HAS political prejudice and distrust of government obstructed practical measures to control the virus? As new Covid cases spiral and even the omnipresent Jason Leitch realises it is out of control in Scotland, let us ask some difficult questions of why so many governments, ours included, have proved so glaringly inept in dealing with the crisis.

Take two issues in point – the lack of regulation on face masks and the lack of effort on vitamin D trials. I hold to account irresponsible activism from the right and left of politics and the vacillation of weak governments in the face of such pressure.

The inconsistent and hesitant advice and regulation on the wearing of masks was an early sign of indecisive leadership. It could be that in the early stages the authorities were frightened to speak clearly on the issue for fear of exacerbating the disgraceful shortages of PPE on the frontline.

But that was long ago and not how it was presented. We were instead told that the evidence for face masks was “weak” although no member of any caring profession would ever willingly go into battle against any virus without wearing one. Then we were told that somehow they were effective on public transport and in shops but not necessarily elsewhere!

In fact, the evidence for their effectiveness was always overwhelming. It was only the degree of protection that was in dispute. And what seems to lie behind the confusing official hesitancy is deeper than just incompetence.

It is interesting that many of the arguments, which first saw the dark of day at the summer Trump rallies where his fan base revelled in the non-wearing of masks, are still prevalent on the right of politics. Of course wearing a mask may save the life of your fellow citizen but the Trumpian nonsense had it that it was an inalienable personal liberty not to wear one anyway!

Incoherent policy can be highlighted by a snap survey I took three weeks ago while stuck in a traffic snarl up in London. While queueing for buses, those wearing masks (where it was compulsory) was 100%. For the rest of people walking around it was around 10%. With Covid resurgent the percentages will no doubt have changed, but it shows the consequences of the hopelessly mixed messages of governments on the run from what they suppose to be popular, as opposed to doing what they must have known to be effective.

The failure to mask up in many Western countries compared to the almost universal application in Asia is a consequence of right-wing agitation impeding public policy. Every libertarian commentator and vacillating politician’s words should be accompanied with the warning “listening to this rubbish can seriously damage your health”.

But why should lunacy be confined to the right? Could not our ever-correct wokerati have made their own disastrous contributions to failure? Yes they have, and an emerging example is the lack of effort into studying simple and cheap remedies to reducing the risk of Covid.

Countless billions have been poured into the search for a vaccine, where it unfortunately looks like we will achieve by default the “Defcon 1” Johnson spring strategy of “taking it on the chin”. Natural herd immunity may now be reached before the vaccine calvary rides over the hill and this virus will likely embed itself as endemic in the human condition.

However, in contrast to the soaraway vaccine budget, lives have actually been saved by the application of two cheap-as-chips steroids which have cut mortality rates by 30%. But why have more such effective treatments not been added to the anti-Covid armoury? Leading the charge sheet is the perplexing failure to properly study vitamin D.

For the last six months the ever-persistent internet star Dr John Campbell has been championing the cause of vitamin D. Vitamin-supplement adherents have been often frowned upon by health authorities, although virtually all health advice also suggests low dosages to address deficiencies.

However, Campbell’s time may be coming. International studies are now supporting the case of the effect of vitamin D as both a preventative and ameliorative of Covid-19. Even the medical establishment house journal The Lancet has carried papers demanding a full-scale clinical trial. One of Campbell’s latest coups is finding out that, across the pond, the sainted Dr Fauci is taking heavy dozes of vitamin D supplements while the official US health advice is for very much lower amounts – and the president whose brain is missing wants to inject people with disinfectant.

The question is why has so little been done when the early trials have been so promising? That is where the compulsion to be politically correct is making fools of us all.

Vitamin D deficiency is much more common in people like me. There is more than a suspicion that academic analysis of the prevalence of coronavirus in BAME communities was reluctant to study the impact of nature as opposed to nurture. For example, the Public Health England study released in August studied every aspect of why communities like mine have fallen victim to in disproportionate numbers.

Every aspect was considered in great detail – health professions, geography, poverty and endemic racism, despite the UK Government’s early attempts to suppress this glaringly obvious aspect. However, no attempt was made to correlate the prevalence of the disease to vitamin D deficiency despite the accepted knowledge that it is concentrated by ethnicity.

There are people, many people, daft enough to believe that merely studying genetic differences is in itself racist and there are even more who think it is safer (and of course easier to find funding) to just body swerve the issue.

So let me be quite clear. People of colour are likely to be poorer, to work in more disease-exposed professions, to be located in cities as opposed to the country and are certainly subjected to institutional racism. However, we would actually also like to know if our genetics make us more susceptible to this deadly virus, just as white people are more susceptible to some skin cancers. And we don’t want a politically correct wokerati establishment impeding studies which might just save our lives.

It is also something particularly relevant to all of Scotland where our intermittent sunlight gives us all an environmental vitamin D challenge. Is this not exactly the type of study, with our integrated health service and scientific base, that Scotland usefully could have contributed to humanity? Or have our officials been too busy attempting to interpret and regurgitate the latest garbled nonsense from the London Sage group?

From the particular point of view of Scots of colour, we want to know if vitamin D, which is even cheaper than chips, could be good for our health and safety, and we want to know it now.

To coin a phrase, it is long past time for our self-appointed, ever-precious leftist “allies” to get off our throats and let us breathe.