“Who are you calling stupid?”

Well, what a week that was. Starting off by being verbally assailed on twitter (where else?) by a wacko Green extremist called Jon Mathias, who claims to be employed in the gravy train defence industry in Bristol (MOD Abbeywood, take note?) As I disagreed with him on the issue of banning all cars in the city – it was something like that – I was deemed by Mr Mathias to be “thick” and that I was probably one of those who was always criticising people for being “woke”, when actually I believe being called “woke” is a compliment. But you know these extremists: disagree and quickly they resort to abuse. Which brings me to yesterday’s very public altercation.

Paying a rare visit to town to consume industrial quantities of cider and wine, I came upon around half a dozen anti-vaxx loons near Cabot Circus, near a pop up vaccination centre they stormed last week, intimidating staff and ordinary folk getting their life-saving vaccines. Seeing them with their big yellow banners, holding up large cardboard banners with anti-vaxx lies, was a red rag to this bull.

I decided to approach them in my usual peaceful way. “You’re fucking murderers,” I said, as I fought to restrain the red mist I saw falling before my eyes. “You are responsible for so many people being in hospital and dying from this virus. You should be ashamed of yourself.” When the man I was having a pop at replied, I realised that these were not local people and they certainly didn’t fit my stereotypical image of what an anti-vaxx loon would look like. Middle class, smart casual dress and a standard Oxford English voice. “You’re stupid,” he said to me.

Being the polite, peaceable man I am, I naturally abandoned social distancing and eye-balled him close up. “Who are you calling stupid?” “You.” “Are you now?” “Er, yes. You believe everything you read in the media.” Having managed to stay relatively calm, I then came up with the sort of response you would always want to say but never do. “Oh, I’m stupid for believing in experts, like scientists and doctors, but you’re very clever for following the arguments of Piers Corbyn and Right Said Fred. You need to think very hard about who is stupid, here.”

The other wackos joined in fitfully and certainly not as provocatively as me and I went to rejoin my partner who shares my views but is far more mature and sensible than me. As I crossed the road to the pub, I made my point by shouting various insults at them and give them the curly finger sign to indicate how stupid they were. As my anger subsided, I began to wonder if the world is turning upside down.

The Greens are very clearly a middle class sect, as you can see from the leafy and right on areas of Bristol where they hold power in the local council. The working class areas are a mixture of Labour and Tory (I know, I know: it makes no sense for working class people to vote Tory.) and the bits in the middle are Lib Dem. My point is that the main protests and marches appear to be the preserve of the chattering middle classes and that was certainly the case at the mini anti-vaxx demo yesterday.

For all I know, I may be thick to their clever, but at least I trust and believe in experts. The media, whatever that means, doesn’t tell me what to think. I have opinions because I have weighed up the evidence and come to conclusions. if it comes down to a choice between whether to believe Professor Chris Whitty or David Icke, it’s not a very hard choice. Then smartest man in the room or some crackpot who thinks the world is controlled by lizards and used to presenter snooker on the telly.

But above all, the anti-vaxxers make me mad because they really are responsible for people getting ill and dying. The figures suggest that the unvaccinated are the main group of people filling up our hospitals and graveyards and some of them will surely have taken the dangerous advice handed out by wild-eyed conspiracists. And if enough people refuse the vaccine, the day when real life can be resumed becomes further away than ever.

The lunatics haven’t quite taken over the asylum just yet, but they keep kicking at the front door and sometimes make incursions. We need to hold them to account, not perhaps in the shouty aggressive manner I did, but always pointing to the facts and evidence they always ignore.

I’m sick to the back teeth of this pandemic dragging on and on. But the best way to end it is by listening to experts. I might be thick, as Ian Mathias pointed out, but not thick enough to ignore people who know what they are talking about, as opposed to those who don’t.