What is this Covid, Actually?

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the man come and take you away -

                        Stephen Stills: For What It’s Worth Dec 1966

Here are a few thoughts around where we might be in the current debate about what Covid is, and the place of vaccines as a benign countermeasure to any effects it engenders. We might start with the idea that a serious disease has for some reason spread across the world and is causing a significant number of deaths as well as serious illness. A small but significant minority of people refute this, but if we wish to pursue a realistic debate, we must start with the assumption that a disease named Covid-19 exists and warrants investigation (qua Stephen Stills "There's something happening here/What it is ain't exactly clear).  

So, is it clear? Is there any mileage in the view that this Covid 'pandemic' created from nothing but the authoritative voice of government and media? Could this be another plank in the ongoing construction of one of the greatest acts of sleight of hand, 'bait-and-switch' or whatever you like to call it in the history of the world?  

My instincts in March 2020 at the beginning, when looking at the UK figures for Hong Kong flu in 1968, were that the 1968 (and 1957) events were deadly indeed but had by no means been the subject of co-ordinated and prolonged lockdowns and general governmental push towards mask-wearing and social distancing. Why then were the prospects in this latest event any different?  

By May 2020 it was way too soon to compare the numbers, but H3N2 had at that time seemed to have proved deadlier than COVID-19. Between 1968 and 1970, the Hong Kong flu killed between an estimated 1 and 4 million, according to the CDC and Encyclopaedia Britannica, with US deaths exceeding 100,000, and the UK 30.000. In May 2020 Covid 19 had reportedly killed around 295,000 globally and around 83,000 in the United States.   

Do we trust these figures? Between 1 and 4 million seems to be a meaningless statement, for example, but in a half hour of research trawling many websites, I could find no consistently authoritative numbers.   

Here for example is what GAVI says "In terms of the number of deaths COVID-19 has caused (349,095 as of 27 May 2020), it is actually more comparable with previous flu pandemics. The Asian flu in 1957-1958 killed an estimated 1.1 million people, close to the 1 million people thought to have been killed by the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968-1970". Not 4 million, then?  

We can read in Wikipedia that “worldwide deaths from the so called Hong Kong virus peaked in December 1968 and January 1969”. At the time, public health warnings and virus descriptions had been widely issued in the scientific and medical journals. In Berlin, the excessive number of deaths led to corpses being stored in subway tunnels, and in West Germany, garbage collectors had to bury the dead because of a lack of undertakers. In total, East and West Germany registered 60,000 estimated deaths. In some areas of France, half of the workforce was bedridden, and manufacturing suffered large disruptions because of absenteeism. The UK postal and rail services were also severely disrupted.   

But do we look back on the years 1968-1970 and see panic, lockdowns and endless debates about vaccinations and controls? In the West, certainly we do not. These years were populated by seismic events, such as the Apollo moonwalk, Prague Spring, the escalating war and TET offensive in Vietnam, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, Woodstock, student demonstrations especially in Paris but elsewhere, the Ohio University campus shootings…  

The World Health Organization estimated the case fatality rate of Hong Kong flu to be lower than 0.2%. The disease was allowed to spread through the population without overarching restrictions on economic activity, and a vaccine created by American microbiologist Maurice Hilleman and his team became available four months after it had started. (More about Hilleman follows below).  

Meantime, in current Covid-19 global up to date figures using Worldometer, the reported deaths worldwide currently is 4.5 million. (Sept 2021). This is 0.058% of the global population. 0.2% UK.0.198 % USA 0.16% Sweden (Using Worldometer figs for deaths and population).    

However, we know that the UK presents its figures as deaths with Covid within 28 days of a positive test.  Are we clear what India does? Or China? Or Brazil? Do the Worldometer figures address these different approaches to data collection and interpretation? And indeed, finally, and crucially, how many deaths have actually been prevented by the waves of draconian measures put in place by governments worldwide? It ain't exactly clear.  

What is clear is that distance lends a kind of perspective. The last truly devastating global pandemic was incontrovertibly the so-called Spanish Flu post 1918. The world was at that time already in tremulous shock. That pandemic simply ripped through populations already traumatised. It created a new fractured politics, a new fractured art. However which way we look at the current sets of data, the effects of current pandemic - in terms of illness and death - bears no relation at all to the 1918 devastations. That is exactly clear.  

And so to vaccines.   

Maurice Hilleman was a difficult beast, but massively influential as a vaccinologist at a time when the zeitgeist did not challenge the concept in the way in which we are led to believe today. He is now more or less faded into obscurity. But in his story in the late 1960s, we have many of the elements repeated in today's melange of activity: angst, virtue-driven certitude, mutations, quickly developed vaccines, maverick scientists, conflicting political and medical opinion.  

Interestingly we read this about Hilleman in a 2005 Obituary: [ BMJ Obituary republished in the National Library of Medicine https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC557162/   

"Hilleman characterised several viruses and identified changes that could result when a virus mutated. This concept, which he worked out while at the Walter Reed Institute of Army Research, helped prevent a huge pandemic of Hong Kong flu in 1957. Learning that the flu was a new strain, 40 million doses of vaccine were rapidly made available in the United States."  

"Hilleman's style of working was iconoclastic. Dr Offit said, “To give you an example of how he worked, in 1963, [when his daughter had the classic symptoms of the mumps,] he swabbed the back of his daughter's throat, brought it to the lab to culture, and by 1967, there was a vaccine.” He added, “Today's regulation would preclude that from happening... If Maurice was alive today, I doubt he would be able to be Maurice. He was a very strong-willed person and a person like him could face a high level of inertia.”  

"During his more than 60 years in basic and applied research, he earned a reputation as an often harsh , impatient fellow who tangled with industry and government bureaucracies. Hilleman defended his pushy and prickly behaviour (today also we might say deeply sexist), which offended some colleagues and co-workers, as crucial for science to advance. He argued that politics, not science, determined which breakthroughs were brought to the marketplace".  

And so in the space of 60-odd years, it seems we have a complete volte-face of the public perception about the deployment, and the constitution of vaccines. The mavericks today are named Montagnier, Yeadon, McCullough, Raoult, Fuellmich, Zelenko.....  

In the current marketplace of opinion (for many opinions are indeed monetised via (anti)-social media and burgeoning video platforms), debates are intense. We might look at the assertion that most of the vaccinated population have no idea of the substance they are allowing into their bodies. Or perhaps very little idea. This, of course is incontrovertible. But whether this is a reason alone to vilify the current crop of vaccines, produced in circumstances which are familiar to mainstream virologists, is absurd. The bigger picture is how medicine has become compromised since the development of a post-enlightenment science-based medical establishment, and petroleum-based solutions which have overtaken and more-or-less supplanted natural and holistic medical practice. How to understand and respond to this is a matter for individual conscience. In a free society, this remains a right and is the source of discussion, such as this one.   

Aside from people of faith, for most people living in the maelstrom of modern existence, when defining how we stabilise as best we can, the health of nations, there can be trust in the authority of the day which is paid for through the Social Contract (whether this be via taxation, or democratic affirmation of the majority, or tribal acquiescence). Or we can develop and act upon our  individual knowledge of the workings of viral vectors, mRNA and their relationship to spike proteins et. al. and so act independently according to individual conscience. The perspective of history tells us that this pragmatic approach to medicine - with all the checks and balances of scientific understanding - saves lives and improves the prospects of millions. 

That is the balance which we inhabit in the modern era. But what is new, of course, is the prospect of the weaponizing by governments of the binary between vaccinated and unvaccinated, and between the tested and untested. This set of notes ends where that discussion starts. But the mood music in the airwaves is not promising.   

September 9th 2021

Update: December 27th 2021 : Here we are in the UK.

Recent UK Government announcements on  Covid Passport interventions in the everyday, neatly summed up in terms of Identification Document Validation Technology (IDVT).

For What It's Worth 

Buffalo Springfield. Released December 1966 

There's something happening here

But what it is ain't exactly clear

There's a man with a gun over there

Telling me I got to beware 

I think it's time we stop

Children, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what's going down? 

There's battle lines being drawn

Nobody's right if everybody's wrong

Young people speaking their minds

Getting so much resistance from behind 

It's time we stop

Hey, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what's going down? 

What a field day for the heat  

A thousand people in the street  

Singing songs and they carrying signs   

Mostly say, "Hooray for our side"   

It's time we stop

Hey, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what's going down? 

Paranoia strikes deep

Into your life it will creep

It starts when you're always afraid

Step out of line, the man come and take you away 

We better stop

Hey, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what's going down? 

You better stop

Hey, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what's going down? 

You better stop

Now, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what's going down? 

You better stop

Children, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what's going down?   

Songwriter: Stephen Stills For What It's Worth lyrics © Cotillion Music Inc., Ten-east Music, Springalo Toones, Ten East Music, Richie Furay Music, Cotillion Music, Inc.  

T. S. Eliot’s Landscapes: A Four-Stage Formal Study

Abstract

This study offers a four-stage analysis of T. S. Eliot’s Landscapes poems—New Hampshire, Virginia, Usk, Rannoch by Glencoe, and Cape Ann—examining their poetic, philosophical, and dialectical dimensions. Drawing from Owen Barfield’s theory of participation (Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry, Wesleyan University Press, 1988) ¹ and Jewel Spears Brooker’s dialectical framework presented in her T. S. Eliot’s Dialectical Imagination (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), the study traces how Eliot navigates shifting relationships between nature, memory, and spirit. The progression through close reading, philosophical lens, dialectical movement, and comparative synthesis reveals the sequence not merely as lyrical observation but as a metaphysical pilgrimage: from lyrical grief to reverent surrender, each landscape staging the evolution of poetic consciousness.

Stage I: Close Reading — Imagery, Tone, and Structure

Eliot’s Landscapes unfold as a sequence of spiritual interiors masquerading as natural vignettes. Each poem carefully modulates imagery, tone, and structural rhythm to enact not just place but metaphysical posture.

In New Hampshire, the orchard becomes an Eden recalled. Children’s voices harmonize with seasonal rhythms—“Cling, swing, Spring, sing”—but harmony is soon fractured by memory: “Twenty years and the spring is over.” The lyrical tone surrenders to elegiac disjunction.

Virginia opens with the slow movement of a “red river,” heat transmuted into silence. Nature is passive—the mockingbird sings only once, the trees wait. Fragmented syntax echoes emotional immobility. “Iron thoughts” travel with the speaker, reflecting unrelieved inner turmoil.

In Usk, brevity becomes pilgrimage. Mythic symbols—the white hart, the white well—are approached with reverent restraint. The landscape transforms into a chapel: “Lift your eyes / Where the roads dip…” The tone is contemplative, the structure aphoristic.

Rannoch, by Glencoe invokes a moor stripped of symbolism. “The crow starves… the stag breeds for the rifle.” Memory becomes a site of violence, historical silence resisting interpretation.

Cape Ann bursts with birdsong—“Quick quick quick…”—but cadence leads to surrender. The speaker yields the land to “its true owner, the sea gull.” Structure and tone converge on silence and release. 

Stage II: Philosophical Lens — Barfield and Brooker

Barfield’s theory of participation—a philosophical model of evolving human perception—helps map Eliot’s poetic consciousness: from original unity with nature, through modern detachment, into imaginative re-engagement. Brooker’s dialectical model complements this arc, framing Eliot’s movement from disjunction through ambivalence to spiritual transcendence.

In New Hampshire, original participation is evoked and then mourned. The orchard echoes unity, but memory intrudes. The speaker moves into onlooker consciousness, grieving a vanished mode of knowing.¹

In Virginia, nature becomes backdrop—passive and still. “Iron thoughts” reinforce isolation. Participation has fully withdrawn.

Usk gestures toward final participation. Myth is present but not pursued. The poet lifts his gaze, not his hand—a reverent posture grounded in humility and vision.

Rannoch by Glencoe offers only residual representation. The moor bears historical pain, but no symbolic comfort. Memory “beyond the bone” remains unspoken.

Cape Ann culminates in final participation. The speaker follows nature’s rhythm, then surrenders speech. “Resign this land…” signals a release into silent communion.

Stage III: Dialectical Movement — Brooker’s Model

Brooker’s dialectical framework—disjunction, ambivalence, and transcendence—provides a lens to trace Eliot’s poetic negotiations between intellect, emotion, and spirit.

New Hampshire holds ambivalence between lyrical beauty and irretrievable memory. Presence dissolves into cadence; ritual replaces possession.

In Virginia, movement stalls. Nature waits, the speaker remains inert. Disjunction dominates, and tension endures without transformation.

Usk opens toward transcendence. Myth is not seized but attended. The poet seeks vision, not mastery. Brooker’s theological poise—engagement through humility—emerges.

Rannoch offers only silence. The dialectic does not move. Eliot chooses ethical restraint over synthesis. Violence is acknowledged, not interpreted.

Cape Ann completes the arc. Birds lead, the speaker follows. The “palaver” ends; speech yields to presence. Transcendence arrives not in conquest, but in surrender.

Stage IV: Comparative Synthesis — Poetic and Philosophical Arc

Taken together, the Landscapes chart a metaphysical pilgrimage. Eliot’s early poems evoke unity only to mourn its loss. His middle poems inhabit restraint and silence. The final poem yields, releasing possession and reclaiming perception.

Nature evolves from symbolic Eden (New Hampshire), through emotional burden (Virginia), to sacred distance (Usk), historical resistance (Rannoch), and finally, sacramental presence (Cape Ann). The poetic voice transforms—from speaker to follower, from griever to pilgrim. Eliot’s dialectic is not a quest for resolution but a journey into humility. Landscape becomes lens—not to look outward, but inward.

Eliot’s Landscapes are less a journey across regions than a passage through modes of being. They dramatise how the poetic mind perceives, carries, questions, and finally surrenders to the world. Nature remains constant; what changes is the eyes that see it.

Footnote
¹ Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry, Wesleyan University Press, 1988. On original participation: “a dim consciousness that man and nature were somehow one.”

• Revised and developed with assistance of Co-Pilot AI, December 2025

T.S.Eliot Reading "Landscapes"

I found this quite by accident recently, whilst doing a Google search on "no concurrence of bone". Those words were triggered in my memory when discussing with an old friend the last line "And Zero at the Bone" in Emily Dickinson's "A narrow Fellow in the Grass". 

Thanks to this random thread of events, the piece now also appears on the T.S.Eliot Society website at www.tseliotsociety.uk

T.S. Eliot reads Landscapes from Don Yorty on Vimeo.

I. New Hampshire

Children's voices in the orchard
Between the blossom- and the fruit-time:
Golden head, crimson head,
Between the green tip and the root.
Black wing, brown wing, hover over;
Twenty years and the spring is over;
To-day grieves and to-morrow grieves,
Cover me over, light-in-leaves;
Golden head, black wing,
Cling,swing,
Spring,sing,
Swing up into the apple-tree.

II. Virginia

Red river, red river,
Slow flow heat is silence
No will is still as a river
Still. Will heat move
Only through the mocking-bird
Heard once? Still hills
Wait. Gates wait. Purple trees,
White trees, wait, wait,
Delay, decay. Living, living,
Never moving. Ever moving
Iron thoughts came with me
And go with me:
Red river river river.

III. Usk

Do not suddenly break the branch, or
Hope to find
The white hart behind the white well.
Glance aside, not for lance, do not spell
Old enchantments. Let them sleep.
"Gently dip, but not too deep,"
Lift your eyes
Where the roads dip and where the roads rise
Seek only there
Where the grey light meets the green air
The hermit's chapel, the pilgrim's prayer.

IV. Rannoch, by Glencoe

Here the crow starves, here the patient stag
Breeds for the the rifle. Between the soft moor
and the soft sky, scarcely room
To leap or to soar. Substance crumbles, in the thin air
Moon cold or moon hot. The road winds in
Listlessness of ancient war,
Langour of broken steel,
Clamour of confused wrong, apt
In silence. Memory is strong
Beyond the bone. Pride snapped,
Shadow of pride is long, in the long pass
No concurrence of bone.

V. Cape Ann

O quick quick quick, quick hear the song sparrow,
Swamp-sparrow, fox-sparrow, vesper-sparrow
At dawn and dusk. Follow the dance
Of goldfinch at noon. Leave to chance
The Blackburnian warbler, the shy one. Hail
With shrill whistle the note of the quail, the bob-white
Dodging the bay-bush. Follow the feet
Of the walker, the water-thrush. Follow the flight
Of the dancing arrow, the purple martin. Greet
In silence the bullbat. All are delectable. Sweet sweet sweet
But resign this land at the end, resign it
To its true owner, the tough one, the sea-gull.
The palaver is finished.

1933-1934