Drunk on power, our leaders controlled us, bankrupted us, destroyed our mental and physical health, and they found the whole thing hilarious, says Mark Dolan

They show that this duplicitous and unethical man, who can't even be trusted by his own wife, sought to capitalise on a new strain of Covid 19 – Covid’s difficult second album after the Alpha variant - in order to scare the bejesus out of us, so we would comply with Covid measures, which at the time were controversial, and have since aged more than that badly than Madonna.

Many long feared that Covid lockdowns, masks, plastic screens in supermarkets, all of that crap, was a disastrous mistake. I said as much whilst broadcasting on the national radio and TV airwaves throughout the pandemic. We were the bad people then, remember?

I even caused an international news story, when I chopped up a face mask, early in the pandemic on my old radio show.

Another moment of scepticism and critical judgment, that has aged pretty well. Notwithstanding four decades of research into masks before the pandemic, that suggested they wouldn’t stop a virus like this, notwithstanding the real world data that shows countries that masked didn’t move the dial in terms of Covid transmissions, compared to countries that did not.

Notwithstanding the latest Cochrane review, the most authoritative study to date, which suggests that the masks did nothing, other of course, than impact peoples mental and physical well-being, and pollute our oceans.

Notwithstanding that all of the medical experts told us not to wear a mask early in the pandemic as it wouldn’t help. If none of that is enough to snap you out of your brainwashed attachment to the idea that any of this nonsense was worth the damage caused, just looked at these Whatsapp messages, and Boris Johnson’s decision to mask children as young as 11 in the classroom, not because of data, not because of evidence based science, but because he didn’t want a fight with Scotland’s pint sized dictator, Nicola Sturgeon.

They covered our faces, to cover their arses. With a vanishingly low infection fatality rate, COVID-19, was the first virus that had its own marketing department with the government deploying terrifying behavioural scientists, like declared Communist Susan Michie, to make us think we were in the grip of the Bubonic plague.

In the end, we didn't have to be scared of this virus, which was really just a threat to a tiny proportion of the population, with serious comorbidities, and in deep old age.

So what have we learned from this whole sorry affair? That we were idiots for going along with these policies in the first place.

Three weeks to flatten the curve was the foot in the door they needed. That's where we went wrong. And we are now paying the price of a wrecked economy, eye-watering national debt, damaged kids, and a sadder, poorer, sicker, and more divided society, oh and an NHS waiting list of 7 million people which surely poses a greater threat to human life than the virus ever could.

But it's for your health.

Follow the science man. In the course of the pandemic, our leaders - and we ourselves - forgot our Western values – free speech was crushed for anyone who questioned the madness of it all, for whom none of this made sense.

Human liberty was trashed – with people being told when they can, and can't see their families, or even say, goodbye to loved ones, who had passed away.

Grannies and grandpas were locked in care homes, as loved ones, had to make do with waving at them through a locked window, to wish them a happy birthday, to wish them a Merry Christmas or to tell them that they loved them.

Here’s where we went wrong, as we were whipped into a frenzy of fear by Matt Hancock and a cabal of politicians, government scientists, and high profile TV and radio personalities - we listened to them, and we took the bait.

We allowed ourselves to be manipulated, gaslit, bullied and brainwashed. Who could blame us? After all, we believe what we were told, and we just wanted it to be over.

And that was the problem. We complied to make it end, but our compliance meant it never would. Just as those idiotic and unscientific vaccine mandates achieved nothing other than creating a new generation of never Vaxxers, public trust in politicians, in scientists and in the media will never recover.

And why should it? You know you’re in trouble when numpties like me were right all along. Next time, we’ve all got to step up. We must choose evidence based science. Data. A diversity of views, should not just be accepted but embraced. Personal autonomy must reign supreme, and next time

anything like this happens, don’t just roll over and swallow the BS.

Choose life, choose freedom, choose liberty.

Say no to tyranny. Drunk on power, and taxpayer funded red wine, our leaders controlled us, bankrupted us, destroyed our mental and physical health, and they found the whole thing hilarious.

They laughed, as they locked us down. There are no words. Actually, I can think of two. Never again.

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