<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/25/shameful-attacks-covid-inquiry-right-anti-science-delusion-lockdowns>
"That number will stay fixed for ever in public memory: 23,000 people died
because Boris Johnson resisted locking the country down in time. As Covid swept
in, and with horrific images of Italian temporary morgues in tents, he went on
holiday and took no calls. With the NHS bracing to be “overwhelmed” by the
virus, he rode his new motorbike, walked his dog and hosted friends at
Chevening.
Nothing is surprising about that: he was ejected from Downing Street and later
stepped down as an MP largely for partying and lying to parliament about it.
Everyone knew he was a self-aggrandising fantasist with a “toxic and chaotic
culture” around him. But this is not just about one narcissistic politician.
It’s about his entire rightwing coterie of libertarians and their lethally
dominant creed in the UK media.
They have a long history of rejecting things that save lives – seatbelts, speed
limits, smoking restrictions, sugar taxes, vaccination, benefits, sewers, clean
air, the NHS itself and, of course, stopping climate breakdown. Recall that
during the 1980s and 1990s, the
Sunday Times under the editorship of Andrew
Neil promoted the strangest gay plague theory, publishing pieces suggesting
that Aids wasn’t caused by HIV, and that it was almost impossible for
heterosexual people to contract it. (Neil has said he regrets certain aspects
of the paper’s coverage, but does not take personal responsibility for it.)
That anti-science tradition is alive and well today. Lockdowns are the
quintessence of everything rightwing science-sceptics abhor: what misfortune
that a tribe least equipped to cope was in power during the pandemic. In the
circumstances, the interventions from those in charge were “too little, too
late”. Hard to imagine, but Covid in the UK could have been even more deadly,
had unavoidable facts about the pandemic not eventually overwhelmed their
fact-free ideologies."
Via Violet Blue’s
Threat Model - Covid: November 27, 2025
https://www.patreon.com/posts/covid-november-144496970
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
