Bin the masks: We must end lockdown and stop pandering to public health junta and eternally fearful

They clamour for permanent mask wearing. They insist that every adult, child, and baby must submit to a programme of repeat vaccination. Crippling society-wide lockdowns imposed at the whim of a public health junta make them feel secure.

We’re talking about people who are so scared that they not only welcome authoritarian state-ism, but also demand more of it.

I do feel sorry for them, but we cannot let them shut down life for the rest of us.

A worrying number of people have been thoroughly conditioned by the concerted government Covid fear and emotional blackmail campaign.

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It was amplified by some media outlets that lapped up the advertising revenues from NHS terror ads without scrutinising the underlying narrative.

This government war of terror on its population has been more successful in achieving compliance than the mind-bender professors who devised it could have ever imagined.

The net effect is that many amongst us are now gripped by the Covid version of Stockholm Syndrome.

They have absorbed their jailer’s script so totally that when the keys to their cell are dangled before them, they opt to stay put.

We’re talking about a national epidemic of agoraphobia. The newly coined academic term for it is Covid Anxiety Syndrome.

Ironically, when the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysed 500,000 Covid hospitalisations it found that, after obesity, the next strongest risk factor for ICU admission and death was anxiety and fear-related disorders.

Covid Anxiety Syndrome sufferers dread the world outside their doors, everything and everybody.

A courier who drops off their parcel at the garden gate triggers their danger antenna just as certainly as a ticking, unattended suitcase at an army checkpoint.

Their day can be ruined by worrying that when out walking the dog while wearing a mask, they came too close momentarily to a reckless local.

Postponing ‘freedom day’ won’t calm them.

Whatever date you choose, they will deem it premature because they still believe that Covid is today’s Great Plague or Spanish Flu. Or a cunningly lethal, hybrid variant of both.

Short of encouraging them to barricade themselves at home ad infinitum, or lying to them – “Oh look, there’s a zero Covid nirvana just over the rainbow!” – how do we coax Covid Anxiety Syndrome sufferers back into the world?

It’s a challenging mental condition to cure because their catastrophising estimation of personal risk is so disproportionate to the objective scale of the threat.

Don’t look to the the public health [sic] establishment for solutions. It has been hijacked by behavioural scientists who slur distinguished colleagues with dissenting views as maverick conspiracists. These doom-mongers aren’t about to relinquish their prime time spot.

Surely public health bosses should take a holistic view that weighs up all public health challenges? Sadly, Covid monomaniacs rule the roost.

Only a slow learner could miss the lesson of the last 16 months: if you suffer from any other illness, mental or physical, than Covid, then you are off-message. Just wait in line.

Now those of us who want to return to the Old Normal – civil liberties, a functioning economy, social interaction, travel – must have a dialogue with those afflicted by Covid Anxiety Syndrome.

To cut through the brainwashing, any appeal needs to be on rational grounds: hard facts.

So here’s what I’d ask them to assimilate.

First, in numerical terms, Covid is now the 24th cause of death in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics.

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Second, please be aware that around 1,600 people die every day in the UK: about 450 from cancer and a similar number for heart disease.

In total societal illness terms, Covid is not now a major killer.

Third, do not interpret mention of ‘cases’, ‘infections’, or ‘rates’ as meaning ‘sick people’. Most people who test positive have only mild symptoms.

“Soaring cases” in over-egged parlance don’t now mirror rates of hospitalisation and death.

On Monday, for instance, 27,334 new ‘cases’, but only 9 deaths within 28 days of a positive test, were reported across the UK.

Fourth, Covid fatality statistics using the 28 days measure, even if this was not the primary cause of death, make death tolls appear more sinister than need be.

If my Covid Anxiety Sufferer goes along with reality thus far, I’d ask them to reconsider the architecture of ostensible ‘protections’.

Take masks. Do they really protect us or do they simply fuel our Covid paranoia? The World Health Organisation concludes: “At present, there is only limited and inconsistent scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2.”

A Danish randomised controlled trial, the most robust type of scientific research, found no statistically significant benefit for mask-wearers. Small wonder. They are so flimsy, and often filthy.

Some studies have shown infections can actually increase with surgical and cloth masks.

Understanding this, you may well wonder if masks are highly promoted for their propaganda value by those who want to prolong the natural lifespan of this pandemic. Signifiers of danger, and virtuous, compliant citizenship – is that their true role?

Continued mask wearing won’t help us return to normal; psychologists know it will do the opposite. They are presented as a temporary prop for the fearful to ease them back into life, but masks exacerbate anxieties rather than reduce them.

This Covid fear spiral leads to an abyss of absurdity. Look at the Duchess of Cambridge.

Despite being double-jabbed, having no symptoms, and having undergone four tests in one week, all negative, she has to isolate for 10 days after coming into contact with someone who tested positive.

The end of this Covid craziness is long overdue. I smell the acrid aroma of burning masks.

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