The Covid hysteria is getting worse

Readers may recall a column last month that laid out powerful evidence for the proposition that the ethnic and racial disparities for dire Covid outcomes are overwhelmingly due to obesity. While I also read the piece aloud for posting online, fewer of you will have listened to the audio rendition. That’s because YouTube took it down.

The explanation was pro forma: the column violated the site’s opaque ‘community guidelines’. An appeal produced the further explanation: ‘YouTube does not allow content that spreads medical misinformation that contradicts the World Health Organisation or local health authorities’ medical information about Covid-19, including on methods to prevent, treat, or diagnose Covid-19 and means of transmission of Covid-19. Learn more.’ Thus if I were to ‘learn more’ from YouTube, I would only be allowed to absorb information in lockstep with the government line.

You may also recall that my loony, irresponsible text, imperilling the lives of grandparents everywhere, was based on a large study conducted by researchers at Columbia University, whose results were published in the New York Times. Gosh, the sicko anti-vaxxer tin-hatters now lurk in the most alarmingly legitimate boltholes.

Scads of people now use YouTube and Facebook as their primary sources of news, so the platforms’ increasingly heavy-handed censorship is alone a concern. Yet with the UK circling the toilet bowl in the name of public health, our restricted access to diverse viewpoints on the pandemic is an even graver threat than the ‘mere’ curtailment of free speech.

Outside rare contrary voices like mine, silenced in August, we continue to be fed a steady diet of Covid hysteria, which amounts to government-sponsored terrorism. After all, what is terrorism? The instillation of pervasive social fear to achieve political ends. Sounds like this administration’s Covid strategy in a nutshell.