One by one, they fall. The verities of Covid, pronounced so intolerantly by the bien pensants in the early months of 2020, are dropping like nine-pins.

We sceptics noted that response to Covid infection was highly idiosyncratic, meaning that significant, but unknown numbers of asymptomatic infections had occurred and were occurring, leaving no reliable denominator with which to calculate either the ‘R’ rate so beloved of Covidista, or the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR). In vain, we pleaded for the small number of test kits then available to be used to determine sero-prevalence in the entire population, and thereby assess more accurately the true extent of the threat. Such kits as we had, we were told, should be kept for testing people whose infected state was already evident from their symptoms. Go figure.

Our cool attachment to logic, common sense, evidence and centuries of human experience were no match for the thrill of catastrophe, and the promise of endless opportunities to boss everybody about, while pharisaically advertising their own virtue. IFRs and R numbers were gleefully bandied about like holy writ – the scarier, the better, as we now know from the Whatsapp archive of the half-witted Matt Hancock, British Health Minister. This treasure-trove shows clearly that far from ‘following the science’, Covid policy was entirely directed at maintaining the state of fear and panic in the British population, the better to ensure its sheep-like obedience.

We sceptics argued, in vain, that natural selection would favour the evolution of strains of the virus that were less, not more lethal. Our cautious optimism was pooh-poohed, so anxious were the Covidista to indulge their craving for drama. The arrival in South Africa of the Omicron strain, and the observation by that country’s medical profession that it conformed exactly to this model, being more infectious than its predecessors, but no more dangerous than a bad case of flu, was greeted not with relief, but with renewed catasrophist rhetoric.

We sceptics noted in the first few weeks of the epidemic that the lethality of Covid Sars 2 was highly skewed towards the elderly, and posed almost no threat to children. Our pleas to keep schools open, and the suggestion by the really brave few that the evolution of less lethal strains might be accelerated if it were allowed to circulate freely among children and young adults, were met with scathing opprobrium, by a self-anointed cabal of the smug who seem to have entirely forgotten the fact that, within the lifetimes of many of them, children were routinely exposed to childhood diseases in obedience to this very principle.

When well-credentialled physicians suggested that cheap, plentiful drugs like Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin might be repurposed to treat infected patients and to provide prophylactic protection against future infection, we looked on in horror as these drugs were demonised, for no better reason that they had received favourable mention from Donald Trump. Clearly, it was more important to the Covidista to discredit the big orange man, and to justify their campaign of terror than it was to find a cheap and easy way to combat Covid.

We sceptics looked askance at the fast-tracking of so-called ‘vaccines’, reasoning that the trials to which therapeutic goods had hitherto been subjected were there for a reason. We were loftily assured that the vaccines were ‘safe and effective’. Even when it became clear that their effectiveness waned at an ever-increasing rate, we were still assured that they were safe. Until they weren’t. That such hastily-concocted, highly invasive treatments should, in so many jurisdictions be either expressly mandated, or made a condition of so many ordinary activities that they were effectively mandated outraged us, the more so when it turned out that vaccines were rolled out without their capacity to impede transmission – the only conceivable ethical ground for compulsion – being tested.

In a recent podcast from the admirable John Campbell, a clinician with the integrity and courage to admit when, rarely, he’s been wrong, British-born Doctor Suneel Dhand recounts his experience of rejecting the vaccine mandate in America where he works. Along the way he vindicates many of the qualms outlined above. For anyone who still thinks the Covid ‘crisis’ was handled by the great and t he good, who had nothing but our best interests at heart, it’s a must-see.

It’s tempting, so great is this bonfire of the Covid vanities, to feel smug – after all, we sceptics were treated to a deluge of smugness, to say nothing of vicious censure, for three whole years and counting, as the craven lunacy of Covid played itself out. But that would be to trivialise the effects of a phenomenon of mass delusion which has cost our societies their wealth, brought to our economies rates of inflation unheard of since the 70s, deprived our children of their education and of the immunological challenge which has conferred upon mankind the innate defence against infection without which we would long ago have died out, and inculcated in them a quite irrational fear of their fellow human beings.

But if we don’t rub the noses of the Covidista in their pooh, how else are we to make sure it never happens again?