I say, I used to have a high degree of trust in our regulatory environment in this country on a range of issues—on the regulation of pesticides in our food, on electromagnetic radiation and on therapeutics and medical interventions. And I assumed the system, for all of its flaws, would always protect us. But the COVID period destroyed that assumption because it uncovered, in my mind, the significant frailties of the system. We saw it all over the world, with regulators moving at the speed of light when they preferred a product which needed emergency authorisation and then moving like molasses when early treatment protocols or alternative approaches were raised. Agencies that dismissed natural immunity, suppressed debate and treated dissenting doctors as heretics, a public health apparatus that lectured us about following the science, while the science itself was being rewritten in real time—once you see that pattern, it's very hard to unsee it, because the pattern is not limited to a single virus or a single point in time. It's the predictable result of big money shaping the very agencies that they are supposed to regulate.

Now, let's look at the pharmaceutical industry. Some of the same companies that have stood to make tens of billions of dollars from their products are also funders of many of the regulators, the research institutions and indeed the medical journals which shaped the official response. And, when the people writing the rules are so heavily entangled with the people selling the products, independence is a fiction. Anyone that questioned the narrative during this time was accused of spreading conspiracy theories. That period is over, but rest assured the pattern continues. For example, let's look at the food supply. We're told that residual pesticides in our daily diet are perfectly safe. But are they? How confident are we in the post-COVID regulatory environment? And would any rational person still outsource their judgement on what they're feeding their children? And then you have electromagnetic fields. We're assured that rapid densification of wireless infrastructure is harmless because the exposure standards say so. But those standards were written decades ago, long before the current density of devices and infrastructure existed. And who has the deepest pockets and the strongest lobbying presence in that space? Well, it's big telco, the same industry that profits from additional antennas and an even more dense network is the one, ultimately, that has the greatest influence. The precautionary principle is nowhere to be found when commercial and government interests align. And, again, the pattern is the same. The public is expected to accept the official assurance and move on.

The lesson obviously is not complicated, and that lesson is this: the state is not your friend. It's a collection of institutions subject to the same human failings as every other institution—groupthink, careerism, political pressure and the quiet, relentless influence of those who stand to gain. We have to stop outsourcing our common sense. We've got to read the literature ourselves where we can, demand transparency on conflicts of interest and listen to those who are willing to speak independently. Above all, we've got to trust our instincts when something feels wrong, even if the official messaging says everything is fine—because let me tell you, nobody is coming to save you. Nobody is watching the fort on your behalf. The fort is understaffed, the watchmen are off looking the other way, and the gates are open to whoever has got the deepest pockets and the right connections. So ask the hard questions, refuse to be gaslit, and never again assume that the people with the titles and the letterheads have your best interests as their highest priority. COVID didn't invent regulatory failure and capture, but it certainly made it impossible to ignore.