Dan Wootton: The government’s winter plan is a hellscape that risks plunging us back into lengthy lockdowns

The doom squad return for more bad news and here I was last night foolishly thinking positively.

Believing that an 80 per cent vaxxed nation with over 90 per cent of Covid antibodies in adults could be brave enough to deal with a virus that now has an infection fatality rate not all that dissimilar to the winter flu.

As Tory freedom fighter Steve Baker revealed after formally asking the government…

“Ministers have now confirmed the infection fatality rate of Covid-19 is 0.096%, comparable to flu".

But no.

So addicted is the government, the media and much of the population to draconian controls on our life and the spectre of a biosecurity state, the government’s winter plan is a hellscape that risks plunging us back into lengthy lockdowns.

Nothing is off the table.

This isn’t normal.

In fact, it’s not even close to a new normal.

No wonder so many of you were contacting me today, asking: So what the hell was the point of being vaccinated?

So to summarise here’s what Boris Johnson said today he is keeping in his back pocket:

• the reintroduction of mask mandates
• the reintroduction of social distancing and seeing friends outside
• the reintroduction of work from home orders
• the imposition of highly illiberal vaccine passports
• full lockdowns

Now the PM said he ideally didn’t want to have to go there, but the doomsday scientists Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance were back to paint a bleak picture of what’s ahead.

No wonder the Daily Mail’s front page today trumpeted: RETURN OF THE DOOM SQUAD

One of the things that shocked me most today is that Sajid Javid – one of the most lockdown sceptical MPs when he was a backbencher – suggested in Parliament that we might have to spend the winter of 2021 forced to socialise outside!

What does that mean for hospitality businesses already on their knees?

And it was also depressing to see former libertarian Boris defending vaccine passports 'in principle'.

Oh how power corrupts.

Boris opened the press conference by saying our position this winter could be “more challenging” because case rates are higher than this time last year.

But surely that fundamentally mischaracterises how we are going to try and control a virus that is inevitably going to become endemic.

It’s deeply depressing to me that the way our political and media class continues to speak about Covid is steeped in fear and terror.

A key plank of freedom is living without the uncertainty that your God given freedom will be taken away by the government at any moment through no fault of your own.

But sadly it appears that’s how the government intends for us to exist for at least another six months.