comforted and the little adoring crowd around a new baby.  There was so much going on.

Now all that has changed. Yes, we still have the public reading of scriptures and prayers and yes, we still have this Word preached but it is now a pale shadow of the real thing. It is almost a caricature of worship. We are restricted to an arbitrary 50, we have to book in advance and it feels like we have been bombed. The main doors are wide open to let fresh air in, even though the interior space is massive. There are signs everywhere and tables with sanitisers at each entrance. But what distresses me most is the people. They seem to be sanitised out of existence: spaced out, distanced in isolated groups and hidden behind masks, the kind that bank robbers, hangmen and terrorists wear. And, yes, the surgeons and the dentist too, reminding you of the anxiety that grips the stomach on the examination couch or chair when you hear the words “This may hurt”. It is not just the wearing of a mask which, for me at least, is a really unpleasant nausea inducing experience, but it is seeing people you know and love and care about, peering over this awful piece of cloth, no matter how tastefully decorated, with frightened, suspicious, puzzled and sometimes scary looking eyes. It is dehumanising and humiliating.  I wonder what on earth we have come to and who on earth is behind it all?

Before being hustled out of the church, we share a few words with a friend. It is hard to hear at a distance and without the benefit of reading lips. She is a clinical phycologist and can’t talk about her work, but she did say tellingly that referrals to her service had more than double in the past months and this is just the beginning. They are gearing up for a tsunami of cases. In the row behind, someone is distressed and crying but we can’t console her. We have to pass bye on the other side. We are helpless. We have just listened to an astonishing sermon on the humanity fo Jesus, by what must be the finest of preachers, yet we can do nothing. All our caring instincts are stifled by the dead hand of authoritarian folly. So, we leave the building, torn apart. And I am angry.

I am angry: that we are putting up with this insanity, while the vulnerable suffer, angry that we bow to the authorities’ strictures, even although we know that they are patently useless and do terrible harm, angry that as a church we have not been able to make an effective challenge to the restrictions, angry that we allow our leaders in government to continue to meddle and micromanage the minutia of our lives, quite oblivious to the destruction they are perpetuating.  

I am angry, but it is not about me. It is not about my family. It is not about my tribe. It is not, even about Christians or the church. This is not persecution. No, this is an onslaught on our humanity that affects us all. It is a mass social experiment which has never been tried before, with little thought or imagination of what might be the consequences. And you would not need much imagine to see that launching a programme of fear, denying person -to-person contact, isolating individuals and mandating all sorts of ridiculous behaviour, for whatever noble reason, will not end well.

And it is very hard to make any meaningful protest. I have tried. Believe me, I have tried. I have written to my MP my MSP to the first Minster to the Clinical Director. On the rare occasions when a response is given it is the predictable repeating of the dogma and no engagement with the question. Even on my one excursion onto BBC’s Any Answers radio programme, Anita Anand ticked me off, politely of course, as she would, for even questioning the rationale for lock-down. “If we don’t,” she said, “people will die”. I felt as if I was a selfish swine, a heartless heretic and a covid denier all rolled into one.

My best friend tells me to let it be. “you can’t do anything about it, so don’t waste your time fretting over it”. There is a lot of wisdom there, still the burden for my area of responsibility can’t be so easily ditched.  I will go along with the charade until I can see a way out, always hoping that there is some creative solution that will cut through the madness. If there is an original idea out there, I could use it right now.

But another Sunday has arrived and it will be our last for some time as the doors are shut again. So much for a route map out of “lock-down”. This one goes round in circles as we are softened up for a new totalitarianism.

I feel quite dizzy.

Crawford Mackenzie