These three weeks are lasting forever

When was the last time any political authority of the past and/or present ever relinquished their emergency powers calmly and voluntarily?

Once again, and not for the last time, news of the Government’s fresh Covid restrictions has hit the press before the Prime Minister’s dinner-time news briefing. At the time of writing, I know exactly what oven-ready restrictions will be imposed on our daily lives before the words leave Boris Johnson’s lips.

When the daily news briefings began at the start of the very first lockdown, an army of Government advisers and high-profile Cabinet members insisted that this will be ‘three’ weeks of flattening the curve, protecting the NHS, saving lives, and banging pots and pans on the doorstop every Thursday evening. I would say they broke their promise, but they never intended to keep their word to begin with. How do I know? When was the last time any political authority of the past and/or present ever relinquished their emergency powers calmly and voluntarily?

Now the magic ‘three’ which is parroted across the media landscape is that ‘three’ Pfizer shots mark the death of the new kid on the block – the Omicron variant. When it is inevitably discovered that three jabs don’t wipe this virus from the face of the earth – well, Pfizer doesn’t mind flogging millions of ‘updated’ doses to rolled-up sleeves across the globe.

When the triple-vaccinated enter into a trance, ignited by a new variant or a new pharmaceutical patent, causing them to march down to their local vaccination clinic for their ‘fourth’ jab, then the magical ‘three’ figure will be an anniversary celebration of the first lockdown.

We are stuck in this cycle now: a new variant emerges somewhere in the world; the establishment immediately flicks the ‘panic’ switch; international borders are closed (largely unnecessarily); the rhetoric on the need for more draconian measures swells to the point of choking on its own exaggerated arguments; restrictions arrive.

Trying to outlaw death has made our overlords forgetful about many other aspects of the mortal realm, one being that all living things – not just microscopic pathogens – adapt to changing circumstances in order to better secure the survival of the species. The first strain which flowed out of China wasn’t an original, first-of-its-kind, viral infection. But, as implied earlier, perhaps they’re not forgetful, but fortunate – fortunate that diseases do mutate, and that there’s always a new enemy to battle every few months.

Much discussion around the Omicron variant has inevitably revolved around whether it is ‘vaccine-resistant’ or ‘carries a higher viral load’ or is ‘more transmissible’. The answer is almost always ‘all of the above’. Equipped with this renewed legitimacy coupled with a revitalisation of military-style propaganda, political leaders, technocratic experts, and bureaucratic scaredy-cats try to picture themselves as generals of a mediaeval army that has found itself under siege. They demand that the ‘walls of immunity’ be built higher and higher and hold off long enough until the hour of victory is at hand (hint: it never is, by design).

In a statement of solidarity with another one of the Government’s other passions – that of environmentalism – this article will be recycled for future use.