It’s a hallmark of the nomenklaturas and authoritarian elites that they conduct themselves with autocratic disregard for the odious rules they impose on the hoi polloi. No matter whether it’s early mediaeval popes shagging anything that moved, Communist elites living in imperial splendour while millions starve, or finger-wagging climate activists privately jetting from one luxurious hotel to another.
It’s one rule for the elite, another for us mere peasants.
The Age of COVID is no different. As petty-dictator politicians and unelected technocrats confine citizens, they carry on the same imperial disregard for the rules they’ve made up.
New Zealand’s own David Clark breaking isolation rules not once, but twice. New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s brother, CNN anchor Chris, aka “Fredo”, breaking quarantine while supposedly infected. Politicians visiting hairstylists during lockdown.
But for sheer arrogance and chutzpah, Professor Neil Ferguson surely takes the brioche.
The scientist whose doomsday coronavirus advice prompted Boris Johnson to lock down Britain has been forced to resign after he broke social distancing rules to maintain a romantic tryst with a married woman.
This is the fellow, remember, who previously, wrongly panicked the British government into slaughtering six million animals during the Foot and Mouth panic in 2001. He panicked the government again, twice, over the Chinese virus. In doing so, he is directly responsible for Britain’s draconian lockdown rules.
Rules he has completely disregarded, just so he can illicitly dip his wick.
Imperial College epidemiologist Professor Neil Ferguson met the woman, Antonia Staats, 38, on at least two occasions at his home in London, the first after he had recovered from coronavirus, all the while preaching to the British public that they had to maintain strict and, in the cases of dying relatives, very cruel social distancing measures.
For the past seven weeks, as the daily death toll has risen, the public has been terrified by government slogans into not leaving their homes except to buy food or to exercise once a day. But Prof Ferguson, who is one of the most influential scientists leading the government’s coronavirus strategy, didn’t follow his own advice.
Ferguson first, wrongly, predicted half a million Chinese virus deaths. Then he changed his mind. Panicked by his changing scare-stories, the British government promptly stripped UK citizens of their most basic freedoms of movement.
But not the philandering professor.
British media reported Ms Staat visited Prof Ferguson on Monday March 30, shortly after the coronavirus lockdown began and at a time when Prof Ferguson was telling the public that lockdown would have to remain until at least June.
Then the same woman – who is married with two children – made a second visit on April 8. It was also reported that Ms Staats has also told friends her husband has symptoms of coronavirus.
While Prof Ferguson and Ms Staats continued their relationship, government ministers repeatedly warned the public to stay at home to save lives.
This egregious creep has been allowed to get off with nothing worse than making a mealy-mouthed “apology” and no-doubt reluctantly prising himself loose from his luxurious government sinecure. For the millions of Britons forced to endure weeks, if not months of privation, including the chance to spend their last moments with dying relatives, that must seem like the feather-lightest slap on the wrist possible.
If scaremongering technocrats can’t even be bothered keeping it in their pants for a few weeks, why on earth should anyone respect their ‘expert advice’?
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