The red pill and the bitter pill

Holding Covid Times to Account.

This is the talk I gave at the 'Holding Covid Times to Account' session at the Battle of Ideas October 2023, with Viv Regan, Tomas Fazi and Jennie Bristow.

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Lockdown was like a bad dream you couldn’t awake from. It was a red pill.

In the film ‘The Matrix’, Neo is offered a red pill or a blue pill. The blue pill will allow him to go on as normal. The red pill enables him understand the illusions created by the Matrix. Truth is unveiled. Taking the red pill is not comfortable.

Many people were red-pilled during Covid-19.

If you had the same red pill as me you know that goal posts were moved. Two weeks became a year.

Threats were exaggerated. Michael Gove said we were all at risk in March 2020, but it was known by February 2020 that risk was stratified by age and co-morbidity.

Promises were broken. We were told the government was definitely not looking at vaccine passports while it had invited companies to tender to develop them.