I am thinking that Professor Emily “Litella” Oster (hat tip to NeoNeocon) did not expect so furious a reaction as she has gotten, by writing this particular article in The Atlantic Magazine. After having done her stalwart best for the Covid Crusade for more than two years demonizing those who refused to get the vaccination or wear masks everywhere, or see our children locked out of school, or who suggested that ivermectin or chloroquine might alleviate the symptoms Professor Oster now is suggesting that … really, it was all just a silly misunderstanding, she and her pals just got carried away but they meant well and didn’t know anything for certain, and why can’t we all just all forgive and forget?
To which the instantaneous and outraged reply is not just no, but hell no. Hell no, with a napalm-degree flaming side order of very personal reasons why not.
The comments on various blogs which have discussed the original article are so lit that they might as well be one of those tornadoes of fire which sometimes happen when a forest fire gets so large that it creates its’ own weather. Professor Oster, apparently living secure in her pleasant little academic and media bubble, appears to have had no notion of the damage to so many ordinary people outside of it and damage felt on a painfully personal level. Commentors related stories of friends, spouses, neighbors suffering and dying from conditions that they couldn’t get a diagnosis of and/or treatment for because they couldn’t get the time of day or an appointment with a doctor or clinic. Elderly parents and kin died alone, baffled and frightened, sequestered in nursing homes or hospitals, they died when their lungs were blown out on respirators, their subsequent funerals being lonely affairs. Vacations, family celebrations, weddings, high school and college graduations, celebrations and community events of every size and degree were put on hold, cancelled, reduced, and isolated. School-aged children lost two years of their schooling and social lives, a situation only alleviated by those active and determined parents who took the situation in hand and began home schooling. The deaf and hard of hearing lost a means of communication, since they couldn’t read the lips of people talking to them and that was not even the cruelest of what Professor Oster and her friends in the establishment media did. That was to deliberately and willfully collude in scaring the bejesus out of that large portion of the public who believed what they saw on TV, over a virus that essentially was no more a danger to a healthy young person than the ordinary seasonal flu bug. Scared people do not react rationally a concept proved to us over and over during the last two years. Politicians, employers, public administrators, neighbors and relatives reacted, many of them badly and hysterically. Lockdowns, vaccine mandates, required masking, a wrecked economy, social isolation … a whole farrago of fail, over a virus which wouldn’t have been a hiccup in any other flu season. Ordinary people lost friends, parents, relatives, unborn and barely-born children, jobs and participation in their communities. Small business owners lost their little enterprise as well as their dreams. Employees and members of the military were forced, as a condition of continued employment, to accept vaccination and boosters against Covid with an experimental vaccine which down the line, may prove to have been more dangerous to health than Covid. Many people also lost whatever residual trust they had for so-called experts, the mass media, and the medical establishment.
And you helped and cheered on all that, Professor Oster, with every evidence of keen enjoyment must have been the most exciting time of your life; such a feeling of purpose with a slight frisson of danger. But people were hurt, Professor Oster hurt in inconceivable ways, and suggesting now that, gee it was all just a misunderstanding and now we all just need to put it behind us … well, that’s just adding insult to the years-long injury.
“Mistakes were made.” H/t USSR and Matt Groening.
Agree with your listing of all the harm the “experts” did. Sgt Mom. They certainly deserve to suffer.
But — many of us also need to look in the mirror. Yes, the Powers That Be tried to frighten us. But did we have to get frightened?
What if we had simply used our minds and our common sense? It was obvious from the time of the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan — about 3,000 people trapped on a ship with no way of avoiding the disease, and only something like 10 of them died, all of them old & sick — that the fear-mongering over Covid had been cranked up to 11. We did not have to buy the nonsense Our Betters were selling. Sadly, too many of us did.
Look in the mirror and tell ourselves — “Never Again!”
I just wrote about this. The covid skeptics were far worse. All of us were operating in uncertainty, but they decided to just make shit up instead. I predicted Spring 2020 that deaths would go over 100,000 and was torn apart. I was repeatedly assured that Sweden was doing the right thing. Skeptics believed conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory and in the end, Ivermectin is crap for covid as is HCQ. The vaccines work and the skeptics were unable to understand the fairly simple concept of “mutation.” The “Father of mRNA vaccines” wasn’t, and people voluntarily chose not to go out – it wasn’t just government mandates that closed businesses.
You can only get to your POV by cherry-picking data. Deal with it. Adulthood is difficult but worth it. Yes, I already know what those cherry-picked facts are. I would rather you gave a try at answering the actual objections to your claims. Conservatives already made their mark by dealing from the facts, not what they wished were true. That vanished the last few years.
As you said, the “experts”, the mass media, the medical establishment, and the government lost the automatic trust that normally accrues to them, and with a large portion of the population the amount of trust lost is both huge and permanent.
Which with events coming up will have huge effects. Consider. With the known theft of the last election, right now 25-33% of the population does not trust the integrity of the electoral paradigm. And actually, since the beginning of the current election campaign; that percentage has probably grown.
In 1775-1776 about 1/3 of the then American colonials were Tories loyal to the Crown. About 1/3 ended up wanting independence because of being treated as less than the Englishmen still in England in the 1760’s to mid-1770’s [if the Brits had had a half a lick of sense, they would have created a kept member of Parliament for British North America.], and 1/3 just wanting to be left alone. For many, the estimate of 1/3 opposition to imposed tyranny has been the marker of the possibility of a revolutionary conflict.
Now last night we had a speech by President* Biden full of hints of further electoral fraud and threats to those who do not submit. How many people are going to believe a Democrat retention of power, especially after 2020 and after the events of the last few weeks? How many more people will disbelieve the basic honesty of our electoral system? In the Social Contract laid out in the Constitution, embodying governance only being legitimate with the “consent of the governed” with the government operating only within the bounds of the Constitution and the law; that consent is granted by elections. If they are not honest, there is no consent. And if it is believed there is no consent for two consecutive stolen elections, how many will decide that the government in power is not legitimate? Almost surely more than the 1/3 cited before. And if the powers of the State are used against those who speak out, a rift will be opened that cannot be closed again.
Subotai Bahadur
I agree that the government response to the virus did a lot of damage. All points mentioned are true. But doctors and nurses saw the other side of it – when you see person after person come in and die, some of them low risk by any definition, you are more willing to consider drastic measures to prevent spread of infection. I believe that the true tragedy here was the event being politicized, which basically ensured that more sensible precautions were not considered.
My mother will never be counted as a Covid victim (she died 14 months after her illness), but her lungs sustained permanent damage and she was never the same again. I, like many of you, personally know people who died and their families will never be the same. I can’t really put together a coherent response, except that I feel great grief for everyone and everything we have lost.
“Mistakes were made”
That made me laugh and is perfect here
The health of any political system is reflected in how effectively it deals with problems over time. There is a bit to unpack here, especially that’s relevant to Post’ article. In an ideal, dream-like, Lennon’s “Imagine” world we would all come together, perhaps in the form of a “commission”, to collectively explore what went wrong and develop solutions that we all will accept. Yeah right… the closest thing we’ve had to that was the 9/11 Commission and we’re still dealing with the fallout of that affair. Even the supposed gold standard of commissions found up in Canada is problematic. I’m a cynic and the older I get the more I lean to the Jeffrey Pelt Definition of Politicians for all such people in the world “A Liar, a Cheat, and when I’m not Kissing Babies I’m Stealing Their Lollipops but It Means I keep My Options Open.” Sorry from personal experience that’s how they work, not a value judgment so much as don’t hate the player but hate the game
Post’s article is about trying to get ahead of the impending Republicans taking over in Congress and what it portends for dealing with COVID… the guilty trying to get ahead of the punishment by pleading “we’re only human right?” Like when you come into your office one weekend and find out that two of your subordinates are using your desk to film a p*rn video and they try to explain their malfeasance. No, the way we’re going to the bottom of this is the good ole American way of using partisan self-interest in the form of Congressional committees combined with a dash of federalism. The Republicans have every interest, as opposed to burying unpleasant facts, in getting to the bottom of what happened and the areas of focus from education to health to oversight and reform fall neatly into the committee structures for the House and Senate. This is the American way of dealing with political issues and when it comes to such a dramatic failure of “experts” throughout the world, the ideal one.
Will it be messy? Oh yes because the process will be both political and fall across the current populist/establishment divide. Biden, Democrats, and the technocratic elites will attack this process at every turn, calling it divisive and that the Republicans are making an investigation political that should be a joint national effort (so they can bury it.) My advice is keep it open and comprehensive (so you don’t end up with a Jan.6-style Committee) and focus on a few committees where you have smart political operators chairing them. This will be especially important because any such investigation will reach back into 2020, meaning into Trump’s Administration.
Regardless it will be a messy process; however, the events of the past 3 years have been too catastrophic to not have both an accounting and develop a path forward. The good news is that the more information that gets out the more we can see actions implemented on the state level (think expansion of Arizona’s school voucher program)
The real messy part is that all of this will happen during the run-up to the 2024 Election and everybody is going to want to both affect the process and spin/bury the results, including Trump. The real target will be personalized in a single person, Anthony The Science” Fauci. Richard Fernandez had a good piece (https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2022/11/03/heretics-against-the-cult-of-authority-n1641396) summarizing a book chapter that depicts the problems the “expert”class, symbolized in Anthony Fauci, will have in both defending its behavior during COVID and its ramification for it future status.
The other dimension of the investigation of Fauci will be the resumption of Rand Paul’s inquiries regarding NSAID’s funding of gain of function of research in Wuhan via sub-grants. The recent article in Vanity Fair (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/10/covid-origins-investigation-wuhan-lab) providing circumstantial evidence of China’s cover-up of a lab leak. The “expert” class is heavily invested in the zoonotic origins of COVID both for reasons of ego and for the ramifications of the lab leak theory. We have been told for 2 ½ years that one of the most traumatic global events for the past 80 years was caused by a virus that just happened to jump from an animal, nobody to blame right? And you are an evil conspiratorial racist who should be canceled for thinking otherwise (see Great Barrington Declaration) What happens when we get conclusive evidence that the expert class was not probably only wrong, but was instead funding research into the very type of virus in an insecure lab? Essentially playing Russian Roulette with the Apocalypse in one of the chambers? Oh my…combine that with the other global events picking up steam and what do you have conditions for?
Alice,
I am sympathetic to what both you and AVI wrote. Let me issue a blunt reply and the back it up.
Pandemics are too important to be left to doctors and probably too important to be left to public health professionals as well.
Two of the key informative dynamics of COVID were the lack of information about its characteristics and people dying. I went along with “two weeks to flatten the curve” because what was happening was frightening and it seemed we should err on the side of caution until we knew what we were dealing with. I deal with the deaths below.
Long time ago I was in a bar talking with a guy who was a high-up public health professional in distant state. Being this was right after that Tom Clancy book that dealt with an Ebola epidemic I had questions and picking up his bar tab generated answers or at least opinions. He stated that being a former Marine officer informed his approach to public health which was 1) policy decisions, even that dealing with health, are about tradeoffs 2) public health was too important to not be left to the politicians. As I stated before I don’t think much about politicians but they are unique to our system in that not only are they directly accountable through elections but they are the only actors who have to deal with society’s complexity as a whole. We can have experts in the health, education, energy fields and so on but politicians are the only actors who have to rise above those silos and make decisions about tradeoffs among the subject areas.
The political cost/benefit analysis in 2020 was geared toward only 1 metric, reducing the death rate. If I was Trump or any politicians I would probably have done the same, whether out of humanity or my own political survival, because the effect of such death is both emotional and easily accounted. We turn on the TV and we see the death toll increase and we see the anguish. At the same time there were a lot of other voices, consigned to the wilderness, that because there were tradeoff costs to lockdowns that there were other policy options. Right now we are in a world of hurt from the decisions we made (fiscal, state of the economy, status of our students) in 2020, so the questions have to be asked, was it worth it? What could we have done better? We have to be brutally honest here. After all we have gone through we owe it to both the living and the dead
That former Marine turned public health professional? He went back to the Spanish Flu epidemic and drew an analogy from his military days. He said back in WW II as the Amtracs were lining up for an assault on a Japanese-held island, the commanding general of the troops looked out onto the gathering boats, saw the Marines in them, and realized that some of them were going to die and that if he was going to do his job as a commanding officer there was nothing he could do about it. A public health professional cannot make that type of decision, only someone who has the legitimacy (an elected official) can. The CDC, NIH… they had pre-2020 plans in place for dealing with a pandemic, policy options for the elected leaders for dealing with the dealing with the tradeoffs, so what happened to those plans?
Once that virus got into the population there were no good options, only better and worse, but someone needed to make those ultimate choices and that person wasn’t the head of CDC, NIH, NIAID… let alone a person with the character of Anthony Fauci.
I am really enjoying SiriusXM and their triumph channel
Today Megyn Kelly had 2?virologists, one who believes COVID-19 started at the lab and the other who doesn’t
The one who doesn’t might be accomplished but he was a terrible public speaker seemingly with every tenth word starting with the preface “you know”. Point is Megyn Kelly gave him some point blank questions that I don’t think he answered satisfactorily such as why he made a complete turnaround in attitude in 48 hours
And the other doctor brought up an interesting thing to consider. Who’s giving the doctors the grants and who is pulling the strings as to what they should say?
Covid started at a lab. It was revealed early on that there were combinations in the genetic material that do not occur naturally.
Most people that “died of covid” actually died with it, or were subject to incompetent treatment. A small number of people actually died of covid, and the measures taken to slow the spread were worthless. We have known for decades that masking was ineffective in slowing transmission of any disease. Every study since the beginning pf the covid scam, dealing with masking, has shown masks are not effective. Some of the drugs used, like Remdesivir, have killed people. My son-in-law was one of them.
Now the scammers are saying they should get some sort of amnesty. I’ll go for it after those with blood on their hands are executed.
Village Idiot is aptly named.
“But doctors and nurses saw the other side of it ”
Alice, ‘doctors and nurses’ lost all credibility when they announced that going to church or walking in the park was dangerous but gathering in the streets in the thousands to burn and loot was medically acceptable.
And frankly, if y’all had time do your tiktok dances y’all weren’t all that worried about Covid.
Thalidomide.
I had a classmate whose arms were shriveled because of Thalidomide. I keep seeing credible articles about excess deaths during the pandemic and continuing. If, I stress if, we have a similar situation where the vaccine(s) there may be a comeuppance.
March 28, 2020 63 year-old diabetic Tom Hanks and his wife Rita return to the USA after recovering from C-19.
April 30, 2020 The Navy hospital ship Comfort leaves New York harbor.
(And everyone lives happily ever after)
Mentioned the Diamond Princess once. Two people chimed in, instantly; “All lies”.
The urge to be made to do stupid stuff, to make others do stupid stuff, was strong.
The political arguments about the supply of “venthilatoors” may have caused an overuse of them, so that the afflicted had their lungs blown out in order to support Cuomo.
The vaxxes were used under an Emergency Use Authorization, were not FDA approved.
This means that an effective therapeutic invalidates the EUA. Can’t have that.
Forget?
Never.
Forgive?
November Foxtrot Whiskey
AVI, once something is proven, it’s no longer a conspiracy “theory”.
Sweden objectively did the right thing. Full stop. The evidence is overwhelming.
The studies on the effectiveness of ivermectin and HCQ are mixed. In some places they seem to have done a lot of good, in others, not so much. The regimens were proposed by doctors with a lot of relevant experience, for solid, defensible reasons. The risks of both treatments are statistically insignificant.
“Might help, won’t harm, and is cheap” should be the starting point of therapeutic treatments of a novel disease.
The US government really did change the definition of vaccination so that the CV-19 “vaccination” would qualify.
Pfizer really did admit that they did not test if their “vaccine” would prevent transmission.
The “vaccine” really does have a high risk of terrible side effects.
The “vaccine” simply didn’t work very well at what vaccines are supposed to do.
And public health officials at the very front of the effort (specifically Dr Birx) now acknowledge that they didn’t expect it to.
Keep in mind, that millions were threatened with the loss of their livelihoods and social isolation if they did not take this experimental “vaccine”.
The public health officials really did lie, flagrantly and often, to the public, and to the politicians they were accountable to.
Dr. Malone has a lot more credibility than you claim.
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.
Put simply, the conspiracy theorists have a much better track record than the so-called experts.
I guarantee I did not do any TikTok dances. I thought that was ridiculous. And the only response I had for the public health types who said it was not a risk to protest and loot was “you idiots!” I knew medical credibility was shot after that. But yes, a lot of people died and yes, I saw long term lung disease and hypoxia in patients afterward. To the point that patients dropped oxygen levels just walking down the hall. Some high risk patients did fine. Perhaps the scariest thing about Covid is that patient reaction is a roll of the dice. You may be mildly inconvenienced, or you may die.
Alice, your response is completely irrelevant to the point. Nice try. Think harder.
Medical professionals completely destroyed their credibility by embracing lies and slanders and supporting the canceling of doctor who didn’t fall into line with the Covid Nazi line. Doctors proved they can’t be trusted with public health or public policy. They fumbled their humble. Their hubris destroyed millions of lives.
To all those who forced their Covidiocy on the rest of us —
When you use force against people because you are convinced of your own intellectual superiority you don’t get to say “oops” and walk away from your horrific mistakes. When you use force, you own the consequences of your hubris.
We didn’t suffer because of your advice or suggestions. We suffered because you used FORCE. Your used government’s threat of violence against us. You deliberately broke our freedoms. You bought the damage. You own it.
You broke it. You own it. Forever. And the bill has come due. You will pay. In full. That you do is only right and just and fair.
Gavin-I was not one of the ones frightened. We had to put my husband in the hospital with Covid because his sodium levels tanked. He was not capable of directing his care when he went in. I got repeated calls from him and he repeatedly called 911 because he thought the hospital personnel were CIA operatives who had kidnapped him. At one point we were told that the hospital stopped treatment because he declined it. My daughter and I told them to resume treatment because he was not legally competent to make decisions. The nurse we were talking to said they could not resume care if he was refusing. My husband may have been without care for up to three days. Had either my daughter or myself been allowed to be with him, he might not have died. As it was, thanks to the decisions made to keep us away from him, he had no chance.
This cow wants me to forgive and forget? I have to forgive for the sake of my immortal soul. Forget or trust these people again? See what Sgt. Mom said above and add what Scipio said about Carthage.
Hopefully, the hacks and liars that brought us to this will discover just how unforgiving the American people can be . . .
All is forgiven up to the moment the first hint of coercion. Bribery is a form of coercion in mirror image form, in this understanding.
Once the first hint of coercion is detected, the blood is on the hands of those in power who invested in any way in the coercion. Declining to oppose coercion is a form of investing in the coercion. Power is positional, credentialed, or derived from social status.
There is a lot of blood on a lot of hands. From Fauci, Birx and Trump all the way down to your doctor and members of your community or family whose opinions you respected.
Forgive? Yes, for my soul. Forget? Never. Punish? Yes, those who held position power to coerce must be punished, and the severity of the punishment must rise with the power the individual held to coerce.
My wife and I both took the Moderna “vaccine” but we are old and in failing health. It was worth it knowing so little early on. I got out my virology book and even my genetics book to try to figure out what was going on. I prescribed HCQ for my kids as early as March 2020. They all filled the prescriptions. My younger, conservative, son did not take the “vaccine” and none of his kids did. They are teens and his son, in particular, I thought was at significant risk. All have been fine. That son is an insulin diabetic. My older son, a leftist trial lawyer, has had his two daughters jabbed and boosted. It might be an interesting controlled trial but I won’t be around to see the end result.
I read Scott Atlas’ book about his attempts to introduce some science into the “committee” running things but they would not even read the literature he found and provided. Trump wanted to reopen schools after Memorial Day but was over ruled by his staff. He wanted to fire Fauci and Birx but the staff feared the media attacks that would follow. As Atlas wryly comments at the end of his book, “They lost the election anyway.” Ron DeSantis listened to Atlas and took his advice, which was based on the early literature. The Great Barrington Declaration was the most advanced advice available in the world and it was shouted down by the Media.
The Great Barrington Declaration: COVID-19 deniers follow the path laid down by creationists, HIV/AIDS denialists, and climate science deniers.
That is one response by an outfit called “Science-Based Medicine .” Note the “Climate Science” inclusion.
Despite the NIH/CDC’s ridicule and guidance against Hydroxychloroquine, there is a paper on the NIH’s own website Pub/Med from October, 2020 which review several studies of the use of HCQ. Their findings: HCQ is safe, and when given early can significantly reduce Covid’s symptoms. Uttar Pradesh’s results using Ivermectin as part of a protocol are stunning.
The actions of the government “health” bureaucracy, both at the federal and state level, were appalling. They had no business intervening between doctors and their patients. They lied to us. They suppressed cheap and useful off-label treatments in favor of an expensive new drug with significant side effects. And they were aided by people like Assistant Village Idiot, who truckled to the authorities like loyal serfs. So yes, never again should be the watchword.
as I pointed out over there, miss oster should keep with whatever hobgoblins she pesters others, public health is not her forte, encouraging pregnant people to drink
until I read robert kennedy’s cri de couer, I didn’t realize how truly hideous fauci’s record was, going back to the dawn of the aids epidemic, ignoring effective therapeutics in lieu of the quixotic vaccine, of course, some of this had been discussed by the fellow who rubbished the claim of heterosexual aids epidemic, michael fumento, who was exiled as far away as the phillipines, some heterodox physicians like meryl nass, are now being proscribed, for trying not do harm, at least, of course the zenith of this is the punishment meted out to dr, simone gold, what is the real purpose of this medical scientific behemoth,
AliceL “But doctors and nurses saw the other side of it – when you see person after person come in and die …”
That is a fair point. Every one of us sees the world through a keyhole — sometimes our own experience, sometimes CNN. Someone who worked in a hospital definitely saw a different world than someone who was out on the streets because his business was crippled by the Lockdowns.
We have to step back and look at the big picture. We know that many people who were exposed to Covid-19 did not catch the disease; many others did get the infection but did not even realize it; some got the infection and suffered symptoms ranging from annoying to serious; a few died. Ninety nine point something of us survived. This was never a pandemic.
It was understandable that there would initially be an over-reaction. We all saw those initial pictures from China of well-dressed working age men dropped dead on the street! That really would have been a pandemic! Yet those images were never repeated in any other country … or even in China. Makes one stop & think, doesn’t it?
Once the Diamond Princess cruise ship evidence came in, it was clear that we were over-reacting to those Chinese images. Covid-19 was roughly comparable to the annual flu, with which human beings have been living forever. Logically & reasonably, Our Betters should then have focused protective efforts on those likely to be harmed — the very old and the already sick. Instead, they enjoyed turning our world into a concentration camp, with strongly negative consequences for the economy, education, and (through experimental gene treatments) future medical issues.
All I am saying is that, next time Our Betters try something like this, we use our heads and refuse to play along with their idiocy. Never Again!
michael senger has pointed out how the narrative was crafted in october 2019, with all the relative parties, it was decided lockdown was the cure, and there was nothing to detract from that, including chief effective therapeutics,
I see Assistant Village Idiot has submitted his thesis to the Promotion Board. I, for one, cast my vote with a resounding AYE!
The sneering condensational tone was especially effective in influencing my decision.
I had no idea that there was any meaningful meat culpa emerging. There’s just this one article right, and the media physician who admitted her own son was experiencing developmental language delay? I learned 1) it didn’t stop when they came for the children and 2) a lot of credentialed people aren’t very professional and are cavalier about their reputations and legacy. I have a real animus toward the people who are in the child centered fields. They made no effort to warn parents of the potential for social or developmental delays or offer suggestions to mitigate it.
I know the band has moved on but I had another thought on “COVID amnesty”
Over the past two months, thanks in part to Biden leading the charge, we have a lot of news piece and politicians stating that the Republicans are a dire threat to democracy and implying that you are either voting g Democratic or semi-fascisty, smeared along the lines you are more interested in something as trite as gas prices than in saving Democracy. Remember all the stories over the past 18 months about Georgia when it shored up its election laws with even the President of the United States calling it Jim Crow and all of those who didn’t fight it were as bad as the segregationists? When I check the election coverage in the legacy media, it seems I cannot get through a story that mentions a Republican candidate without mentioning they are an election denier as if the Republican candidate for Arizona Governor was “Kati Lake Election Denier” (cue comparisons to Stalinist propaganda). This despite that no one who has used the term “denier” has ever tried to address the dire state of our election systems and smear those who do try (see Georgia.)
Point being? When we are talking about dealing how we dealt with COVID it really is part of a larger pattern of using not only rhetoric but the power of the state, both political and administrative, to delegitmize (or “otherize”) part of our citizenry. A while back I mentioned what happened with Justin Trudeau and the Canadian trucker convoy. We saw some of the same tactics here with the Biden on down slamming anyone and everyone who deviated from the “official” line on virus origin, school closing, vaccinations, etc…. If you deviated you weren’t just wrong, you were to be cast out, and your voice suppressed. Sound familiar? Like the last month or so of election coverage? 2020 Election/Hunter’s Laptop? Questions about Jan. 6? I could go on….
Back in my youth, there was a general rule that if one side pressed the big red button and called someone a nasty name like “Nazi” or “Fascist” that the Marquess of Queensbury rules ended and the gloves came off, that there was a cost to “going there” and if you went there you were playing a high stakes game. What happened with COVID is just one example of that, not only of the deceit but of the slander by those who purport to rule us. We are headed down a dark path and I think some good investigations of not only what people did but what they said, and then appropriate (and legal for you DHS bots) action taken. Call it an after-action report, but a message needs to be sent that you cannot say or do things in regard to your fellow citizens without a degree of recompense.
Maybe we crossed the Rubicon already and we’ll look back at Biden’s Independence Hall speech as the time when we realized the date was 1857. However I would like to think a good COVID airing out will go a long way to getting people to better behave and restoring the civic order