I think this is a stunning piece of evidence that explains what happened. Go to the last paragraph before the summary and the summary. Excuse me if it was you Brad that previously alerted readers to this.
People in positions of power and authority were previously engaged in using global crises to remake, primarily, western society. Looks like we just allowed our fear and our "good compliance gene" to overcome our need for freedom and liberty. We let the authoritarians have at it. The pandemic hit and they were ready.
I do wonder if we would do the same next time. Sheeple comes to mind. Yesterday I passed a tiny Smart car driving too slow on the freeway by a middle-aged woman with Biden stickers on her bumper. She was driving alone double masked. I wish I could say that where I live she is the exception.
The people will do it all over again. They will be unwilling to pay the price of resistance and they will not give up their "conveniences" even when there are strings attached.
It will be up to the 10% who resist to make all the nonsense unenforceable. During covid we had, at best 1-2 %, that resisted in any meaningful way. I think we're up to 10% now.
I will try to take a crack at Brad's questions, with my guidepost being that old chestnut "Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely" and my underlying theme being more or less the modern Western addiction to CONTROL, to how this idea of CONTROL (sorry, Substack needs italics) has become an unstoppable omnivorous force for people raised by the twin gods of Science and Technology, this discomfort our elites seem to have knowing that there still remains aspects of existence that are unknown or unknowable and cannot (yet) be assimilated into the Market machine (and also how tempting the idea of CONTROL is for the type of people who go into politics, activism, postmodern journalism and academia, and all the other "Let me tell you how to live" professions).
One more quote first (sorry): The famously demented Emperor Caligula famously said "I wish all of Rome had one throat, so I could cut it", and that is the position our global ruling class has arrived at in re the internet and the fact that just about all of life has moved there.
Sometime in the past decade it seemed to dawn on everyone at the top of the food chain, from the WEF to the NYT etc: Our society does have one throat! (Or one voicebox) And this presented too tempting a prize not to be fought for: imagine that with a few clicks the FBI, DHS, NIH, FDA etc could coordinate between themselves to craft a single reigning narrative, and then imagine that w a few more clicks they could ge their friends at Big Tech (who are the mouth for our social voicebox) to make their narrative the sole permissible one, while censoring all dissent and silencing or banishing all dissenters. With a few keystrokes, they made themselves omnipotent, omniscient, godlike.
Our entire ruling class, from the grubbiest most brain dead bureaucrat at the DHS or NIH up to Gates, Zuckerberg, Soros & Sulzberger etc, couldn't resist the temptation: they have been able to grab more power than even the immortal Emperor Caligula dreamed of, and didn't even have to shed a drop of blood or look a smelly plebe in the eye.
Excellent summary, Brad. Man, I love and look forward to your writing, essays AND stories. Would that all Substack writers were as direct and concise and adventurous as you. Lockdowns were a Rubicon, a boundary that was crossed thoughtlessly and irrevocably, an unspeakable desecration of a centuries-old social compact. I say "thoughtlessly" because I don't think the people who occupy positions of power these days possess anything the leaders of yore would have recognized as "thought." I recall writing to a friend in spring 2020, quoting that old saw, "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." Well, the "making mad" part we have witnessed and endured in spades; now we'll get to endure the "destroy" part, as we are now ruled, left and right, up and down, by madmen and zombies. I see no thought, no clarity or sanity, in the near future. There is a cataclysm coming, after which there may be a reckoning and correction, or else a decline into a dark age wherein we no longer even aspire to sanity, or recognize it. I need another drink. I'm a real Canadian, so it has to be Gibson's 12-year-old. I'll drink a toast to your clarity and sanity.
I thought this also, but I had never gone through the simulation myself to confirm my speculation. The other day, however, I know I came across an article which said that, in the simulation, lockdowns were rejected. I mean this question in an honest, neutral, enquiring manner: have you gone through the simulation to see what happened? Do you know where we can read about it in sufficient detail for our conclusions to be warranted? Thank you.
It is still almost impossible sometimes to believe that the events of 2020 happened as they did, how it was allowed to happen, and, even now, I have no confidence at all that the right lessons have been learned. I think that if something similar to Covid pops up as it will inevitably, the same 'emergency declarations', masking, closures, quarantines and lockdowns will happen, heck, it might even be easier the second time around.
Is it retro and out of touch to point out that the lockdowns were illegal? The 1st Amendment...
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble..."
To shut down churches and prevent peaceable assembly is simply not legal, unless the Constitution is amended. Certainly the CDC had no legal power to do that.
And yet precedent is set, not only for the next epidemic, but for whatever else our overlords choose to do to us from now on. Our protections under the First Amendment are null and void.
Thank God some of us have the second amendment. That's right, only those who utilize it, have it. The rest of you may say it's important, blah blah effing blah, but unless your willing to arm yourself, you just hope there's enough of us.
The point of the lockdowns had absofuckinglutely nothkng to do with human health, and only one goal was in sight. Destroy the incredible economy that PDT built just by being him. The idea that they used it for mail in ballots,to steal an election, then used the duped humans to destroy the thing he built, and reverse every damn executive order that made America strong again. They had to do something. Now I think it's time to prosecute, with prejudice and Projectiles.
I attended med school in Germany, in German, in the late 1980s. I failed the required surgery rotation (lifetime clumsiness), but still entered a psychiatry residency. In 1990 I had to return to the US and gave up medicine for a constellation of reasons.
I do remember the basics of epidemiology as it relates to respiratory viruses: Outside is always better than indoors; search for group vulnerability profiles; almost all exacerbating factors will be associated with obesity. We knew almost from day one that vulnerability varied with age cohort, and that few younger than seventy would be particularly vulnerable. Thus, focus protection on the old and the fat, and leave everyone else alone pending more information. So, we did the opposite.
We locked everyone indoors and treated everyone as having identical vulnerability. To make it worse, we shut down the global economy and began closing borders due to panic induced by authoritarians who knew next to nothing about medicine. The authoritarians were public health officials, not practicing physicians. The best thing we could have done is ignored C19. The next best thing would have been to fund individual visits to private physicians who were not trying to protect their legacy or increase their prestige.
Government reaction to the virus was infinitely more dangerous than the virus itself.
Throughout the pandemic, many child care centers have stayed open for the children of front-line workers — everyone from doctors to grocery store clerks. YMCA of the USA and New York City's Department of Education have been caring for, collectively, tens of thousands of children since March, and both tell NPR they have no reports of coronavirus clusters or outbreaks.
You believe NPR now? They want schools as babysitters so they can sit at their computers and opine about social justice all day without their children pestering them. Of course older teachers and staff and those with health conditions got sick and many died. Younger teachers are quitting because capitalism, and teacher moms have used up all their sick leave for their kids. But don't let reality contradict your ideology.
Kids do spread covid though, and the absurdity of spacing desks 3 feet apart while teachers have to help them tie their shoes and monitor the lunchroom while their masks are off anyway was the last nail in the coffin of trust in public health for many of us.
Yet the places that kept schools open without any of that nonsense fared just fine, and more importantly actually kept teaching children instead of babysitting them.
We don't know that because nobody kept track of how many students and staff died as a result of covid exposure in schools. It was actively covered up when they decided that it was important for the economy for schools to be open. Suddenly the mantra was that schools are safe which was and is a convenient lie.
Many schools stayed open too. Mostly the big urban districts stayed closed and they got all the media attention because that's where journalists live. A lot of teachers and essential workers died of covid. I'm a teacher and I've been sick for a year with the tripledemic in schools lol. Why not try common sense: essential workers on the front lines of epidemics need sufficient support including protective gear and sick leave.
Among UFCW members nationwide, there have been a total of 456 deaths from COVID-19 and at least 91,400 infections or exposures to the virus among frontline workers. UFCW said its latest estimates include 178 deaths and at least 39,900 infections or exposures among grocery workers; 132 deaths and 22,200 infections or exposures among meatpacking workers; and 50 deaths and 11,700 infections or exposures among food processing workers.
Overall, UFCW represents 1.3 million workers in the grocery store, meatpacking, food processing, health care, retail sectors, among other industries.
---------------
This means that 0.035% (3 1/2 of every 10,000) of grocery workers died with covid.
Not having paid sick leave is probably something that severely exacerbated the pandemic in the USA. If you can't afford to stay home while contagious then that leaves you with very few options.
I was against the Lockdowns almost from the get go. however, It was apparent that it wasn’t a real lockdown, since most working class like myself still had to get up and make sure society had food, electricity, plumbing, health care, UberEats etc.
to my great disgust, it was only a lockdown for the laptop class. that’s right, the same keyboard warriors who hailed us as heroes for getting out there early, turned us into villains the next year when we were suspicious of the Vaxx.
this is why ideas like TGBD would have been an absolute live-saver...
Are you really saying that all those packed ICUs and makeshift morgues were imaginary? I know a lot of health care workers who would beg to differ. Some of us are a lot more sheltered from the impact of covid than others, apparently. Or they just don't care what happens to their servant classes.
I was in the hospital when the " news was spewing those lies. Here in Florida. The hospital was essentially closed and the emergency rooms were empty. The parking lots were empty, the staff was sent home. So yes,they actually were. I was let in because I blew some back cartilage into my spine and needed emergency surgery. So I saw it all. There was very little covid and what was here didn't a,punt to diddly. There was hospital protocol killing people though. Yeah my bride is an rn so I have a clue.
ICUs were packed because thousands of ICU beds were closed outside major Metroplitan areas. Rural hospitals were closed and literally thousands of medical professionals were laid off. The problem was extended by forbidding elective surgeries, the financial lifeblood of small hospitals. Of course, abortion centers were protected and kept open - difficult to understand since an abortion is almost always a matter of choice.
Makeshift morgues were never needed nor used. There was never a shortage of ventilators. The whole thing was an exercise in induced mass hysteria.
I think this is a stunning piece of evidence that explains what happened. Go to the last paragraph before the summary and the summary. Excuse me if it was you Brad that previously alerted readers to this.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867420310126
And the Great Reset. It is all out there for everyone to read. They are not hiding it. https://www.weforum.org/great-reset
People in positions of power and authority were previously engaged in using global crises to remake, primarily, western society. Looks like we just allowed our fear and our "good compliance gene" to overcome our need for freedom and liberty. We let the authoritarians have at it. The pandemic hit and they were ready.
I do wonder if we would do the same next time. Sheeple comes to mind. Yesterday I passed a tiny Smart car driving too slow on the freeway by a middle-aged woman with Biden stickers on her bumper. She was driving alone double masked. I wish I could say that where I live she is the exception.
The people will do it all over again. They will be unwilling to pay the price of resistance and they will not give up their "conveniences" even when there are strings attached.
It will be up to the 10% who resist to make all the nonsense unenforceable. During covid we had, at best 1-2 %, that resisted in any meaningful way. I think we're up to 10% now.
She's listening to NPR.
I will try to take a crack at Brad's questions, with my guidepost being that old chestnut "Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely" and my underlying theme being more or less the modern Western addiction to CONTROL, to how this idea of CONTROL (sorry, Substack needs italics) has become an unstoppable omnivorous force for people raised by the twin gods of Science and Technology, this discomfort our elites seem to have knowing that there still remains aspects of existence that are unknown or unknowable and cannot (yet) be assimilated into the Market machine (and also how tempting the idea of CONTROL is for the type of people who go into politics, activism, postmodern journalism and academia, and all the other "Let me tell you how to live" professions).
One more quote first (sorry): The famously demented Emperor Caligula famously said "I wish all of Rome had one throat, so I could cut it", and that is the position our global ruling class has arrived at in re the internet and the fact that just about all of life has moved there.
Sometime in the past decade it seemed to dawn on everyone at the top of the food chain, from the WEF to the NYT etc: Our society does have one throat! (Or one voicebox) And this presented too tempting a prize not to be fought for: imagine that with a few clicks the FBI, DHS, NIH, FDA etc could coordinate between themselves to craft a single reigning narrative, and then imagine that w a few more clicks they could ge their friends at Big Tech (who are the mouth for our social voicebox) to make their narrative the sole permissible one, while censoring all dissent and silencing or banishing all dissenters. With a few keystrokes, they made themselves omnipotent, omniscient, godlike.
Our entire ruling class, from the grubbiest most brain dead bureaucrat at the DHS or NIH up to Gates, Zuckerberg, Soros & Sulzberger etc, couldn't resist the temptation: they have been able to grab more power than even the immortal Emperor Caligula dreamed of, and didn't even have to shed a drop of blood or look a smelly plebe in the eye.
Excellent summary, Brad. Man, I love and look forward to your writing, essays AND stories. Would that all Substack writers were as direct and concise and adventurous as you. Lockdowns were a Rubicon, a boundary that was crossed thoughtlessly and irrevocably, an unspeakable desecration of a centuries-old social compact. I say "thoughtlessly" because I don't think the people who occupy positions of power these days possess anything the leaders of yore would have recognized as "thought." I recall writing to a friend in spring 2020, quoting that old saw, "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." Well, the "making mad" part we have witnessed and endured in spades; now we'll get to endure the "destroy" part, as we are now ruled, left and right, up and down, by madmen and zombies. I see no thought, no clarity or sanity, in the near future. There is a cataclysm coming, after which there may be a reckoning and correction, or else a decline into a dark age wherein we no longer even aspire to sanity, or recognize it. I need another drink. I'm a real Canadian, so it has to be Gibson's 12-year-old. I'll drink a toast to your clarity and sanity.
Thank you, made my day.
Cause that was the gameplan from the pandemic simulation.
The simulation controls everything!
Of course! Can’t have the masses ruminating together about how things don’t seem to add up now, can we!
I thought this also, but I had never gone through the simulation myself to confirm my speculation. The other day, however, I know I came across an article which said that, in the simulation, lockdowns were rejected. I mean this question in an honest, neutral, enquiring manner: have you gone through the simulation to see what happened? Do you know where we can read about it in sufficient detail for our conclusions to be warranted? Thank you.
It is still almost impossible sometimes to believe that the events of 2020 happened as they did, how it was allowed to happen, and, even now, I have no confidence at all that the right lessons have been learned. I think that if something similar to Covid pops up as it will inevitably, the same 'emergency declarations', masking, closures, quarantines and lockdowns will happen, heck, it might even be easier the second time around.
Is it retro and out of touch to point out that the lockdowns were illegal? The 1st Amendment...
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble..."
To shut down churches and prevent peaceable assembly is simply not legal, unless the Constitution is amended. Certainly the CDC had no legal power to do that.
And yet precedent is set, not only for the next epidemic, but for whatever else our overlords choose to do to us from now on. Our protections under the First Amendment are null and void.
Thank God some of us have the second amendment. That's right, only those who utilize it, have it. The rest of you may say it's important, blah blah effing blah, but unless your willing to arm yourself, you just hope there's enough of us.
The point of the lockdowns had absofuckinglutely nothkng to do with human health, and only one goal was in sight. Destroy the incredible economy that PDT built just by being him. The idea that they used it for mail in ballots,to steal an election, then used the duped humans to destroy the thing he built, and reverse every damn executive order that made America strong again. They had to do something. Now I think it's time to prosecute, with prejudice and Projectiles.
Superb writing Brad, as usual. I'm with Owly Peter in Alberta, look forward to your posts.
I attended med school in Germany, in German, in the late 1980s. I failed the required surgery rotation (lifetime clumsiness), but still entered a psychiatry residency. In 1990 I had to return to the US and gave up medicine for a constellation of reasons.
I do remember the basics of epidemiology as it relates to respiratory viruses: Outside is always better than indoors; search for group vulnerability profiles; almost all exacerbating factors will be associated with obesity. We knew almost from day one that vulnerability varied with age cohort, and that few younger than seventy would be particularly vulnerable. Thus, focus protection on the old and the fat, and leave everyone else alone pending more information. So, we did the opposite.
We locked everyone indoors and treated everyone as having identical vulnerability. To make it worse, we shut down the global economy and began closing borders due to panic induced by authoritarians who knew next to nothing about medicine. The authoritarians were public health officials, not practicing physicians. The best thing we could have done is ignored C19. The next best thing would have been to fund individual visits to private physicians who were not trying to protect their legacy or increase their prestige.
Government reaction to the virus was infinitely more dangerous than the virus itself.
Sure, but then acknowledge the risks for essential workers, including teachers if you want schools to stay open.
Essential grocery clerks went to work the entire pandemic and were fine. Teachers would have been, too -- and we knew it nearly immediately.
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/24/882316641/what-parents-can-learn-from-child-care-centers-that-stayed-open-during-lockdowns
Throughout the pandemic, many child care centers have stayed open for the children of front-line workers — everyone from doctors to grocery store clerks. YMCA of the USA and New York City's Department of Education have been caring for, collectively, tens of thousands of children since March, and both tell NPR they have no reports of coronavirus clusters or outbreaks.
You believe NPR now? They want schools as babysitters so they can sit at their computers and opine about social justice all day without their children pestering them. Of course older teachers and staff and those with health conditions got sick and many died. Younger teachers are quitting because capitalism, and teacher moms have used up all their sick leave for their kids. But don't let reality contradict your ideology.
I believe that if kids spread covid, you wouldn't hear the end of it in early 2020.
Kids do spread covid though, and the absurdity of spacing desks 3 feet apart while teachers have to help them tie their shoes and monitor the lunchroom while their masks are off anyway was the last nail in the coffin of trust in public health for many of us.
Yet the places that kept schools open without any of that nonsense fared just fine, and more importantly actually kept teaching children instead of babysitting them.
We don't know that because nobody kept track of how many students and staff died as a result of covid exposure in schools. It was actively covered up when they decided that it was important for the economy for schools to be open. Suddenly the mantra was that schools are safe which was and is a convenient lie.
Many schools stayed open too. Mostly the big urban districts stayed closed and they got all the media attention because that's where journalists live. A lot of teachers and essential workers died of covid. I'm a teacher and I've been sick for a year with the tripledemic in schools lol. Why not try common sense: essential workers on the front lines of epidemics need sufficient support including protective gear and sick leave.
From April 2021:
---------------------------
Among UFCW members nationwide, there have been a total of 456 deaths from COVID-19 and at least 91,400 infections or exposures to the virus among frontline workers. UFCW said its latest estimates include 178 deaths and at least 39,900 infections or exposures among grocery workers; 132 deaths and 22,200 infections or exposures among meatpacking workers; and 50 deaths and 11,700 infections or exposures among food processing workers.
Overall, UFCW represents 1.3 million workers in the grocery store, meatpacking, food processing, health care, retail sectors, among other industries.
---------------
This means that 0.035% (3 1/2 of every 10,000) of grocery workers died with covid.
Edit: Source https://www.supermarketnews.com/issues-trends/grocery-worker-covid-19-infections-deaths-rise-ufcw-report
Gee. That kinda refutes Brigid's claim, doesn't it. Thousands. Lol
Not having paid sick leave is probably something that severely exacerbated the pandemic in the USA. If you can't afford to stay home while contagious then that leaves you with very few options.
U make a good point Brigid.
I was against the Lockdowns almost from the get go. however, It was apparent that it wasn’t a real lockdown, since most working class like myself still had to get up and make sure society had food, electricity, plumbing, health care, UberEats etc.
to my great disgust, it was only a lockdown for the laptop class. that’s right, the same keyboard warriors who hailed us as heroes for getting out there early, turned us into villains the next year when we were suspicious of the Vaxx.
this is why ideas like TGBD would have been an absolute live-saver...
There were no risks. Lol
Are you really saying that all those packed ICUs and makeshift morgues were imaginary? I know a lot of health care workers who would beg to differ. Some of us are a lot more sheltered from the impact of covid than others, apparently. Or they just don't care what happens to their servant classes.
I was in the hospital when the " news was spewing those lies. Here in Florida. The hospital was essentially closed and the emergency rooms were empty. The parking lots were empty, the staff was sent home. So yes,they actually were. I was let in because I blew some back cartilage into my spine and needed emergency surgery. So I saw it all. There was very little covid and what was here didn't a,punt to diddly. There was hospital protocol killing people though. Yeah my bride is an rn so I have a clue.
ICUs were packed because thousands of ICU beds were closed outside major Metroplitan areas. Rural hospitals were closed and literally thousands of medical professionals were laid off. The problem was extended by forbidding elective surgeries, the financial lifeblood of small hospitals. Of course, abortion centers were protected and kept open - difficult to understand since an abortion is almost always a matter of choice.
Makeshift morgues were never needed nor used. There was never a shortage of ventilators. The whole thing was an exercise in induced mass hysteria.