Revisiting Covid
A conversation with Martin Neil
Four years into the “new normal”, I sat down with
to talk about his findings on covid.This “novel pathogen”, or rather, society’s response to it, has done something extraordinarily rare: it has divided our lifetimes into the ‘before times’ and the ‘after times’, in an acute and profound way.
For a while, I distanced myself from anything related to covid, as I developed a kind of aversion to thinking or hearing about it. I had spent so much time on that topic that I needed to turn the page. Once I had radically accepted the momentous events that marked our lives and changed them forevermore, I no longer wanted to play in that mental sandbox, at least for a time.
One of the only exceptions has been reading
and ’s Substack, “Where are the Numbers?”, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in scientific inquiry and the pursuit of truth.Martin came on my podcast to discuss the remaining questions surrounding covid and the response to it. He is a Professor of computer science and statistics at Queen Mary, University of London. UK, and has been dissecting the numbers and narratives around covid for the past four years.
Later in the podcast, we got into some philosophical questions: what have been the psychosocial effects of the Covid era, not only on those who never questioned the official narrative, but on those who did?
Here is the full episode. To my avid readers and paid subscribers, thank you for your patience— it has been a very busy time as I have been travelling. I have more podcasts and posts coming for you this week— stay tuned!
I enjoyed this conversation very much. I have to admit to being one of those people who has not let this covid thing go. I have collected two bookshelves worth of books about what happened and I'm actually reading them. I subscribed to many substacks and I'm thoroughly enmeshed in the topic. I feel that I need to bear witness and collect documentation that might be valuable to a future historian.
Hello Kate, I haven't had the chance to listen to the podcast yet (it's next up on my playlist!) but I do have to say, I was sort of in the same boat regarding COVID for a time after the nonsense finally stopped (though... Has it really?)
I recall attending one of the sessions in my city for the citizens inquiry and having to go back to that time when people were losing their jobs, getting fired, shunned by society. It was awful.
Even today, when listening to podcasts revisiting that time can be pretty difficult for me.
In other words, I still haven't moved on. I have a hard time getting over how people treated other people merely for seeing things differently. I just wonder... What is coming next?