Omicron PWNS Allison Pearson

As so often, when you need to show with pinpoint clarity how terminally clueless the right-leaning punditerati really are on the real and present danger posed by the surging Omicron variant of Covid-19, the opposition rides to your rescue. This week, at the head of the lamest posse ever to be dispatched from Dodgy City has come worryingly wacko Allison Pearson, still given a platform by the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph.

Omicron was highly transmissible. Even alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was concerned. New measures were brought before the Commons. And, all too predictably, many Tory MPs refused to back their leader. Only with Labour support did Bozo prevail. Ms Pearson knew who was in the right, and it wasn’t the PM.

“Please don’t call the MPs who voted against vaccine passports ‘Tory rebels’. In my book, those upstanding men and women are the true Conservatives. Rather, it is those who pushed through this repellently un-British measure, with the help of the Labour Party, who are the traitors to our philosophy”. TRAITAHS! Orf to the TOWAH with them!!

So what, pray, makes the convocation of back-bench idiocy so wonderful? “That stirring creed of liberty that trusts grown-ups to make the best decisions for their own families and does not seek to ostracise people for refusing to provide proof of a medical treatment to go to the theatre or the footie”. Ah yes, the old “freedom to spread a potentially deadly virus on the basis of misinformation from bad faith actors” ploy. So who are her heroes du jour?

“From head boy of the old school, Sir Graham Brady, to 28-year-old blonde bombshell of the Red Wall Dehenna Davison, via former Royal Air Force engineer Steve Baker (more sense than the entire Cabinet combined) through that lioness Esther McVey, keenly compassionate Sir Charles Walker and Miriam Cates (both rightly devastated by the collateral damage of lockdown) to fearless, principled Nus Ghani and the swashbuckling Sir Desmond Swayne … These are my heroes”. Wibble, meet hatstand.

Baker is a religious zealot. Ms Davison never did explain her closeness to the far right, and Desmond Swayne … that’s the comedy turn who told the Commons that more people died on the roads than from Covid (not even slightly true). But enough. Let’s look at the reality of Omicron, and why Ms Pearson and her heroes are, once again, plain flat wrong.

As the BBC has reported, “A further 78,610 confirmed cases were announced on Wednesday, the highest number of daily cases since the pandemic began”. The seven day average of deaths has not yet begun to tick up, but that for hospital admissions has. The former tends to follow from the latter. The situation is worsening.

In those circumstances, what should a responsible Government have done? What would a rational and sensible administration have done? What would Nietzsche have done? What they assuredly should not have done would have been to follow the all too typical power-without-responsibility bawling of our selfish and inconsiderate media class.

The Beeb has also told us “There have been more than 11 million confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK and over 146,000 people have died”. Allison Pearson may not care about adding a few more tens of thousands to the total deaths. But some of us do. And are becoming heartily sick of her irresponsible and petulant outbursts. Enough, already.

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