During the last 927 days of this pandemic, I have lost friends, been outcast by family members, lost my job and endured untold emotional blackmail, bullying, coercion, scorn and ridicule. I have been relegated to being a disease-spreading second-class citizen and barred from certain public and private places. And yet, unvaccinated and largely unmasked, I have failed to catch COVID-19.

For months I tortured myself with daily episodes from the Podium of Pain where the Princess of Propaganda and her Pungent Pawns tried to scare me, manipulate me and fill my head with lies and misinformation. Where I was told repeatedly that the “tricky virus” was “literally finding the unvaccinated”. Where fear was the flavour of every month.