What the past 18 months have revealed to the world is this: In the post-modern era, there’s an extremely thin line between an “expert” and an activist.
I’m in agreement with Peter Hitchens, “these past 18 months have been a major turn back towards what looks like superstition.”
Discussing mask mandates, and “mantras,” Hitchens told TalkRadio’s Mike Graham, “I wish more people would pay attention to the evidence.”
“The way in which people wear masks [for example], flapping around their chin, gaps in either side, putting masks in pockets, and taking them back out again…Anybody who knows anything about hospital mask wearing knows, you mustn’t touch them. As soon as you take them off the mask has to be replaced.”
For masks to be effective, “they have to be tightly fitted to the face, quite uncomfortably,” Hitchens explained.
“It’s a simple point: even people who understand this must know these tokens people are wearing can’t do much good.”
Despite claims, “we know that there’s no proof masks protect from infection. If an infection can get in through a mask, why shouldn’t it be able to get out?”
Hitchen’s, paraphrasing Graham Brady, concludes, “masks are much more of a political symbol than an actual protection; people wear them as a sign of compliance with the new regime.”
Asked for his thoughts on the lifting of all COVID restrictions in Britain, on what was styled as “Freedom Day,” Hitchens replied, “it doesn’t feel all that different.”
Hinting at the lax attitude towards reason, in favour of a narrative, Hitchens stated:
“Nobody examines COVID statistics in a particularly rational of forensic fashion, because there’s this huge desire, both from the COVID Zero lobby, the people who want us permanently under control, and parts of the public living in fear.”
This fear, Hitchens asserts, “has gone in so deep; but fear is irrational, it’s completely immune to reason.”
For instance, offer any reasoned opposition, and “very rapidly the response turns to anger because the mob is safer in their certainty and fear than they would be in a reasoning world.”
Hitchens adds, “That’s what we’ve come to. Damage has been done to reason in politics, public life, broadcasting, universities, and elsewhere – which were already quite badly damaged.”
This is why, he argued, July 19 (aka ‘Freedom Day’) will attract attention from a lot of “COVID Zero people and the rest of the militants who want to permanently control [us] for ‘health reasons.’ They’re waiting for their opportunity to say opening up on the 19th was wrong.”
They’ll “use figures obtained from tests looking for COVID numbers, that don’t necessarily indicate any actual illness. Then they’ll point to hospital admissions.”
Hospitalisation numbers are problematic.
Hitchens explained: “The last time I tried to look up the numbers of admissions, it showed people connected with COVID, had tested positive, but you couldn’t state that’s simply why they were in hospital when they had been in hospital with something completely different.”
Addressing the controversy over Dominic Cummings breaking his own lockdown rules, Hitchen quipped, “The people who devised these policies don’t believe their own propaganda. They don’t behave the way they tell us to behave!”
In June, Commings, who is the former aid to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, alleged the Ministry of Health’s bureaucratic ineptitude had hindered Britain’s early COVID response.
Cummings also laid blame on Boris Johnson’s reluctance to buy into COVID hysteria. Accusing the Prime Minister of not acting early enough to lockdown Britain.
Hitchens recognises the importance of “really strong precautions.”
Precautions should be weighed and measured by sober-minded experts, not pathos-driven activists posing as professionals.
Left in the hands of the latter Western society will be set further adrift. Even if capable, it will not be able to reconnect with its moorings.
Such as Thomas Sowell illustrated in his 2004 Empirical study of Affirmative Action, “Any ‘temporary’ policy whose duration is defined by the goal of achieving something that has never been achieved before, anywhere in the world, could be more fittingly characterised as eternal.”
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