Our ruling class saw in Covid an opportunity to radically revolutionize society: recall how the phrase “the new normal” emerged almost immediately in the first weeks of the pandemic. In the first month Anthony Fauci made the absurd suggestion that perhaps never again would we go back to shaking hands. Never again?
The experts are nothing if not certain about what (if anything) you should know and when (if ever) you should know it. And by all indications, that’s not likely to change anytime soon. In the profound words of the multi-talentless Kamala Harris, “It is time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day.”
Sunetra Gupta, epidemiologist at Oxford University and a prolific historian and novelist, and a contributor at Brownstone Institute, speaks to Jeffrey Tucker of Brownstone about the brutal attack on democracy and equality that came with lockdowns, and how they unleashed a reactionary spirit in the world in which we were all invited to divide society by class, race, profession, and political compliance with mandates.
Lockdowns Shredded the Social Contract: Interview with Sunetra Gupta Read More
In these times of summarily rejecting people we disagree with or treating those with differing opinions as dangerous or diseased, I have felt led to remember what I would have missed if I had rejected certain people with whom I disagreed on significant issues but from whom I had also received wonderful gifts.
The Urge to Shame, Purge, and Exclude Diminishes Ourselves Read More
The Wuhan lockdown lasted only a handful of weeks, but its declared “success” in defeating COVID convinced the vast majority of the world to attempt to replicate the severe restrictions. For two years, China has claimed to have stamped out the coronavirus with a lockdown + “COVID Zero” policy, but attempts to replicate the measures have resulted in unprecedented disaster for humanity, as lockdowns catastrophically failed to stop the spread.
If you are one of those who supported the separation of the unvaccinated from society, it is worth considering how your own life was diminished during the pandemic. The range of the homo sacer, those deemed expendable, has been broadened over time from traditional groups such as the homeless, up through the working classes in recent decades, and now large swathes of middle classes during Covid.
The Expendables: The Biopolitics of Human Sacrifice Read More
Surely there was no such thing as a powerful cabal plotting to force a single orthodoxy on science in order to protect themselves from too much investigation into their own role in funding gain-of-function research! Except that this appears to be exactly what was happening.
The moral problem here is that, regardless of intent, a participant in a declarative fad is knowingly and personally benefiting from an injustice without doing anything to put right the wrong from which that personal benefit is being extracted. To do so is to benefit slightly from the very injustice at issue without providing at least as much benefit to anyone else.
Immunity offered by the vaccine is not long-lasting and the protection rapidly diminishes each month following the first 2 months after the second dose. With no randomized controlled trials evaluating the efficacy of the boosters on relevant clinical outcomes, and no data on safety given that the booster studies released did not contain a control group. A practitioner of science cannot be confident the potential rare benefit of hospital reduction in the younger healthy population outweighs repetitive dosing of a vaccine with limited safety data.
The theme of Tchaikovsky‘s 1812 Overture is a truly horrific event that took place when a despot lost his sense of reality. Precisely because of this, performing it is never more fitting than now, when yet another despot has gone too far. The failure to realize this signifies we have lost our relationship with the very values by which we define our culture.
Although individuals may be faring better, the profound damage to religious institutions is also quite remarkable. Charitable giving at many places of worship dropped precipitously during the pandemic. Many churches took government PPE funds to help weather the financial storm, but those funds only lasted for so long.
Maybe the reporters and editors at the Times believe they’re advancing the cause of public health by stoking panic, even long after it is justified by the level of the threat (if it ever was justified in the first place). Or maybe, to be a bit more cynical (or realistic?) about it, the reporters and editors know that fear and panic draw readers, especially around Covid, so they just can’t let go.
