Mark Dolan: Time for a bonfire of Covid restrictions so Britain can rise like a phoenix out of the ashes

They don't want this to end do they?

Sage scientists warning of unknown future variants and the labour party seeking evidence for the lifting of restrictions.

By the way I wouldn't call these lifting of restrictions early.

They should never have happened in the first place. And please don't give me any of this guff about why we’re losing free tests. They're not free.

Did you know they cost you and me about £2bn a week and all they do is perpetuate this hysteria, not to mention how uncomfortable of this test is for many – children find it distressing - and of course the colossal environmental impact of all the plastic in these kits.

I would like to see all of these Covid tests melted down into something more useful. Perhaps a massive plastic sign, one installed in every town and city, saying all of this madness is over.

The ditching of all Covid restrictions – including the need to isolate at home if you have a positive test - is better late from the prime minister Boris Johnson who at the moment is doing a great job of proving me wrong. Well done Boris. The BBC spent half their interview with him banging on about partygate. Who the hell cares any more?

I confidently predict we will look back on the last two years as an historic, catastrophic health policy disaster.

And knowing what we now know, do you seriously think people will accept more lockdowns and mask mandates in the months and years to come? Do me a favour.

With half a trillion borrowed already and a decimated economy, how many more lockdowns do you think we can afford, before families debate which of their children they're going to eat first?

It gives me great pleasure to say bye-bye Covid. You've had too much prominence for too long, at the expense of far worse diseases like cancer, diabetes and depression.

In terms of public health policy, it's time to relegate Covid to where it should've been from the start, alongside other respiratory viral infections.

And there is, in particular, no excuse not to completely the unlock now that we have omicron. The professional vaccine salesman Bill Gates.

The man with the golden syringe, has admitted in an interview this week that Omicron has taken over as the main vaccine against the virus. You get omicron, you recover and the immunity significantly trumps that of any jab. At last common sense and actual science are beginning to prevail.

Far from avoiding omicron, the healthy should all be getting it. We should be having omicron parties. Because that's how you ultimately protect the vulnerable, save lives and end this pandemic. That's how we get back to normal.

Ignoring the natural immunity acquired by healthy people getting the virus, as argued for by the Harvard University epidemiologist Martin Kulldorf has been the great scandal of the last two years. Ah yes, good old natural immunity, another casualty of this pandemic.

Has anyone in the history of the universe ever self isolated with a cold, other than being too tired to get out of bed? Well Covid is scarcely different from a very nasty flu – which kills thousands every year - and omicron has proved to be a great gift to the world.

A variant of Covid which is milder than Michael Bublé's greatest hits. But the elite laptop class don't want this to end.

Was Kay Burley so concerned when she partied with her mates on her birthday at the height of lockdown?

Smug middle-class cheerleaders of lockdown should hang their heads in shame, after the damage that has been done. And yet some are asking for more of the same.

The good, honest working-class people of this country were the whipping boys of this pandemic, going out to work every day, whilst well well-paid media types baked banana bread, mowed the lawn, watered their petunias and cracked open a bottle of Pinot Grigio at five in the afternoon, as they tended to their final emails of the day.

Independent Sage, the sectarian wing of regular sage don't want this to end either. Let's not forget Communist Party member Susan Michie who thinks we're going to have a form of social distancing and masks forever.

Well I'd happily socially distance from you for the rest of my life dear, and you can take your masks and shove them where the Sun doesn't shine, perhaps under that mountain of data that says the masks don’t make a blind bit of difference.

To anyone that pushed for these restrictions, I'm afraid it’s game over. The burden of proof was on you to demonstrate we needed these restrictions, that they would work, a cost benefit analysis. None of these things were forthcoming.

So the damage is done - people won't get those years back, those memories, those life moments, that income. The health damage and the economic impacts are all irreversible and it's all on you.

So now it's our turn. From now on, we do it our way. Which is to inform people of the risks, offer them support and protection, particularly the vulnerable, for which I believe it should be money no object.

The Great Barrington declaration, signed by Martin Kulldorf, was all about protecting the vulnerable.

And never again should the public have their faces covered with a filthy rag, that's been described by CNN's chief medical advisor as more facial decoration.

Never again should we stop people from going out to work and providing for their families and contributing to the economy, which pays for your beloved NHS.

Never again should we threaten someone's job for a medical intervention. And never again should there be a policy focussed exclusively around vaccination, with a vaccine yes largely safe and fantastic for those who risk hospitalisation or death, but one which I believe has been largely oversold in terms of its ability to end the pandemic.

Bill Gates said it, Omicron is the vaccine now. And no one has successfully explained to me why healthy young people need a vaccine for such an innocuous virus to them, with a vaccine that doesn't even stop transmission.

Here's an inconvenient truth. The ultimate vaccine is being healthy. COVID-19 is a nasty virus we all hate it, but like everything in nature, it's brutally honest too. Not withstanding those with complex health issues, again who must be protected, COVID-19 is a largely lifestyle related illness. Did you see the PM on TV this morning? Quite a unit isn't he? And that's why he was hospitalised and flirted with death at the hands of the virus.

Thankfully he pulled through. Millions of people with a lower BMI shrugged off this virus and at least a third of the population had no symptoms at all. And we stopped the world for that. God help me. But if you're worried about future variants, it's very clear now that the lever of lockdown and other mandates have been pulled to destruction and in my view are now permanently discredited.

Massively expanding hospital capacity for winter surges, and a general public health message of slim down and be healthy, is the only long-term sustainable solution to handle Covid and other such viruses. I was truly shocked to read an interview with the woman who discovered the omicron variant in South Africa Dr Angelique Coetzee.

She made it categorically clear in November that omicron was mild and she couldn't understand why European countries were treating it like a worse disease. Well in a later interview, she said the following 'In South Africa it is a lighter disease, but in Europe it has been a serious, serious illness, which is what the politicians want me to say. There has been a lot of pressure from European scientists and politicians who have said ''Please don't say it is a mild illness''.'

Welcome to hell.

In the end Covid was not the bubonic plague. Just a nasty virus which exposed the weaknesses of our health systems and the poor state of public health.

The Spanish flu, the black death, Armageddon it was not. But we have nuked the country in a failed attempt to control it. We committed suicide for the fear of death. Well it's over.

There may be future variants and will have to get on with it. Life is dangerous. As the storms of the last 24 hours have taught us and as Vladimir Putin is teaching us right now, as he circles his wagons on the border of Ukraine.

It's time for a bonfire of all of the Covid restrictions so that Britain and its amazing people, can rise like a Phoenix out of the ashes.

And as we recover and bounce back mightily – which we will - two words must resonate, across the length and breadth of this land: never again.