Tag: lockdown

If I’m wrong, you’re embarrassed. If you’re wrong, we might die

By Daviemoo

The rise and rise of polarisation has been a theme of everything I’ve been speaking about for a great many years now. From politics to consumption to the increase of moral panics, and then into the responses to the coronavirus pandemic, humans are being confronted by issues that pose great danger to us. So why are huge proportions of the human race determined to go with outlooks that may damage- or quite literally destroy- us?

There are two main arguments that absolutely flummox me every time they come up- and they do come up, every day. Climate change, and coronavirus.

Studies going back decades show that climate change is a huge threat. Sea levels could rise, the earth could heat up enough to disrupt sea currents which would cause mass death of marine life, the weather could be so destructive that we’d see mass death as crops wither in the fields.
The main contributors to this emerging disaster are big businesses who refuse to do anything that may damage their profits- the main enablers are governments, who accept what we can probably call “legal bribes” to legislate protections into law for these businesses to continue. But behind the scenes, those businesses have also sunk money they could have used to change their models for something more green, to flood the internet with disinformation about climate change- and for some reason, a huge subsection of human beings- not big business owners or the politicians they pay for, but just everyday people have taken this information and fashioned it into a fight.

Climate change is not something you can deny if you believe in science. It’s happening. You might not be able to see it every day, but it is happening. It’s like denying the existence of the sea floor- you may have only seen it on documentaries but it is there…
Yet these individuals are convinced that it’s all a scam, designed to tell us how to live!
The core thinking that seems to revolve around this type of mindset is, as I’ll lay out here, rooted to the idea that essentially these people are extremist libertarians who don’t want to be told how to live. Oddly they’re fine with the laws that say they can’t be gunned down or robbed, that they legally own their own home and so on- just the suggestions they could throw paper and plastic in different bags are the ones they don’t like.

We see the exact same mindset with the coronavirus deniers- because yes, in 2023 people still exist who think coronavirus is a scam, made up. Having caught it in November and still having lung problems now, I can assure you it’s quite real and though my second brush with COVID-19 didn’t kill me, having lung problems 3 months later and having been forced to lie in bed for a solid week, death isn’t the only way viral illness can affect your life. But still, if they don’t deny covid they refuse to imagine a world where we’d continued on as normal and likely almost a billion people would have died.
A survival rate of 97% sounds good until you realise that that means if everyone on earth was infected once, 240,000,000 deaths would have occurred just from viral infection. I, though, have been infected twice, some people multiple times. Three and a half United Kingdom’s worth of people would have died just from COVID, then those who needed healthcare outside of viral infection would have died due to overwhelmed hospitals. Supply chains would have completely fractured, goods would have ceased production. Famine, death en masse, long term health issues. All a worthy price to the people who think covid is a scam though!

The prevalence of these mindsets seem to revolve intimately around one thing- a cocksure attitude that you’re so right that it doesn’t matter about the possibility of being wrong because you aren’t, so these heinous scenarios could never occur.

Frustration buds from two main points here: if I’m wrong about climate change, we sink a lot of money into new energy solutions that hasten technological development and we harshly tax businesses for refusing to update their business model. I’ve no doubt a harsh pursuit of green solutions would cause societal change that would cause issues to the populace but we already have issues causing the populace problems -floods in Pakistan that wipe out whole villages, days so hot in the UK that asphalt melts, crop failures in vast patches of eastern Europe due to abrupt weather changes. Complaining about problems when there are problems is reminiscent of those who took pictures of empty shelves during early 2020 and posted them to social media saying “this is what Corbyn’s England would have looked like”, failing to see the irony of posting photos of Johnson’s England looking like their apparent idea of a worst case scenario. No, there is no easy way to pursue green solutions- but when the cost of not doing so is a smouldering crater for a planet perhaps it’s worth doing so.

You, when raising this, will predictably be met with people who will scoff: It won’t happen at all, it won’t happen for a long time or it won’t be that bad.
The same absolutist confidence that I see as one of the main reasons humankind is doomed.

The world doesn’t have to follow the worst case scenarios for it to be a disaster. We don’t have to face ecological wipeout for climate change to ruin millions, tens of millions of peoples lives. If the seas currents do change it will affect those whose living relies on the sea not doing so. If the sea levels rise it will affect coastal living. If the climate stays the same as now the horrific flooding and storms and weather irregularities will continue- and that is a disaster already occurring. But the possibility of worse to come is still not enough- because the people who push the oppositional thinking aren’t directly affected; or are, but are not invested enough to care.

Looking at covid- this is not a virus that is simply going to vanish. Thousands of people a week are still dying. “What would you have us do” they will reply, “another lockdown that ruins peoples mental health and does nothing”.
I don’t actually know how we could ever tackle coronavirus, but the issue is- there’s a gulf between “doing nothing” and “zero covid” and people refuse to budge one inch, refuse to wear a mask because “they aren’t effective” (I just finished reading my third study that shows they are). I asked an anti masker once, why do they bother you so much and after cornering her enough she confessed the truth. “I just don’t like being told what to do”.
The terror I feel, being surrounded by a not insignificant number of people who will risk becoming a vector for a virus that’s ruined my lung capacity because they get offended at not being asked politely if they don’t mind very much to cover their face for five minutes is immeasurable. I can’t not go into this without mentioning how ridiculously obvious it is that these people are wrong. I keep seeing people posting about “adverse reactions to vaccines”. Yes, there were always going to be adverse reactions to vaccines; it’s been a known side effect since vaccines were created, and when you scale that up to billions of doses, shockingly those side effects that we already knew about- happen. You know what didn’t happen? The explosion of severely autistic people you were all talking about 5 years ago. If vaccines caused autism I suspect giving out over 16 billion vaccines might have caused a spike in people with autism… and yet here we are.

When it comes to covid and our thinking- if we’re wrong, you look a bit stupid because you’re wearing a mask when you don’t need to. Masks don’t cause any of the nonsensical rubbish people talk about, if they did, doctors and cleaners and builders would all be sick constantly. The worst that happens if we’re wrong is that you look weird in public. If you’re wrong, you are spreading a disease that can be as bad as a nasty cold and having had a few it’s rude and gross to spread that anyway, it can cause illness severe enough to take a 34 year old off his feet for a week and give him long term health issues, or it can mean someone ends up choking to death as their lungs fill up with pleural fluid. Is it worth that risk? Still, for many of these people, yes- hence my semi withdrawal from a society I was, until now, unaware was absolutely filled with people ranging from deluded to frighteningly callous.

The reason we’re told masks cause disease is because they can’t just rely on “I don’t want to” as an argument on an international scale. The reason we’re told that green solutions would decimate industry is because they think those industries won’t be decimated by an earth that becomes close to uninhabitable. And when it comes to other arguments- about marginalised groups etc, you will often find that it’s not enough to simply dislike others, no- people of colour are causing a “white genocide” just by existing, gay people are corrupting your children with drag, trans people are trying to sneak into spaces not for them… I often wonder if the people who fall into these utterly ridiculous ways of thinking genuinely believe them or they know that “I just don’t like them and I don’t want to change my mind because being wrong equals losing” is a stupid mindset.

Being wrong is not a sin

People seem determined to conflate incorrectness with losing. Being corrected on something you’re wrong about is not losing. Rejecting correct information and clinging to bias, bigotry or abject nonsense because you cant possibly be seen to be wrong is.
Being wrong is usually a huge part of how we learn. We study at school and we write our sentences out and the teacher corrects our spelling and grammar and we learn. We make errors in our calculations and we’re shown where we make a mistake and we do better. Why does the idea of being corrected suddenly go from par for the course to equivalent to “losing” as soon as we leave mandated education.

The reason culture wars are such lucrative social currency is that the world has decided collectively that it’s better to fall into a tunnel of disinformation that backs up a lie than to bend to the acknowledgement of the objective truth. And many people without morals exist who are all too happy to partake- from Tucker Carlson whose show is so wildly unreliable that he has had to declare that he does not tell news but is a fictional show, to pundits in the UK like Jeremy Clarkson who is so blithely unaware of his radical hatred of women he writes columns about flogging and sexually assaulting women he doesn’t like.

Hartley-Brewer, Oakeshott, Coren, Johnson- these people’s careers are built on spinning the idea that the objective truth- of good relations with the EU, of climate change, of viral mitigations- are all bad. That we should be able to do exactly what we want, where and when we want because it is our right- and yet when your rights conflict with others physical safety, when your simple wish to display your face to the world consists of an unbalanced risk of viral disease, why is it suddenly feeling over fact, for the people whose moniker has always been, fact over feeling?
Fact, climate change is real, you can see it happen in real time. Fact, masks work, vaccines work and covid kills. But we live now in the world of alternative facts, of fake news, a whole deep pool of comforting mistruths that people can dive into if simple reality is too much.

Ultimately, I wish I could say I didn’t care. I wish it was as simple as letting people get on with it. If you want to end up choking to death because of covid or going hungry because you set the world alight, I wish I could let you get on with it.
But you’re dragging us down with you. The stupidest most selfish humans in existence are using the rest of us as collateral. And I am sick of it.
If you want to die- die. I won’t stop you. But stop wrapping the noose around my neck too, and telling me to stop complaining about it.

Evil Triumphs as the Good Do Nothing

By Jack Meredith @PoliticalWelshy

It is quite apt that this piece’s title is a paraphrased quote from Edmund Burke, often regarded as the philosophical founder of conservatism.
Remaining silent at a time when truth to power must be spoken is often the catalyst for corruption to take hold, embed its toxic roots and create something so diabolical. 

In the context of an institution, it can have the knock-on effect of keeping the silent in an uneasy state of complicity – speak up, and risk losing everything you have garnered so far, damn yourself while also acknowledging that you benefited from the corruption. Stay silent, condemn others to the corruption, and allow its toxic roots to strengthen and grow until they can no longer be removed without doing away with the institution entirely.

And this is why it is so apt to reference Burke; this is the situation Conservative MPs find themselves in.

It has no lie that the Conservative Party has placed many of its electoral hopes upon the character that Johnson portrays. To many across the country, he isn’t Johnson, Mr Johnson or Prime Minister – he is “Boris”. He created an “every-man” figure that relates to the common person in the street (despite having studied in Eton and lived a life none of us could ever imagine!).

It seemed like a great idea at first; pinning their hopes upon “Boris” won them a landslide in the 2019 election, helped them convince the British people that they could “get Brexit done” and had the power to vote through whatever legislation they wanted.

And then, as it goes with every tale too good to be true, reality hit hard.

He is currently overseeing a cost of living crisis, with the options to implement a windfall tax and cut VAT to lessen the impact on citizens being rejected – by himself and his government. Asylum seekers arriving in Britain are being sent to Rwanda. The right to freely vote and the right to protest are being infringed upon. Inflation has hit a 40-year high, reaching 9%. The “oven-ready deal” Johnson promised on Brexit had expired, with the plan to rewrite the Northern Ireland Protocol rejected by both the EU and US. 

And, of course, he is the first sitting Prime Minister to have broken the law. This is a fact that no matter how much Boris Johnson would like to brush under the carpet, isn’t going away anytime soon.

While so many sacrificed seeing loved ones, some for the last time, Johnson broke lockdown rules and held illegal parties in 10 Downing Street.

What has been the response from MPs, to everything that has so far transpired? Have they held a vote of no confidence, kicked Johnson and his allies out of the party and reformed top-to-bottom? 

Not quite…

A flurry of “no confidence” letters here, the occasional television interview calling on Johnson to resign there – but no action. The threshold needed to trigger a vote of no confidence has yet to be met, and the MPs that make their grievances public continue to serve under the Prime Minister.

They stay quiet, while evil triumphs.

Jack Meredith is a prominent political activist found on twitter, tiktok and often writing for the Lib Dem Voices- his social media is linked at the top of the article.

Partygate: From Democracy to Mockery

By Daviemoo

As the met concludes the investigation they had to be pressured into a vast portion of the country is left asking ourselves: did the met police perform the coverup many of us suspected- and are we now stuck with a dead cat for a prime minister?

In November 2021 when news first broke of parties in Downing Street, there were many amongst our number in the UK who were less surprised that our government ministers would flout vital safety law than shocked it took so long for another scandal to surface.

At the time huge interest was piled onto those who were in the know: Pippa Crerar’s journalistic moxxie turned up evidence that Allegra Stratton, who had already been struggling as the tories’ answer to the UK press secretary in the form of Jen Psaki, had openly joked about the fact that the rules had been thrown off at the height of lockdown, giggling with her colleagues about cheese, wine and impropriety. The video showed what could charitably be referred to as distain for the rules as tory staffers laughed about ignoring safety guidance, especially in the line “and it was not socially distanced”. We wouldn’t have long to get used to Stratton’s face smirking across our screens before a new, HD Stratton video emerged: her resignation, tears running freely outside her house as she assured a raging public that she would “regret her actions for the rest of her life”. But what actions was Stratton referring to: she had merely joked about the rules being discarded by colleagues?
So naturally came the next line of questioning: if the woman who joked about laws being broken at the archaic heart of british democracy was to go- who else would? What would the punishment for this rule breaking behaviour be?

Cut dramatically to bombshell after bombshell: there were MULTIPLE parties! Sunak was at one! And it didn’t take long before the revelation we all waited for: Boris Johnson, prime minister was in attendance at not just one- but several- of these events.

Johnson, for his part had fallen on his usual habit of trying to lie his way out of trouble: after all, he lied his way into Downing Street on the promise of getting brexit done (how is that going, Prime Minister- fixed the border yet?). But the collective weight of grief, anger and appetite for truth (mixed as always with our obsession with scandal) meant the british public would not, as we have been told by a multitude of Johnsons’ staffers, “move on”. At first Johnson denied parties had taken place at all, the idea was ludicrous! Then he gravely assured us he was as furious as we were at the accusations- how very dare his silly staffers hold parties in his residence! Then came the denials that he attended any events himself- then photos of him at said events rolled in, to which he responded that it was not a party, it was a work event- then photographic evidence of him reclining with multiple staffers and his wife and the decorator for his flat appeared- was this a work event, with people who weren’t staff there? Well no, he said, it was a party- but he didn’t know it was a party you see, how could he, for the prime minister who flew from a meeting about Putin’s use of a deadly toxin on home soil to a KGB agent’s son’s party couldn’t possibly know what a party looks like- then when emails confirmed he did know it was a party the tact changed again- yes it was a party, he did know it was a party but he didn’t know parties were against the rules but he was very sorry and he would commission a report into it all so we could see the extent which our democracy was being mocked.

When the Gray report was inches from our outstretched fingertips suddenly the met police leapt into action- despite earlier stating they did not investigate retrospective breaches and predictably the line shifted from “just wait for the Sue Gray report” to “just wait for the conclusion of the met police investigation”. Wait, wait ,wait they said, forgetting it seems that while they threw back cheese and wine and laughed at podiums we had lost two years of our lives to isolation and now we were being asked to wait for justice to be served to those who couldn’t adhere to the same rules we had. Now the Gray report remains the only bastion of hope for holding the government to account – but therein lays the flaw that exposes the deepest issues we have with forcing this government to account for its wrongdoings: you cannot force someone to account for something they don’t feel regret over.

Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, the staffers- nobody feels remorse for their actions: they feel irked that they were exposed and embarrassed, angry that they had to divert resources away from what they actually care about to try and placate what they see as a sea of baying ingorami and confused that they should have to defend their actions. The line will go that “nobody died so who cares”. We are force fed lines about cake and Prosecco and how everyone just wants to be angry and offended. But not one amongst those who helped topple the respectability of british politics understands the root issue.

We- the people- were expected to follow these rules, asked to do as we were told, requested to do what was right, moral, safe- because at the same time as Johnson was quaffing wine and discussing the robustness of cheese with his colleagues, people were sat on the floor of their homes, desperately depressed and alone, mourning people whose chests were filling up with liquid as they drowned- funerals were held with barely any attendees. People were driven to suicide by trying to do the right thing and protect others. Mothers lost sons, sons lost fathers, fathers lost brothers. A million new disabled people, damaged in one or more ways by infection with a dangerous virus, many- most- of whom tried their best to avoid catching the coronavirus. We were told Johnson was only at one event for nine minutes- nine minutes I would have loved to have spent with my newly widowed Dad, or one of my two sisters as we all struggled to cope with the loss of my mother.

The breaking of rules was a big issue because even one slip up, one forgotten mask, one unwashed hand could have meant further spread of the virus that has stolen two years of our life and continues to kill hundreds of our countryfolk a week. Some of us worked hard for two years to ensure we stuck as best we could to the rules laid down by the Johnson government and to see his open flippancy in defying those rules then to watch the met gently chuck Johnson on the chin, employing the notion that Johnson cannot be punished for every event because they happened at his home so he “had” to be there is not our own chuck but a slap to the face.

The Johnson government has desperately tried to amend what it sees as the flaws of British society- wilful disregard and distrust for the office of prime minister- but who can respect a prime minister who drags us, still connected at the artery of Ireland, from the EU and watches us bleed whilst blaming them for the damage- who can respect a prime minister who “shook hands with” covid patients even as the deadliness of the virus was being questioned, the man who enforced harsh rules and penalties on everyone else but never for one moment believed he would adhere to them himself – the man who took away protest, made it harder to vote- the man who has utterly prostrated himself at the altar of ego, heedless of the cost of his own lies even as we paid the price.

Boris Johnson is, I hope, the worst prime minister the UK will ever see. The question now is not is he the worst: it is how long will he remain in post, and until Johnson realises that his desperation for validation will not be sated by a country sick to the back teeth of his embarrassing actions, he will continue to drag us further into the cut de sac of fruitlessness that his worse than lacklustre tenure has provided so far: so to the tories who surround Johnson and seek to protect themselves as much as he, remember this: your days are numbered and you are tarnishing yourselves every moment you remain his loyal lapdog. History is written by the victors and you lose every day you stand by his side. Either relinquish your white-knuckled hold on the hackles of the man who has destroyed you or go down in history as an enabler of the worst prime minister in the history of the United Kingdom.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

Boris Johnson – The Worst Prime Minister at the Worst Time

By. Daviemoo

Boris Johnson has bound the hands and feet of the nation. His slavish allies have picked us up, and carried us to the altar of his ego. Today Johnson is set to slit our collective throats on the altar of populism. Our lifeblood is set to be spilt into the foetid grounds of populism, and thousands of people will die… to save Johnson’s tenure in office… Do you think the deaths of thousands who wouldn’t have died had we kept mandates in place is a worthy sacrifice for a less than mediocre politician to stay employed?

Look to the social media of any prominent scientist and watch them, agog in horror at the behaviours of the conservative government and the wet eared cowardice of their supporters who simply cannot bear another moment of coronavirus restrictions. It’s been so hard to follow the guidance they say, as if they ever did. Selfish people cackling about you wearing a mask in the fruit aisle of Tescos, who never stopped visiting relatives for Sunday lunch and who look down on you for following scientific advisors’ dire warnings. Maybe you do it because you lost someone, or more than one someone, to covid. Maybe you had the virus and it frightened you just how sick you got- or maybe you’re just a decent person who realises that the world didn’t slow to a crawl for almost 2 years for no reason, no insidious plot of replacement theory to be seen except in the rheumy eyes of these freedom fighters who didn’t show up to protest against literal human rights being debated in parliament.

Today I signed an open letter Professor Christina Pagel is advertising, to hear experts like her speak about the lifting of restrictions.

Experts like Professor Pagel have, the entire time, erred on the side of caution because she, like most decent humans, believes that everyone deserves the chance to live through the pandemic. But today, Johnson is revealing his plans to “live with the virus”, which involve payment for testing, obfuscating numbers and allowing those infected to be able to wander around positive without any mandate for staying home. Boris Johnsons’ plans for living with coronavirus will kill people. Hundreds, thousands of people, who will die because he has become a populist fundamentalist, who seems to think you are free to become a vector of mass infection if you want to, and the cherry on the cake is that we simply won’t even know it’s happening because he refuses to even keep tabs on it.

Why has he done this, you may ask? Because it distracts us from the sheer, unquestionable fact that Boris Johnson is terminally inept (quite literally), selfish sheister, a terrible PM, a man who is more vacuously obsessed with his ability to keep reflecting back British law like the flesh of a Y incision so he can carve out the still weakly shuddering heart of British democracy and hold it aloft as a prize before losing interest and casting it off.

Since Johnson took power in 2019 he’s appointed someone who committed something tantamount to espionage as our Home Secretary, a man who wants to repeal the human rights act to justice secretary, a woman who was surprised people use YouTube to learn (what did you think it was for Nadine?), has had a doctored report on racism produced which stated it consulted with experts who were shocked to see their names included. He’s presided over the worst death rate in Europe, lied about the EMA’s capabilities of stopping vaccine rollouts and taken credit for the NHS’ stellar job in the first deployment- speaking of the NHS, he’s continued to slowly pare away funding for it and has thrown GPs to the wolves to distract from his role in covid mismanagement. Whilst many of us were burying relatives by zoom or saying goodbye to people we love via FaceTime he was throwing back Moet with colleagues, convinced by virtue of political party or class that they were exempt from the rules they themselves created.

He’s presided over the most disastrous outcome for Brexit, and rather than face up to that has circled the wagons of the British press to disseminate distractions about trans athletes in bathrooms or other such nonsense, instead of showing 12 hour queues to drop off goods- he blamed COVID for Brexit issues, Brexit for COVID issues and not once through all of these debacles, not at one time- has he ever said “It’s us. We’re sorry, we made mistakes”.

Whilst Hancock and he were breaking the law with PPE procurement, he never once paused to wonder if this was the wrong thing to do, the wrong way to act. Because to Johnson, the job of PM is simply a badge of honour, the next “to present” on his CV. He doesn’t care about decency, the rule of law or any freedoms but his own. Our highest office, the most vital political job in the UK will be used as fodder for dinner parties down the line. He’ll sit, clutching a designer glass of designer champagne telling people about the time a billionaire oil baron shook his hand and he came away richer than he was before, skipping over the shambles he’s left the country in. No matter how poor, or miserable or sick you or I or our friends or family get, Johnson’s future is writ large: as long as he can continue his decadence we could all die tomorrow. It won’t change a thing for him.

Now as we all walk, open eyed into a country with no covid restrictions some of us see three lions, strutting down the street proudly as the “winners” of the pandemic. But others see vectors of infection, a populace strolling sullenly into the maw of the beast, wondering who we love will die or become disabled now because the libertarians amongst us think that’s a worthy sacrifice. The sad thing is, people genuinely believe that it’s worth people dying for them to be able to go into Tescos without a bit of cloth on their face. This is where the poison of populism has gotten us to – everything is the enemy. Masks, vaccines, Corbyn supporters, the left, the woke, everything out to stop people living how they want- but the people who deeply believe this don’t seem to realise that we don’t live how we want – because of them. This imposition of their imaginary freedoms has now stretched to being a climate denier- the seriously bad weather was the enemy this week, how dare that woke storm stop me from… doing what? It’s cold, wet and rainy, just stay in the house and antagonise social justice warrior on twitter like normal you losers- but they didn’t did they. Just to spite the weather(?) people went on walks and got blown over, and that’ll show… Mother Nature I suppose, that these people can’t be stopped from their stupidity. Michael Gove said we’re “sick of listening to experts”. Apparently we are, but we have an unending zeal for listening to absolute morons.

Johnson stands as leader on the cusp of a potential war. Look at the outcome of brexit- more expensive goods, a cost of living crisis unprecedented even when the country’s covid debts are already repurchased, lower world standing, worse quality of life. Look at the outcome of covid- worst death rate in Europe and still going, a stalled vaccine programme, no attempts to even mandate safety via healthcare workers and literal capitulation to anti vaccine terrorists (I’ll use that word even if the press won’t). If Johnson remains in charge for war I suspect the country will suffer untold levels of misery there too, starving in the street as our pleura fill up with covid pneumonia fluid, homeless because we couldn’t afford the rent- and still the Johnsonites will cry “but imagine what it would be like under Starmer”.

I normally urge people to stay safe, to wear their masks, take their vaccines, to social distance- but it’s actually reached the point where I don’t think it’s pointful. Too many people have become inured to death and misery and just do not want to try to avoid it. Some even take a strange and perverse pleasure in being as obnoxious as possible. So I suppose now I must change my signoff from that to – I hope you survive, dear reader.

viemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

If your bodily autonomy circumvents everyone else’s, it’s not bodily autonomy – It’s health based tyranny

By Daviemoo

Ever since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, something politely termed as debate has raged between a deeply factional society. Bodily autonomy and freedom are two terms thrown around often by people who simply don’t understand the concepts they’re discussing. And whilst we’re told as we grow that we sometimes simply need to learn to disagree civilly with people whose views differ from our own- what do we do when those views carry potentially deadly consequences? Is someone’s skewed view of liberty worth dying for?

What is freedom to you?

It’s a question I’ve asked myself hundreds of times throughout this pandemic. The answer is more closely tied to the repercussions of Brexit, oddly. Freedom to me was the right to rights themselves. Losing the right to free movement sickened me, as someone who always loved, and wanted to move to, the continent but was prevented through fear of distance between myself and my family. The right to rights is a strange sentence, but being bound or restricted But as the coronavirus spread around the world and I saw the death toll mount, I- and many others- knew that our freedom was imperilled.

As the pandemic has raged on burning away people’s lives, making people long term sick, tanking economies, worsening wealth disparity many people have woken up to injustices- but in very different ways. Some of us fight with desperation to remove a government intent on enacting damaging laws, from the throttling of our democratic right to protest, to curtailment of our ability to aid those in distress who are not UK citizens, to removing “dissidents'” citizenship, to the enfranchisement of voting by implicitly attaching a cost to votership.

Some rage against a system they see as horrifically authoritarian for enacting emergency powers to restrict movement and interaction amongst people- enacted to control the spread of the coronavirus but to some, the reasoning of “a virus with a 97% survival rate” is a flimsy one.

This is where so many of us fundamentally differ. In 2020 the human population estimate is 7.753 billion.

If 3% of these people died, this would be a death count of 232,590,000.

Two hundred and thirty three million lives. This of course only factoring in the deaths from coronavirus. All too easily, the deaths from delayed medical treatment, from delayed ambulances, from exhausted physicians are written off.

One of the main kickbacks from my speaking in support of coronavirus restrictions is “what about deaths from the vaccine”.

This is understandable- but does not account for the fact that any deaths are sad, especially unnecessary ones like coronavirus deaths- or deaths from the vaccine, regardless of how low the risk. We should count these deaths as deaths due to the pandemic- because no coronavirus vaccine would be needed without the pandemic. Equally, look at the escalated rate of suicide due to isolation. This pandemic has a huge death toll, that extends it’s sinister reach far beyond the death brought by being infected and every single one of these deaths is a loss, a travesty and should not have happened. The way deaths have been manipulated for a political agenda is disgraceful. Ultimately and objectively, mass death is not a political decision- and the philosophical arguments can be bandied back and forth, but ultimately behind politics and philosophy are humans laid suffering from something that went from being an unprecedented worldwide event, to preventable for the most part, if people curtailed their contact.

The emergence of coronavirus allowed an unprecedented glimpse into the mindset of so many around us, people who openly distain others’ as long as they don’t feel controlled, coerced, don’t feel spoken down to, don’t feel like they have to make changes to accommodate others- forgetting of course that if others didn’t do it, they would also be at risk.

After two years, it’s openly a hostile move to walk into a shop- a place you have to go to buy food- without wearing a mask. Some see it as a laughable move which won’t prevent anything, some see it as a symbol of oppression and control from the state, others simply do not care and still more are a mix. There’s also a small subset of people who just like to annoy other people.

Those opposed to mask wearing, to social distancing, to lockdowns or any other measures declare that it’s their right to DO WHAT THEY WANT. They state that they shouldn’t be controlled, coerced, forced to do things they don’t want to do. But I have to wonder how often they follow that thought pattern to it’s apex of “for the common good”. Nobody that I know wants to wear masks, wants to get vaccines, wants to spend weeks alone. It was, I believe, seen by some as a civic duty or, more simply, the right thing to do. Was it? I believe so. Some are diametrically opposed.

When it comes to politics and more, it’s inevitable that disagreement will pop up. But the sheer volume of working class people cheerfully arguing that the economy can’t be allowed to fail if it means keeping people alive is terrifying – it’s the height of “it won’t happen to me”.

And of course it’s right and normal for humans to disagree on matters- but matters of mass death? It’s a strange world we’re forced to live in where people believe that their own, their loved ones- and strangers, who they don’t know- will die and that’s a worthwhile sacrifice.

It’s completely understandable that people are sick of living the lives we’ve had to under coronavirus- but it’s so often missed that people’s lives will continue this way until the virus has become endemic (we all knew from the start we’d never eradicate it). It’s the very people up in arms about masks and health measures who necessitate it’s continuance.

I read the story of an oncology doctor on Friday, who had to cancel a cancer patient’s operation because the bed they would have taken was now filled with an anti vax covid patient.

The covid patient would likely be moved to a ventilator soon, but the loss of that precious window for the cancer patient likely meant that they too would die. The cancer would grow, it would metastasise and just like that, another two people who didn’t have to die, but died, because of this virus- and because of the choices of an anti vaccine enthusiast.

Your choice to kill?

You see, there was a tipping point in the pandemic where your choices were miasmic and didn’t have the sway to hugely impact on the outcome. We were uninformed, we were all waiting for more research, more information. And now here we are- where your personal choices, from declining to wear a mask to refusing vaccines- are in a very real way, wreaking real life consequences upon people.

I’ve always levelled a deep and profound blame at a government simply unable to act decisively. Wishy washy guidance, hand wringing over following their own rules, duplicity- but now the onus truly has shifted to a split with those who wilfully will not comply building off the ignorance of the Conservatives.

It’s confusing that people are being given the choice to risk others’ health, all under this strange umbrella of bodily autonomy. Many of the people who support forced birth have appropriated their hated moniker, “my body, my choice”, for their crusade for the freedom they find difficulty in defining.

The co-opting of pregnant people’s rights

A pregnant person can, and should, be able to choose what happens with a pregnancy for many reasons, from whether they wished to get pregnant in the first place, financial and emotional readiness, health, safety and more. This isn’t a debate. A pregnancy can’t go on without a body to co-opt, but a body can go on without a pregnancy. Human beings are not incubators and pregnancy can have horrific consequences- from thinned bones, post partum depression and psychosis, scarring, bleeds… death. Every pregnancy constitutes a risk towards the pregnant person’s health. Their body will be, no matter how smooth a pregnancy goes, permanently changed simply by going through it.

And when it comes to being forced to take vaccines, this argument is, while controversial, more understandable. But that’s the essence of “my body, my choice”. You choose not to take a vaccine and you take on the risk to deal with consequences- societal (being excluded from mass events etc) or personal (dying or becoming disabled from long COVID). And of course, anti vaxxers will point at the death rate of vaccines- but again, this is bodily autonomy in action. Choosing to take the vaccine is you choosing to take that risk- negligible, but existing risk. Every person who died from the vaccine to my knowledge took that needle because they chose to, and accepted the risk.

The gleeful appropriation of “my body, my choice” is a misnomer. Pregnancy doesn’t spread via the air. Pregnancy only puts risk on the body of the person carrying it. You won’t spread mass pregnancy simply by being in a room while pregnant.

Outside of a pandemic the choice to make is whether to take a vaccine. Whether to take that risk, on the off-chance you come across the disease in question. During a pandemic, the choice is NOT to take the vaccine when there is a silent timer counting down to your exposure- and whilst it’s seen as bodily autonomy to make that choice, it’s not bodily autonomy- it’s bodily tyranny, because your mere presence in a room- especially if you’ve been wandering around with no mask, no social distancing, no vaccine- creates a risk, removing everyone around you’s bodily autonomy, their choice NOT to be sick. So now the question is- does one person’s bodily autonomy supersede that of the rights of everyone they could come into contact with?

People believe the merits of the anti vax movement- but isn’t it strange how the movement went from telling us that vaccines cause autism (neurodiversity by the way is a normal condition and function, though there are naturally extreme cases) to being silent, when 5 billion doses of vaccines were deployed over months. Suddenly the threat is “oh within two years you’ll be sorry”… about what?

Once some credible evidence comes to light we can discuss the nuance of whether vaccination vs non vaccination is worthwhile. Otherwise we continue to debate the efficacy of medicine that works vs rolling a lottery of disability, sickness and death.

Do I have to die for you to change your attitude?

Lets say coronavirus didn’t kill anyone but makes them sick like I was. Desperately poorly for weeks, exhausted, dizzy, sick, unable to eat, unable to sleep, in pain, headaches and more. I lost weight, I was light sensitive, my body ached. I still have a cough in December and I stopped actively suffering in mid October…

Is it worth running the risk of spreading that en masse? Even without death, mass sickness and disruption to peoples’ lives is a huge ask of everyone you may walk past in a day.

Society has not changed, no matter how much we can state it has. Change would be adaptation to the crisis at hand. What has changed are the circumstances in which people can easily advertise to you whether they care about those around them or think their own welfare comes first. No longer can we believe the myth that humans would try to collectively come together to protect each other- because all too many of us have joined the war on coronavirus on the wrong side.

The societal shift

One can’t necessarily pinpoint why society is how it is, and it appears that it’s a mistake to imply that we haven’t, at our core, always had this type of person in our society who will refer to those who make sacrifices for the collective “sheep”. But sheep do what they do out of fear, and out of instinct. I’m not overly scared of coronavirus, of isolation, of masks and vaccines- I’m scared of human beings who would rather lash out in violence than give simple proof that their claims of government takeovers, of poisoned vaccines, of masks causing health issues.

Until we can move past this virus as a collective, this battle will continue and the victims will continue to mount until common sense can stretch to both sides of the aisle. There will always be exceptions to those who can follow restrictions. But there will also always be those who spurn them. And the question continues to gather urgency – how long can society countenance the outliers when their actions, or lack thereof, endanger us all?

Why is 150 migrants an “incursion”, but 150 dead brits is “mercifully low”

By Daviemoo

Every day the numbers of infected people hits over 35,000, which is a precipitous and terrifying number of people who cannot work, who may get sick, who may spread the coronavirus and who may get very sick and possibly die. The leaders of our country, from the prime minister who wanted bodies to pile high in their thousands over closing the economy for safety, to the old health secretary who had an affair with his assistant who he hired using public money, to the new health secretary who threw off all restrictions to please the tories’ populist and pugilist base, have failed us- why aren’t we calling this out?

England is a confusing place to live these days. I find myself looking around at the maskless masses and wondering what part of their nature allows them to think that running the risk, not only of their own health, but those around them- is acceptable. I’ve spoken to people I have to be around with this mentality and the shrugging indifference is maddening.

The reason I find this so very confusing is that, in a country so tightly wrapped up in nationalism, one would assume that your fellow countrymen would be high currency to you- and yet the inverse seems to be true. The callous disregard for our fellow countrymen and women seems to be at odds with a country so dedicated to pushing the narrative of “we’re the best”.

One could reasonably assume that the endless scribes thrown out by the media, which serve to manufacture culture wars that aren’t worth the time and attention (see people constantly using the word “woke” as a pejorative) of anyone with a reasonable mindset. As someone who is assigned this moniker at least once a week to my indifference, I’m amused as to why people would think “ugh, you care about people’s feelings and safety” is an insult- but perhaps this is another symptom of the sickness other than covid that is creeping amongst our numbers. Many people are suffering from a terminal case of indifference to anyone that is not “of their number”.

I’d go so far as to state that the UK is suffering from tribalism, but the tribes are hilariously misdrawn. The poor defend the rich who make their lives harder with longer working hours, less stable contracts, poorer pay, more tax, unsafe working conditions. One minority turns it’s ire on another as if this will give them exemption from the same hatred pouring from the masses. And all the while, white people will proclaim that they too can be victims of racism without ever seeing the power dynamics at play.

This applies too to the problem that made me write this article.

100 people on a dinghy, desperate to reach British shores because they speak English, because their family live here- simply because they WANT to come here- are described in term of vermin – incursion, flood, TOO MANY! But the lack of restrictions on coronavirus facilitate the choking death of 150 people daily who supposedly share this great nation, and they’re consigned to the “inevitable deaths” pile.

Looking at it from that angle makes my blood truly run cold. “They had pre-existing conditions- we need to get on with our lives” are the usual defensive lines. It makes me feel sick to think that so many people can’t and won’t even go to the insignificant step of putting on a mask in restaurants, stores etc to prevent the possible deaths of those around them. I won’t even attempt to debunk the crackpots who believe a strip of cotton with ear loops is equivalent to oppression because their cosseted existences cannot be punctured with the simplicity of explanation that a face mask is not the same as jewish or POC or LGBT+ oppression, and rising to their ridiculous polemics is pointless- it’s the net result they want, so I frankly choose a mix of scorn and indifference.

The “other” arguments

Another talking point that both exhausts and amuses me in equal measure is “we don’t count deaths by cancer or flu every day”.

We actually do count flu deaths in the UK- just not on a daily counter. It’s not something we need to do because it’s not happening to the extent coronavirus deaths are presently. If flu became the perfect mix of horribly infectious, easy to pass on, hard to kill and deadly- I can guarantee you the daily figures would indeed become widely available- but the abject slap in the face that is conflating cancer with coronavirus cannot be stated as stupid often enough for me. You cannot- in any real way- compare something that essentially spontaneously occurs in people, which needs long term medical intervention, is 100% fatal without intervention and is not infectious with a virus: to put it simply – I’ve never caught cancer by sharing the gym with someone with cancer. Also as someone who has lost multiple family members to it I find people’s eagerness to throw out nonsense comparisons deeply offensive.

It’s the same with heart attacks, or anything else. Even comparison with flu doesn’t work- yes flu is infectious, it is a virus, but it has a lower death rate than coronavirus- why is this still information that needs to be repeated very nearly two years into a pandemic?

In my eyes, at this point- every death in the UK is squarely at the feet and the fault of an indifferent conservative government, enabled cheerfully by it’s supporters and emboldened by anybody who does not speak out on the hypocrisy of it. And being told to focus on yourself, having the false narrative of personal responsibility thrown out is the biggest insult- how can I focus on my own personal responsibility? If I need to get on a train to visit my family and I wear a mask but every single other person does not, I focused on my personal responsibility and nobody else did- their decision affects me and nullifies my efforts. A society should be encouraged to come together for its’ own good and for its’ own betterment- but in England it’s every man woman and child for themselves.

I suppose I’m searching for answers here from those who so devoutly believe it. Why is 50 migrants a plague, but 150 deaths – from a plague – is fine if it means you get to drink a pint without wearing a mask?

Dear “Libertarians”

By Daviemoo

Are you tired? Tired of being told to be vaccinated? Tired of being told to social distance? To wear masks? To wash your hands? Are you tired of the tyranny of a government commanding you to follow orders like a sheep?
How tired do you think we are of dragging you all along with us and suffering at your hands?

MY BODY MY CHOICE. It was, I’m sure, perceived as a master stroke when whichever cosseted little snowflake decided to appropriate the abortion rights moniker in the war against sense that is the anti vaccinations/ anti lockdowns/ anti masks movements.

However, I’ve never caught a virulent case of pregnancy via a handshake or sharing a supermarket aisle with someone.

Your body is your body – but your choice to walk around as a disseminator of a virus that has killed 4.5 Million people is not your own to make- except under a government that is either wilfully negligent or terrifyingly inept.

To imply that you are able to walk around with impunity is already false- were you found to be carrying a dangerous disease communicable by breathing or touch, you would, against your will, be forced to quarantine for the good of everyone around you. Were you walking around emitting radiation you would be caught, cornered and isolated. This is not new, it is not news, and it is certainly not controversial. You are not being shot, beaten, broken for the crime of existence- you are being prevented from spreading disease. If you can’t make a distinction between a desperate attempt to prevent societal damage and death, and TYRRANY – the issue doesn’t lie with your fellow countrymen or, loath as I am to defend them- the government.

The irony is that we currently have a government in place who are supremely unconcerned with infections en masse so my defence is- like any tory lines about “protection” – fictional.

Equally I see many people desperate to make a false equivalence between coronavirus and HIV.

HIV is bloodborne and can only be passed in certain circumstances I very rarely find myself in with strangers- that’s the difference with covid, and if you can’t make that distinction without an internet stranger pointing it out, I urge you to keep your mouth closed out of fear that you will suffer mortal embarrassment.

To be regularly called hysterical by people who reach histrionics when asked to wear a mask, to stand a slight distance apart or who regularly storm the wrong places to protest a vaccine is exhausting.

To see the dregs of our society – dregs, dear reader that I’m not afraid to call them any more- holding back our progress in defeating this virus that’s stolen a year and a half of our lives makes my stomach fill with hot rage. Here we sit, handcuffed to awkwardly squirming anti-everythingers who just want to “get on with their lives” as they refuse to follow even the smallest inconvenience to it, prolonging the issue.

How long are we as a society going to forment these weaklings? Do we really have to speak to people like they are children to explain why this is necessary? And if that is the case, why is it we who must suffer as they rage and flail against the symptoms they cause?

Frankly, the last 18 months has fundamentally changed how I feel about my fellow humans. Seeing the endless nonsense recycled, only to be called to heel by the reason of experts- to see it recycled again in a clown-filled repetition of garbage garbage garbage assailing the truth – has made me embittered towards my fellow people- and yet still I do what we’ve been told will help without question. But why? Why should I continue to do what experts recommend when so many others wont? If they wish to be so cavalier with my life, why shouldn’t I be with theirs?
The answer, I fear, is that it is fundamentally who we all are as people- surrounded by those who are “reasonably sure” they are right and their surety may kill me, as we try to protect them and may be giving our lives or health for it.

As the government who are supposed to oversee the welfare of the country continues to tacitly accept this disgraceful lack of safety from a legal and societal standpoint, I find myself more amazed than ever that we continue to assent to their twisted rule. Under the thumb of Johnson, who is hoping to eliminate the job of vaccines minister because he wishes to “move on” from COVID, this dangerous situation will grow, spread and entrench into the very stones of our buildings until our half-safe way of life becomes normal… even as the rest of the world returns to normal, away from the gaslighting the UK faces on the daily.

I don’t see wearing a mask, getting vaccinated or any other measures taken as cowardly- I see an inability to change your own behaviour as the world dictates as weakness.

And many more of our fellow man are shamefully weak than we knew.

How we move forward from this; I wish I knew.

On the eve of “Freedom Day”

By Daviemoo

Reader, I have to be honest. I didn’t think this would happen. I assumed that, at some point, someone would talk common sense into the admittedly plankish head of our esteemed Crime Sinister Johnson. But as tomorrow looms with no last minute sanity from our erstwhile government, some thoughts.

When I saw that Sajid Javid, a man who has been health secretary for less time than I’ve had bell peppers in my fridge, confirmed that he’d been diagnosed with COVID-19, my first thought was “right, well his name is now Sajid Covid in every video I make about him”.

I felt a small hope that perhaps this might prompt Westminster to realise that their diet eugenics plan probably wasn’t so brilliant after all. And most of all, I felt absolutely sure that Javid, as was shortly confirmed thereafter, would have shared a room with our mop haired muppet prime minister- and I wondered how he was going to escape this one.

I don’t want anyone to suffer from COVID-19 – I’ve seen, in front of me, someone die in a very similar way to the way this disease kills you if you’re so unlucky as to suffer that fate. I’ve heard someone complain that they’re drowning in their own pleural fluid. It’s not something I would wish on anyone, best friend or worst enemy. It’s part of the reason I’ve been so careful throughout the pandemic, acting as best I could without going absolutely insane.
You can imagine, then, my dismay when this morning’s news brought an update that both our illustrious thatch haired goon of a leader AND Rishi Sunak would NOT be isolating as we have, for the last twelve months (delayed, “world beating” app) been told is the “right thing to do”.

The outcry from the public was thunderous and for once I was pleased that the British public were outraged by something. But fleeting that feeling was because of course, they did their little U turn and all the Johnson fans jumped straight back on the bandwagon.

I have to wonder exactly what “freedom” it is that people are missing?
Those who haven’t wanted to wear masks haven’t been doing. Many a right wing grifter has been proudly declaring in their ignorance that they never downloaded the crap and trace app. And as for social distancing, the amount of sweaty headed idiots I’ve had spluttering at me throughout the pandemic is… many. I think I must have a different understanding of freedom. People seem to think that risking other people’s lives, hell, their own lives, is fine. I can’t tell you how many people have told me we just need to “get on with…” whatever. Our lives? Bit difficult when I’ll be worrying about passing on a virus to anyone I care about that might mean heart failure, coma, death, long term lung issues and more.

I’m not sure what the people desperate to go “free” think will happen next. We’re all up for the chopping block now. Likely we’ll all be sick, some of us very much so. The shops they’re so desperate to avail themselves of will shut again due to sickness. The coffee shops will become endless breeding grounds for the disease. Hospitals will fill and shut down.

Doesn’t seem like much of a freedom day to me.

I suspect if I get COVID-19 I’ll be okay, though my chances of long covid are still high. Who knows.

But I want this blog post to stand as an epitaph for anyone I love who I lose. I’ll write your name here, and that will give me the fuel for the fire I’ll summon to utterly destroy the enduring legacy of the charlatans running our government who allowed this disaster to unfold.

EDIT: it’s 23:06 on 21/01/2022 – since freedom day, 24,727 people have died in the UK from coronavirus. Twenty four thousand countryfolk, who have died at the hands of a government desperate to prop up their economy using the corpses of hapless Brits.

The Citizens of the UK- or how we became the kindling to restart the fire of a pandemic Economy

By Daviemoo

As Crime Sinister Boris Johnson is set to reopen the country with zero restrictions on the 19th, a quick reminder that a vast chunk of England seem absolutely fine with walking gently into mass hospitalisations, long covid cases galore and, indeed, the needless deaths of our loved ones.

I don’t like the conservatives.

You might have picked up on this simply by standing near me for more than 10 minutes, watching my internet videos or reading this blog- or simply sensing that I possess a moral compass that I actively try to align to true north when I can.

I haven’t liked them for a very long time, and frankly it started out as a grumbling resentment that the party of “family values” so openly touted a distaste for me and people like me simply based on my sexuality which still persists to this day with the animated ancient mummy herself Baroness Nicholson leading the charge.

But over the years this grew from a distaste to a naked hatred- not necessarily of conservative voters though I do find conversation with right wing voters entertaining because the pretzels they can knot themselves in to escape the reality of voting for bigotry is truly impressive- like watching one of those people that can fold themselves up to fit in a box.

Am I saying that all bigots are right wing? No… having stepped further and further left I do sometimes worry that some of my fellow far left folk fall prey to a different type of bigotry, one that assumes that we’ve always been how we are- “sensitive souls”, those who care about the people around us enough to hear them out and try to accommodate them. The fact that the left sometimes continue to condemn people even when they apologise openly for their behaviour confounds me- though I often find it right to do so when the apology is contrite and focuses more on the feelings of the accused, rather than sorrow for the harm their actions caused.

Nevertheless I do feel an open dislike for conservative voters to be quite apt at the moment, as we’re watching England in particular careen towards what I and others like me see as an abject humanitarian disaster. Below is a graph that shows the figures in England on lockdown day 2020- vs the repeated fuckups of a government run by a shaven orangutang in an ill fitting suit, vs now.

Source: google data on COVID cases in the UK

I’ve listened with numb horror to every bit of news coming from Downing Street for several weeks, sure that it was more right wing pomp, the showmanship of a man convinced that if he acts rough and tough despite looking like a dishevelled fop, people will laud him as a tough, decisive leader when we know- from the literal mouth of his previous adviser and sundry leaks- that he is incapable of doing the job which the tories wangled him into.

But no. Here we are, heading into literal disaster, a worst case scenario so unutterably dire that I cannot process it- and still bay the tory voters, “we just need to get on with our lives”.

Were this not a matter of life and death for others and, who knows, maybe even myself – I’d sit back and watch as these people lose their grandmothers, wives, cousins- and suddenly realise that maybe charging naked into a bush fire isn’t quite the brave notion they think.

But I know many vulnerable people who will be paralysed with fear in their homes, unable to take vaccines, unable to visit shops during the day for fears of crowds of people so excited to return to normality that they’ll cheerfully sacrifice the over 1.5 million seriously disabled among us who, and I can’t believe I have to write this, also deserve to “return to normal”.

Of course I’m not foolish and I know that the internet is a vacuum and people will spout their nonsense there, only to toe the line when the chips are down – but the sheer number of people excited to reach “freedom day”, an odious term coined by the office of our lacklustre leader, feverish to ditch masks which are treated like the lead at the neck of a particularly ferocious dog, terrifies me.

Firstly, a word on oppression- the reactionaries’ current favourite term.

If your oppression consists of the act of wearing a bit of material on your face so you can walk into asda for some custard creams and a pint of milk, or being asked to not breathe directly down the neck of the people in front of you at the pub- what a privileged, easy life you must lead.

The types who feel this is oppression are so quick to compare it to Nazi Germany which proves beyond doubt they’ve never actually read history books or accounts of what exactly it was like to live in Nazi Germany. To think that we walk amongst people so cosseted that they believe that mask wearing, an act that protects others more than yourself, is oppression, would be laughable if it were a pastiche- so ridiculous that you wouldn’t believe it.

I remember seeing this meme about six months into the pandemic and even though it made me laugh, it also made me sigh and understand that this was the “normal folk” I was expected to walk around with. It simply said something to the effect of “any zombie movies after this will be really unrealistic if a huge portion of us don’t go running towards the zombies to prove how undeadly they are”.

That meme has become a mental symbol of how I’ve coped for so long- making comedy out of the growing insanity of the country to get by, because to look at people’s behaviours factually I think i’d have snapped in May 2020.

Heading to disaster

I wake up every day, a little bit amazed that we’re allowing the tories to just blow the doors off the pandemic because “if not now, when?”- we were told so many times we had an amazing vaccine rollout- surely it does it an injustice to open before it’s finished? But people don’t care. A worrying portion of people somehow function in their daily lives whilst equating vaccines to poison, population control, tracking and an exhaustive list of other fundamental nonsense.

I can never imagine what it’s like to be someone so insane as to think that almost every scientist, doctor, nurse, politician and more, in the whole world, sat down and said “so we’re going to pretend that this virus exists/ so we’re making an evil vaccine- don’t tell anyone though, we’re making a new world order for *insert laughable reason here*”.

All of that- the disinformation that’s been allowed to spread, unscrupulous characters trying to shill their idiocy to a nation all too willing to believe the one person who says no when 99,999 other people say yes, a government headed up by a man who, we now know without a doubt said “let the bodies pile high in their thousands!” rather than facilitate a lockdown out of a fear of his friends’ pockets getting lighter, has led us to this moment. As we stand on the precipice of what I confidently believe will be a disaster for the people of the UK, I think I’m more offended for the people failed by the education we were given by a state in disrepair who believe the nonsense than I am by the man so callous as to push for it.

There seems to be a worrying amount of credence to the notion that Matt Han-dsoffmywifeyou-cock was removed from his role by angry tory backbenchers who knew he was throwing rope at an intern he hired with public funds, who then facilitated the installation of Sajid Javid who would be their mouthpiece for the end of lockdowns. The reason? Isn’t it always money? Need you ask.

I don’t have the spoons today to go into the Brexit reasoning behind reopening, plus I think that brexit is only a factor, not THE factor in reopening. Plus saying Brexit three times usually gets you mobbed by angry people who are genetically incapable of speaking in cogent arguments.

And now for some pretension!

I feel like Cassandra. If you don’t know who Cassandra is, here’s a little history on Greek tragedies for you.

Cassandra was a woman gifted by fate to see the future- but cursed to never be believed when she told people what she saw.

I imagine if Cassandra were here now she’d be screaming at the top of the shard, begging people to stand up against a government who seems to be falling just short of eugenics, as people point and laugh and call her crazy. But we don’t need Cassandra to spell this out to us- we have doctors, scientists, immunologists, people whose roles are to study pandemics past and advise us on how to get through it, telling us en masse that this is a bad idea.

Of course there’s conflicting opinions- people saying it will work – but we live in a world where Nazis still exist so to speak for the mental acuity of individual, educated people who speak out in favour of the erasure of measures, is not exactly ground breaking, nor does it mean that they are the pied pipers we should be following.

My concern comes for the people of the UK who may – I hope I’m wrong, I don’t want to see abject suffering and mass deaths of course and woe betide the tories if I lose someone I love- be facing a nightmare from which the escape will be long, arduous and filled with the suffering of those we care for most.

I repeat, I hope things work out okay- but if things do go wrong, I hope Johnson and the scum who enabled the disaster to unfold are hoisted high from their own petards and castigated by the masses they’re so willing to throw to the wolves, all in the name of the post-Brexit economy.

I suppose my main question is as simple as this: how and why are so many people absolutely fine with the possibility of getting sick themselves, of their families getting sick, of losing friends, loved ones?
The usual answer seems to be that “we’ve sacrificed so much”- begs the question why we’re so keen to sacrifice more.