Bewilderment, Bemusement and Bejeezus

Around about 2 years ago the UK entered into lockdown for the first time. A year ago I was carrying my Dad’s coffin into the chapel. Now, a couple of days after yet another birthday with scarier numbers than covid attached to it, I’m sat here typing this and wondering what in the name of holy fuck happened?

We broke the world for a virus with an overall fatality rate of less than 0.3%

My energy bills have gone up by 50% - and I’m one of the lucky ones - some people’s bills have more than doubled. My supplier proudly boasts that all my energy is derived from renewable sources. That’s nice. Obviously the pandemic, and now Ukraine, have resulted in a shortage of wind, waves and sun.

At least I now know what a woman is : a person who swims slower than Lia Thomas

Thankfully, I’m post menopausal otherwise I might be suffering like this person on Twitter

As another Twitter user wryly commented this is easily solved. This person should re-identify as genderfluid. Period pains? No problem - just identify as a bloke for a few days and it will all go away.

But the latest nominee for the US Supreme Court has the decisive answer. She has no idea what a woman is and recommends asking a biologist.

So, the multicoloured hairdo peeps have spent the last decade or so trying to convince us that sex, or gender (whatever the fuck that is) have bugger all to do with biology - we’re all just formless blobs at birth ruthlessly assigned some arbitrary sex by those arsehole doctors. Biology is just a power structure designed to constrain us - we can be whomever and whatever we please.

But now we have to ask a biologist? Those arsehole doctors, then, presumably skipped all the bits of their training that had anything to do with biology - otherwise they’d know wouldn’t they? At least according to Ketanji Brown Jackson.

These kinds of, shall we be charitable and say, logical flights of fancy are not unsurprising in themselves. After all, there are more than a few of us, myself included, who, at times, cannot think our way out of a wet paper bag. What is more surprising is the seriousness with which this stuff is taken. It’s clearly and obviously stupid. It’s beyond stupid - it has passed through the great wormhole of lunacy and is vacationing in a parallel dimension. It’s one of those dimensions where God, taking a well-earned Sunday break to rest, beheld His work and said “Oh Crap”

When it comes to covid it has been “Oh Crap” indeed.

For some reason world governments decided to take what was a moderately serious disease outbreak and elevate it to “Oh Crap” status. This was clearly deliberate. It was not accidental that anyone dying, for whatever reason, within 28 days of a positive covid test was listed as a “covid” death.

This wasn’t some forgivable cock-up. This wasn’t some panic-porn-induced frenzy of helplessness in the face of an overwhelming threat. This was deliberate anti-scientific bollocks forced upon us in a national teabagging of truly staggering and unprecedented proportion.

It’s very, very strange. You have a disease that for the vast majority is not serious and governments pretended it was a full-on unprecedented Bejeezus of a Viral Outbreak™. The only thing “unprecedented” about this sodding virus was the governmental responses.

I do not know why they felt the need to do this.

Having needlessly scared the living bejeezus out of most of the population they then proceeded to try to force some God-forsaken Goo into the arms of anything with a pulse - a ghastly concoction that most of the population didn’t need, and one that has clearly made things worse. If you’re one of those who peruses the world-wide data and still thinks it looks like there’s been a 95% effective vaccine floating about, then I have several golden investment opportunities to discuss with you. Available, only through me, at a very affordable price.

The reason why people were so scared was because governments deliberately made it look much worse than it actually was. They threw away decades of scientific understanding and advice, almost overnight, and embarked upon a disastrous and ruinous program of disease ‘control’. It did not work. It brought the world to a halt and has had and will continue to have dire consequences for millions.

They did this without ever performing any rigorous cost-benefit analysis. They adopted a novel ‘treatment’ and ignored the side effects. As we now know, it has been all ‘side-effect’ and very little ‘treatment’.

They routinely ignored sensible and balanced scientific advice and only listened to those who promoted the darkest of messages. Indeed, in the UK they only commissioned the most pessimistic of modelling scenarios. They instructed the modellers to concoct only the bleakest of pictures.

So, you take a moderately serious disease, Jackson Pollock it by spaffing all over it with the paint of OhCrapness, and instigate a series of measures that brings the world and your own economy to its knees.

You vigorously attack and suppress anything that looks like a promising early treatment and pin your hopes on the production of the mystical Goo of Safety and Effectiveness - a Promised Land of Pharmacological Fruit and Plenty.

The extreme measures taken can only be justified by extreme circumstances (and maybe not even then in some cases). But the situation was only ‘extreme’ because they did their damnedest to make it look extreme. And even then, in my view, it didn’t look particularly extreme.

It’s like the whole “woman” thing. It really is a non-issue in the sense that gender dysphoria (for want of a better term) affects a very small percentage of people - and yet it has become of almost crippling importance, for some reason.

We shouldn’t have just ignored covid. Just like we shouldn’t ignore those people who do struggle with identity and gender. I am more than happy to make any reasonable accommodation to ensure that people get to live their lives free from pain and suffering. But very few treatments come without cost. Everything is a balance - or should be. We’re OK being able to drive at 70mph, despite the obvious danger to others, because we’ve decided the benefit outweighs the cost - we’ve decided that driving at 10mph, which would cut road deaths to next to zero, is not worth it. Or rather we might say that being able to drive at high speeds is worth the death of a few.

A day past the 2 year anniversary of the start of the pantodemic in the UK and I’m scratching my head in bewilderment, bemusement and befuddlement. I’m wondering what the bejeezus happened to us? How did we let things get so far out of kilter?

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