Divide Et Impera

Hi everyone, sorry it’s been a while. In the fortnight since I wrote a post, the world has shifted again. I just got used to being able to drive around freely and went on a mega-trip a fortnight ago to shake off the tainted air of confinement. The weather was glorious, and it was just really nice to hang around in Highgate, watching Londoners doing their thing, loll around in Waterlow Park with my peeps, just listening to two of the most magical sounds on the planet — children running around, going bananas, and birdsong. I realised I usually illustrate my blog with pictures of scenery or products or buildings I like. To hell with all that! The planet is not worth a damn without the people on it so this week my image is of two of the nicest people I met when we exhibited in Harrogate. They just look like they are having a great time, love this pic.

In that time, we’ve had the murder of George Floyd, the protests all over the world, and ever more draconian decrees by our governments. I haven’t watched the video, I can’t bear to see it. I still find it hard to forget the executions of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Ghadaffi which I chanced upon, and I wasn’t a fan of either so watching what is essentially a snuff film? No, thank you. I have enough trauma to contend with in my daily life as I watch my patients succumb to bouts of Covid-19 and have to deal with the Covid-collateral patients who are now end-of-life or newly diagnosed with cancers that should have been caught 3 months ago. We did take part in blackout tuesday; I thought that was a really strong statement considering how addicted we all are to social media. By the time I had the opportunity to go on IG after work, #blackoutuesday had half a billion posts. It was so encouraging to see that so many people agree that it’s wrong to see their fellow human beings being brutalised. Black lives matter? You bet! Especially mine!! I’ll go further and reclaim the fact that all lives matter; I believe we are all made in God’s image – how about that for upping the ante? That’s because this is not a black and white thing, it’s also a rich and poor thing, and an enfranchised and disenfranchised thing. I believe that a worldwide lockdown has shown a lot of people that we are all in this together for real – intelligence, race, gender, money, power, beauty, influence, none of these things will protect any of us from an apocalypse. They may afford some wriggle room but at the end of the day, we would all be toast.

While all this has been going on, our dastardly leaders have been sneaking in outrageous laws under the radar, hoping we are all distracted. You can’t have anyone in your house who is not a member of your household unless they are working. Who the hell voted for that? The police are going to come into our homes and in effect ask, ‘Where are your papers?’ I fell asleep and woke up in Nazi Germany. We must all wear masks on public transport, and probably to come soon, whenever we leave the house, or face an £80 fine. Pity the government wasn’t so concerned about me wearing a mask when I went to work everyday as a pharmacist for eight solid weeks without any PPE, as they risked my life and that of millions of essential workers at a time they were still telling us half a million people would die from Covid-19. They know what they can do with their mask. We did actually pay some attention in physiology classes: I know how small viruses are, and how big the holes are even in medical-issue masks. Muppets.

Anyone who still thinks this is all about a virus must be a real innocent abroad. Even though the infection rates are now negligible by medical standards, they’ve increased the interval between lockdown reviews from 3 weeks to a month so each period has been prolonged, and they are putting out ever-more draconian laws. In other news, it’s been found that H-2 antagonists such as Ranitidine and Famotidine help with recovery from Covid-19. Would you like to guess which class of drugs has been unavailable since last autumn because all Ranitidine supplies worldwide were found be contaminated with a rocket-fuel component? (How? Search me) Ding! H-2 antagonists. All of them. And despite the nonsense you are reading in the media, hydroxychloroquine is being used successfully all over the world including the UK to treat Covid-19 patients. I read the medical coverage in the media and look on in astonishment at the lies and propaganda and misinformation.

As of today, WHO says 399,013 people have died of Covid-19 worldwide. Meanwhile, in 2017 the same WHO said the average worldwide mortality burden of influenza every year is 389,000 – ranging from 290,000 in a low year to 650,000 in a bad year, and that’s from respiratory causes alone. Forget the associated complications like cardiomyopathy and myocarditis. Source: NCBI https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6815659/ Russian flu in 1977-78 killed 700,000, Hong Kong flu in 1968-69 killed between 1 million to 4 million people. You probably don’t know that because there wasn’t 24-hour rolling news full of scary charts in primary colours.

The prolonged lockdown is the most senseless thing I have ever witnessed and the less virulent the disease becomes, the more controls get imposed on us. For those who are willing to trade their civil liberties for ‘safety’, history tells us that you will end up losing both. So let’s not fall for the divide and conquer tactics. Black, White, Asian, Hispanic – we are fighting a truly powerful enemy at the moment. Believe it or not, we are winning as the plan seems to be falling apart, hence the ‘headless chicken’ quality of the rules and regulations.

As a Christian, I often get asked if God is real, why doesn’t he intervene to stop evil? It occured to me this week that most of what we call evil is man-made. Hunger, poverty, assaults, wars, inequality – they are all man-made and we can solve them if we want to. All countries have no money to help the poor but the UK alone can find £300,000,000,000 behind the sofa in the space of a fortnight. The US government has $1,000,000,000,000 handy. Granted these are two of the richest countries in the world but up to now the US has been spending $750 billion on defence on average every year and more than $900 billion on the space programme since 1958. The country is neither at war nor has it put a colony on the moon. It does not have a fit-for-purpose healthcare system. How crazy is that? Copy that for every country in the world – The money is there, it’s a matter of priorities. So, no God is not going to come down and sort this out for us when we can fix it ourselves. But with this lockdown, the enemy is big enough and we can’t fight it alone and if you ask any Christian, they’ll tell you they can see Him working big-time thwarting some pretty scary efforts to enslave the human race. So, again, don’t be afraid and don’t trade your humanity for a life of ‘safe’ self-imprisonment. Even if you don’t believe in God, you are a rational, smart human being. I’m going to assess the risks and benefits and think for myself. Resist the devil, and he will flee you. That’s Christianity 101 – it also works against jumped-up dictators if there are enough people on your side. And there are definitely more people who want to just get on with their lives than there are wannabe tyrants. As this is AlaraApothecary, we finish with the utterly wonderful Eva Cassidy singing the utterly wonderful Curtis Mayfield song ‘People Get Ready’ Love for all, hatred for none. Have a fabulous weekend.