I am, admittedly, no expert in artificial intelligence, quantum entanglement, computer programming or computation.

In fact, my enemies would say I am no expert in anything, and they would be mostly right. My domain of self-proclaimed expertise resides in the world of fantasy, illusion and unfathomable mental processes, whose signature and traces I have spent a lifetime teasing out in the intense one-on-one work of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, and also in the creative work of poetry and theatre.

No doubt I may be deluding myself even with this allusion to personal talent, but to sum it all up I’d say that my professional training and career, my abiding creative interests, and my own art all meet at a common interface — that border between fantasy and reality, deception and truth, notwithstanding the inherent ambiguities.

Looking back over the Coronavirus Epoch, now in its fourth year, I am struck not only by the savage and slavish devotion of many to the pompous dictates of States, but also by the craven renunciation, by once-honored institutions of health and governance, of accepted foundational principles. Thus Medicine conveniently forgot about natural immunity, treatment and the dangers of new untested interventions, and Medical Institutions, global and national, embarked on a jihad against practitioners who remained faithful to such principles. In New Zealand, I am disheartened to say, the authorities are still harassing doctors who had the temerity to try to help patients by prescribing Ivermectin or suggesting Vitamin D, Zinc, and Vitamin C as promising protective and ameliorating agents.

Governments, empowered by the populations they purport to represent, conveniently seized upon drastic measures to control, while neglecting truly beneficent and sensible measures to mitigate fear and address a threat of illness.