Andrew Nikiforuk writes that we are living through the Great Pandemic Denial. Consider the case of Boris Johnson:
Last July U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who partied freely during two COVID lockdowns caused by his own inaction, decreed “Freedom Day” from the pandemic.
So he lifted all protections including masks and told his people to move on and live with a nasty novel virus — a policy that favours the rich, dooms the poor and makes a mockery of reality.
Here’s what that kind of “freedom” from COVID actually looks like — because it is coming to a province near you. Canada, too, is in political retreat from reality, feeding and strengthening a sixth wave of COVID propelled by the highly infectious variant: BA2.
The virus has mutated once again. And it's dangerous because it's more transmissible than previous iterations of the bug:
How infectious is BA2? Forty per cent more than its relative Omicron, already one of the world’s most contagious viruses.
Since Johnson’s gleeful declaration of freedom last year more than 35,000 U.K. citizens have died. Last week alone more than 1,000 people there perished from a pandemic that most Conservative politicians officially pretend is over. One in 13 people are now infected. Approximately 16,000 people occupy the nation’s exhausted hospitals. Every day U.K. health-care workers struggle to perform treatments for other diseases such as cancer and heart disease.
The rates of long COVID among U.K. health-care workers and teachers have reached their highest number, which means fewer qualified people working in their hospitals and schools.
The number of U.K. children with long COVID, now 120,000, has tripled since Freedom Day.
And we in Canada have decided to follow in JoJo's footsteps. The truckers scared our politicians. They now believe that people are fed up and simply will not follow public health advice. Perhaps they're right.
If that's true, we are sailing on a ship of fools.
Image: Ship Of Fools
