There follows a guest post by a Daily Sceptic reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, on the anger that led him to stop wearing a mask – but the apathetic resignation to the ubiquitous Covid theatre that led him to acquiesce to a pointless Perspex screen.
Cast your mind back to the distant past. Do you recall when the Government postponed the so-called June 21st 2021 ‘Freedom Day’ by a month? (You remember: the ‘irreversible terminus’ of the ‘road map’!) Well, I’d been seething for a while, but when that happened I really was as mad as hell and finally decided not to take it anymore. My protest was rather timid, but it felt like a big step at the time: I resolved I would no longer ‘mask up’ (there must be some strong contenders but has a more loathsome phrase entered the language in the Covid era?) as an outward and visible sign of my inward opposition to the nonsensical tyranny that had taken control of our country. (Musings on the travails of my conscience at this time were kindly published by the Daily Sceptic.)
I confess that I was, in that long-distant summer, a little nervous upon entering the supermarket and getting on a train for the first couple of times. But it very quickly came to feel completely unremarkable – and highly liberating. Somewhat to my surprise, I also found that nobody challenged me. Not a single person. I had no difficult conversations or explosive confrontations; I didn’t need to enter into heated debates about exemptions or human rights. I maybe received the odd death-glare from my fellow-citizens, but with half of their face obscured, how can you really tell?
I was an outlaw for a month, until July 19th 2021, from when nobody was obliged to wear a mask in shops or on public transport and the law was finally on my side. There remained ‘guidance’ to the effect that wearing masks in crowded places was recommended, but with laughable optimism I assumed that this guidance would be generally disregarded. I strode into my local Co-op on July 19th, fully expecting to see a sea of cheerful bare faces. Why would anyone voluntarily submit to this dehumanising and degrading imposition? It was the middle of summer; all the metrics that apparently measured the progress of the (increasingly questionably named) pandemic were gently bumping along at the bottom of a line graph; surely nobody would continue to choose to put a mask on their face to go shopping?
But no: in shops and on buses the masked-up still remained a clear majority. I found this disconcerting. It started to dawn on me that, deep down, maybe people actually liked wearing them, and that there was perhaps more going on here – psychologically, politically, sociologically – than simply staying safe.
As the year progressed, however, the ratio of masked to unmasked started to shift somewhat closer to sanity. When I took my son from our small North West town into Manchester in early December, the train there and back was very crowded with Christmas shoppers and there was hardly a mask in sight. We had to stand for much of the journey, in close proximity to fellow human beings, and we struck up friendly conversations with strangers by exhaling air from our mouths in the traditional fashion, unencumbered by cloth barriers. It felt good. Natural. Normal. I really started to think that the Covid mania was pretty much coming to an end and that the spell had been broken, like that bit in The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe when the snow starts melting and the White Witch can do nothing about it apart from stamp her feet and shout at her dwarf.
But days later the latest scare campaign was launched. A new ‘variant of concern’, originating in South Africa, was detected. I watched, deflated and astonished, as the sickeningly familiar apparatus of fear was wheeled out again: the portentous Greek code name (the Omicron Variant; it sounded comically like a 1970s airport thriller by Frederick Forsyth but apparently we were supposed to take it seriously) the shrill headlines, the apocalyptic models (large numbers of people dying by… some point in the near future… probably…), the grave press conferences. Come on! Surely, I thought, people aren’t going to go along with it this time! The facts were so unpersuasive – South African doctors were telling us from the outset that this variant was essentially a cold. Surely the mutation of the virus into something endemic and eminently manageable was a cause for celebration, not blind panic?
Of course not. The majority seemed to lap it all up with resigned fatalism and even a strange masochistic delight. The masks suddenly started to proliferate in greater numbers. I started to spot far greater numbers of the weird sub-group of masked people who wander around outside and alone, like confused escapees from an institution. I call these people “Ernies”, after the character in the film K-Pax who wears a mask all day long because he is, you know, a mentally ill hypochondriac. You may recall that at the end of the film, Ernie takes his mask off and decides to henceforth live his life confidently and joyfully, at last recognising that a life spent obsessively fearing death is a life wasted. What a strange message from a galaxy far, far away!
Before long the Government’s so-called ‘Plan B’ was invoked. As well as introducing a reprehensible system of health apartheid by mandating vaccine passports, this step involved mandating the wearing of masks in shops and on public transport. In January the Government then went further by forcing all secondary school children to cover their faces throughout the school day. As I type these words I still cannot quite believe that this is really taking place in my country, and that many teachers and parents are shamefully supporting this cruel, stupid, abusive policy.
I was still mad as hell, far madder actually, and so despite the return of the legal mandate I certainly wasn’t going to back down now. I screwed my courage to the thingummy and continued to go abroad in a state of brazen masklessness. And with much the same consequences as before: that is, none whatsoever. So far a grand total of one person has challenged me; a bus-driver who asked me, rather half-heartedly, whether I had a mask. I said that I didn’t and I sat down, which proved to be the end of the matter. I was disappointed to see, again, such high levels of compliance, but it is at least reassuring to observe a smattering of fellow refuseniks abroad. I find the staff in shops to be, if anything, more friendly towards me than usual. Perhaps many of them are sick of wearing masks themselves and enjoy interacting with someone whose face they can see and whose voice they can hear clearly. Staff at train stations and on the tube, I have noticed, very often don’t wear masks themselves, and do not seem at all interested in enforcing the mandate.
It’s a strange time – things are, perhaps, drifting back in the general direction of what we might just about call normalcy, but the vestigial traces of Covid mania are proving stubbornly slow to disappear. This gives almost every routine daily interaction a slightly surreal, irrational quality. I will try to illustrate what I mean with a brief anecdote.
This Saturday morning I went to our local butchers. Most people in the queue were wearing masks; I and the lady behind me were not. The butchers were not wearing masks themselves and the man who served me was courteous and friendly and did not remark at all upon my bare face. “See you soon, sir!” he called as I left the shop.
As I was walking home I was caught in a sudden heavy downpour of rain just as I was passing a small cafe. On a whim I decided to take refuge there for 20 minutes or so in the hope that the rain would abate.
It was a smart sort of cafe, quite small, with maybe eight tables arranged closely to one another. It was busy. Most of the tables were full, and a couple had reservation signs. A waitress approached, maskless, smiling. I explained that I just wanted a cup of coffee, but said that I could see that they were busy. A man sitting at the table right by the door doing a crossword and drinking tea said that I was welcome to sit at his table, since he was on his own at a table for four. I thanked him and sat down.
All perfectly normal, so far.
The waitress went away, returning immediately with a surprising object: a small portable Perspex screen, maybe half a metre square, that she proceeded to place upon the table. Given that me and the gentleman with the crossword were on the same side of the table, this screen didn’t even sit in our line of sight, so any hopes that it would be able to deflect the potentially deadly microscopic virus particles passing between us seemed especially optimistic. “Just going to pop this here… let me know if you don’t need it,” said the waitress. My companion was engrossed in his crossword. I ordered a cup of coffee.
Waiting for my drink, I wondered what a visitor from the distant past – February 2020, say – would have made of this little screen. I then started to notice other little things that a time-traveller would have found odd about the café. Firstly, she may have noticed that by the door was a QR code and a notice stating that it was a legal requirement for visitors to ‘check in’ using this code as part of a Government programme called ‘Track and Trace’. Such a notice would undoubtedly have sent a frisson of horror down her spine. What dystopian hell is this?
She would also have noticed, however, that absolutely nobody entering the café paid any attention to this sign or the code. Was the sign out of date? Was it being routinely disobeyed in a quiet act of civil disobedience? Was it actually some sort of elaborate prank – or an art installation, perhaps? It occurred to me – having never downloaded this app myself, and having rather lost track of the myriad restrictions that have been brought in, rescinded, and reintroduced in recent months – that I didn’t have a clue whether checking in to cafés is still a legal requirement. And if it isn’t, why are the signs still everywhere? When if ever, will they be removed?
The other thing that might have baffled and dismayed a visitor from the past was the peculiar ritual conducted by every single customer upon entering the café. They all walked in wearing face masks. Following a muffled conversation with the waitress, they would then make their way to a table and only upon sitting down would they finally remove these masks.
How would this weird phenomenon be explained to a bemused time-traveller?
“Well, there’s this virus going around, and they think that masks might reduce your chances of getting it, or at least passing it on, so it’s become a courteous custom to wear them in order to reduce the spread of the disease.”
“Yes, but… they only wear the masks for half a minute and then spend half an hour sitting in a small room in close proximity to 20 other people. Is this a virus that can somehow only infect those who are standing up? If they are genuinely concerned that they might have this dreadful virus then why not just have their breakfast at home? And none of them actually look very fearful. This really isn’t how I imagined people would behave in a deadly global pandemic – I’ve seen Contagion and I don’t remember the scene where everyone went out and ordered avocado on toast.”
And that’s the truly strange thing right now – none of them look fearful. We are still going through the motions with the masks and the tests and all the rest of it, but as far as I can tell very few people are actually in the least bit concerned about Covid itself. Every second conversation you overhear is about some friend or family member who, despite being ‘triple jabbed’ and testing themselves daily and dutifully wearing their mask has managed to catch Covid and is currently stuck at home watching Netflix. But these conversations are all completely matter of fact, even rather jocular; none of the people being talked about seem to have more than a bad head cold. There is a total absence of the fear of the virus that was evident in March and April 2020. The Covid rituals have become entrenched; a self-perpetuating practice, conducted for its own sake, and uprooted from any realistic connection to an actual threat.
Whatever their private opinions may be, few people I encounter appear to be openly questioning why we are still acting in this extraordinary way. Nor are they challenging the removal of the civil liberties and the jobs of low-risk people who choose not to be given a vaccine that is manifestly ineffective against infection with the dominant variant of the virus. Nor are they disputing whether perfectly healthy people should be testing themselves every day, at eye-watering public expense, to determine whether they are ill without knowing it. Okay, I have encountered one or two friends who are now voicing these sorts of radical views, but it is still somehow not the done thing in bien pensant circles to speak out against the dominant narrative. It’s embarrassing and somehow ill-mannered to do so, and any opposition is tentative and very carefully framed indeed – “I’m not a Trump-supporting conspiracy theorist anti-vaxxer but I’m just a teeny bit unsure about this forcing children to wear masks business…” In general, most people are still dutifully – even enthusiastically – going along with the Covid theatre of the absurd.
I mused on all of this as I walked back home from the café on Saturday, the rain having stopped, and I experienced and rather enjoyed the nasty little glow of outrage and smug self-righteousness that is my chief consolation when contemplating our current predicament. They’ve all gone mad, I tell myself, but at least good old me can see through the insanity.
But then it occurred to me that this wasn’t entirely true. I too had played along with the rules of this Mad Hatter’s tea party. When the waitress had placed down that Perspex barrier, she had clearly stated that we should inform her if we didn’t need it. I should at this point have politely asked her to take it away. The man with the crossword would probably have raised no objections, since he was the one who had invited me to sit down in the first place. I very much doubt the waitress cared one way or the other.
So why had I said nothing? Oh, for an easy life, I suppose. Right then and there, wiping the rain from my glasses and deciding which coffee to order, objecting to the screen simply hadn’t seemed worth the bother. But by letting the screen remain in place, I had been guilty of a small but nonetheless significant act of apathy and cowardice. It may not have felt like a big thing, and in a way it wasn’t, but it’s the accumulation and the acceptance of so many of these little things that has created the bizarre world we now live in.
I may well be wrong – my hopes and predictions have been dashed many times over the last 18 months – but it does feel as if all of this is, maybe, finally, just about starting to wind down in the U.K. The current restrictions are due to expire on January 26th. Some of them will, it seems at this point, probably be rescinded. But others may well remain. And for how long? One final push to get us through the winter… better safe than sorry… it really is the irreversible terminus this time! There is a real risk that some of the props and routines of the Covid theatre will be with us for years, if not forever. So now is not the time for complacency. We need to resist all of them, even the small ones. There must be a bonfire of the masks. And of the Perspex screens as well.
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Restaurant/stadium/etc asks potential customers to present a “vaccine passport” before entry. As a potential customer I would first demand to see the vaccine passports of all the workers in that facility. Only fair, right?
Liberal Democrats it is then.
I have never voted for the Liberals, Lib Dems or whatever believing them to be a cowardly safe haven for those who cannot decide between Conservative and Socialist.
New, one issue, parties will achieve nothing except to waste money and split the anti authoritarian vote.
With a voice already in Parliament and the media and with their current 100% record why vote for anyone else, except those honorable notable Labour, Conservative and Other MPs that just outed themselves as champions of liberty ?
Yes Ben Bradshaw, that includes you, surprisingly.
76 is a good number to start with three years to build up the anti momentum.
Makes sense, if only because it is the only way to obtain Proportional Representation; and PR is the only way forward for small new parties to grow.
We need new parties in order to protect minorities from the ‘tyranny of the majority’.
PR is a disaster. It guarantees nothing will ever get done. That’s why ZZ Top run Israel. Strangely enough the most effective is a three party where the opposition plus the ‘third’ can stop the worst excessives of government.
The Liberal Democrats have always been a bit weak on actual liberalism. But to judge by their actions they are right on this and will get my vote unless there is an even more explicitly anti-lockdown party on offer.
Does anybody know how they voted for the 3 lockdowns and the previous covid bill?
The Liberal Democrats are not anti-lockdown; they are not opposed to the non-pharmaceutical interventions.
I suspected that. It’s just this specific extension they are against
Yup, I got a bit excited at that too, then I saw this https://www.libdems.org.uk/s21-covid-motion – they are firmly part of the ‘lockdown earlier and harder’ and ‘close the borders’ brigade. And it seems some of the labour MPs didn’t think the bill went ‘far enough’ in supporting people to self-isolate. So sadly this is not really coming about as a result of these people looking at the scientific evidence which says that quarantining the healthy is pointless, in the case of the lib-dems it’s probably a desperate grab for attention prior to the local elections, after which their local councillors will be pressing at every stage for ‘local powers’ – it never ends….
Ben Bradshaw seems to have made the transition so why not the Lib Dems, even if only for short term electoral advantage (which Ben does not require).
Doesn’t look like Bradshaw has made that much of a transition – only last week he was pushing for hotel quarantine to be replaced by a GPS tracking system. Replacing prison with house arrest enforced by electronic tag for the crime of going on holiday doesn’t cut it with me I’m afraid. I would be more convinced if he was asking when we are going to have an international tourist industry again….
Point taken, his main interest seems to be the resurrection of the local tourist industry which would, of course, benefit from the destruction of overseas travel.
my MP is firmly against all restrictions (as he emails me) and is in the CRG. Then he votes for everything going
And that only because they know that they’ll never be in a position to exploit it.
Sir Forensic fancies his chances at taking the helm of HMS Despotic if they can make this temporary emergency permanent.
Why are you simping for a party?
We don’t vote for parties, and we certainly don’t vote for leaders. We get one vote, in our constituency, and we vote for the actual candidates who are standing there. Please, please, try to get that through your skull.
Look at the individuals actually standing. Find out what they believe, and vote for the individual who best represents your beliefs, or for none of the above.
Sure, most low-information voters are just going to scrawl their X by the picture of the rosette that they’ve always voted for, but perhaps informed voter might try to be better than that. If we don’t, then all we’re ensuring is that the second-worst Party of Davos candidate will get in, time after time after time.
I have never voted for Ben Bradshaw precisely because he is of the Labour party (not that any other party has ever put up a candidate of merit against him).
Despite my now advocating voting Lib Dem on the basis of their new stand re Coronovirus legislation in Ben’s case I would now vote for him for that same reason and because he is the sitting MP.
I made that proviso in my initial post.
This from a conservative who never forgave them for getting rid of Enoch Powell because he was anti Common Market and never voted for them since they got rid of Mrs Thatcher for similar reasons.
Wonderland. Simply not where we live. I lived for a while in Andorra. Got to vote. You actually wrote the name on the ballot. That’s Democracy. In the UK it’s very simple. The only workable is a single issue anti lockdown. The rest will be fixed.
Regarding lockdowns being “electoral gold” in Australia and NZ, I wonder why in those countries the bottom-up popular will to stop Covid is so much stronger than in the Americas or Europe?
From an Australian poster on a (members-only) forum which I frequent:
Wow, is there no opposition to this? It’s so brutal, just for a mild respiratory illness.
In an extension of the orientalist attitudes that many Westerners have shown regarding East Asian responses to Covid, some argue that what has happened in Australia is that the country has gone back to its penal colony roots.
Repressive regime seems like repressive regime wherever it happens. Don’t see how that’s ‘orientalist’ or any other ‘ist’.
I can’t help but see regret in Aus/NZ future if this continues; this from someone who lives in a small, repressive, ‘let’s do zero-covid’ island which is in the same uncomfortable position.
Isle of Man?
Yup, the home of terrifying motorbike road racing, now run by bedwetters for bedwetters and going down the shitter with nary a peep.
See Paula’s excellent comment below.
Was the Isle of Man capable of following a zero covid plan in the way that the UK wasn’t simply because its much smaller size means it’s far more difficult for someone to reach it illegally?
If you head out to sea from the northern coast of France in a vaguely northwesterly direction you’re almost assured of making landfall in Great Britain, but reaching the Isle of Man would likely require far greater navigational skills.
I don’t think so, it’s fairly visible; I can see England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales from our coasts.
There’s just no pull factor to reach it illegally as benefits and housing are dependent on residency for five years at least.
I’m sure that there are other European countries that are far more attractive to benefit scroungers, and that most illegal immigrants to the UK come here not to scrounge but to work.
Although the real issue isn’t illegal immigrants per se, but about British citizens returning illegally if they’d ended up stranded abroad by an Australian-style border policy.
In Victoria it was highly publicized when an illegal gathering in a garden shed was discovered after someone at the local KFC drive-thru made a suspiciously large order, which alerted the manager to call in the licence plate to the police.
The problem is you can have ‘popular will to stop Covid’ until you are blue in the face – it’s a waste of time if the methods you are using are ineffective. If I was going to be very unkind I would say Europe and especially those parts of the US that are opening up are more alert to the follies of thinking you can ‘control a virus’ The UK had a carefully thought-through pandemic plan which it threw out of the window in favour of measures that had no evidence base. But at least in some quarters we seem to be very slowly realising our mistakes.
Surely the point is that if people have a strong will to stop Covid then they will accept the methods that are effective, such as sealed borders and highly intrusive surveillance: like the universal QR code checking mentioned above, which in NZ also applies to buses, shopping malls (both the mall as a whole and the individual shops within) and each building within university campuses.
It’s interesting that Americans are typically appalled by the harsh lockdowns in Australia and New Zealand, while Europeans are more likely to be appalled by their sealed borders.
I live in Auckland, NZ and have used the bus twice lately. There is no pressure to use the QR code and I have not worn a mask either, I now have an exemption but have not shown it.
I didn’t see anyone using a QR code at a mall entrance the other day, though I did see some using individual shop’s ones.
Recently there has been more PR about using them as compliance has fallen considerably, which pleases me!
You’re joking of course? If not you need professional help.
What did I say in my message above that implies that I “need professional help”?
Just reading about antibody-dependent-enhancement and I came across the following meeting “Consensus summary report for CEPI/BC March 12–13, 2020 meeting: Assessment of risk of disease enhancement with COVID-19 vaccines”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7247514/
Part of the conclusions are
“Data are needed on whether antibody waning could increase the risk of enhanced disease on exposure to virus in the long term”
I don’t suppose they have that data yet do they? Hasn’t really been enough time
IT GETS BETTER!!!
BLOOD TESTS TO ENTER A PUB???????
Apparently supported by the Damm man.
‘In March 19th the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued a press release detailing changes to its operational strategy for K-12 students. It stated that among other things, students may now reduce their social distancing from 6 feet to 3 feet.’
https://www.aier.org/article/the-6-foot-mandate-was-bad-science/
Europe, and this country, begin to look embarrassingly backward, even stupid/dumb.
The case of Holmseley Care Home in Devon is very puzzling. The police have arrested two care workers on the basis of “wilful neglect”. The Home has had an outbreak of Covid 19. Nine residents are reported as having died of the disease. Yet the residents and most of the staff had been vaccinated. None of this makes sense. If the residents were vaccinated – and the vaccines are safe and effective, as we are constantly told by the authorities – how could the residents die of Covid 19? What did they die of? Surely the deaths would be vaccine adverse reactions? Why have two of the workers been accused of wilful neglect? What is it that they allegedly did not do? Why is there a police investigation?
“As part of their enquiries, officers are speaking to staff and conducted a search of the home. Post-mortems have been conducted on three of the deceased residents.”
maybe just trying to look like they are doing something?
Very odd report indeed (Local Live), it implies both that the deaths are Covid related and that the Staff are at fault.
Normalising Police involvement in cases of Staff non- compliance ?
Don’t understand how they could have an outbreak with vaccinated residents unless either the outbreak began too soon after vaccination for immunity to take effect, or at least half of the residents had such weak immune systems in the first place that the vaccine didn’t work.
I fear for the upcoming Panorama ‘Covid’ documentary. Glimpsing the trailers it looks like they’ll try to trash Sweden and extol Boris. Maybe with a ‘not soon enough, not hard enough, not long enough’ flavour. (I really hope I’m wrong). Of course the Sheeple will gobble it all up. Panorama used to be a strong investigative program. Hope lives eternal!
Outside of the metropolitan bubble it will reach those ten viewers who can’t be bothered to switch it off.