If you want to know how fascism happens,

remember how nice people talked of 'herd immunity' as if they didn't know it would entail the deaths of thousands and when it happened how soon it is that it's been forgotten.

Covid UK in tweets (up till Lockdown Mar 2020)

 History of Covid in tweets (Dec 24 2020)

They say 'herd immunity', we say 'Black Death', let's call the whole thing off.

Thailand, South Korea, Japan. We stand or fall in comparison to those countries. We fall.

Without vaccination, herd  immunity is a myth. Scientists who talked of it as a fact were deceiving themselves or us or both. They had the Black Death as a prime example to draw on: successful herd immunity, population ravaged over hundreds of years.

From Wuhan to  Lockdown: how the UK government toyed with the idea of 'herd immunity', deliberately failed to implement track-trace-isolate, and mask-distance-handwash with the result that thousands died or got seriously ill with lifelong consequences.

Anyway, they gave us a choice: people's freedom to not mask, distance and wash, versus our deaths and lifetime damage. They went with 'freedom'.

There are campaigns and there's legislation to highlight hate crime, racism, antisemitism etc. Quite right. But what's happened here is a form of discrimination against a group, (the over-70s),  that is seen as separate from other forms of hate. We were defenceless. Literally.

The people who articulated the 'herd immunity' theory have never been called to own up to it for having endangered us:  John Edmunds, Patrick Vallance, Graham Medley, Robert Peston, Toby Young, Jeremy Warner. 

We have very public mourning for the awful random multiple deaths of major accidents and acts of terrorism. Quite right too. The Covid deaths are just numbers. No collective public mourning for tens of thousands of deaths.

How did politicians, journalists, scientists soften us up to accept 'herd immunity' without vaccination?

24 December 2020

How did politicians, journalists and scientists soften us up to accept 'herd immunity' without vaccination? 

Feb 3 Boris Johnson's Greenwich speech in which he counterposed what he called 'market segregation' and 'freedom of exchange' as alternatives in how to deal with the Coronavirus. He favoured (of course) 'freedom of exchange' over - what I think he means - state intervention in dealing with the virus.

Here are two more examples:

Daily Telegraph:

“Not to put too fine a point on it, from an entirely disinterested economic perspective, the Covid-19 might even prove mildly beneficial in the long term by disproportionately culling elderly dependents.”

Jeremy Warner Daily Telegraph

March 3 2020

In March 12 2020

Robert Peston explained here in the Spectator why we had to go with 'herd immunity' but without him mentioning the inevitable toll of deaths and permanent damage it would inflict. 

(copy and paste the link into your browser)

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/Herd-immunity--will-be-vital-to-stopping-coronavirus

Also in March 2020 we have Toby Young writing a tweet:

"The cost of the economic bailout Rishi Sunack has proposed is too high. Spending that kind of money to extend the lives of a few hundred thousand mostly elderly people with underlying health problems by one or two years is a mistake."

And in March 2020, at least three scientists came on TV to tell us that 'herd immunity' (with no mention that they meant 'with vaccination') was the right approach:

Graham Medley, Patrick Vallance and John Edmunds.

Medley said on BBC 'Newsnight; (March 13) '"We're going to have to generate herd immunity...the only way of developing that in the absence of a vaccine is for the majority of the population to become infected..."

1/ 13/03/20: Sir Patrick Vallance (UK Chief Scientific Adviser, SAGE member): "Our aim is to try and reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely; also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity"

(Today programme, March 13 2020)

"The only way to stop this epidemic is indeed to achieve herd immunity" - John Edmunds, 13th March 2020 (not referring to herd immunity through vaccination)

I am the medical experiment

I am the politician’s dream 

I am the scientist’s calculation

I am the journalist’s headline

My eye is the collateral damage

My ear is the necessary wound

My blood clots are the inevitable consequence

My toes are the concomitant contribution

We are here to give you herd immunity

we are here to save your business

we are here to save the politicians’ skins

we are here to say nothing

We are the dead

we are the long covids

We are the there-but-for-grace-of-god-go-you

We are you.  

Epitaph by Merrit Malloy

 Someone called David Joyce posted this on Facebook and it popped up on my timeline. (As it seems to be circulating on the internet, I'm not sure of the rights in the poem) 

This poem is stunning. Just wanted to share it. It is used in the Reform Jewish liturgy, as an optional reading, before Kaddish

”Every once in a while, a poem or song is so well constructed, so clearly conveys the author's meaning and is so precisely expressive that it becomes something of an anthem. The poem below, Epitaph, was written by Merrit Malloy and as one of those poems, has become a staple of funeral and memorial services…for good reason.”

Epitaph - By Merrit Malloy

When I die

Give what’s left of me away

To children

And old men that wait to die.

And if you need to cry,

Cry for your brother

Walking the street beside you.

And when you need me,

Put your arms

Around anyone

And give them

What you need to give to me.

I want to leave you something,

Something better

Than words

Or sounds.

Look for me

In the people I’ve known

Or loved,

And if you cannot give me away,

At least let me live on in your eyes

And not your mind.

You can love me most

By letting

Hands touch hands,

By letting bodies touch bodies,

And by letting go

Of children

That need to be free.

Love doesn’t die,

People do.

So, when all that’s left of me

Is love,

Give me away.

J'accuse...a government of not protecting us

J’accuse

(I accuse)

(in tribute to Emile Zola, who called out the government of his day for disregard of human rights)

J’accuse

a government of not protecting us

J'accuse

a government of experimenting with its population

J'accuse

a government of putting profit before people

J’accuse

a government of toying with the idea of ‘herd immunity’ without vaccination

a government of knowing that herd immunity without vaccination inevitably necessitates the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people

a government of knowing how little they knew about how Covid-19 works and that how it might spread, mutate, reinfect were unknowns and therefore any idea of ‘letting it rip’ was lethal and fatal to thousands of people

a government of refusing to listen to World Health Organisation guidelines issued from February 2020

a government of dishing out contracts to friends and supporters to provide services and equipment

a government that turned away from the local public health bodies that were best placed to run services

a government that has not provided and is still not able to provide a proper test-trace-isolate system which could and would protect more of its citizens

a government that decanted thousands of old people out of hospitals into care homes without them being tested, resultng in tens and thousands of deaths

a government of failing in early March to issue strict guidelines about social distancing, mask-wearing and hand-washing

a government of underfunding the NHS for ten years prior to the pandemic so that it was not sufficiently equipped to cope with the emergency

J’accuse

a small group of scientists of peddling the idea of ‘herd immunity’ without vaccination as a viable and ethical policy even though they knew that it necessitated the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people

J’accuse 

journalists and commentators in major papers and news outlets peddling the idea that people over 70 were or are superfluous, unworthy of saving, who, if dead, would help the economy by not existing

J’accuse

journalists and commentators for helping to provide a seed-bed for what is in effect a form of creeping fascism, that a whole section of the population can be dispensed with for what is deemed to be a greater good.

(with thanks to Kevin Ovenden for suggesting that I write this)

Recent print interviews on surviving Covid

 For people not used to using links, you'll see that the links below aren't live. You can't click on them. To read or listen to the interviews, you copy the link by running your cursor over it, and press 'command' and 'C' simultaneously, and then paste it into your browser and press 'return' and it should come up. Cheers

https://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/michael-rosen-on-coronavirus-and-nhs-3671606

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/30/michael-rosen-on-his-covid-19-coma-it-felt-like-a-pre-death-a-nothingness

https://www.bigissue.com/culture/books/michael-rosen-on-the-move/

https://www.independentsage.org/qa-with-michael-rosen/

https://www.thebookseller.com/profile/michael-rosen-i-don-t-think-i-realised-until-maybe-august-how-ill-i-d-been-1230607

2 hours 36 minutes into this radio programme from BBC Radio 4 Today programme there's an interview with me from Martha Kearney:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000qblk?fbclid=IwAR2G5dxuZzsLb3bO6OT0UWm__dBXKKdNfn7NZNDbm5gZTd0GkXKa3_8rgSY

https://rep.repubblica.it/pwa/robinson/2020/12/28/news/non_ci_resta_che_giocare-280238889/?ref=RHTP-BH-I280255636-P15-S2-T1&fbclid=IwAR3vRpVjzZG6al9RbLVn4Q--hK48sg1hY0TK3GzWEq9oUCWchJQyVqqjt8o

Article in this  edition of NEU 'Educate'

https://neu.org.uk/educate-janfeb-2021

'The Reunion' Radio 4

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qlzh?fbclid=IwAR3_vryq_HnBs9-MYJ0_Q6qKbAM8jdoxDYA6Zfn6jgUfn_6lSgrGK7kmd5Y

Pick of the Year Radio 4

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qjdf

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9098695/Author-Michael-Rosen-74-reveals-suffering-symptoms-long-Covid-hospital-battle.html