In the light of this story, and this one as well, I am more than ever glad that my daughter and I said “no” to the Covid shot and follow-on boosters. Of course, I know that any new vaccine or drug can have a small number of unfortunate side effects – but honestly, aren’t well-informed adults allowed these days to calculate the risks and make their own decision? Apparently not for many employees, who were ordered to get the Covid vaccine or be fired … and are now facing health problems that make Covid itself look like pretty small potatoes.
My daughter and I were extremely reluctant to get the vaccination – mostly because we had read enough to be skeptical, neither of us was in a position where we could have been forced to do so as a requirement of continued employment. As it turned out, both of us caught Covid anyway. So did Wee Jamie at the age of four months or so. He had a mild temperature and the sniffles for two days, and that was that.
As of this writing, 2020 Covid is done. I wrote earlier this year: The dreadful creeping suspicion among the general public – or those who have been paying attention to the world around us, tallying up our own observations and personal experiences – is that the Covid vax may possibly be damaging in the long run or the short run to those whom it was administered, whether voluntarily or under threat. And if it is damaging … will that ever be fully acknowledged, or publicly regretted and apologized for?
I’m afraid the answer to that one is – no. Those responsible for inflicting incalculable damage likely are incapable of ever owning up to what they have done. They will never publicly regret the damage that their actions or non-actions did to general mental well-being of a large swath of the public, or the irrecoverable damage to school students left to their own devices for almost two years because public schools stayed closed. They will never acknowledge the economic damage to small businesses in lock-down-crazed states and municipalities… and most especially we will never hear any regret over the damage to health caused by a rush to administer an experimental vaccination. There will be no apology to those who were forced to vaccinate or else forfeit employment. And why? Because the authorities, bureaucrats, politicians and media who insisted on all this view themselves as good people, good people who simply don’t do awful things … you know, like wreck the health of strangers, kill their elderly parents in hospital, isolate them in their homes, ruin their business, shred their mental health and wreck the education of their children. Nice people, well-intentioned people simply don’t do evil things like that … and they are nice people, with the best intentions in the world … so they simply didn’t do any of those things. Expressing sincere regret and apologies would mean admitting that they aren’t nice people, with the best intentions in the world. So, they never will own up to the incalculable damage. They simply can’t, and still maintain their self-image as nice people.
Discuss as you wish. While we still can.
Sarge, I think you are too kind. You assume that they believed that they were good people and their motives were, if not pure, at least not reprehensible. Given the surrounding evidence in our governance then and since, I have lost all trust in that.
The vaccination push quickly became a push to prove that by all that was holy and a bunch of their personal habits that weren’t; they had the absolute power to force this no matter what people wanted. The [now proven] lies of Fauci and his chain of command about the source irredeemably taint their intentions.
For the record, we got vaccinated. And about 6 months later I came down with COVID, which fortunately was only like a case of the flu. However, the damage to the economy, and to the Social Contract if it can be fixed will not happen for a long time {generations?].
They will not apologize, or refrain from trying to do something like this again, because they view themselves as so inherently superior to the workers, peasants, and kulaks that they never can be wrong. However next time they might not find it to be so easy.
Subotai Bahadur
They don’t have to. Everybody now knows that whenever some young athlete keels over with a cardiac arrest, he got vaccinated or a recent booster. They won’t admit it but everybody knows they are lying. The long term consequences of this are, as yet, unknown but they will not be good. Fortunately, my three grandkids did not get vaccinated even though they were supposed to. I have two other grandkids, daughters of my leftist son and his crazy ex-wife, who got every jab and every booster. We have a sort of randomized trial in the family.
Knocked it outta the park with this one, Sgt. Mom!
Well done!
I think a major problem with getting any sort of justice is that, at least in the political sense, the band has moved on. The 2021 GOP electoral sweep in Virginia was largely fueled by the Mom revolt over school closures; however what happened in 2022? Nothing, Was it because the Republicans, expecting a Red Wave wanted to play it safe and decided not to make it a campaign issue? At any rate even the House Freedom Caucus did not make the COVID policies a make-or-break during the McCarthy Speaker battle. It’s, if not done, at least dormant,
Could it revive? Sadly the one person who has both the attitude and the ability to bring off such an enteprise, Trump, will not because he feels Operation Warp Speed is one of biggest accomplishments and he is compromised by the fact he was in the White House when the lockdowns happened. One of the supposed benefits of this part of the presidential primary cycle is supposed to be all those candidates looking for traction will takes stances on issue but so far no one has tried the “COVID justice tour” idea. Maybe DeSantis will use the issue given his track record on Florida, perhaps Christie will, he sure hates Trump enough to try
I’m not sure what the solution is here, but I don’t think we’re going to get justice in any sort of comprehensive way. Maybe we’re going about this all wrong and instead of a grand campaign we should think in terms of a “punitive raid.” Pick a few targets and then drag them through the court system either as a civil suit or someone like Fauci for lying to Congress (though you would never get a conviction in DC). Put a marker down to people that there will be a price extracted for their actions and perhaps they will think twice before doing this again. These type of people are not committed ideologues and have lower pain threshold
I have always thought that the Left would want COVID to go away as an issue. They won the big battles, collected their winnings, and by now would have the most to lose front-and-center. Then I see a front-page article like in everyone’s favorite mouthpiece of the Establishment, Pravda on the Potomac (Washington Post) going after doctors who issued warnings about vaccines and prescribed Ivermectin. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/07/26/covid-misinformation-doctor-discipline/) My thought was really? They want to bring this up again? Why? This isn’t about the victors shooting the wounded, something is up.
Just so we’re clear because the WP article is pay-walled, I don’t pay for a subscription to that paper or indeed any of Liberal media. This is through my public library account. I find it useful to read that media to see what the enemy is thinking, but they aren’t getting a penny of my money.
I’m not to the point of believing that the whole covidiocy was deliberately generated to kill people en masse or to swing the election – but I do believe that a lot of individuals and organizations took full advantage for their own aggrandizement: politicians, governors and health officials because they could strike a heroic pose by being seen to “do something!”, and the developers of the vaccine and remdesivir because it fattened their profits – and there was no profit in readily-available chloroquine and ivermectin. Hospitals went all out for seeing Covid everywhere because there was profit in it, the national news media because scaring the snot out of people meant clicks, eyeballs and readers. And your average neighborhood Karen the Mask Nazi loved it, because they could boss people around. Public school teachers loved it because they could sit on their a**es at home and still get paid. Everybody liked what they got out of the covidiocy, short-term.
And we have not forgotten or forgiven all those people who insisted that people who refused the vaccine should be locked up, fired, forcibly vaccinated and have their children taken away.
The Democrats will never hold themselves up to consequences, and Republicans cannot hold anyone to account so long as they throw their support behind Donald Trump who was actively participating in all the bad policies. About the only people who could potentially be held to account would be those who funded the gain of function, and that is looking less and less likely.
We did not design accountability into the system (such as it was). Why should we expect it?
I’m not to the point of believing that the whole covidiocy was deliberately generated to kill people en masse or to swing the election…
I am. I still recall the aborted bird flu panic of circa 2008, which for a while I expected to bring about the sort of disaster that covid did. I also recall wondering what happened to make it all go away. I can only conclude that when Barry Obama became preezy the regime’s pet media decided not to talk about it, at all, period.
Much later, it turned out that all the masks and other supplies Bush 43 had stockpiled to deal with a pandemic had been expended during this event and never replaced- resulting in the infamously ugly shortage of such supplies for covid- and it also became known that the person Barry had put in charge of dealing with that pandemic had openly stated that they had done everything wrong in their response.
My guess is that if everything else had been the same- except that there was a demonrat in the white house- there would have been no catastrophic lockdowns, no insane demand that anyone accept experimental medical treatments as a condition of employment, and no reason to pretend such treatments weren’t experimental, when ugly side effects appeared.
The entire point of the covidiocy was to get rid of the Demon Trump, period. Any damage done to the country was secondary to that goal.
A number of impulses came together, each one leveraging the pandemic for its own purposes. Big Pharma saw an opportunity to make money. Control freaks saw an opportunity to impose their fears on everyone, backed by government muscle. The government saw an opportunity to not only gain more power, but to also centralize more control over people and the economy. Worst of all, Democrats shamelessly seized the opportunity to control election outcomes.
The federal government has learned nothing. Quite the opposite, Biden is setting up a new pandemic coordination office in the White House, providing even more centralized political control over the next emergency.
We are not going to vote our way out of this mess. What’s needed foremost is a massive government downsizing and restructuring, along with very carefully circumscribed authorities. To regain public trust, there must be figurative, if not literal, public hangings. And yes, government at all echelons must admit they effed up and over-reacted.
There should be some massive lawsuits against the Medical Industrial Complex. The states might have to take the lead, as no one in D.C. will.move off dead-center on this. For example, I know that Dr Birx came to our governor at least twice and bent her ear over the “proper response.” Perhaps our state could sue her for her intentional misguidance. It would be a start.
I can easily believe the Covid response was quickly co-opted to swing an election. Absolutely. I don’t know if the virus was “released” at this time to coincide with the election year, but it has gotten more difficult to not recognize how powerful forces used the cultivated panic to their benefit. Any countries expressing any populist sentiments had to be brought to heel, and quick. What better way than terrify them, take away their freedoms and punish them for their transgressions? This was pure power politics. I hate that I even have to consider these realities, but it does no good not to take them seriously. Our governments do not serve us anymore – they control us.
Xennady and Occ. Commenter – excellent comments!
There have always been people that confuse leadership with giving orders. Think Major Burns in MASH. Orders only work if there is someone willing to follow them.
A light may be beginning to dawn for some in the government. The IRS recently announced that they will no longer be just showing up, that they will in some way give advanced notice. I wonder how they’ll do that. How many people are going to believe a phone call or email (you’ve got to be kidding) from somebody that says they’re from the IRS? How many will be scammers, nevertheless? How will any of us tell the difference? 87,000 new agents won’t be nearly enough.
When Bush and his merry band palmed off FISA with the assurance it would only be used to police terrorists and that the courts would police the police. The FBI would surely never lie to a judge. Like a rug, as it turns out while the courts just look on with a pained expression. What happens when juries stop automatically believing FBI testimony or even caring? Even when it’s plausible. All the leverage that sees 95%+ of cases resolved without trials disappears. Lots of fun times ahead.
Think about sitting at a traffic light at 4:00 AM, not another car in any direction.
It occurred to me with all the hubub about the new Oppenheimer movie that I would definitely pay see to a movie about Fauci and not just because they were both instrumental in developing deadly technologies.
Take a step back and think about Fauci. An amazingly spry 80-year old bureaucrat who essentially started a second bureaucratic career when NIAID got juiced after 9/11 and the anthrax scares. During COVID he not only steps in and grabs the media limelight to become the face of the COVID response, at a time when millions of Americans thought you would die if you went to the beach, but he knew how to protect his position. He knew that Trump couldn’t refuse him because Fauci was claiming to represent the “Science” and like anyone experienced in bureaucratic war Fauci let Trump know that he (Trump) would get the blame for each and every death if he deviated from Fauci’s advice. Fauci also knew how to quash not only any opposition to his edicts but any attempt to expose his part in developing COVID in the first place.
Yes the information confirming what we had suspected is now being released but long after it could pack any emotional punch. If we had proof even 2 years ago Fauci and the government were actively suppressing information about the Lab Leak and the efficiency of vaccines and masks there would be a fire storm. Now? People are too tired to care, Fauci knew that as any media-driven insider that the way to deflate a story is slowly, like a balloon. Nothing to fuel the frenzy needed for accountability. It’s been more than 3 years and it might take a year or 2 more to get the full story and it’s now old news, the band has marched on. In the final scene of our movie “Fauci” our anti-hero leaves the office on his last day of work, listens on the radio to news stories discussing all the ramifications of the lockdown, and then goes home to admire all the awards and accolades on his mantle piece.
So that’s how it is done, when faced with a too-hot-to-handle issue, delay and suppress, play for time and at best only let the truth out slowly. Your preferred narrative is secured and the world moves on. It happened with the Russian collusion hoax and it’s happening right now with the Audrey Hale manifesto and the Florida “slavery skills” lie.
I still think it’s very much worth going after, but not only because of the lockdown. Rand Paul exposed Fauci’s involvement in funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Lab, an unbelievable reckless act. Politico (https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/01/white-house-cautiously-opens-door-to-study-blocking-suns-rays-to-slow-global-warming-ee-00104513) issued a piece describing how the White House released a report on “solar experimentation” which is basically modifying the atmosphere to block solar radiation for the purposes of controlling climate change. The key part of the article was a quote “The fact that this report even exists is probably the most consequential component of this release…. (it) signals that the U.S. government is supportive of well-governed research.”
So if you follow how these works, trying to engineer the atmosphere has just entered the Overton Window. And off we go as every instance of a “climate disaster” brings the urgency of such nonsense that much closer. . Gain-of-function research, solar experimentation…. to paraphrase a long-ago quote of Paul Ehrlich about nuclear energy, allowing governments to engage in such nonsense is like giving an idiot child a machine gun.:
Humility is the foundational virtue for good reason. We are all flawed, foolish, ignorant and often stupid. We are sinful.
Wisdom is impossible without humility. And the first step is to recognize that we know very little and much of what we think we know is wrong. This is why science is never settled. This is why free speech is vital.
The Covid nazis want to claim they wrecked the constitution, violated rights, stole elections and imposed health-destroying mandates in good faith and with the best intentions. “The path to hell is paved with good intentions.”
The defense of good faith was abandoned when they stopped trying to convince and began using force. When they took away free will, they claimed the role of gods. Isn’t a good shorthand definition of evil — “playing god in the lives of other people”?
Power corrupts. It also exposes the wicked by giving them the opportunity to demonstrate their lack of humility.
I’m beginning to think that humility or its absence is the key to a “unifying theory of humanity.”
The first lie the lying liars always tell is that they’re telling the truth. The second is that they are protecting your interests.
It’s obvious that the idea the wuflu came from the lab, had to be quashed not only because it would cast the Chinese government as directly responsible but because any investigation would show that Fauchi paid for it in direct contravention of the law. Again Fauchi lied like a rug and Congress just stands around with a sour expression.
Ironically, I have a jury summons in front of me. One of the questions they usually ask is how trustworthy do you think police are. How would you answer?
Karma, as they say is a bitch. If you’re paying attention to China away from the MSM, the whole country seems to be crumbling before our eyes. The most proximate causes are first, the insane zero covid policy and second, a new espionage law that classifies releasing any information that the government would rather keep quiet.
Technically before the new law took effect, there were a string of police raids on foreign accounting firms who’s violations seem to have been discovering and reporting the unpleasant financial reality of various Chinese companies. This has lead to a general exodus of foreign capital where that was possible and especially a sever curtailment of new money. You don’t have to look hard to find reports and video of whole districts in cities like Shanghai that were rocking 24/7 that are now empty, the shops closed, shuttered and out of business.
It would be gratifying indeed if those few million dollars to the Wuhan lab caused the downfall of the CCP, though historically, just a bunch more dead Chinese are the norm. If I were Fauchi, I’d be very reluctant to accept any speaking engagements in China.
“The Covid nazis want to claim they wrecked the constitution, violated rights, stole elections and imposed health-destroying mandates in good faith and with the best intentions.”
The Covid nazis can truthfully claim to be loyal and patriotic citizens of the Deep State of America, who faithfully fulfilled their oath to the Constitution[1] of the Deep State, defending it against its existential domestic enemies of Donald “Bad Orange Man” Trump, his “ultra-MAGA semi-fascist” followers, and those deplorable right-wing subhuman kulaks and revolting peasants more generally.
[1] which has the same text as the Constitution of the United States, but a radically different interpretation. See for example the various liberal/conservative split opinions and dissents of the Supreme Court.