I recently read a good column in the UK Daily Express by Frederick Forsyth, a no-nonsense octogenarian, who was pointing out that brainwashed Britain must stop living in fear. Frederick is of the stoic species of humanity and doesn’t suffer fools gladly. In his opinion piece he bemoans in horror of how, with the COVID event, Britain has become obsessed with the impossible dream of 100 per cent permanent safety.
Frederick makes the salient point that with zero risk there is no life at all, at least not one worth living. He is more convinced daily that the quangocrats and academics got it wrong. (I think that has already been proven). He notes that COVID is a vicious virus – rapid, elusive and intimidating. But he says, so were swine flu, bird flu, Asian flu, BSE, MERS and SARS.
He points out they were beaten and there was no sweaty palm fear, let alone panic. There is now and he asks why? His answer is because we were ordered to. He says that [in about 93% of fatal cases] COVID has proved a death hastener for two categories – the very old and the already very ill. In Britain the medical profession are convinced more are dying for lack of treatment and neglect caused by COVID. He says the lockdown must end. We have to go back to normal or there will never be normal again.
The above was a long way of getting to the point of the similarities between Britain and New Zealand. The fear here was also politically induced. The ridiculous 80,000 deaths scenario that the Government highlighted was an excuse for our control freak Prime Minister to act the way she did: totally over the top and at great harm to employment and the economy overall. Closing the borders weeks before she did and concentrating on protecting the elderly, particularly those in rest homes, would have been the correct way to go.
Those of the younger demographics, who only got a mild dose, could have kept on working. The problem for the Prime Minister with that scenario is that not enough control could be exercised over the population as a whole. In exercising blanket control she achieved her aim of instilling fear into people to the extent that when they could return to work some were unwilling to take the risk.
This is a ploy of the hard left who would like to see society change more to their raison d’être. They have used COVID as grounds for implementing rules and restrictions which are in line with their rationale. That is the destruction of the current economy, capitalism, to the point where the state controls production, distribution and exchange. Socialism in other words. There are now over 200,000 unemployed in this country. This need not have been the case had COVID been handled with a different end goal in mind.
The Prime Minister continues to play the fear game when it comes to opening the borders even with Australia. So Victoria has a problem. The rest of Australia doesn’t, so open up to Australia except for Victorians. Where is the difficulty with that? The border has to be opened and the sooner the better, both for the economy and people’s psyche. Instead of concerning herself with controlling people through fear, her time would be better spent finding a means to handle COVID once the borders are open.
As Frederick Forsyth says, we have to stop trembling with fear because there might be a passing risk involved. That is the problem with fear, either you beat it or it beats you.
Our problem is that we have a Prime Minister who is using it as a stick to beat us with.
