By David Warren.

We still do not know - anything, really - about the "coronavirus pandemic" that passed through the news five years ago. We agreed to a fortnight to "contain the spread," on Dr. Birx's advice, now 130 fortnights ago. Needless to say, her official mission seems to have ended, along with Dr. Fauci's, and for the moment we do not endure arbitrary public health instructions.

Things like churches are open again; and restrictions on prayer are only in effect near abortion clinics, or in communist jurisdictions, such as England.

We have "experience" now, I read in the media.

Perhaps the main thing we have "learned" is that lockdowns, business closures, mask mandates, travel restrictions, quarantines, social distancing, contact tracing, &c, were either useless against the Batflu, or made it worse - the medical versions of "the process is the punishment."

I wrote "learned" sarcastically. In fact, the worthlessness of each of these proposed remedies was fully known and demonstrated in all previous "pandemics." The public health "experts" were in a position to warn us against each of these old wives' tales, but falsely promoted them in the name of "science."

As to whether the "vaccines" were any more use than other pharmaceuticals - or the infamous ventilator machines - I have no special insight. My skepticism, which did not require a medical degree, has been growing quite radically, since the "Batflu" was first announced.

Too many untruths were told about it.

And by the summer of 2020, the "experts" were supporting mass political demonstrations, cheered on by hospital staff in every "progressive" urban environment, that contradicted their own explicit medical instructions.

In view of this obvious and total hypocrisy, people like me became convinced that expert views on public health should be ignored. Nevertheless, they were legally enforced, in all those theaters where human freedom is held in contempt.

By coincidence, this was about the time my spiritual master died, at an advanced age, and not from the COVID virus. (Fr. Jonathan Robinson, 3 June 2020.) His funeral could not be attended.

The "old world," in which the life of Christian nations could be taken for granted, was now over.

As, imperfectly enough, an "old Christian," I had the new feeling of being entirely on my own. This was subtly confirmed by various environmentalist pronouncements, coming from the Vatican. The Church herself seemed to be surrendering to the public health authorities. And even the pope, apparently, was no longer Catholic. How could this be?

But this was a panic as indefensible as the Batflu response. For there is God, there is Christ, there is the Spirit; and the created universe does not change like a transient political event.

My own learning, about the best and also the worst of medical procedures in my little corner of the world, happened a year later when I suffered a heart attack and stroke: also quite unrelated to the Batflu.

It was my first sudden acquaintance with life in a "world-class" public hospital, where I would encounter the abilities and efficiencies of doctors and nurses. Several happy truths would be illustrated.

Yet I would also come up against the influences that were undermining, possibly destroying, what had been one of the most splendid features of Western, Christian civilization.

For Western medicine, its clinics and hospitals, were the creations of the Church, and patronized almost exclusively by the Church, over many centuries.

Even today, in non-Christian countries, medical services and investments are largely in the hands of Christian missionaries (in the broadest sense) or are modeled on Christian institutions (e.g. the Red Crescent after the Red Cross).

In the West, however, the healing art has been mostly nationalized, or crudely commercialized, and tax monies have replaced the work of charitable religious orders.

A conscious effort to desanctify the hospitals has accompanied the heathen and atheist move...