ARE WE ALL APRIL FOOLS?

Is this going to be the month in which The West locks itself into an economically and therefore socially suicidal path of lock-downs?

Or will the savage restrictions now being placed on people’s lives across the world produce health results better than the negative consequences?

I dont pretend to have the answers but I want things to be described accurately.

The coronavirus health crisis is not a war.

It is a pandemic which appears to threaten mostly elderly lives.

Of course we want to save the lives of our oldest and often wisest people if we can.

But earlier eras had a much better sense than many modern people of the extent to which Western ideals of democracy and freedom are worthy of sacrifice.

Too few people are now showing the courage of Dan Patrick.

Boris Johnson’s attempt to speak of the value of herd immunity has not survived.

In my eyes, Donald Trump deserves huge credit for admitting that the character of his people is suited to freedom not lock-down.

Any rational human action has to include knowing who we are.

Our future is no joke. Our culture could be at stake.

Can we at least have a full and open discussion of these ideas?

For my own part, as a sixty-two year old man, I state unequivocally that I would rather take a greater risk of dying from corona-virus in a free society than finish life in a country where fear shuts down freedom or in an economy destroyed if too many people stay locked too long in their homes.

Just saying what I think. Do I still have that right?

Who else feels the same?

Geoff Fox, 1 p.m., 1st April, 2020, Down Under