Mark Dolan: It's time for Britain to reclaim our country and our freedoms and judge the risks for ourselves

Have a look at this statement from Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon. Now get used to this messaging, not just north of the border, but across the UK.

The siren voices of lockdowns and other Covid measures will get louder. The arrival of more ruinous measures this side of Christmas is more likely, than the arrival of Santa Claus himself.

Have we learnt nothing? The aim of lockdown was supposed to be to protect the vulnerable, but with one of the highest Covid death tolls in the world, protect them we did not. Curfews, social distancing, arrows in supermarkets.

There is no overwhelming evidence that they helped. But their overwhelming damage is clear. In terms of the effectiveness of lockdowns for example, Professor Simon Wood ran the figures for all three national lockdowns, in a peer-reviewed study.

Is Nicola Sturgeon prepping Scotland for another lockdown?
Jeff J Mitchell

His figures suggest fatal Covid infections were falling, before each was imposed. And the graph of infections for countries that locked down hard and those that didn't, look strangely similar. Turns out, virus gonna virus. Now I will cut the authorities some slack that in March 2020, with little known about the virus, who could blame them for wanting to do something.

Now I hope that these measures were the right thing to do, but we've now had a cost benefit analysis of lockdowns, after the fact. And we have been left with a poorer, sicker, sadder and more divided society. Take the NHS waiting list, which is now in excess of 12 million people. Explain to me how that's not going to cost more lives.

Plus the damage to life and loss of life, caused by the biggest recession in 300 years, a trillion quids worth of extra debt by the time we're done with this, a smaller economy, a mental health crisis and our children's education in chaos. So you want more of that do you?

Sorry I'm not having it. I was described by the Guardian newspaper yesterday, as a “lockdown sceptic” broadcaster. Too right I am. Why isn’t everyone sceptical, after all this damage. For so little reward.

A negative Covid-19 test sits on top of a Passport for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Holidaymakers will finally discover which destinations they can visit this summer without quarantining, with Portugal, Iceland and Malta among those expected to be on the travel green list. Picture date: Friday May 7, 2021.
Andrew Matthews

To all of those lockdown fanatics, perhaps many of whom could afford it, or others bought off by the furlough scheme, sat at in their lovely homes, baking banana bread, listening to podcasts, and pouring themselves a large glass of Pinot Grigio for their last zoom meeting of the day, I say spare a thought for the millions of people whose lives have been wrecked by these measures.

And for victims of the non covid death toll, which will likely dwarf that of Covid in the years to come. The University of Bristol have estimated an extra half a million premature deaths as a result of lockdowns.

And of course once viable businesses were closed down, the self-employed were effectively disowned by the Treasury and the elderly and vulnerable themselves, have been imprisoned in their own homes since March 2020.

So when are we going to have a grown up conversation about whether lockdowns and other Covid measures actually work? And the price they exact, before we sign up for more. Why do we ignore the elephants in the room of Sweden, Florida and Texas?

Florida is a good example. An older, more vulnerable population, and with more densely populated cities than lockdown loving California, and yet a comparable Covid death toll. Cases fell when they lifted measures in a move described by President Biden and neanderthal thinking.

I'm so confused. In fact show me a country that didn't or couldn't lock down that has had a cricket score death toll. There isn't one. Some of the strictest lockdown regimes are at the top of the unfortunate Covid league table.

Even the basket case example of India, with its disastrous health-care system, a third of its population with metabolic syndrome, and of course those horrific scenes played out of people literally dying outside hospitals, contradicts the cosy covid consensus. India weren't able to pay people to stay at home and make their way through the Netflix back catalogue.

After a painful spike, reported enthusiastically across the media, cases fell off a cliff and they now have a significantly lower per capita Covid death rate than us. And you can't really use the population density argument in cities like Mumbai or in a country with a population of 1.3 billion like India. So why doesn't data matter anymore?

Why don't facts matter? Still the masked militia push their woke agenda of face coverings. If they worked, why have we had so many cases? SAGE sub group member Professor Clifford Stott says face masks are now more of political statement than a help to public health.

Professor Carl Henegan of Oxford University says they are not evidence based and former sage adviser Professor Colin Axon told Dan Wootton on this very programme, they are merely comfort blankets with any benefits too small to be measured. Wow. But facts don’t matter any more. And harms are ignored.

Does no one care about the psychological impact of masks, the pollution from chucking away 53 million a day, and what about the potential impact on your actual health. Is it optimum for human health to cover your nose and mouth for hours on end?

When I watched supermarket workers and restaurant staff huffing and puffing through a 12 hour shift with a face covering, it struck me as cruel and wrong. Interesting how many of those heroes that served us during the pandemic, have since discarded their face coverings.

And many in the so called vulnerable groups are now mask-free, suggesting common sense is beginning to prevail. By all means wear a face mask forever if you like, the ability to CHOOSE, is now a test case for the future of this country.

I like measures that work. Like the vaccine. Seemingly helpful at preventing serious illness and death in the most vulnerable groups, it’s got my vote. And I’m double jabbed. So as we emerge from this pandemic, lessons must be learned and mistakes not repeated.

The problem we have is an entire generation of politicians who are hooked on the optics of being “seen to do something”. Masks and lockdowns and arrows in supermarkets isn't safety in my view, it's safety-ism. And of course thinks like lockdowns and masks make sense on paper, which is what makes them so dangerous.

A year and a half on, the numbers are coming in and it doesn't make for good reading. We've tried to stop the virus and I believe we failed. We've been led by people looking out for their job, not the public interest. It's been the world’s first “health and safety” pandemic, a jobsworths pandemic.

Safety first, at the expense of everything else. We’ve been led by public figures keen to be seen to do something and mindful of the judgement of history. Given the damage, there can be no future lockdowns, no jabs for kids, no mask mandates and absolutely no Covid passports.

The approach going forward must be based on freedom and individual judgement. Let us as human beings assess the dangers, as we have done as a species for millennia. It's time for the state to butt out of our lives, because in my view the damage from these Covid measures has been far greater than that from the virus itself, nasty and highly infections though it is. So here's my message to the fans of lockdown.

You've had it your way for a year and a half. The damage has been colossal, the advantages hard to see from where I'm standing. So now it's our turn. It's time for the British people to reclaim our country and our freedoms and judge the risks of life for ourselves.