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Jorg Probst

Singapore’s new healthcare system

Covid has brought out the worst in health care systems. 

Those critical of government-imposed Covid measures noticed and called out from the beginning the existence of incredibly perverse incentives for doctors, clinics, and hospitals, which not only made any truly meaningful statistical evaluation of this whole crisis impossible, but also caused incalculable harm. 

But profit-driven, counter-productive incentives existed in healthcare systems long before Covid, and they are deeply entrenched. Health care costs in many countries keep on spiralling out of control, with governments seemingly powerless to do anything about it. 

Switzerland, which can safely be described as a first-world country, is one such seemingly hopeless case. There, some hospitals have just announced they are on the brink of collapse. Their solution is to simply demand yet higher fees so they can keep operating.

Surely there has to be a better way. And indeed, recently the city-state of Singapore has announced a radical overhaul of its healthcare system. 

Going forward, doctors and hospitals will be incentivised to give the right care to the patients, not the most profitable care. The focus will be on preventing sickness and providing any necessary care as efficiently as possible. 

The focus on preventative healthcare – isn’t that what public health should have primarily been about all along? I know, that’s not what Mr Bigpharma likes to hear. 

Associate Professor Jeremy Lim, the director of global health at the National University of Singapore’s Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health explains what this actually means, as well as some challenges the new system may face.

Singapore’s ‘Healthier SG’ is probably not perfect either, but it looks like a plausible and sensible alternative that governments in other countries, including Australia, should at least consider.

Eyes wide shut

There can be no doubt that Australia, like many other countries, is experiencing significantly higher overall mortality since 2021.

The following graphic from the latest release of provisional mortality statistics by Australian Bureau of Statistics has its limitations – it’s as if that agency didn’t want to make it easy for the public to see the fuller picture. But what the ABS does dish up should be enough to more than just raise eyebrows.

We can speculate what might be the reasons, but it would be much better if there were some kind of transparent and fulsome inquiry into this phenomenon. Surely frank and unbiased research ought to be carried out in an effort to get to the bottom of this.

Even the media have picked up on the issue, though they steer clear of mentioning the liquid that must not be named.

Clearly, something isn’t right. On 23 March 2023, a few Australian senators, who happened to be those critical of the governments’ Covid measures, tried to launch a Senate inquiry.

Here are the contributions from Sen. Babet, Sen. Rennick, Sen. Canavan, with Sen. Pratt trying to gloss over the issue. Sen. Babet then called for the establishment of a Select Committee on Australia’s Excess Mortality.

The next day, the Senate voted on the motion. What was the outcome?

Fifty-nine of the seventy-six senators showed up to vote on what really shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Perhaps it’s still too early for many to face their Covid demons, but collectively (29 ayes to 30 noes), the Australian Senate decided it does not want to understand why death rates in this country have not stayed more or less the same over the very period during which experimental but allegedly highly effective and safe substances have been circulating through the bodies of the vast majority of Australians.

Again, we could speculate as to why a majority voted ‘no’ to a mere fact finding mission. Are they really not interested? Do they not care to see the bigger picture? Did they just toe the party line? Did they vote this way merely because the motion came from senators whose other political views they don’t agree with?

All of the ’no‘ voters wouldn’t even have been in government when the magic potion was unleashed on the public, but of course, they were just as Covid-crazed as their political enemies. And now? Perhaps they know all too well their role in this particular ‘game of mates’, and they are loathe to risk upsetting their pharmaceutical puppet masters.

And just for the record, here are these wilfully blind senators who too swore to serve the Australian people:

Diagnosis ‘critical thinking’

I’ve been diagnosed with a mental illness. But you know what? I’m actually proud of it. And I wish it was highly contagious because everyone should get infected. I admit, this particular affliction can be a little uncomfortable at times, but on another level it is also quite liberating.

The diagnosis? Critical thinking. 

Will this serious disorder make it into the next version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)? It wouldn’t surprise me after watching this fascinating talk by Dr James Davis that demonstrates just how corrupt and downright ridiculous science in general and psychiatry or psychology in particular can be.

My first official diagnosis came in May 2022 when a bunch of researchers from New Zealand presented their explanation as to why some people were less than enthusiastic about getting their Covid jabs when that country’s rollout kicked off in 2021. 

There sure was a perplexing mystery to be solved here. How could it possibly be that the most selfless and scrupulous pharmaceutical companies bestow upon all of humanity out of the sheer goodness of their hearts a perfect solution to save all of us from certain death (and this in record time), only for some people to refuse this heavenly gift? There was only one possible explanation: these people had to be stark raving mad. 

The researchers took their ingenious hunch to a cohort of people at their disposal – people who were used to their lives being prodded and poked by scientists from time to time. And so just before the beginning of the vaccine rollout, these subjects were quizzed about their preparedness to get ‘vaccinated’ against Covid.

The hypothesis was that something must have gone wrong during the childhood of the ‘vaccine hesitant’ or those entirely unwilling to take the stuff.

This group of researchers were not the first ones to claim that vaccine hesitancy is caused by some kind of brain malfunction, for example cognitive deficits (eg Batty et al, 2021). But they felt they had something special to offer – they claimed that vaccine hesitancy was connected to early life experiences. 

A solid 88% of the targeted cohort filled in a questionnaire about whether or not they would get vaccinated. Out of the 832 people, 75% were definitely or likely willing to get vaccinated, 12% were hesitant or undecided, and 13% were labeled ‘vaccine resistant’. 

The study found that 25% of those who were vaccine hesitant or worse ‘followed the expected social gradient’ – they were early school dropouts and from a lower socioeconomic background, and a quarter of them left high school without a qualification. Whereas, among those willing to roll up their sleeves on command, the number was 10%. With 35% of the willing having completed university,  only 15% of the refuseniks received a uni degree. 

That says it all, right? Well, as Prof. Mattias Desmet suggests, and that is also my observation from three years of living in Covid Clown World: whether you believe in this whole Covid story has nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence or education. 

But back to the study. The researchers make some very predictable and banal findings:

The unwilling tended to have safety concerns about the vaccines, doubts about the pandemic in general, and they didn’t believe the jabs would lead to a return to normalcy. They mistrusted institutions and influencers, and they didn’t even listen to family, friends and co-workers. Seriously? How dare these people think for themselves, have their own opinion, disagree with the mainstream view? 

And then of course comes the hammer: What did they find when they compared the psychological histories of the willing versus the unwilling? Especially vaccine resistant but also vaccine hesitant people were exposed to ‘significantly more Adverse Childhood Experiences’ such as abuse, neglect, threat and deprivation. As adolescents they scored higher on negative emotionality, in other words they tended to shut down more under stress, felt alienated, felt mistreated, and were aggressive. They were also non-conformists. And to top it off, they were more likely to have experienced ‘mental health problems dating back to adolescence.’ 

Next, they list a plethora of symptoms such as antisocial behaviour, substance misuse, anxiety, depression, delusional beliefs, hallucinations, obsessions, compulsions – symptoms which ‘might interfere with receipt of health messaging, healthy decision-making, and resistance to conspiracy theories.’ 

Aha! There we have it. Why was I not surprised to find the c-word in this study?

Intellectually, the unwilling were below average readers when leaving high school, performed less well in IQ tests as children, and as adults scored lower in comprehension and processing speed tests. In other words, they are a bit, well, you know… slow. 

What about the 13% of ‘unwilling’ who somehow managed to get through university and still turn out to not submit to vaccination? They scored less extremely on all these factors, and so the logical conclusion is the uneducated unwilling are on average actually even crazier than they seem.

And what do these learned researchers suggest should be done about such recalcitrant citizens? 

Seeing that most of them are just plain stupid, they recommend dumbing down the public health message. They suggest that ‘clear and simple messaging tailored to a modest level of verbal complexity may reach the vaccine-hesitant.’

But… hasn’t that  happened from the very beginning of these vaccine campaigns? I mean, is it possible to dumb down primitive slogans such as ‘vax to the max’, ‘we’re all in this together’, ‘do it for granny’ etc? Ah but that’s different, I see…

The study authors go on to pontificate:

‘Pro-vaccination health messaging does not operate in a vacuum, it must compete against powerful anti-vaccination messaging, which often reinforces themes of suspicion, mistrust, fear, anger, alienation, and conspiracy, sensationalises fear of rare side effects, lionises anti-establishment nonconformist, praises going against the “vaccinated herd”, and presents vaccination as a personal choice that must be exercised to preempt exploitation by the government.’

‘Lionises’… cute.

In line with their findings, the authors recommend that schools should do more to indoctrinate children with the right ‘knowledge’. 

It seems the vast majority of teachers were fully on board and had no doubt done their fair share of scare mongering in the classrooms, even if it was mostly online.

This study is based on the fundamental assumption that the reasons for questioning vaccines are invalid, and that there cannot possibly be any good reasons to question the official narrative around these alleged vaccines. It is written from within a very particular narrative.

Never mind that even by the time the study was published, many doctors, health professionals and academics around the world had spoken out against the Covid fraud generally, and specifically against the foolishness (to put it mildly) of coercing the entire population into being injected with insufficiently tested, unproven, ineffective, and demonstrably problematic substances to combat a virus and a disease which is far from being as dangerous as it was portrayed. 

Actually, the authors, had they not been captive to the Covid narrative, could have explored a much more interesting question when it comes to preparedness to get these Covid jabs: why do so many people simply follow orders? Why do they so readily roll up their sleeves? Why do they blindly trust governments? 

On to my second diagnosis… 

You see, I think that the whole climate emergency story is a huge fraud on humanity too. Once I began researching this topic in earnest some years ago, it didn’t take me long to figure out that there was something seriously wrong with the mainstream narrative. But somehow seeing behind the curtain of deceit makes me and many others dangerous ‘climate change deniers.’

The pompously titled 2022 study Associations of locus of control, information processing style and anti-reflexivity with climate change scepticism in an Australian sample is behind a paywall. The abstract is pure pseudo-scientific gibberish, but thank goodness we can get the gist of what the authors are trying to say, because they kindly providee us with a handy summary in the quality publication The Conversation, under the title Inside the mind of a sceptic: the “mental gymnastics” of climate change denial.

The groundbreaking conclusion of this study is essentially that ‘some people reject consensus science and generate other explanations due to mistrust in climate science and uncritical faith in “alternative science”’.

How about looking at it in another way? Could it be that people like myself don’t have uncritical faith in alternative science? Instead, we are critical of mainstream science… including their study which is apparently based on an online survey with a rather low sample size.

The authors seem to suggest that US climate change denialism is connected to religious beliefs, whereas the Australian deniers have ‘faith in “alternative” or pseudo-science explanations.’ 

It’s amazing: that climate denialism bug is shape-shifting just like the Covid bug. 

And it gets better:

‘Our further analyses suggested that mistrust in climate science and uncritical faith in “alternative science” prompted them to reject consensus science and generate other explanations.’

What a fascinatingly ground-breaking and profound explanation. It’s all clear as daylight now.

The authors make an effort to further explain why deniers are sceptical. Apparently, deniers have faith in alternative science, they believe climate change is natural and cyclical, they simply mistrust climate science, for example alleging data manipulation; they point out that predictions haven’t come true, and they question the motives of the pushers of the climate emergency agenda. 

Well, could these not be perfectly reasonable observations and views? Obviously not when one is captive to climate hysteria.

And how to fix these poor mentally deranged people who just can’t see that the planet is burning up before our very eyes? The authors don’t have much to offer, apart from yet more targeted public messaging – propaganda, in other words. As if we weren’t already bombarded with enough of that already. 

Alas, it’s not helping. I’m still suffering from critical thinking. Somebody rescue me, please!

I guess I’m a hopeless case…

But hang on. Very recently I heard this slightly jarring interview on the ever-objective ABC with Gabrielle Bryden from Central Queensland University. (Yes, I don’t just consume conspiracy news, I also dip into high quality official journalism from time to time!) 

Dr Bryden made a ground-breaking discovery as part of her PhD thesis. She even tried really hard to bring into circulation a new term: the ‘privilege paradox.’ Her PhD findings suggest that geographic areas with the highest socio-economic advantage have the lowest rates of vaccination. 

Why might that be? Well, her thesis supervisors had already done the groundwork by putting scepticism down to ‘a particular psychological and cultural orientation which often led to a reluctance to engage with the scientific evidence.’ There you have it. Pure genious.

Worse, these educated rich people embrace magical health beliefs, and to some degree holistic health, complimentary and alternative medicine. How abhorrent … inexplicably, these people don’t even want to allow their five year-olds to be jabbed against a disease which is absolutely no threat to them. How outrageously unreasonable!  

In summary, what do these three valuable studies of the highest scientific integrity boil down to? 

If you’re not on board with the mainstream view, there is definitely something seriously wrong with you. That’s about it. 

And governments are not about to give up curing you from your critical thinking disease. The University of Western Australia has just secured a whopping $4.7 million from the Medical Research Future Fund to study the impact of Covid vaccine mandates. I can hardly wait to see the unsurprising results. Apparently, the findings will help governments ‘understand how to translate vaccine availability to health policy improvements.’ You can read between the lines here, right? 

The causes for suffering from critical thinking are many and varied – being too poor or too rich, being uneducated or being highly educated. It’s a bit like the weather: if it’s too hot, it’s human-made climate change – if it’s too cold, it’s also human-made climate change. No mental gymnastics are too difficult for these grant-greedy mainstream scientists to convince everyone that they are right, and everyone else is therefore wrong. The science is settled. After all, it’s settled science that must have led to all that progress over the last few centuries, right?

I suppose I’ll just have to come to terms with the fact that I’m one of those lower or upper-class and/or highly-educated or uneducated people who don’t just blindly believe in whatever scare story happens to be the flavour of the day. 

I can live with that affliction. I know I’m not alone. I just wish there were more of us. Many more.

Imagine this headline in The Guardian: ‘WHO declares pandemic of critical thinking!’

Us crazies could actually change the world for the better, using dreadful weapons such as commonsense, the scientific method, logic, diplomacy, and compassion.

Another kind of Covid death

You may not be familiar with the name Clemens Arvay. Arvay was an Austrian biologist and ecologist, a prolific writer who tried to unite humans with nature. Two of his earlier books are available in English. 

Arvay was well known in the German-speaking world as an early critic of the disproportionate and irresponsible Covid measures governments imposed on their citizenry. 

From the beginning he was vehemently opposed to the introduction of mRNA and vector-based so-called Covid ‘vaccines’, warning of the possible consequences of allowing the distribution of these insufficiently tested and dangerous substances. He correctly predicte in August 2020 that big pharma would exploit Covid to push the wider introduction of these new ‘vaccine’ technologies. Sure enough, Australia’s first mRNA vaccine manufacturing facility is already under construction.

Arvay wrote articles and two books on Covid, and he produced numerous informative videos. He also appeared in talk shows and in an early meeting of the German Corona Investigative Committee. 

I enjoyed Arvay’s contributions, as he always expressed himself in a passionate but measured and rational way, explaining his reasons for opposing Covid measures, especially the so-called ‘vaccines’. Arvay was prepared to debate anyone who would take him on, and he always did so respectfully. 

But in the press and on social media he was either ruthlessly heckled, ridiculed, dismissed, or, like most other prominent critics of the official Covid narrative, he was ignored, canceled and censored. 

Why do I speak of Clemens Arvay in the past tense? 

Recently the story broke that Clemens Arvay ended his life in mid February. The exact circumstances of his death will remain private. However, one of his friends, the Viennese psychiatrist Raphael Bonelli, who knew him well, attributes it to the relentless public criticism and bullying Arvay was experiencing, although in recent months Arvay had completely withdrawn from the Covid debate to focus on writing a thesis and another book. 

Bonelli has spoken with Arvay’s mother, who told him that her son left a note behind in his backpack which read ‘die machen mich fertig’ – which could be translated as ‘they are destroying me.’

We may never know for sure what drove the 42-year-old father of a young boy to suicide, but I can imagine that Bonelli’s conclusion is correct.

In his videos, Clemens Arvay always came across to me as a highly intelligent, down-to-earth and sensitive man who took great pride in his work and his reputation as a serious scientist. He was clearly offended when character assassins tried to smear him. It is quite likely that it was the continued vitriol he faced that got to him.

Clemens Arvay’s sad and tragic death should be a wake-up call in our increasingly woke cancel culture. No matter how much we disagree with others, no matter which side we’re on, it is unacceptable to resort to personal attacks, to shut out and shut up those we don’t agree with. 

The currently prevailing censorship culture shuts down scientific debate on Covid, climate and many other issues. This is not only counter-productive, toxic and destructive, but can also be quite deadly. 

Questioning the unquestionable

https://phil.cdc.gov/Details.aspx?pid=23311

Are there viruses at all? 

I became aware of this heretical question during 2020, and I’ve followed the debate with interest ever since.

If you consume nothing but mainstream news you probably never heard there are people who actually doubt the existence of viruses, and even if you did, you would probably simply dismiss it as yet another tin-foil hat conspiracy theory. 

The thing is, once upon a time most people were convinced the sun revolved around the earth and anyone who said otherwise was ridiculed or worse, much worse. Today, it would be the other way round, and not just on Twitter. 

So unless we keep an open mind to big questions, unless we allow big theories to be reconsidered and questioned, unless we don’t just faithfully and blindly repeat the mindless ‘follow the science’ mantra, unless we actually follow the scientific method and engage in rigorous scientific debate instead of muting those who don’t follow the herd, we end up turning science into a religion, and we end up making fools of ourselves, or worse, at least vis-à-vis future generations.

If, say, the Big Bang theory is questioned, it’s no big deal. It’s a question that is so far removed from our daily lives, it is allowed in mainstream media. Nothing much hinges on such a debate.

However, whether or not viruses exist is a much hotter potato, especially in these Covidian times. Too many careers and livelihoods are at stake, and not just in big pharma.

I find this debate fascinating.

A very brief summary in layman’s terms: those questioning the existence of viruses generally say that the science behind virology is essentially smoke and mirrors, that the existence of viruses has never actually been proven by rigorous scientific standards, that all the alleged evidence is based on shoddy scientific methods, and that all arguments in favour of the existence of viruses are merely circular and therefore untenable. 

For a long time, those believing viruses exist have simply ignored the other camp. But recently the debate has intensified. Dr Sam Bailey threw down the gauntlet by publishing the Settling the virus debate statement on 14 July 2022. She and likeminded colleagues are challenging virologists to prove the existence of viruses through properly conducted, documented and monitored scientific experiments. 

In addition, German virus doubter Samuel Eckert has created the Isolate Truth Fund, offering €1,5 million for any virologist who presents scientific proof of the existence of a coronavirus.

So, watch this space…

Personally, I’m in two minds. I can understand why the doubters want rigorous scientific proof that viruses exist. I’m surprised that prominent virologists react to being challenged by dismissing or ridiculing the doubters, instead of taking on the challenge and proving them wrong. Considering they are so convinced of their theory that should be child’s play.

To my mind, the arguments of the doubters do make sense; and the burden of proof lies squarely with the virologist.

On the other hand, could virologists really fool themselves and the whole world by making up their own language, by constructing and maintaining a whole make-believe universe for decades and decades?

Let’s observe, let’s listen to the arguments from both sides. Hopefully there will be a serious, respectful, high quality scientific debate. But paradigm shifts are hard, egos are big, and the stakes are extremely high.

Lord Sumption’s brilliant speech in Australia

At the 2022 Robert Menzies Institute Oration and Gala Dinner on 13 October 2022, Lord Jonathan Sumption gave a simply brilliant half-hour speech titled A State of Fear: Covid-19 and Lockdowns. 

Throughout the Covid madness, the former UK Supreme Court judge was one of few commentators who calmly and rationally criticised disproportionate and destructive government measures that caused so much damage to our liberal societies.

The full speech can be read here and watched here. For all the wise words that emanated from Lord Sumption’s lips, unsurprisingly they were almost completely ignored by the Australian media. 

On 24 November, an excellent but paywalled article by Chris Merritt made reference to Lord Sumption’s speech. The article was about the inadequacies of Victorian and NSW public health legislation which is hardly worthy of a functioning democracy.

The Spectator published a freely available short article mentioning the speech. 

On your ABC he only featured during an interview with Tom Switzer (at 20 minutes).

The Australian published an eloquently written column by Lord Sumption a few days before he held his speech, but it too is safely tucked away behind a paywall.   

Lord Sumption also got some air time during his speaking tour on Sky News, and he addressed the National Press Club, as reported in this AFR article.

Pretty good shape, hugh?

The US has had an unbroken series of woeful presidents over many years, but I find it quite remarkable how the world pretty much shrugs its shoulders at the numerous gaffes and obvious signs of senility by US puppet president Joe Biden, culminating in the following oxymoronic statement pertaining to his mental focus during a September 2022 60 Minutes interview:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-joe-biden-60-minutes-interview-transcript-2022-09-18/

Come again? If it wasn’t so sad it would be downright hilarious. Here is the video:

https://youtu.be/u1UC89H4Swc?t=885

And just in case, here it is preserved as a sound file:

More of the same – only different

Pre-2020 nobody cared much about the flu – we just lived with it. Health workers would complain, rightly so, about being under-resourced every major flu season – but meh, who cared or listened? Certainly not governments. 

Then suddenly, in 2020 out of the blue, all hell broke loose over a particular kind of flu. I don’t need to remind anyone what that was like – we’ve all lived it.

Now many governments, semi-conscious perhaps of the immeasurable damage their irrational measures have caused, would like us to live with the flu again. But that message is not an easy sale when dealing with a hyper-sensitised, completely traumatised public. 

And so the Covid boogeyman just keeps making the rounds. The topic seems to be virtually inexhaustible. 

I’m not surprised. I knew that winter would bring on another wave of doom and gloom, but it is fascinating to observe what’s going on right now. 

Nothing has changed, and in some ways everything has changed.

I can’t help but laugh at our hapless politicians, health bureaucrats and so-called health experts, our various Departments of Disease, who keep pushing useless and perhaps even dangerous substances (they call them vaccines) onto the mostly still unsuspecting public. 

It is inconceivable to them that perhaps, just perhaps, these substances have done, if anything, more harm than good. The mere thought is considered outright heresy. 

I laugh at them because while they do what they do, all the while there is mounting evidence against criminal organisations such as Pfizer. It is becoming ever clearer that panicked governments colluded with greedy pharma companies to unleash something potentially horrible on society. They could have always known, and they could have prevented it, if they had asked questions and weren’t such devoted Covidian apostles. 

Then again, they probably believed their own propaganda and meant well. 

Oh, I just don’t know whether to despise them, feel sorry for them, or show understanding that they too are victims – victims of the world’s biggest ever mass psychosis. More on that later.

The mainstream media are equally culpable, because they simply won’t pick up on any of this evidence. Their Covid headlines have become a little less sensationalist, but by and large they still prefer to be henchmen for our puppet politicians and corrupt organisations like the WHO. I suppose that’s what the playbook ordered: Unquestioning pandering to the pandemic peddlers. 

Investigative journalism is now the domain of a few journalists who have retained commonsense and integrity throughout this manufactured crisis. Of course, these journalists are defamed by the mainstream as right-wing conspiracy theorists. But that’s usually how it goes: if you don’t have any real arguments and you want to avoid debate, there’s no better way to censor your opponent than some form of character assassination. 

I feel for those who have been and will be damaged by these irresponsibly dished out experimental concoctions. 

I’ll be damned if I ever have one of these jabs. Even my elderly parents have said “enough is enough” after rolling up their sleeves twice – only to get sick anyway.

I must admit, there is a tiny amount of unspoken told-you-so Schadenfreude when I hear from thoroughly vaccinated people that they too “go it.” 

Invariably they will say “but it wasn’t as bad as it would have been without the jab.” I guess that’s one way of coming to terms with realising that one has been fooled. Seriously, how could anyone possibly ever know? We are expected to trust the science – no matter how shoddy it is.

What I predicted with the first imposition of lockdowns is now coming true: our immune systems have been severely compromised by this most stupid of decisions, and we’re all getting sick, Covid or not.

Not allowing us to mix with other people for months on end has been a huge mistake. Being sick, having colds and the odd flu is part of life, and we need that in order to stay healthy overall. It’s not the end of the world for the vast majority of us. If it gets really bad for some people, there have always been perfectly good and effective remedies – which of course have been poo-pooed and even forbidden by those who told us, ultimately for their own benefit, that only a vaccine will save us. 

And what about the ridiculous numbers that are still being bandied about by those insufferable Covid doomsayers – as if any of those numbers had any meaning whatsoever? As if these PCR and other tests had any relevance and reliability. As if any of the statistics and their underlying assumptions we are being spoon fed day after day were not a complete joke.

For all the pain, damage, anguish, torture and injustice we’ve been subjected to by our governments over the last two plus years, Covid is allegedly still running rampant, still haunting us, still holding us captive. It must not be over. And so new scariants crop up every so often, just to make sure the fear levels remain sufficiently high.

Only now, suddenly, it’s ok to not lock us up any more, not to force useless face nappies on us any more. They must have figured out – finally – that treating us like idiots is perhaps not such a good idea after all. I couldn’t believe it when I recently read an article in which a politician was quoted actually saying: “We need to empower [people] to make their own decisions.” Seriously? Are you kidding me? Now you’re saying that? After over two years of one insult after another? What happened? 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the wonderful freedoms we are now suddenly being granted again. How very generous. Human dignity might actually become a thing again one day. I live in hope.

All of this Covid theatre was never justified, and yet too many people still seem to believe it all, and would probably put up with it again – I’m thinking of the people I observe in public skilfully putting on masks as if it was the most natural thing in the world; the people who recoil in horror when someone sneezes or coughs in their vicinity; the people who frantically wipe down any surface they’re about to touch; and the people who glibly refer to their fellow citizens as “the great unwashed,” as if they were vermin. How sad.

Thankfully though, at least a significant minority seem to just want to get on with life instead of hiding in fear from something that is really quite harmless for the vast majority. Hurrah, I’m no longer the only one refusing to wear that horrid symbol of oppression on public transport. 

I have little sympathy for employers who are throwing up their hands in despair because their underlings won’t show up at the office any more. They fuelled the madness, instead of keeping a cool head early on, and telling governments that what they were doing was idiotic, also from an economic standpoint. 

“Oh, but back then we didn’t know…” Sorry, but if you can make cold hard rational decisions in a flash to sack thousands of workers to satisfy your shareholders, you could also have kept a cool head when you saw the ridiculously unconvincing Covid tales coming out of China, Bergamo, New York.

You should have stayed on the ball, dug deeper, analysed the situation, done oh let’s say a risk analysis, not just fallen for this false agenda that was evolving. Unless of course you actually benefited from the Covid carnage, in which case you would have rubbed your hands in glee anyway – and so: shame on you. Boo.

And then there’s the abject failure of our would-be democratic institutions to protect society from this Covid debacle. The people who make up these institutions have insulted our intelligence for far too long. They have allowed our society to slip into a form of totalitarianism that is positively frightening. Only one opinion counts, only their way is right, and they must not be questioned. 

But surely parliamentarians, ministers and judges are only humans – they all lost their faculties and were inadvertently sucked into the Covid vortex like most, and therefore we should cut them some slack, right?

Seriously, could we not expect more of our leaders, our economic elite? 

At least we can see some cautious back-paddling. What previously led to an immediate state or country-wide lockdown is now nervously tolerated, and we are asked to live with it. 

Thank goodness there doesn’t seem to be an appetite by politics for further lockdowns and mask mandates, but our politicians have demonstrated in the past that they have no backbone, and so I wouldn’t be surprised if they would eventually buckle under pressure, from the WHO, for instance.

Interestingly, there are even absurd polls about how many alleged “Covid deaths” people would find acceptable. So this is where our disease and death-fearing ultra-safety driven society has arrived at. 

Despite the shift in attitude by politicians who are trying to weasel themselves out of the impossible situation they’ve manoeuvred themselves into, I have yet to hear an outright apology for the nonsensical and damaging measures that were taken. I suspect there is no apology forthcoming.

Am I too harsh in my judgement? 

I’m an ordinary citizen, father, partner, employee. How could I see and call out this most destructive overreaction about Covid and our leaders couldn’t? 

Perhaps I have a power they don’t have: the power to think critically, the power to question, to even question myself (and believe me I did!). And I have the freedom to think and say what I like, even though I often censor myself for the sake of keeping the peace too – for instance at my workplace. 

I also have a deep-seated desire to search for the truth, though of course it’s often not clear what the truth is. But it sure is worth seeking it out, and doing one’s best, despite all the biases and psychological imperfections that can afflict us all.

In any case, the truth is self-evidently not that humanity has been ravaged and decimated by an incredibly deadly killer virus. The cures were so screamingly obviously much worse than the disease.

In the face of such injustice as we’ve all experienced, I feel it is my duty to speak out, to be courageous, to not follow senseless rules, although I too pick my fights. 

To be clear: I’ve never judged ordinary people who were swept away by this tsunami of stupidity. I know we’re all potentially susceptible to mass hysteria. I could have been one of them. I just took a closer look and smelt a small letter ‘rat’ right away. 

But our leaders: they are in their positions because they enjoy a special trust and bear a higher duty, and almost every single one of them failed us miserably by simply following an apparently faulty narrative. 

This mass hysteria could have easily been prevented if our leaders had bothered to do their jobs properly, if they had questioned the irrational voices and had heeded the warnings of those who kept their cool and risked their careers and reputations to point out the obvious. 

One does not need to be an expert to smell a rat. One only needs to employ one’s commonsense, to have an inquisitive mind, to be sceptical. Perhaps this cannot be expected of everyone, and not everyone has the time and energy or interest to research. But it can be expected of those in charge, those who call themselves leaders in our societies and often get paid extremely well for being in such positions.

So when I hear a WHO official or some high ranking politician who in all apparent seriousness attributes cleverness to the virus, I can only laugh and say tongue in cheek that it sure is cleverer than him.