As a Member of Parliament, on many occasions I was reminded of the ancient maxim that ‘hard cases make for bad laws’ – that is, unfortunate circumstances should not be used to create laws of general application.

Immediate and extreme emotional situations are a terrible basis from which to generate wholesale conclusions and laws. Unfortunately, it is becoming more and more evident that this is exactly what has happened with COVID.

What do I mean? Well…..

International health organizations unduly influenced by China could not move or even communicate the scientific facts at the beginning. Even today major health entities are providing very different information and direction.

Political leaders around the world panicked and when politicians panic their default is to seize more and more power. Their only solution - ever more pervasive government interference with and restriction of individual rights.

Media was unable to keep up to the evolving state of affairs, defaulting to the government narrative, partially because it fits the perspective of most journalists and partially because this was beyond their capacity to report fully. Our large scale media organizations supported the notion that the solution must be found in government taking the lead – anyone or anything that questioned that was suspect. And so, the vast majority of media outlets missed the main dynamics of what was happening around COVID and the failing response to it.

For drug companies, having worked on a new technology for two decades with very mixed results, (often deadly ones), finally there was a window of opportunity to roll out something completely new. And, for one company, their very first patent becomes the cornerstone of their medical offering to the public. With a potential income of 60 to 70 billion dollars on the COVID table, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. And, with the help of a massive PR campaign, they made themselves ‘indispensable’.

This ‘emergency’ allowed for a much different window for drug approval than any normal situation. As long as no traditional treatment option was given approval (and they were not), the new genetically modified juice became the only game in town (especially as the side effects of the other possible ‘vaccines’ were highlighted daily in the media).

And so all was supposed to be well. Only a few minor glitches were holding up the successful management of COVID 19. Only it wasn’t quite that easy and with a little hindsight its easy to see how it went off the rails……Is it even possible to get back on a level track? We’ll talk about that next time.