Not another Covid outbreak

We learn from your columns of a fresh Covid outbreak.

Well, I had a bad but typical cold in the middle of December that was followed by unusual occasional bouts of annoying dry coughs that lasted for over a week. Now I’m fine.

If this was the latest scourge of which we are supposed to be living in terror, it certainly came as an anti-climax. The healthy human body is perfectly capable of defeating the minor respiratory infections that have plagued humanity for millennia.

An added bonus is that in the process we gain lifetime immunity against that virus. Sadly, big pharma does not profit from natural healing and immunity, but these are some of the richest companies on the planet, so no tears need be shed.

Another truth, like it or not, is that we are all mortal. We will all inevitably die in one way or another. As we age, our bodies weaken and are less able to fight viruses and some of us will succumb to respiratory infections. For example, aged 80, Winston Churchill was so weak that a common cold triggered the chain of events that led to his demise. This is the way nature works and it is beyond our power to change it.

Returning to the report, I cannot understand the legality under a supposedly democratic order of an unelected body such as the Covid-19 Scientific Advisory Committee suspending fundamental rights such as the right to freely attend doctors’ and dentists’ surgeries.

We have seen before that this may only be the thin end of the wedge. In a democracy, let’s have a referendum to determine whether the majority wishes to take its chances with the respiratory infections in the knowledge that we are mortal and will one day depart from this material earth and our departure may indeed be caused by a respiratory infection when our bodies are too old and weak to fight them any longer. Or, whether the majority wishes to live in a biosecurity state in which self-appointed bodies may curtail any human right any time they wish based on arbitrary and peremptory declarations of health risks, with all who question such declarations subjected to attacks ranging from censorship to removal from posts and consequent ruin that hark back to the attacks on heretics in the Dark Ages.

Tim Drayton

Agios Athanasios, Limassol