They say that in politics you should never fight a pig: you both get dirty but only the pig enjoys it.
Likewise, you should never argue with a conspiracy theorist because you both end up inhabiting their delusional world.
However, it is vital that we separate conspiracy from reality. And we must expose how the inhabitants of the lunar strip and the supposedly sane ideologues are inextricably linked.
And this is nowhere better demonstrated than in the reaction to the ground-breaking research into Covid led by the Chancellor of the University of Western Sydney and former head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet Peter Shergold and my column about it last week.
The findings of the nearly 100-page report, the only national inquiry into Australia’s Covid response to date, confirmed pretty much everything I and a few others have been saying consistently since the outbreak of the pandemic : that the schools should never have been closed and that they are being locked down. they were excessive and disproportionately hurt the most disadvantaged in our community.
At the time, any expression of these views resulted in howls of outrage and torrents of abuse from lockdown lovers and the #IstandwithDan troll army. When the report was delivered, its silence was both deafening and damning.
Instead, the noise comes from a cohort that did almost as much damage during the pandemic, namely anti-vaxxers. At a time when I and others were calling for more freedom, these people were unnecessarily clogging up hospital beds, suppressing absorption rates and giving petty politicians and bureaucrats the excuses they needed to keep the restrictions imposed longer and longer.
Perhaps even worse, they allowed pro-lockdown extremists to paint anyone who questioned them as an anti-vaxx lunatic, and thus were able to dominate the political narrative and impose on people two years of brutal restrictions the economic and social consequences of which we are still struggling with
The response to my article last week was also an illuminating, if predictable, look into the methods and mindset of the anti-vax movement, although both words are generous descriptions.
My piece on the Shergold report didn’t even mention vaccinations, but a meme quickly circulated around the world purportedly contrasting it with an earlier piece condemning those who refused to vaccinate while the rest of us languished in confinement
And of course the pieces themselves were not broadcast, that would force the public to read them. They were just screenshots of the headlines.
From the barrage of abuse that poured into my Instagram posts, of all places! — I allowed myself only one exchange for the sake of posterity:
Random: “Did you write this article?”
I do. Have you read it?”
RM: “No.”
However, my new pen pal insisted that I apologize for this. You have to admire their commitment!
Crazy, irrational and extreme, right? And yet it’s the exact same technique used by so-called block-loving progressives on the same issue.
In one case, an online campaigner tried to stir up outrage by taking a screenshot of a week-old article criticizing the disproportionate impact of the lockdowns on disadvantaged areas, again not daring to provide a link because people actually read it.
Incidentally, the activist herself now works for Kooyong Teal Monique Ryan representing the interests of suburbs such as Hawthorn and Kew.
In another, Victoria’s chief health officer himself, arguably the poster boy for pandemic mismanagement, posted a screenshot of an article of mine about having to live with the virus.
Again, there was no link for his followers to read. Meanwhile, he rebuked things the article didn’t say and his central complaint seemed to be with a quote from the federal chief medical officer.
And so we see that, in their behavior and reasoning, enamored and anti-vaxxers are just as delusional and irrational as anyone else.
And while such online antics might be dismissed as deranged and annoying, the one-eyed fanatic has dire consequences in the real world, as the Shergold report makes clear.
School closures are the latest case in point: there was never any scientific basis for this and yet state premiers, enabled by their chief health officers, disrupted and slowed down education of children up and down the East Coast and condemned thousands of students to oblivion.
And all because a vocal cohort of panicked ideologues were as irrationally anxious about Covid in children as anti-vaxxers are about needles. Both positions were misguided, harmful and against all the evidence. The only difference is that a deranged type of dogma has infiltrated some of the highest offices in the land.
Today the dogs have barked and the caravan has moved on and there have been few consequences for either group for their role in significantly worsening a national crisis.
But in time each of these violently opposed extremists will be remembered as badly as the other. And that time begins now.