You Can’t Have a War on a Virus

A Family Doctor Describes What Living in the Pandemic Society Has Taught Him

The following is an enjoyable read from Mike Casey, an NHS family doctor in Tower Hamlets, London.

Whilst many of the points covered in his article will be obvious to my readers (and will have been so for many years), it is still satisfying to read his concise take on events during the pandemic.

It is a middle of the road chronicle which would be suitable for many who went along with the whole Covid narrative. In fact, I think Dr. Casey himself agreed with lockdowns fairly late on and in October 2022, tweeted “Lockdown until vaccine looks like a great pandemic plan moving forward. Why did we never think of this before?” He then changed his mind in June 2023, tweeting “I find the Lockdown-til-vaccine argument very weak”.

Nevertheless, to move forwards, we need people to change their minds. I am very happy if people become anti-lockdowners, so long as they admit their past mistakes and use it to modify their future behaviour. If more doctors think like Dr. Casey, we will be in a far better place if anything like this happens again…so long as they don’t suddenly revert back to panic mode.

There is much the article does not address but I think this was purposefully done to keep it moderate and for a wider audience. However, if you think the article needs expanding to include topics such as Gain of Function bioweapon research; pre-planning such as Event 201; testing to exaggerate the prevalence/virulence of the disease; the MSM/government censoring & misinformation; vaccine harms etc etc then add your thoughts in the comments below.

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Drownings at beaches without lifeguards, spring 2020. Photo: Lynn Batten, BBC

Authored by Mike Casey in Cafe Americain

Like a bad dream, Covid fades in the collective imagination. With the political sphere having quickly shifted to other issues (Ukraine, cost of living, Israel/Gaza), the social sphere has in many respects moved on as well, as if living in a hyper-medicalized dystopia had never happened. Yet, just as with a bad dream, flashes of how antisocial the Lockdown era was come back to haunt us. 

Reports of beach swimmers who died with no lifeguards and children reaching school age still wearing nappies, along with calls for amnesty of unpaid fines for the violation of seeking human company are but a few examples. Reminiscent of the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, the War on Covid was ultimately a war on people. And as respiratory infections, unlike terrorism or drug use, are a universal part of the human experience, this was a war of all against all.

It would have seemed absurd to maintain prior to 2020 that ideals of human rights and civil liberties could be abandoned by liberal democracies in response to a novel “influenza-like illness”.

It would have seemed absurd to maintain prior to 2020 that ideals of human rights and civil liberties could be abandoned by liberal democracies in response to a novel “influenza-like illness”. World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendations for respiratory pandemics, updated in 2019 just prior to Covid, explicitly rejected border closures and mass quarantine as they were considered unethical, ineffective and, simply put, would do more harm than good. 

The Swine Flu pandemic of 2009-10 led to the establishment of another endemic seasonal pathogen, without political demands for mass detainment of the sick, let alone of healthy people. But austerity after the Great Recession and subsequent global deterioration of healthcare systems were clearly a material factor in bringing about the new reality that made itself known during Covid.

However, the socio-political realities and trends of democracies immediately before the Covid pandemic also manifested an ongoing crisis of political authority coupled with increasing social atomisation, that led to a rapid abandonment of principles of human rights and civil liberties virtually everywhere. At the political level, longstanding tendencies of disengagement with political parties had culminated in the pre-Covid era with political developments such as the rise of the Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle) in Italy, Brexit in the UK, and the unexpected election of Trump in the USA. Creating huge shocks for the political establishment and mainstream commentators, electorates voted against the preferred outcomes of political insiders. 

At the time these votes were heralded by pundits as a rise of “political extremism”, only for the winners’ fortunes to fizzle out, too. Still today, the narrative remains that voters can easily be swayed by charismatic demagogues or populists. However, ongoing political volatility indicates that voters are protesting political insiders who they no longer feel represent them, rather than endorsing so-called populism. With an ongoing crisis in political authority, careerist politicians correctly perceive themselves as vulnerable in the face of non-compliant voters who are increasingly turning to anti-political figures.

These political developments have been driven by even longer-term trends of the growing decline of organized social activities. Be it religious institutions, local sports clubs, unions, business associations, school and parent groups, or other voluntary organisations, the numbers of individuals who choose to join as active members of social organisations is continuously decreasing. 

Much has been written about the atomisation of society, with various reasons given, but, in the UK at least, direct surveys superficially suggest a lack of time or inflexibility in working hours as the major factor. No doubt other factors are at play, but the atomisation of society has left social institutions weak and unable to offer a limiting balance to the volatility and instability currently seen within political parties that used to be the hallmark of representative democracy. 

Nearly all of these social institutions, as well major cultural institutions such as the English Premier League and UEFA (the Union of European Football Associations, who govern football in Europe), but also more informal communities, such as those of the arts scenes, willingly retreated and shut up shop in the face of Covid. Many workplaces ordered their employees to work from home before this was mandated, and parents began pulling their children out of schools well before they were closed. 

This all happened before governments formalised such decisions via Lockdown. This may well be the core explanatory factor for what happened, as a green light was signalled to authorities that the usual rules of pandemic mitigation were no longer politically palatable. With the historically unprecedented withdrawal of society from collective institutions, it was now open to governments to rapidly switch from their pre-existing, light-touch pandemic plans (explicitly made to be adaptable to SARS type infectious disease) so as be seen to be “taking control” of the virus. 

Political fantasies of control thereby filled the space that had been surrendered by social institutions. An opportunity had presented itself for political classes bruised by recent electoral shocks to shore up their weakened authority by being seen to control the virus, and polls well into the pandemic showed strong support for leaders that took “swift and decisive” action. 

With talk of overwhelmed hospitals, and aggressive public health advisors and activists waiting in the wings to make a name for themselves, the retreat of society led to a bipartisan shift in the political dynamic, from one of recognition of civil liberties and human rights, to one of coercive and intrusive state measures, which touched even the most intimate aspects of private and social life.

In an ironic inversion of the Domino Theory used to justify US-led war in Vietnam, CCP-style lockdowns were readily accepted across the globe. Despite initial misgivings from the commentariat that the Wuhan lockdown was an unprecedented violation of human rights, the CCP spuriously claimed that lockdown could stop Covid in its tracks. 

There was a sudden volte-face, endorsed by the WHO, who insisted that lockdowns and restrictive measures should be adopted wherever there was Covid. By that point, of course, that meant everywhere. The uncertain origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have inevitably led to speculation about what really happened in Wuhan and why Western governments remain so afraid to accuse the CCP of covering up research, vaccine-focussed or otherwise, that went horribly wrong, even if only to deflect criticism of their own ham-fisted actions. 

One plausible hypothesis is that US government agencies, and those running them, could be implicated in said research, even if the origin of SARS-CoV-2 was indeed a natural spill over. Whatever the truth, a banal combination of ass-covering and group-think around apparent early successes with controlling the virus seems the most likely an explanation for what later unfolded.

With the lack of any serious opposition to lockdowns in the West, and citizens having already withdrawn to the supposed safety of their homes, the architects of lockdown suddenly realised what they could get away with. The narrative that Covid is a respiratory disease that is impossible to control, and that trade-offs must be considered, rapidly changed to one of doing everything possible to ‘beat the virus’. 

Inhumane acts such as denying dying patients visitors, restrictions on funerals and other social rites that give life meaning, and confining victims of domestic abuse to their homes with their abusers, were justified as necessary evils in the War on Covid despite protestation, itself marginal and much maligned. 

Even a child knows that those in extreme distress, not least the dying and bereaved, are best helped by the company and touch of loved ones, something that was collectively ripped away in such brutal fashion.

The incoherence and chaos of this rapid pivot was demonstrated in the wide variations in the implementation of “lockdown” across nations. Some countries introduced border closures immediately, locking out their own expatriate citizens; others brought them in much later. 

Huge variations were seen in the length of school and work closures. Testing and contact tracing, previously “not recommended in any circumstances” for preventing Influenza-Like-Illness, because seen as a waste of public resources, were suddenly re-envisioned as tools to control a disease with non-specific symptoms spread by breathing. 

By cloaking their policy decisions in The Science™, governments and their advisors deflected responsibility for policy and sugar-coated their aggressive response as apolitical. Amusingly, what “following the science” meant was remarkably dependent upon the jurisdiction in question. The common factor, however, was that this was a health emergency that was going to be regulated under the auspices of the criminal justice system. 

The authoritarian path that governments adopted in response to Covid was one which had already been paved by the wilful retreat of the population out of society and into their homes.

Critically, however, the authoritarian path that governments adopted in response to Covid was one which had already been paved by the wilful retreat of the population out of society and into their homes. Although the police were used as a highly visible threat, and on occasion harassed ordinary citizens, in a sign of how socially divisive the period became, snoop phone lines were set up for eager informers. Neighbours were successfully encouraged to report on disobedient neighbours, and most people willingly complied with most lockdown measures. It was the oppressive weight of social conformity, the pressure to be seen to “do the right thing”, however antisocial or irrational, that truly kept people in line.

As “15 days to slow the spread” turned into weeks, months, and then years, and principles of bodily autonomy were abandoned for the so-called greater good, it became clear that the War on Covid would not be immune to mission creep. With the media fuelling a sick competition as to which country was best managing a global health emergency, countries and experts that opted for or suggested lighter responses were smeared as fringe cautionary warnings to the world, or worse. 

“The more restrictions the better” became axiomatic. Predictably, countries and jurisdictions held up as exemplars of controlling the virus, were later found to have lost control as the virus surged back. Despite this, rules were updated and changed in a dizzying attempt to feign command of the situation.

In this febrile and heavily moralised environment, it became taboo to question interventions, lest one be accused of “wanting people to die”. Activists jumping on the Covid political bandwagon resorted to the tried and tested tactics of shaming dissenters in an effort to police the discourse. Even people with the mildest objections were labelled conspiracy theorists and science deniers. Those questioning the ethics of vaccine passports and mandates, or the wisdom of blanket use of fast-tracked vaccines, were vilified as anti-vaxxers. 

Those wishing simply to abstain from the moral panic soon got the message that it was better to remain quiet. Sadly, this dynamic often meant that those who presented themselves as “centrist” advocates during the online debates, in trying to compromise, merely opened the door to the lunacy of the Zero Covid movement which advocated for an international effort to eliminate Covid from the world. With over two hundred known viruses that cause multiple seasonal epidemics of respiratory infections, this was such a Sisyphean goal fundamentally out of touch with reality, that it could only be comparable to a supernatural whack-a-mole game against something as elemental as air. Taken at face value, Zero Covid would logically necessitate permanent on-off Lockdown restrictions, conjuring a horrifying image of a mask being forced on a recalcitrant child’s face forever.

As the dust settles and sober perspectives once again become acceptable, it’s reasonable to say that, overall, countries that went for lighter restrictions had a less traumatic and less harmful pandemic in holistic terms. I don’t need to insult readers’ intelligence by listing all the harms arising not from the virus but the panicked response to it, as one need simply look around. 

Saving lives may be a noble endeavour, but it doesn’t take a medical degree to know death can only be postponed, not avoided. For those of us in the medical game, we really would have done better to remember that moralising infectious disease, especially one spread by breathing, would open Pandora’s Box.

Saving lives may be a noble endeavour, but it doesn’t take a medical degree to know death can only be postponed, not avoided.

It is not surprising that people look to their leaders to lead during an emergency. As a generalist medical doctor also qualified in Global Health, I can tell you that it has been a bitter pill to swallow that so many of those leaders–both political and scientific—chose to ride the panic, in a reversal of previously stated ideals and values, a choice which they knew would come at such cost.  

Nonetheless, once it became ludicrously apparent that, at best, restrictions would only work until they inevitably stopped working, Western governments quickly declared the emergency over, leaving Public Health experts still forlornly championing the War on Covid to look like jilted lovers. 

This was mirrored in China, where the nightmare Zero Covid policy collapsed after citizens finally staged protests against the barbaric conditions inflicted on them. That the regime rapidly caved in the face of quite tame demonstrations suggests that the CCP were quietly relieved to have an excuse to finally escape the trap they had set for themselves. Again, a few Zero Covid activists fanatically devoted to the cause continued to fight on to the bitter end.

It is the hostile relationship between a paranoid and hubristic political sphere and a passive and atomised society that illustrates the real new normal.

Thus, the antisocial politics of Covid were merely a symptom of how far politics can push once society acquiesces. It is the hostile relationship between a paranoid and hubristic political sphere and a passive and atomised society that illustrates the real new normal.

As the social bases of political parties have withered, this has left ossified and institutionalised party apparatuses operated by a select and highly partisan few, but also at risk of hostile takeovers by fringe activists. Waning participation in the political process by society is taken by the political class as evidence that society is dysfunctional and in need of fixing—an approach paradoxically increasing apathy and deepening the antagonistic relationship.  Yet it is the lack of social engagement that is the primary factor of this vicious circle.

In this New Normal of widespread anti-political sentiment, political institutions struggle for social relevance, seeking new crises to be championed, rather than promoting causes originating from within their previously large social bases. All the better if the crisis can be used to attack political opponents. Whilst popular social causes around housing, better jobs and food insecurity remain neglected, fringe causes capture the political establishment almost overnight, with vicious hostility and othering directed at those that publicly demur or who feel excluded from this detached political process. 

This lurching from one hot topic to the next exposes ideological contradictions, as most recently exemplified by the switch from free speech during pandemic times constituting a right wing cause, to its once again becoming a left wing concern over the seemingly endless war in the Holy Land.

Unfortunately, the retreat of society in the face of Covid is likely to have only accelerated this process of social and political disintegration. Religious congregations have shrunk, and many nightlife venues are likely to never reopen after submissively accepting “inessential” status. Working from home is now firmly established, and young people are increasingly socializing via the parasocial online realm, a development pointing towards further atomisation. 

Distrust in the political process will likely only increase the feeling of voters they have no option but to protest by turning to candidates that can successfully posture themselves as anti-politicians, even if destined to end as a damp squib. 

However, with an apathetic society, and lack of alternative collective institutions that can show leadership in times of crisis, this leaves the political sphere as the only player in town for collective action, which it then executes in typically brutalized and bureaucratic form.

Now that Covid is yesterday’s news, and against a background of inflation, public service failure, and looming risks of world war, it is easy to feel bleak about the future. Accountability towards public health figures who (shamelessly) abandoned previous ethical principles looks non-existent. The reputation of Public Health is grievously wounded, and this will likely limit future public trust in scientific institutions. For, whilst eventually even bad dreams fade and die, the troubling fallout of the suppression of society will ripple on and on.

The superficial return of social life as if nothing happened could feel disorientating for those few who protested its curtailment. Yet this is where hope remains. The snap return of social life is a victory, even if a bittersweet one, with divisions barely beneath the surface. People cannot live without social life, despite a brief and mad time where many colluded in the myth that it is dispensable. 

Like the madness of addictions or obsessive safety behaviours, attempts to impose social isolation as a means towards health will only create an illusion of control ultimately doomed to shatter. But one of the unintended consequences of the suppression of society has been an opportunity to reassess what makes life beautiful and to remind us of the joy of other people.