After one year, Brownstone Institute has made huge strides, from an inauspicious founding to dramatic growth to broad and global influence. Deep gratitude goes out to our many benefactors who have made the work possible. It is an inspiration to join with so many who have hope for the future and are willing to take the steps necessary to bring it about. We have just begun.
They managed to destroy countless businesses, upend human rights, kill millions, cast hundreds of millions deeper into poverty, strain the mental health of billions, and transfer trillions of dollars in wealth from the world’s poorest to the very richest—all while failing to slow the spread of a virus that was subsequently confirmed to have an infection fatality rate under 0.2%.
We preach non-discrimination, equality, and democracy, but when confronted with what seemed to be a potentially mortal threat to our health and lives, we reverted back to pre-modern forms, almost overnight creating a new caste system, shoving the lessers among us in front of the virus to keep the elites pure and clean.
This shouldn’t be a left wing or a right wing thing. This shouldn’t be a Democrat versus Republican thing. Left wingers and right wingers all have babies and toddlers, and those babies, grandchildren of those of the political left and right, will be starving soon if our leadership doesn’t get its act together.
To have a free society we have to have a history, and in this major historical moment, we had a massive betrayal of the social contract — a betrayal committed by millions. The social contract cannot be re-knit without public accountability, confrontations, and even condemnation.
While the CCP engages in active censorship of the misery Shanghai’s residents are currently experiencing, there are both immediate and long-term economic, psychological, and health consequences from this zero-COVID policy that may reverberate around the world.
The damage is done already but it is wise to be aware now of what is possible. Much of the infrastructure was set up over these two years and it all still survives. There is every intention in place to deploy it all again if covid mutates again or if some other pathogen comes along. Lockdowns seem to be in disrepute among the public but the ruling class is still in love with them.
The supposed “experts” who claimed the airline industry would be undergoing massive turmoil never had the slightest chance of being right, because masks don’t work. Somehow though, I doubt the new Ministry of Truth will be coming after them for their “disinformation.”
Let us not forget those months when the haircut was illegal. When governments finally allowed them, it didn’t allow blow dryers and made customers follow arrows on the floor and use only “touchless” payment methods. That’s pandemic control in a nutshell. What a disgrace this entire period was to science, rationality, human rights, and freedom.
The true regulator of health and disease is the innate immune system. From the start of the pandemic scientists have been warning that lockdowns and pandemic measures could result in a waning immune system with a risk for more diseases. The time has arrived.
The Mysterious Rise in Severe Diseases in Children Read More
Finally we come to the biggest problem of all. What kind of society do we want to live in and build? Is it based on the presumption that freedom belongs to all and is the best path for progress and good lives? Or do we want the rights of the people always to defer to the mandarins in the walled-off bureaucracies who give orders and expect only compliance and no challenge to their rule?
There were MANY of my colleagues who took this vaccine and they did not want to take this vaccine. They took it to keep their employment, to put food on the table, and I would never judge anyone for doing that, but it was horrible, the way they were being pushed into it.
Silent No More: Voices Against Restrictions and Mandates Read More
