Publication Date: December, 2020
Location: go to Future in Archives on the PoetsOnline website.
Genesis: I don’t think I’ve ever been so upset by the state of the world as I am now. Look, I know there’s a nasty bug going around. I’ve never suggested otherwise, and the whole controversy about where and how it emerged feels mostly irrelevant right now. However, all the data from all over the world now says, pretty much categorically, that Covid-19 was never as dangerous as we first thought (or were initially led to believe). Here in the UK, for example, 2020 is on track to be the eighth worst year for excess deaths since 1993; in other words, nothing special.
Furthermore, we now have data from countries that had very different approaches to lockdown. Peru had about the harshest, and longest, with military enforcement on the streets, whereas Sweden had one of the softest, with citizens trusted to make their own choices within just the loosest set of guidelines. Today, as we approach year-end, we see that none of our measures made the slightest difference to the progression of the virus; every country displays more or less the same infection curve and, it would appear, the pandemic (if ever there really was one) has been over since mid to late summer.
The PCR tests that are being relied on worldwide have a high level of false positives, which is not surprising as it was never designed to be a diagnostic test in the first place. This not only means that the number of Covid-19 cases is almost certainly being massively overstated everywhere, it also calls into question the efficacy of a vaccine when the researchers at least partly relied on PCR testing to measure their results.
Faulty tests that are not fit for purpose is driving the pandemic narrative long after the spring peak has been and gone. There never was a ‘second wave’ with SARS or MERS, which are biologically comparable viruses, and there’s not a second wave of Covid-19, either. However, governments all over the world have discovered just how compliant we are when we’re kept fearful of an invisible disease and uncertain as to what rules we are meant to be obeying today, and they are finding that the level of control they now have is very, very difficult to relinquish. We, on the other hand, seem to have happily relinquished our right of assembly, our right to protest, our right to collective worship, our right of free movement, our right to work and make a living in many cases.
I could go on for pages, but this is not the right place. When the prompt came up to write about the future, this is the headspace from which this poem emerged.
I Can't Wait For the Day when we finally wake up from this all-encompassing fever-dream, this collective, psychotic breakdown, and stop running this huge and correlated experiment on seven and a half billion souls. I can't wait for the day when our basic human rights - the ones we have been frightened into relinquishing, frighteningly easily - return. The right to collective worship, whether in mosque or church, synagogue or sports stadium, music festival or comedy venue. The right of assembly. The right to hug, and kiss, and shake hands. The right to make love with someone beyond my bubble. The end to bubbles. And tiers. And tears of loneliness, frustration, poverty, powerlessness. I can't wait for the day when sitting in a park is no longer an act of defiance; when masks are back where they belong, in surgeries; when 'lockdown' is once more a term only used in prisons; when 'social distancing' is once again the name of a lifestyle choice made by hermits, and the painfully shy. I can't wait for the day when I can visit my neighbour without worrying about what other neighbours might say or do; when I'm free to move around without risking fines or persecution. The evidence is clear - it was never as dangerous as we first thought; all our draconian measures made virtually no difference; and the worst of it was over by late June. I can't wait for the day when real science trumps political agendas and our political leaders learn some humility and apologise.