We approach the third year and people have forgotten that all the harms of lockdowns were strongly warned about by many voices in many venues. In addition, the virus was much better understood back then and openly discussed. We knew for certain that the panic and fear were being wildly overblown.
Like people, paradigms get tired, mostly because the humans that work within them, as Kuhn suggested, increasingly lose touch with the problems that originally elicited in them the intense and sacrifice-laden drive to create urgently desired new things. But humans aren’t always very good at recognizing when they have begun going through the motions. This is especially so with those in the thrall of a purely linear vision of time in which the perennial reality of intellectual and spiritual regression is afforded no legitimate space.
The current crop of failed fearmongering virus prophets coupled with the low-uptake of boosters is stark and terrible reminder that the institutions that prided themselves on public health damaged the public trust more than anything else. Your trust should be in the bedrock of our Constitution, not in some self-endowed title of “science.” Public trust in our institutions is sinking and it will require a public trial of our policy decisions to right the ship.
Oster’s implicit claim that next-to-nothing was known about SARS-CoV-2 – and therefore all the pointless, unethical, and illegal things people were forced to do are understandable – isn’t the pathway to healing, because it’s dishonest. Inexplicably, she denies that, from the get-go, we knew Covid’s stratified risks and the harms of coerced interventions.
Osterism Won’t Prevent March 2020 From Happening Again Read More
There are other good reasons to think the onslaught is not over, that we are at the moment in a ‘phony war’ while enemy forces regroup. Inflation, energy, food, surveillance are all active fronts in the broader battle. It hardly matters which one will flare up next.
Hart is one of the few intellectuals who was correct about the whole hullabaloo from the very beginning. Therefore he doesn’t need to embark among some silly dance in which restrictions were fine in the beginning but later became too much. Nope: he kept his wits about him the whole time. Thus does he have the credibility to write without apologies.
The consequences of overestimating the IFR are profound. It overpredicts the number of deaths and influences political decision-making without considering the long-term harm and well-being effects.
The Early Estimates of the Fatality Rate Were Very Wrong Read More
Fauci denies that he had anything to do with school closures, but the record is clear that he advocated against schools opening in areas where the coronavirus was spreading (which was everywhere), and if they did open, there needed to be face masks, and social distancing, and test-to-stay, and quarantining of healthy people who sat too close to someone who tested positive, and onerous sanitizing, and on and on. The Covid measures for children in school, and college students, were expensive, miserable, and unnecessary, as their age groups are at almost zero risk for serious Covid infection.
More than two years since the lockdowns of 2020, the political mainstream, particularly on the left, is just beginning to realize that the response to Covid was an unprecedented catastrophe
Altruism has a dark pathology that has driven some of the worst acts on humanity ever recorded. One maladaptive altruist can wipe out disruptive advantages of opportunity by manipulating innovators and mavericks into cooperative followers.
Karma is already turning on the whole gang of coercive totalitarians here and abroad. While the virus is invisible, the people who dreamed up and enforced lockdowns and mandates who wrecked the country are highly visible. They have names and careers, and they are right to be very worried about their futures. First step: apologize.
In an explosive new report from the Wall Street Journal, leading health officials began offloading stocks at truly unprecedented rates in January 2020—well before the COVID-19 emergency was declared—with officials at the US Department of Health and Human Services selling 60% more stocks in January 2020 than average over the previous 12 months.
US Government Officials Dumped Stocks Prior to Lockdowns, Report Shows Read More
