The conspiracy theorists have had a field day with covid. These manipulators who enjoy intimidating the weak and making the naïve believe their nonsense have put out some very weird ideas. These included that China wanted to take over the world, that somehow 5G mobile phone masts were responsible for the flu or that Bill Gates was intending to put a chip into every anti-flu vaccine and inject it into everyone in the world. Thanks to the sheer incompetence of governments worldwide, some actually believed such nonsense.

Let us look at some facts:

– 85% of victims of this virus were aged over 65; 1% were aged under 40; the number under the age of 20 was virtually 0. (This is completely unlike ‘Spanish’ (= American) flu which affected above all the young. Incidentally, tens of millions of victims of this American flu caught it only because of the British-organised, so-called ‘Russian Revolution’. Only because of this did the USA enter World War I, so at once bringing infected US troops into Europe to spread their flu).

– 96% of all victims of all ages had serious underlying health conditions – the others had immunological problems.

– Those over the age of 90 who caught it had an 85% chance of recovery.

– According to official statistics, the number of victims is now greater than in the swine flu virus a decade ago, though then there was no lockdown or economic catastrophe.

– Hysteria has been created by an irresponsible and sensation-seeking media, which talk of second and third waves. In reality, most of the new cases and ‘spikes’ are due to the existence of testing, which is picking up what before was not detected. In one recent case, it was said that infections had increased in one city by 100%; in reality the number of cases detected had indeed gone up – from 6 to 12.

Most of those who died from the covid virus would have died anyway; it is expected that there will now be a sharp fall in the death rate in months to come, as this flu has brought many who would have died in any case to a slightly premature death. Thus, in the UK the number of victims, equivalent to a thirteenth month of deaths for 2020, may simply mean that in the second half of 2020, there will be some 50,000 fewer deaths than would otherwise be expected. In other words, the death-rate for 2020 may well end up being comparable to other years.

The two problems that create conspiracy theorists is, firstly, that they believe that governments are sufficiently intelligent to create conspiracies and, secondly, that they do not believe in God. The second problem means that they do not know that although man proposes, God disposes. In fact, incompetence (including even the inability even to record accurately the number of deaths), panic and political correctness are the only explanations for governments, of left or right, bankrupting their economies and carrying out absurd lockdowns, threatening and intimidating the naïve, as if covid were the bubonic plague. The absurdity of closing schools, creating lasting psychological damage to a generation of schoolchildren, bankrupting millions of businesses and whole sectors of the economy, creating poverty and mass unemployment, especially among the young, is something that will never be forgotten. The remedy, which is in any case not a remedy, is indeed far worse than the problem.

Why such incompetence, panic and political correctness which have killed the economy and messed up hundreds of millions of lives? Only because people have lost faith in God, meaning that, as humanists, they cannot cope with the only inevitable fact in human existence – that we are all going to die, whether from covid, or, far more likely, from any of a thousand other causes.