I was reading through Jeremy Clarkson’s The World According to Clarkson – a collection of his Sunday Times columns from way back – when I came across a real ‘be careful what you wish for’ moment.
In a piece titled, You think SARS is bad? There’s worse out there! from 2003, Clarkson mulled over what would happen if the world was struck in the neck by a dangerous virus.
The article was penned not long after the 2003 SARS outbreak (20 years ago!) when 774 people were killed and politicians thought about panicking but never quite managed it.
It was as close as you can get to a dress rehearsal for Covid. China was accused of a cover up in which Beijing continuously lied to the world about what was going on inside the nation that served as Ground Zero for the outbreak. Neighbouring Asian nations stopped issuing visas, quarantine camps were set up, political tensions in dangerous parts of the world became strained, and Qantas laid off 1,000 staff blaming a drop in traffic due to the virus. There was even a hotel controversy. PubMed Central wrote:
From a global perspective, the SARS epidemic demonstrated the importance of a worldwide surveillance and response capacity to address emerging microbial threats through timely reporting, rapid communication, and evidence-based action.
SARS was a bit of a non-event as far as world-ending pandemics go, but the response, or lack thereof, from health authorities led Clarkson to wonder what would happen if an Ebola-like virus decided to run amok.
He writes:
‘If Ebola ever gets on a plane, experts say that 90 per cent of us will be dead within six months. It is known in America, where they are good at names, as a “slate wiper”.’
Clarkson adds – and this is the interesting bit:
‘This is why I’m slightly nervous about the world’s reaction to SARS. We like to think that governments have contingency plans for every conceivable disaster. But I got the impression over recent weeks that a lot of people have been sitting around in rooms saying “ooh” and “crikey” and “you can’t do that – think of the shareholders”.
‘What we need is a scheme that would allow scientists and medical experts to impose, at a moment’s notice, a total ban on all flights and a global curfew. But who would run such a thing? The World Health Organisation doesn’t even have big enough teeth to take a bite out of that political colossus Canada.
‘The Americans? I fear not. Any disease that has a fondness for eating stomachs would head there first. Besides, if they can’t find Saddam and Osama, what chance do they have of finding something so small there could be a million on the full stop at the end of this sentence?
‘So it’s the United Nations then. We’ve had it.’
Who would run such a scheme indeed… It turns out the answer was all of them. SARS served as the excuse for medical bureaucracies to plot the establishment of a global system of surveillance, control, and medical coercion that explicitly violates Western concepts of privacy and personal liberty. Health Passports, anyone? QR-check-ins?
2003 was a pretty cruisy time. If Prime Ministers and Presidents had attempted to whip the world into a mask-wearing, hand-sanitising frenzy, the political water would have been too hot for the frogs. It is the sort of rash change that alerts the prey that they are on the menu. Fear-based power grabs only work if people are genuinely scared. The communists and Marxists did it successfully with the class struggle, and we have sat back and done nothing as our kids have become radicalised against the weather.
In a few decades nature will take its course and there won’t be enough sensible people left alive to stop the march of the climate caliphate.
I have no idea what Clarkson thinks about the situation post-Covid. Covid didn’t kill ‘like Ebola’, but the press pretended that it did and governments took hold of the propaganda with both hands, shaking it for every dollar, cent, and ounce of political mileage. This means apocalyptic fiction and reality are comparable when it comes to the apparatus of global response.
That said, Clarkson managed to upset the safe-space, emotionally-challenged class of Covid worriers by saying: ‘I think politicians should sometimes tell those communists at Sage to get back in their box.’ And to the great click-bait rage of the hypochondriacs: ‘Well, if it’s going to be forever, let’s open it up and if you die, you die.’
‘If you die, you die,’ is pretty much the standard approach of politicians toward the public – unless they think there’s a way to exploit the situation. When you start hearing press conferences that begin with, ‘We can save you if…’ the most dangerous thing in the room is the politician.
A sober look at the world post-Covid has reminded the public that reality is very different to a panicky thought experiment.
There is plenty of Covid around today. People are in hospital. Some are dying. Every now and then there’s a news story begging people to use up some of those soon-to-expire vaccines before they end up in landfill next to the wind turbines, but life continues as normal.
Yesterday, a friend of mine presented his positive Covid test and all I could think was, why? Why are people still testing themselves? What difference does it make if you have Covid, influenza, or a hang over?
Based on the behaviour of the world today, full of Covid but minus the panic and political terror-raising, we may make a reasonable guess that no one would have noticed the Covid pandemic as anything other than a ‘bad flu’ if it hadn’t been for the daily bombardment of health officials giddy with fame.
I am prepared to go on the record and say the fallout from Covid health policies will end up killing more people than the virus ever could – especially taking into consideration the destabilisation of global politics triggered by worldwide supply trade disruptions, major wealth transfers, and a dive in public trust. All of these things have a habit of causing conflict.
Unfortunately, governments and our health officials are not as nuanced and adaptable as Amazon’s Grand Tour star when it comes to changing their minds. ‘Keep calm and carry on’ doesn’t make for a catchy election slogan. Politicians do not want you calm. If people aren’t frightened of hell, there is no reason to go to Church. The same is true of elections. Besides, if voters work out that most problems take care of themselves, what are the politicians going to do? Manage the country properly? Ha!
Why do you imagine Net Zero policies have 2030 and 2050 time limits? Is it a realistic guess? No. It is a date just far enough in the future that the ruling political class can make the argument to keep them in power just until 2030 to finish the job. This is propaganda. This is cheap politicking. This is emotional manipulation dressed up as responsibility.
Before we get to climate, those who seek to crack down on liberty will proceed with biosecurity legislation.
The only thing the WHO appears to have learned from the Covid years is that fear-mongering on a global scale is an excellent way to accelerate the reach of their power.
The WHO’s problem has always been that wealthy Westerners have no need for them and the third-world, ruled over by despots and tyrants, isn’t particularly interested in eradicating Malaria. The proposed pandemic powers and new systems of control guarantee the WHO’s survival as an all-powerful, ridiculously funded entity for politicians, philanthropists, and medical professionals. ‘Give us hundreds of billions of dollars and we’ll save you!’ they promise. To world leaders, they say, ‘Throw money at us and you’ll never have to shoulder the blame for health issues again. You’ve outsourced the problem!’ It’s a 5-star gravy train with a white-coat dress code.
Governments loved Covid too. Really loved it. Premiers, Prime Ministers, and Presidents the world over used ‘emergency powers’ to install permanent power grabs that have left our nations with all the scaffolding needed to kick-start a communist-style regime.
Why haven’t they given these powers back?
Why isn’t the Opposition heckling those in power?
‘Oh… Well, you know… Just in case!’
To their eternal shame, the Liberal Party in Australia joined Labor in misusing Covid as a reason to lean on social media companies to censor Australians using the excuse of public safety. It was always rubbish. They were protecting themselves, their future careers, and their corporate friends with whom they had spent hundreds of millions of public money. Both political parties aided in the silencing of victims injured and killed by government policy. This is unforgivable, but it seems it will be swept under the Canberra carpet. No one will answer for these crimes. Politicians would much rather apologise for things that happened hundreds of years ago than atrocities committed by people sitting in Parliament today. That is why we call it virtue signalling instead of virtue.
The detail of biosecurity powers are wholly unreasonable. It’s easy to see how dangerous laws end up being written. Not wanting to look ‘soft on health’, each extension of power was nodded into law. These Acts became sprawling documents full of powers no citizen would agree to in the sober light of a referendum.
This matters because sleeper-laws such as our biosecurity suite of tyranny can be enacted at random to serve ulterior purposes.
As a general rule, all policy and law should be designed to withstand a leader such as Kim Jong-un – not Robert Menzies. Always assume politicians will find a way to create a mess, either through negligence, idiocy, or malice.
Australia has left an army of politicians and bureaucrats in Canberra for nearly a century with nothing to do except create meaningless laws. And that’s what they’ve done. Day after day. Drafting and passing a swamp of legislation – most of which is surplus to requirement. Some of it is dangerous. All of it feeds the hungry army of lawyers who drool on Canberra’s lawn.
I thoroughly agree with Senator Jacinta Price’s call for an audit into the Indigenous bureaucracy, but who is going to call for an audit of Australia’s laws?
Which political party has the guts to strip power from itself and hand it back to the people?
Alexandra Marshall is an independent writer. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.
