Were Nurse Kathryn and our NHS heroes ‘used’ for propaganda purposes?

The words of ICU nurse Kathryn Ivey published HERE were read by many and drew a variety of responses. One of these came from PAUL MORGAN, a friend and colleague from half-a-century ago when we worked at The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne. It is a disturbing alternative view of possible political manipulation and/or mishandling of the pandemic. It deserves to be heard — DAVID BANKS, Editor

IT IS HARD NOT TO SYMPATHISE with Australian ICU nurse Kathryn Ivey whose heartfelt COVID-19 plea was published here last week (to read again, CLICK HERE). But there is another side to this sad story.

Mistaken lockdown policies have cause equally horrific collateral damage, not just to health but on several other fronts. Undiagnosed and untreated patients with heart, stroke, kidney and other chronic conditions have endured huge delays (ITV News, 12/8/2021) similar horrors to those described by Nurse Kathryn, not to mention the lonely, the addicted and the plain unhappy who have taken their own lives at least partly because of lockdowns.

Or the children whose education has been damaged (Daily Telegraph, 30/6/2021). Or those forced out of work; or those whose lifetime’s work spent building a up a business has been reduced to nought when lockdown closed their doors, isolating supplier from customer.

It is a complicated old world. I do not doubt for one moment that Kathryn and her colleagues merit heartfelt thanks from us all. But I wonder – yes, I really DO wonder – just how much the tireless efforts of Nurse Ivey and many, many thousands of medical staff have been used as propaganda to create the climate of fear that led to a series of irrational and mostly useless lockdowns.

I leave it to you to speculate on the identities of these shadowy manipulators but I question their longer-term motives: might their aim be to exert national, even international, control  over us all partly through a new world order using mass vaccination and so-called ‘freedom’ passports?

Don’t immediately write me off as an ‘anti-vaxxer’. As a 78-year-old with an underlying health condition (re-assuringly described in these COVID times as a “co-morbidity”!) I took the first of my two jabs as early as the second week of January.

Whether or not I would do the same today, when post-vaccine deaths and adverse reactions keep climbing and vaccination seems neither to stop ‘double jabbers’ either contracting or spreading the disease, I am not sure.  I take some comfort, however, from evidence that seems to indicate vaccination cuts the risk of hospitalisation and death.

That risk calculus does not apply equally to the young. Indeed, my half-French grand-daughter who lives and works in Lyon told me some time ago that she would not be taking the shot because it had not been fully tested on women of child-bearing age and because being so young meant she had more chance of being struck by lightning than of dying from coronavirus. .

That was a month ago. Now my dear Charlotte tells me she will be taking the vaccine after all. And the reason? Nothing to do with relative risk and safety, let alone because of any notion of liberté, egalité or fraternité.

No, she will to be vaccinated because she is fed up of not being able to join her passport-waving friends at the local restaurants and night clubs.

And there was I, proudly telling my friends I had a grand-daughter who was part of ‘la Nouvelle Résistance’!