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Who Pushed for Lockdowns? 101 Leading Voices

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In Shanghai, China, millions of residents have been locked in their homes for weeks. Those who test positive for Covid are taken to detention camps and their pets are killed. Many face starvation, and there have been countless suicides. Despite all this—as is the case in every country that implemented them—these inhuman policies have failed to stop the virus.

This gruesome spectacle has been taken in with horror by international onlookers. Many who once supported lockdowns have gone silent. Indeed, these scenes are the logical conclusion of the Zero Covid cause, and serve as a grim reminder of the dystopia that could have been our own had they gotten their way.

Who gave life to this deadly ideology which culminated in such catastrophe? Below is a sample of 101 individuals and institutions with significant, public-facing credentials who advocated for “real” lockdowns—harder, longer, or earlier than those imposed across the world in March 2020—to control Covid.

As many have noted, journalists and health professionals are overrepresented in this group. Most lean to the political left. Even more telling is that, of all 101 individuals, not a single one appears to have been financially affected by the lockdowns they were advocating. Below is a telling example:

This indicates that many were aware lockdowns caused significant harm to others—even lethal harm—but were reassured by the fact that those harms did not affect them, personally. Many justified a “real” lockdown as being necessary to prevent further lockdowns. Presumably, this means that some may have stopped supporting lockdowns after seeing they’d failed. That said, all appear to live in states and countries that implemented strict lockdowns in March 2020, and that did not stop them from advocating stricter lockdowns, indicating that some may have advocated even stricter lockdowns in a “no true Scotsman” loop.

Lockdown had no history in the western world prior to Xi Jinping’s lockdown of Wuhan, China, and was not part of any western pandemic plan, but it’s unclear, in most cases, whether those in this sample were thinking of China when advocating for “real” lockdowns. Lockdown was a social phenomenon, and many likely promoted lockdown simply because they saw their peers promoting lockdown. Those who opposed lockdowns were often vilified and censored by powerful institutions; this may have led to an association of support for lockdowns with power, leading many to believe they need not examine the policy prior to advocating it.

To be sure, this is a very tiny sample of those who promoted lockdowns on social media. Additionally, for every person who publicly advocated lockdowns, countless others quietly acquiesced while playing no role in the debate.

Tragically, these silent enablers included the leaders of our society’s highest governing bodies who, each in their own way, could have stopped the entire lockdown catastrophe; this stand-down by the stewards of our most revered institutions gave a veneer of legitimacy to the broad implementation of a Xi Jinping policy across the free world.

Nonetheless, all the individuals in this sample publicly advocated policies that caused substantial harm to others in pursuit of a goal that—as Shanghai has so tragically demonstrated—was doomed ab initio. The PDF attachment screenshots their tweets and comments.

  1. Devi Sridhar, Public Health Professor
  2. Tom Frieden, Former CDC Director
  3. Jerome Adams, Former Surgeon General
  4. Bill Gates, Software developer
  5. Anthony Fauci, NIH Director
  6. Rochelle Walensky, CDC Director
  7. Eric Feigl-Ding
  8. Michael Osterholm, Infectious Disease Professor
  9. Ian Mackay, Virologist
  10. Angela Rasmussen, Virologist
  11. Ellie Murray, Epidemiology Professor
  12. Lisa Iannattone, Dermatology Professor
  13. David Fisman, Public Health Professor
  14. Irfan Dhalla, Medical Professor
  15. Christina Pagel, Operational Research Professor
  16. Zoë Hyde, Epidemiologist
  17. Isaac Bogoch, Infectious Disease Physician
  18. Tomás Ryan, Neuroscientist
  19. Susan Michie, Health Psychology Professor
  20. Bruce Arthur, Toronto Star Columnist
  21. Yaneer Bar-Yam, Physicist
  22. Mike Gibbs, Ontario Ministry of Health
  23. Deepti Gurdasani, Epidemiologist
  24. Brian Goldman, ER MD
  25. The New York Times Editorial Board
  26. Jacobin Magazine
  27. John Ross, China lobbyist
  28. Chen Weihua, China Daily EU Bureau Chief
  29. James Palmer, Foreign Policy Magazine Deputy Director
  30. Peter Daou, Democratic Campaign Strategist
  31. Erica Joy, CTO at Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
  32. Dr. Oz
  33. Jason Silverstein, Medical Professor
  34. Yoni Freedhoff, Medical Professor
  35. Zubaida Haque, Equality Trust Director
  36. Daniel Andrews, Premier of Victoria, Australia
  37. Kevin Rudd, Former Prime Minister of Australia
  38. Diane Abbott, MP
  39. Timm Bruch, CTV Reporter
  40. Shafi Ahmed, Medical Professor
  41. Abe Oudshoorn, Nursing Professor
  42. Ananyo Bhattacharya, Science Writer
  43. Bloomberg Opinion
  44. Brendan Crabb, Microbiologist
  45. Luke Bailey, iPaper Editor
  46. Paul Bongiorno, Saturday Paper Columnist
  47. Dirk Devroey, Medical Professor
  48. Emily Deans, Psychiatrist
  49. Ximena González, Freelance WriterOmar Ghraieb, Oxfam Policy and Campaigns Officer
  50. Zoe Daniel, Australian Politician
  51. Diederik Gommers, Chairman of the Dutch association for ICU doctors
  52. Jay Beecher, Investigative Journalist
  53. Femi Oluwole, Writer at The Independent
  54. Jennifer Gunter, OB/GYN
  55. Cheri DiNovo, Canadian Politician
  56. Malgorzata Gasperowicz, Developmental Biologist
  57. Andrew Gaffney, Sports Writer
  58. Andreas Eenfeldt, CEO at Diet Doctor
  59. Quentin Dempster, Journalist
  60. Simon Houpt, Writer at Globe and Mail
  61. Issa López, Film Director
  62. Rhys Jones, Public Health Doctor
  63.  Emmett Macfarlane, Political Science Professor
  64.  Bartley Kives, CBC Reporter
  65.  Jane Merrick, iPaper Policy Editor
  66. Virginia Heffernan, Wired Columnist
  67.  Brian Klaas, Global Politics Professor
  68.  Andrea Horwath, Canadian Politician
  69.  Judy Melinek, Forensic Pathologist
  70.  Chico Harlan, Washington Post Bureau Chief
  71.  Julien Mercille, Geography and Environment Policy Professor
  72.  Paul Mason, Journalist
  73.  Margaret Morgan, Filmmaker
  74.  Mary-Margaret McMahon, UK Politician
  75.  Steven Newman, Floriculture Professor
  76.  Don Moynihan, Public Policy Professor
  77.  Neel Kashkari, President at Minneapolis Federal Reserve
  78.  Kai Kupferschmidt, Science Journalist
  79.  Shannon Palus, Editor at Slate
  80.  Umbereen S Nehal, Founder at Nehal Group LLC
  81.  Jonathan S Perkins, UCLA Director of Race and Equity
  82.  Tyler Watt, Public Health Nurse
  83.  Tony Blakely, Epidemiologist at Melbourne University
  84.  Alfons López Tena, Spanish Politician
  85.  Tara C Smith, Infectious Disease Professor
  86.  André Picard, Globe and Mail Health Journalist
  87.  Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post Columnist
  88.  Michael Schull, Medical Professor
  89.  Stefanie Leder, TV Writer/Producer
  90.  Diana Z Berrent, Founder at Survivor Corp
  91.  Asa Winstanley, Investigative Journalist
  92.  Jeff Sharlet, Author
  93.  Bell Ribeiro-Addy, UK Politician
  94.  Claudia Webbe, UK Politician
  95.  Bruce Hawker, Political Commentator
  96.  Alheli Picazo, Freelance Writer
  97.  Charlie Stross, Author
  98.  George Aylett, UK Politician
  99.  Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust
  100.  Brianna Wu, Executive Director at Rebellion PAC
  101. The Nation
No-True-Scotsman-Lockdown-as-social-and-political-phenomenon



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Author

  • Michael Senger

    Michael P Senger is an attorney and author of Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World. He has been researching the influence of the Chinese Communist Party on the world’s response to COVID-19 since March 2020 and previously authored China’s Global Lockdown Propaganda Campaign and The Masked Ball of Cowardice in Tablet Magazine. You can follow his work on Substack

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