Mask zealots will have good reason not to show their faces when the true costs of lockdown become clear

We used to take living in a free society for granted. We would boast complacently about the British love of liberty, often basking shamelessly in the reflected glory of the wartime generation who sacrificed so much to keep this country free from tyranny. Then came the coronavirus...

Covid-19 has done what the Nazis failed to do: it has cowed the UK into meek submission and caused its fearful citizens to embrace authoritarianism.

While we're on the subject of Nazis, Hitler was very much an 'ends justify the means' kind of guy. Bizarrely, it is now progressive 'liberals' who adhere to this bankrupt and dangerous doctrine. The want to drive down coronavirus infections and will support any measures they believe will achieve this. They don't consider whether the cure may be worse than the disease. They don't consider whether the restrictions they support may actually kill more people in the long run. All they can see is Covid-19 and facts that obscure their fear are dismissed contemptuously. I seriously believe some people would stick a cucumber daubed in anti-bacterial lotion up their backside every morning if Jonathan Van-Tam told them to. 

Of course, the virtue-signalling lockdown zealots will insist their only motivation is to 'save lives' and protect the elderly and vulnerable. They are preachy, judgmental, holier-than-thou; they have been radicalised by the cult of Covid. But when the true costs of lockdown - in lives and livelihoods - are revealed in all their horrible glory, don't expect any apologies from those who went along with the creation of this ongoing dystopian hellscape. 

Where we're heading if Covid zealots get their way

I often wonder how many older people who die during the lockdown of causes other than Covid-19 will find themselves wondering, as they take their final breath, why they were forced to spend the last months of their existence largely, or entirely, cut off from their family and friends. They weren't given a choice. They weren't asked. They were just condemned into isolation to 'save' them from a condition that might not have even made them ill. 

But in the strange, topsy-turvy world in which we now live, questioning the morality of lockdowns incurs the wrath of every liberal, Guardian-reading latte-drinker in the land. Without apparently realising it, they have bought into the logic of the infamous mantra of that favourite hate-figure of the Left, Margaret Thatcher. 'There is no alternative!' they cry. 

The dreaded rona

We know this is not true. We know a host of experts have suggested alternative strategies, different tactics. But the first casualty of coronavirus was dissent and as new variants of the infection have emerged, so too has an increasingly virulent form of aggressive compliance.   

Observe, for instance, those who wear masks in environments where even the Government's paid scaremongers have conceded they don't provide any benefits. It is strange indeed that some people seem to think they need to cover their faces outside in the fresh air. Perhaps they think a Chinese horseshoe bat is going to swoop down and cough in their face... 

How long before wearing this obscenity is UK law?

What is clear is that the Government's pernicious messaging has made otherwise rational people fear coronavirus much more than they fear almost any other threat. Some seem to think a walk in the park is as risky as wearing glasses in Pol Pot's Cambodia. And if you don't join them in their rabbit-hole of terror, they view you as a tinfoil-hat wearing Covid 'denier'.

I have no doubt Covid-19 exists and is a truly unpleasant and potentially deadly condition. But my eyes and ears function well and I remember what we were told about this disease early in the pandemic. Back in March, 2020, Professor Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, made reference to Hubei in China, where the pandemic began. 

He said: "Even in the most vulnerable, oldest groups, in a very stressed health service – which Hubei was at the point when most of the data came out – the great majority of people who caught this virus – and not everybody will – survived it. The great majority - over 90 per cent."

The statistics bear this out. Yet we have taken a sledgehammer to the economy and thrown away liberty, privacy and dignity in pursuit of eliminating a disease that poses very little threat to the vast majority of people who catch it.

Looking into the future, it is a racing certainty that the news will be dominated by story after story lamenting the terrible legacy of lockdowns. It is completely plausible that research will show that many of the most intrusive and damaging measures were not necessary, or were ineffective.

But don't expect many of the virtue-signalling mask and lockdown fanatics to admit they might have been barking up the wrong tree. They'll no doubt still be covering their faces - and, finally, they'll have good reason to do so: for shame.