Britain’s Jaw-Dropping Stupidity is a Danger to the World
Britain’s Decided to Let Covid Rip, and the Consequences Will Be Disastrous. How Can Any Country Be This Foolish?
Britain is Opening Just as Covid Explodes All Over Again. What The?
Is Britain the dumbest nation on earth? Is it even possible for a country to be
this dumb?
To help you decide, let me recount a story. My lovely wife, the doctor, had a conversation recently with a friend. Her friend is an American doctor, who was partly educated in Britain. It went like this.
“So…things are looking pretty bad across the pond. About 50,000 cases?” That was my wife’s colleague asking, surprised, remembering Britain as a gentle, wise, friendly, and thoughtful nation, not quite knowing that, alas, that country is no more.
“
More than 50,000 cases,” my wife gently corrected him.
“Wow! That’s about — “ he frowned and did some quick mental math — “five to ten times the number we have. In America! What’s wrong with them?
We’re supposed to be the dumbest country on earth!”
He laughed at his own joke. She didn’t laugh back. He tried to ignore it. Why didn’t she find it very funny?
“So…they must be about to lock down again,” he said. It wasn’t a question, just a foregone conclusion. After all, that’s what any vaguely sane and sensible nation would do. And Britain — the one he remembered — was a society of gentleness, reasonableness, competence, and sanity, which he still thought of so fondly. That Britain had been the kind of place he’d always hoped America might one day become, too.
But now his mind was about to be well and truly blown.
“Lock down? Oh no. They’re not about to lock down again at all.”
“What?” He couldn’t believe his ears.
“Quite the opposite. They’re reopening the country again.”
“
Now? While a new wave is exploding?”
“Yup,” my wife nodded.
“You can’t be serious,” he replied. He didn’t believe her, the way men so often don’t believe women.
Nobody could be that dumb, he thought to himself. She must be mistaken. Women!
“Go ahead and Google it,” she shrugged.
He did.
His jaw dropped. “What the…they really
are about to reopen the country again. I mean, they’re
lifting all the restrictions and protections.
All of them. They’re not even telling people to wear masks! What on earth? What — ”
“They call it ‘Freedom Day,’” my wife explained, cracking a sardonic smile.
“But…that’s Orwellian. They’re not free from Covid! They’re neck-deep in it, all over again.
Freedom day?”
“I know!” This time, she finally laughed. Mirthlessly.
“But…I don’t get it. Come on!! Literally,
literally, nobody else on earth is that…that…”
“Go ahead and say it.”
“
Stupid.” He exhaled heavily as he said it.
He was lost for words. Suddenly, he began to understand why his joke hadn’t been very funny. It
wasn’t one. He took a second to collect his thoughts, which by now had been shattered into a million glittering pieces by a whole new level of stupidity he’d thought impossible for human beings to achieve, just a scant few minutes ago.
“I can’t understand it. I don’t get it. What’s the deal?
Why are they being such incredible morons?”
“Politics,” my wife shrugged again.
“Don’t they
know what’s going to happen? As in, this isn’t an experiment. We know exactly what the outcome will be! Hello, science!!?” He asked, frustrated. He was completely baffled at this point. Like he’d said, this was even out-stupiding America, which is no mean feat.
“
It’s not going to happen, it’s already happening. 50,000 plus cases? That’s what the British government
targeted two weeks ago.”
“Targeted? As in they
let this happen?
Wanted this to happen? But…” He couldn’t even finish the question.
My wife sighed, and tried to explain.
“They think that, and let me quote, ‘the
link between infections and deaths is broken,’ so it’s totally OK to reopen the country, for political reasons, meaning some bizarre notion of ‘freedom,’ which apparently doesn’t include public health or sanity or facts or logic. Since Brexit took ahold of it,
the country you remember is gone, and now it’s kind of a nationalist cesspool burning with the lava of human idiocy, all of which is slowly going thermonuclear. Brexit broke their minds. They believe every foolish fantasy and Big Lie their politicians tell them now. Britain post-Brexit is
like a nuclear meltdown of human stupidity which never ends. It just keeps on combusting, into hotter, purer, more explosive forms of stupidity.”
He tried to argue. “
But.
But the link between infections and deaths isn’t even the issue. First, infections
still lead to hospitalisation at alarming rates. Second, Delta Covid hits
young people harder, and they get hospitalized. Third, it has
lasting consequences, like damaging your vascular and pulmonary systems, not to mention all kinds of stuff we barely know about. Fourth, what about elderly people and vulnerable groups. What about us doctors? What about…I mean…nobody else in the rest of the world is this stupid!”
His list, it seemed, could run onto infinity. She could see it happening before her eyes. His brain was being melted down by Britain’s shocking, bewildering stupidity, and at that point, staggered, nobody much stops to ask: can you really argue with an entire nation that’s chosen achieving world-beating, history-making, brain-melting levels of human folly as its noble and glorious destiny?
“I know, I know!” She threw up her hands. “Science, facts, logic, reason. They don’t care! The whole world thinks they’re morons, and is flabbergasted and horrified. Join the list.
They don’t care. I know. Covid is not a disease you want to get. It’s a lethal pandemic. They. Don’t. Care. Now read about Britain’s vaccination statistics for a second. I’ll wait.”
He checked his phone. And then he whistled. Then the whistle turned into a silent scream, which ended in incredulous laughter. “They’ve barely vaccinated
just over half their population fully? With
a vaccine which has about 60% efficacy at two doses and just 30% at one? And they’re going to reopen? Don’t they get that means their population doesn’t even have around
half protection against Delta Covid yet?”
“Oh, it’s much worse than that,” she replied. “Keep reading.”
He did. And this time he pounded his fist against the nearest wall. His jaw dropped again. It was the third time already this discussion.
“
The government isn’t going to vaccinate teenagers and kids? I mean…” he sputtered, looking for the words. ”Britain has a
literal government of anti-vaxxers?”
“It makes sense if you think about it,” she said. “They’ve held on to power by telling Brits,
whose minds are broken now, the
Big Lies of nationalism. You know, they’re the greatest country in the world, the best in history, the chosen people, especially strong and smart, better than the rest. It’s a Nietzschean thing. And if you believe that, well, who really needs vaccines? You’re the ubermen of history, apparently, and vaccines are for the weak.”
“Or, maybe,” he replied, “It’s because the British government’s nationalism explains why they didn’t properly check out the AstraZeneca vaccine, order enough other vaccines, and ran an incredibly slow and ineffective vaccination program. I mean we have more people vaccinated in the States, with way better vaccines.”
“Could be that, too. Either way, they’re about to find out…
“The hard way.” He finished the sentence. Then he summed it all up, thinking out loud. “They’re declaring ‘Freedom Day,’ victory over Covid. While they have
ten times as many cases as we do in America. Which are exploding by the day. In a population which isn’t nearly vaccinated enough yet. And in which kids and teenagers won’t
get vaccines at all. My God.
Are they crazy? The hospitals are going to be overrun. The long-term consequences are going to be devastating.”
My wife fell silent. She knew what he was about to say next. Anyone vaguely sane or thoughtful did.
“
I mean that’s the perfect — and I mean the perfect — setup to breed new vaccine resistant strains. A half-vaccinated population in which the virus is allowed to run amok. No restrictions? You couldn’t ask for a better Covid-20 incubator if you tried.”
“Here.” She handed him her phone, and showed him the letter that more than a thousand doctors and scientists had sent to the Lancet, calling Britain’s approach to Covid not just an “unethical experiment,” but also a
danger to the world.
“Arrrrrgggghhh.” He couldn’t take it any more. He finally let out something like a howl of pain at the incredible, lacerating stupidity of a nation as unbelievably, mind-shatteringly idiotic as Britain. “Their doctors and scientists — more than a thousand of them — have already told them how reckless and foolish this is? How it’s a perfect setup for new variants to emerge? And
nobody’s listening?”
She smiled, a wan smile of sympathy for the sudden pain of being hit square in the face by a giant fist of stupidity.
“
I don’t get it. They don’t even listen to their own doctors and scientists? But we’re the ones who’ve been on the front lines. I don’t even know how many people I’ve seen die over the last years. How many families I’ve had to tell things they never wanted to hear. How many patients came in perfectly healthy, and left via the morgue, almost overnight, faster than they ever could have believed it. They don’t even listen to
us? The ones who literally risked our lives to fight this pandemic for
them?”
“Well,” my wife replied. “To be fair,
plenty of Brits are terrified of reopening the country while a fresh wave of Covid is exploding. The problem is that a) the government doesn’t care because b) it knows that the other half or more of the people don’t appear to care about anything. And I mean anything. Not even their lives. Their own kids’ health. Their healthcare system being destroyed.
Anything.”
“Come on, I always thought Brits were smarter than us Americans!”
“Not anymore,” shrugged my wife. “Now they give the word stupidity a whole new meaning.
I haven’t even told you the stupidest part of all the stupidity yet.”
“Seriously? It can’t get any dumber than all this. Can it?”
“Sure it can,” my wife laughed, and this time she meant it. “Guess who got Covid the Friday before ‘Freedom Day’?”
“Who?”
“The…
Health Secretary.”
Her friend spat out his coffee. “That’s too stupid for words.”
“Oh, we’re not done yet. Guess who’s isolating because of Covid contact the
day before ‘Freedom Day’?
“Who?”
“
The Prime Minister and the Chancellor.”
He laughed so hard his eyes welled up. He clutched his stomach in pain as he pounded his fist against the wall. “That’s…the stupidest…thing…I’ve…heard….
ever.”
“I know!” She started laughing, too.
It was funny because it all seemed so impossible. The gentle, wise, magnanimous, friendly Britain which had once been the envy of the world. Brought this achingly, painfully low, into the rank gutter of chaos, misery, despair, and ruin. A place so incredibly, breathtakingly stupid, that the very men who told the Big Lie that the people were to have a “Freedom Day” over a disease they hadn’t yet defeated, but was in fact exploding…got that very disease….
the day before victory was to be declared.
A wiser nation might have even wondered if time and fate were trying to send it a message. But Britain, drunk on tepid nationalism, manic with delusions of grandeur, intoxicated by rage, delirious with idiocy….barely even noticed the impossible irony.
They fell silent, at last.
“It’s going to be bad, isn’t it?” He asked.
“It’s going to be very, very bad,” she replied.
“How did Britain get
this breathtakingly stupid?” It was a question that lingered heavy in the air.
They stared at the sun rising over the city. They’d just finished up a night shift, helping save a life here, a family there, doing whatever they could, still, to stem the terrible tide of a fatal disease. It was just another night in the life of a doctor.
She thought, she told me later, of the violence people do, allow to be done to them, in the name of the lies they come to think they love them back. Of how the sharp metal of grief is forged in the white-hot crucible of stupidity. She wondered if what Aeschylus had said was ever really true. That wisdom, too, came to us that way. Britain was the stupidest country on earth. And it was getting dumber every day.
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