Tomorrow in England, the schools go back. They’ve been shut since early January when the government abruptly imposed another lockdown over coronavirus. However a remarkably successful vaccine roll out which has seen 20+ million Britons safely vaccinated against this disease has created the conditions where schooling in person can return.

The remote schooling has been both stressful and difficult for many parents with some schools being better than others in the provision of remote teaching. We’ve been lucky, our child’s school has been brilliant but others have not been so lucky. They’ve had to deal with poorly planned lessons, delivered badly and with very poor feedback between school and the parents and the child. There’s no doubt that the home schooling has been as disruptive to some children as evacuation was to children during the Second World War. We’ve seen both good and awful remote schooling during this time. We moved our child from his original school shortly after the first lockdown, as even prior to the pandemic we were getting more and more frustrated with a lack of home school communication. That lack of communication and lack of provision worsened during the pandemic so we moved our child to another school last September and we’ve been delighted by the service that we’ve had since then. We’ve actually been treated like customers, which makes a change when dealing with Britain’s state education system where too often parents are treated like scum.

The return of in person schooling is a big step along the road to normality and its a normality that can’t come soon enough. We’ve got a lot to do to repair the damage that the lockdowns have caused to the economy, to society and to the mental and physical health of Britons. Although I’ve shifted my position on many issues during the pandemic period, most notably with regards my initial suspicions of the mRNA vaccines, I still believe that if Britain had had better pandemic planning that looked at other diseases of concern not just influenza, then maybe things would have been different. Maybe with better planning Britain would not have had to have lockdowns of such great length and severity?

I’m seriously concerned at the damage that the government’s policies have done to civil liberties and some agencies, such as the police have taken a massive hit to their reputations. A perception, too often backed up by solid evidence, has shown the police in a bad light. A lot of people are going to take a long time to forget how the police kneeled for BLM/Marxist thugs whilst kicking merry hell out of those protesting lockdowns. This was biased and partial policing at its worst and this is going to be remembered and filed away along with police failures on Islamic Rape Gangs and selective and biased policing of ‘hate speech’ laws. This is eventually going to blow back in the faces of police possibly by a reduction in public help and support. When all this is over work is going to have to begin in earnest to repair the damage to civil liberties.

Another thing that I would like to see is the government being honest in the future with the public regarding pandemic threats. You don’t need to be a genius to know that whilst covid might be bad, there are other horrible diseases out there that could be even more devastating. I’m thinking of a really bad mutation of influenza or an air transmissible haemorrhagic fever or even a return via terrorism of something like Smallpox or even Anthrax. Thankfully there are vaccinations available for both Anthrax and Smallpox and it is to be hoped that the development of mRNA vaccines may even help to created a far safer version of the Smallpox vaccine than the one that used to be employed prior to Smallpox being wiped out. If Britain was afflicted by a Smallpox attack I fully expect the anti vax community to call for the vaccine to be refused and Smallpox to be treated by homeopathy or some other equally useless pseudo-science. If we were afflicted again by a pandemic disease then I would expect the government to be honest and tell the public the truth about it as well as close Britain’s borders early enough to prevent the import of disease. The government has done itself and the rest of us no favours by being seen as disjointed, evasive and vacillating, something it has appeared to be at times. The piss poor communication by government has not just frustrated Britons but has given an opportunity for the charlatans and grifters of the anti vaccination community to peddle their bullshit and appear credible even though they are not. If you want to get some idea just how much the anti vax cult has exploited covid then may I suggest that you look at the Science Based Medicine and Respectful Insolence sites. They are documenting and countering the way that the anti vax and pseudo-science groups are exploiting the situation. I think that these anti vax and alternative medicine nutcases will always be with us, but I believe that much better and more vigorous science teaching will with any luck in the future lessen their influence and make them as laughable as they deserve to be, maybe hopefully as laughable as the Flat Earthers or those who believe that Gravity is a myth created by ‘the Jews’. I truly believe that greater science knowledge across all parts of the public is the bleach that could clean up the cess pit that is the anti vaccination movement.

The return of children to school is a good sign that this pandemic may soon be over and we can dispense with the lockdowns, the assaults on civil liberties and the increasingly hated masks. An end to this pandemic will come by applying the science and hopefully it is the application of science that will not just deal with the effects of the next pandemic, but possibly stop it from happening in the first place.

My child is longing to get back to school and he needs to be back at school as seeing him pine for other children to play and interact with has been extremely distressing. I’m extremely glad that the schools are no returning and that hopefully that means that the nation is on the road to recovery.