THERE’S been a lot of deeply irresponsible behaviour from some big businesses throughout the coronavirus pandemic – but if there is one company that truly epitomises capitalism’s way of putting profit before people, it would be JD Wetherspoon.

Tim Martin, the owner of the pub chain, has managed to bookend the coronavirus pandemic with staggeringly myopic decision-making. Starting in March, he suggested its staff could take jobs with supermarkets amid the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, as pubs were forced to close.

Now, Wetherspoons is displaying anti-lockdown propaganda in the windows of pubs across the UK.

This move would be crassly irresponsible at the best of times during the pandemic, but to choose now to undermine the efficacy of anti-coronavirus measures is worse. The British variant of the coronavirus is rapidly spreading across the UK from the south of England, while NHS services are overwhelmed, leading to a serious knock-on effect to non-Covid related treatments. This is the time to keep the heid – not to pour ourselves back into crowded pubs with the vaccine in sight.

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If you have stumbled past a Wetherspoons pub recently, you may have noticed these posters. In a bid to convince punters that governments have overreacted, the posters undermine the seriousness of the pandemic with conspiratorial headlines such as “What they don’t tell you about Covid” before listing details such as “95% of fatalities had underlying causes”. Thank you Tim Martin, for reminding me that people with underlying health problems are now second-class citizens, a worthy sacrifice to your wealth.

Setting aside the fact that this is such a morally vacuous position to hold, there are potentially serious long-term effects from having contracted the virus that anyone can suffer from. It entirely fails to acknowledge the impact of long Covid, which reports suggest affects around one in five who catch the disease, nor the potentially permanent scarring of the lungs that can come as a result of severe Covid-19.

In order to make these kinds of claims, the posters support calls to re-open the pubs while ignoring everything that contradicts the wisdom of doing so.

Martin has repeatedly pointed to Sweden as an example of how ineffective lockdowns are, stating that “Sweden hasn’t locked down and has a lower mortality rate than England, which has locked down twice”. What he has conveniently left out of that statement is the fact that Sweden’s fatality rate absolutely eclipses its comparable Nordic neighbours, to the point that Finland and Norway are offering medical assistance to Stockholm’s overflowing hospitals. Sweden’s death rate is roughly 10 times higher than Finland’s.

On top of that, to say that Sweden didn’t lockdown isn’t entirely true either. There was a lockdown in Sweden; it just wasn’t mandatory. Spending in Sweden throughout the pandemic dropped as dramatically as it did in nearby Denmark because people, broadly, chose to stay at home and help limit the spread of the virus.

However, it wasn’t enough. Without mandatory restrictions in place, the situation has deteriorated to the point that Sweden is now pushing a bill through parliament to allow lockdowns to take place from later this month. You can expect to hear a lot less about Sweden from anti-lockdown proponents as time goes on.

Interestingly, Martin and his like seem a little more reticent to point to other countries that followed a similar strategy; countries like America, where the majority of states did not implement lockdown and where the death toll is well over 358,000.

Much of the argument against lockdown actually comes from an even more circular position; where a lower number of cases (a result of the lockdown) is used as proof that we don’t need a lockdown.

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I don’t think that Martin really believes the conspiratorial headlines that he’s plastered in the windows of his pub chain. The isolated statistics and excluded data point more to a man who wants to keep money flowing into his pockets and will find any excuse to justify that position. Regardless of what he may say now, it’s certainly not keeping his staff in a job that he cares about.

Ultimately, Tim Martin comes across to me as a man who doesn’t much care if you catch coronavirus at the pub – just that you are spending money in a Wetherspoons when you do so.

In the district of Sherwood in Nottingham, locals have hit back at the chain by painting the words “70,000 dead” across the windows of the Samuel Hall pub, covering the misleading posters that were put up.

It’s good to see Wetherspoons being reminded that public discourse isn’t just for those with the wealth and real estate to push their agenda. Not when the death toll in Britain is now more than 74,000.

When the pandemic comes to an end, and we all gather to celebrate over a pint, I hope people will remember who put themselves first, above the wellbeing and health of their staff, customers and community – and choose where to drink accordingly.