Have We Lost Our Marbles Completely?

By Kevan James

Monday November 2, 2020.

Over the last few years, the United Kingdom appears to have become gripped by a lengthy bout of collective insanity. Since the Brexit referendum was held and the result announced in June 2016, people have been divided like never before. On Brexit specifically, and as we all know, a very narrow majority voted to leave the EU. Between that vote and the eventual departure in January 2020, the country indulged in a fit of vapours; people on both sides hurled insults at each other and twitter almost went into meltdown. But the UK did leave – at the very start of 2020.

With that done (despite the still ongoing and seemingly fruitless discussions between the UK and EU over a trade deal) one could be forgiven for breathing a sigh of relief and thinking we could get on with our lives, with leave supporters believing they were, and the country was now, once again a free nation. Not a bit of it…

By March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had become established and the United Kingdom, along with much of the rest of the world, subsequently went into lockdown and the greatest assault in modern history on the rights and freedoms of people had begun. Whatever views one has of the actions of various governments around the world, that one fact is undeniable; citizens that, up to that point, had been free to come and go more or less as they pleased; to decide for themselves what was essential and what wasn’t; to travel either within the UK or further afield; to have parties or simply gather in their local park – all that was gone.

Yet at the time, few complained. Everybody queued outside those stores that were still open (with many declared as ‘non-essential’ by the government and forced to close) without rancour. People diligently kept 2 metres from each other, smiled and got on with it. Apart from anything else, the weather was kind; it was warm and sunny so taking a little longer to shop wasn’t such a big deal. Most accepted that COVID-19 was a new disease about which little was known, other than it was spreading with remarkable rapidity around the world – and people were dying. Here in the UK, around Europe and everywhere else, COVID-19 was killing people. ‘The Coronavirus’, as it has been consistently called, was killing indiscriminately. This was fact – or was it?

Let’s start by sticking to facts - nothing else, just facts and not opinion. This is actually harder to do than one might think as facts are always affected by opinions of them and can thus be made to suit a particular view. Or at any rate, seem to suit, but let’s give it a try.

The first, and most important, concerns COVID-19 itself. I have written of this before but it is worth repeating even so. COVID-19 exists. It is real. There are those who think it is all a massive con, perpetrated by governments bent on world domination but we’ll come to that another time. Let’s stick with COVID-19 for now and for brevity, use the acronym C19.

C19 is real and is a disease, the result of a coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2. This is one of seven coronaviruses known to be capable of infecting humans. Coronaviruses have been around as long as we have, they are not new. They have also proved astonishingly resistant to any kind of vaccine or cure, classic examples being the three coronaviruses responsible for the common cold. Most people get a cold at some point, some seem more frequently vulnerable than others, some suffer for weeks and some recover within a few days. This is fact, not opinion. The common cold and the coronaviruses that cause it are not matters of opinion, they are matters of fact. Here’s another, to emphasise my point above – there is no cure or vaccine for the common cold. There never has been and it is unlikely, especially after all this time, that there ever will be.

What is also a fact is that viruses are capable of evolving, of becoming stronger and more advanced (we, the human race, have evolved – why should viruses be any different?). This applies to coronaviruses just as it does to anything else - hence the appearance last year of SARS-CoV-2. Up to 2019, when it was discovered, the six existing coronaviruses had been with us for a very long time. Yet we have never shut down the world because of people having a cold, the result of one of those three strains of coronavirus already mentioned. This is also fact.

What is thus also fact, and must be so, is that to describe the current pandemic as ‘The Coronavirus’ is wrong. To describe it as such is misleading – yet ‘coronavirus’ is routinely used; by the government, by the NHS, by mainstream media, by almost everybody. I am one of the exceptions. I refuse to refer to C19 as ‘The Coronavirus’ as the word means a number of different strains. I have been taken to task on twitter by a couple of tweeters, the usual response being that ‘everybody knows that coronavirus means C19’. Do they?

No. They don’t. That is one of the reasons why there has been so much panic and hysteria over it. It is why (especially when the government wants to imprison us in our own homes) accuracy is so vital. The right information is crucial when health is at risk. And that means the correct name as much as anything else. This lack of correct information is again, one of the reasons why many people are confusing flu with a cold and with ‘The Coronavirus’. Influenza is not a coronavirus but from a family of viruses known as Orthomyxoviridae. Yet the symptoms of both colds and flu are very similar. Again, this is one reason why it is so important to use the right name for C19. And another fact – flu, and the adverse effects of it, kill more people every year that C19 has (even more die in road accidents). Yet still we don’t shut down the world because of it.

So we have established that there is a lot of misinformation and disinformation swilling around. Why? Let’s look at another fact; Prime Minister Boris Johnson has advisors around him. They are not elected and are thus pretty much unaccountable, at least to the people of the UK. Specifically I refer to Professor Chris Whitty CB FRCP FFPH FMedSci, who is the Chief Medical Advisor for England, and Sir Patrick Vallance FRS FMedSci FRCP, who is the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA) and Head of the Government Science and Engineering or GSE (Another fact: Vallance was President, Research & Development at GlaxoSmithKline from 2012 until 2017. The company’s website says: ‘We are a science-led global healthcare company with a special purpose: to help people do more, feel better, live longer’. Let’s put that another way – the company makes medicines, drugs that are supposed to help sick people get better…including vaccines…).

These two, along with members of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, or SAGE, are responsible for the wave of advice given to the PM and his government. Oh and by the way, SAGE is chaired by the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance and co-chaired by the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty.

Messrs Whitty and Vallance have consistently poured a deluge of doom and gloom over COVID-19 to the exclusion of anything else and it is this lack of context and alternatives that is so disturbing. Whitty is on record as wanting stronger measures to ‘combat C19’ – but he doesn’t seem to want anything else. Neither does Vallance. Are there alternatives to lockdowns and the removal of rights and freedoms previously taken for granted? There are always alternatives – one just has to search for them, but let’s take a look at why so many in the UK are now beginning to rebel against what seems to be the Whitty/Vallance agenda.

Many countries around the world have never enjoyed the freedoms of the people of the UK. Some have never known anything but total state control. Lockdowns are pretty common to the point where it is the norm – society is under permanent lockdown. The culture and history of some countries has seen a gradual lifting of former restrictions and some have hovered between the two as a matter of course. Yet there is no country like the United Kingdom, not even the USA, where the right to live one’s life without undue interference from the state or its agents and employees is, or has been, held above everything else.

Yes, we have always had to live with some kind of restrictions somewhere but up to now, we’ve had it pretty easy. Anything the state did impose was usually clearly, rationally and logically put to the people and debated on in parliament. This is why current government actions, whether telling us to cover our faces or what we are permitted to buy in shops, is so utterly alien. It is, to most in the UK, anathema to have a government that rules by decree and makes up new laws on the hoof as it were, to ensure compliance, which is what this one is doing. It is so because of the Coronavirus Act, rushed through without any parliamentary debate and renewed by a compliant set of House of Commons members (MPs) with no scrutiny. Even the legislation itself – the Coronavirus Act – is badly named. Its passage to law by the way is also not a matter of opinion; it is a matter of fact.

So where are we now? Despite being told that the original lockdown earlier this year was just temporary, we have not been free since March this year. Have ‘cases’ risen so dramatically since restrictions were eased in the summer? Of course they have – we are on the verge of Winter for a start and ‘cases’ have risen because of the one inherent flaw with lockdowns; while such action might well slow the virus down since most will be stuck inside their homes, it doesn’t go away. You cannot ‘suppress’ a virus. You cannot delay it, restrain it, kill, it, defeat it or eradicate it. Coronaviruses are mind-blowingly resilient to anything we mere humans can do. Ease the lockdown – and ‘cases’ will rise again, as they have. And I wrote as much here on KJM Today months ago. So how ‘temporary’ are the latest? Will Wales and England really come out of lockdown in time for Christmas? If so, will a third lockdown come along just after it?

Despite this, we also are resilient. If we are allowed to be – we are capable of developing our own resistance to coronaviruses and the effects of them. Granted we aren’t perfect at it and we will fall over a few times as our immunity to COVID-19 grows and yes, some may never rise again; it is nature at its worst. We won’t build any resistance to any virus however, unless we are exposed to it – and for those that didn’t know, a vaccine works by giving you a dose of what it is intended to protect against, to help the body’s immune system develop that resistance.

The fact however remains – the United Kingdom has become an oppressed country, not governed by the consent of the people but ruled over by a cabal of self-appointed elites who really don’t know what they are doing, have come to love the power they have given themselves and who are in thrall to a closed group of advisors (to the exclusion of all others). And until and unless we can gather up our marbles and put them back in their box, we are likely to remain so.

© Kevan James 2020

Top Image – House of Marbles

Main image – Glenda Green

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