“But for many of us in America, our lives are still being controlled by the pandemic.”
————————————————————
Excellent piece by Bari, but I really need to understand why people do this. Especially when smart people like Bari do it. Why do people insist on pretending the virus did this to us? The government did this to us.
Your lives are being controlled by scumbag politicians and bureaucrats.
We decided, a while ago, that everyone needs to go to college and as a result we now have a shortage of forklift drivers and waitresses and a surplus of unintelligent, ineffective, dangerous assholes with name tags and parking passes and real power.
Their jobs need to be eliminated. We can’t just move on from the pandemic. We need to eliminate this problem or it will keep coming back.
OSHA is a threat to freedom. It needs to be eliminated. The CDC is a threat to freedom. It needs to be eliminated. The CDC had one chance to ‘control disease’ and the result was 15x worse than if we did not have a CDC at all. Eliminated.
Give the money to single mothers or pay reparations. I don’t give a shit what you do with the money. Eliminated.
I want Washington DC to look like like Enron and Lehman Brothers with people crying and carrying their little cardboard box from their office out to their car knowing their pension is gone, the ‘industry’ they work in has been dismantled, and they have to start their life over from scratch.
And don’t bother coming to me with
“Oh but we need the CDC because they…..”
I’m sure they do a few things that are worthwhile. That doesn’t matter. The marginal benefit does not outweigh the *extreme* threat that they pose to liberty.
I love you Bari but it is time to stand up to unreasonable requests. I finally did it this Christmas when my brother's girlfriend wanted everyone (16 people) to get tested before Christmas Eve dinner. I said, "No, If you are scared don't come. I understand everyone has different ideas on Covid but at this point these are the rules in my house, and we will miss you, but I will not ask people to get tested, vaxxed, wear mask etc..." Yes, my brother and my mother called me selfish (Really?) but they came, and everyone had a great time. I also stipulated- NO COVID TALK. I said all of this calmly and sweetly but held firm. A wonderful evening!!
COVID has already stolen so much from me and my family (and everyone!), including causing the deaths of three close friends. Why is my city, Los Angeles, allowing COVID to continue stealing what is left of our lives and especially what is left of our kids' childhoods? I cannot take it anymore. I have fantasies about moving to Florida or Texas - yes, liberal me, the despondent Hilary voter in 2016 who shouted, "Fuck Trump!" and "Not my President!" as I marched in countless protests against Trump and "crazy" Republicans. Now, it's the Democrats (race-obsessed/defund the police/mask even if you're vaccinated) who are nuts and I secretly hope Republicans win every elected seat possible so maybe Democrats can regain their sanity. I do not understand why my fully vaccinated elementary school aged kid who is in public school (LAUSD) and is tested every week for COVID (always negative) and is still required to wear a mask from 8am to 6pm (aftercare) even outdoors, even "in between bites and sips" at lunch and snack times. All staff and teachers are fully vaccinated because of the vaccine mandates for them. I'm fully vaxxed and boosted. So is his dad and everyone we know. We wear masks when required/asked to. LA has high vax rates. And I'm willing to bet that the majority of the kids and families are fully vaxxed, boosted etc because we take our kid to a "nice" public school in a fancy neighborhood about 45 minutes away in LA traffic. Yet despite every single conceivable precaution to "keep you safe," my kid is only allowed to play on the apparatus once a week and prohibited from taking a sip of water in class or anywhere inside a building and can't have fun with his friends at lunch without being scolded to mask up and stay apart. Prior to COVID, our school was one of the very few in LAUSD that welcomed parents on campus and to volunteer in the classroom and we hosted numerous activities like fall festival, winter dance, talent show, movie nights, and other fundraisers. It was truly a special school community where parents got to know one another, our amazing principal, teachers and each other's kids. That's all gone now. Since COVID and even now, parents are NO longer allowed on campus and no outside activities. There's no camaraderie among parents at drop-off or pick-up when everyone is wearing a mask outside and afraid to get closer than six feet. (I tolerate dirty looks from other parents because I refuse to participate in this "security theater" by wearing a mask outside on the sidewalk or even inside my own car at drop-off/pickup when I'm vaxxed/boosted.) Playdates and birthday parties are a rarity even when we know each other's kids are vaxxed and test negative for COVID every week. If there are, other parents insist on all the kids AND parents wear masks even while outside in a park and the adults are all vaxxed! There's no escape. When I signed my kid up for a sailing camp over the summer - outdoors on a boat in the ocean - they still required the kids to wear a mask because the fully vaccinated captain wanted the fully vaccinated crew and (at the time) unvaccinated kids to wear masks. I had to get permission to not wear a mask during drop-off/pick-up outdoors on the dock by telling the captain I was fully vaccinated. During the end of camp "family sail," families were also required to wear a mask, regardless of vaccination status, on the boat deck outside as we sailed around the harbor in the open ocean. We were the ONLY people on boats in the harbor that were masked, by the way. I'm pretty sure I could detect a lot of frowns under the masks of parents. There's countless idiotic masking requirements for LA kids and their adults like at the event to teach kids how to fish on the LA River or to watch the king tides (mask + social distancing) on the pier or on a guided tour of the tide pools at the beach or during a beach clean-up event. But you're not allowed to even complain about masking or any of the countless and pointless COVID rules in LA or else you're accused of being a White supremacist, Trumpist, right wing, anti-vaxxer. In fact in LA, to "be a good person" you have to show off how "seriously" you take the pandemic by professing your LOVE for this insanity, dutifully wearing your mask even when not required, never leaving your home, and demanding that everyone be as neurotic as you are. I am not even allowed to ask questions like why is it racist and Jim Crow 2.0 to ask a person to show their ID to vote, but it's not racist to demand ID and vax card to eat a Big Mac at McDonald's, especially when young Black men in LA have the lowest vax rates? Or why are Democrats/progressives perfectly content to accept the obvious risks of injury and death in my neighborhood that comes with their insane Abolish Police & Prisons! ideas, but refuse to tolerate the risk of allowing my fully vaxxed and COVID negative kid to go without a mask? Am I really "saving lives" when I put my mask on in a restaurant to walk 2 feet to the bathroom when everyone in the restaurant is required to be vaccinated? Is it really White supremacy to want my kid to go to school in person as the teacher's union president said? When will sanity return and what will it take? I have always loved LA and California and "felt safe" here. I don't want to leave, but I don't know if I will have much of a choice if these insane policies continue. My kid has only one childhood and I refuse to allow him to lose anymore than he has already lost.
I've seen it floated elsewhere that masks (literally and figuratively) are the left's MAGA hats. I think there's something to that. What they - and the emerging Covid "passports" - really embody is a visible symbol of total, utter compliance with the state. Horowitz once quipped that inside many liberals is a totalitarian screaming to get out. Here we are, living that in full color.
Here in MA, I watch people drive by my house out in the burbs fully masked. Fully vaccinated teens are in the high school double and triple masked - surgical plus N95 - while others are wondering why, as seniors, they have only had one normal year of high school and their winter sports are being canceled for the third year in a row. The hysteria I see on the local FB groups is intense. If anyone ever wondered how the mass hysteria that dominated in Salem happened hundreds of years ago, how folks went along with Japanese interment, and how McCarthy had his day in the spotlight, I think we get it now. I'm waiting for the "V" to arrive for my coat - up for fully vaxxed and down for the "unvaxxed" who may even have two jabs but, of course, that was never the point. That was never going to be "enough."
Covid has become a smokescreen for something more insidious in our political system and it's worrisome on so many levels. Too many on the left are in a lather over covid and there is absolutely nothing scientific about it. There hasn't been anything scientific for quite awhile, frankly. The types of laws these folks are promoting and willing to tolerate is chilling and the growing sense of comfort they have at othering, dehumanizing, and punishing is especially chilling.
I've studied political violence, unrest, extremism, radicalization, and human rights abuses for most of my career. I'll say it here in the same way I've said it at home. We are in a moment. We are in that kind of inflection point that goes one of two ways - it either settles down or it moves fully into unrest. I see no signs of it settling down and that concerns me on a professional level, much less a personal one. As in similar historical moments, this one also isn't limited to the United States.
I pray every night that some sanity prevails. However, when you have the ADL and other commentators on MSNBC daily commenting that Republicans running for local office are engaging in a far-right conspiracy to take over the government by - wait for it - being elected, we're in trouble. I fully expect, within the next few weeks, for that discussion to move from the Hungary/Turkey examples being trotted out at the moment to 1932 and Germany.
Right now, I personally don't care what party you are. Folks need to show up at the ballot box in November and vote this level of crazy out and demand that a new Congress immediately reinstate the "equal time" in media law for all mainstream media outlets.
The story of this pandemic is not the inconveniences that those of us with options have had to endure nor is it the incompetence of the public health establishment... it is rather about the class divisions within our societies in the West and how the poor and marginal are suffering and dying in exponentially larger numbers ...and how the laptop class can only consider their personal inconvenience. This pandemic has shown a pretty ugly light on our society that has nothing to do with left or right or race. Simply old school class distinctions (socioeconomic) and a certain class of people thinking they're better and more enlightened than everyone else.... Even to the point of taking away people's personal freedoms and othering them like has not been seen since the middle of the bloody 20th century.
Look at world o meter numbers. This is over. Well, in 6 weeks it’s over - gonna be a nutty 6 weeks though. The charts are crazy.
By today 75% of the US population has previously had Covid, regardless of jab status, or is currently infected. We are around peak. It’ll continue to breakout across the country in different places the next 3-5 weeks. By mid March, it’s over. By mid April it’s dead - just another common cold of the dozens of causes of common cold.
Think I’m nuts? Write a note today and come back April 2nd. I’ll Venmo the first 25 people who can show I’m wrong $20 bucks. I’m not rich, I just love data. And it’s clear we are in the last throws of the crazy (from the virus - people I can’t predict. I’ve been wrong for 2 years. I can’t believe how long people have lived in fear - particularly those who face the lowest risk from this virus).
The virus won. It always was going to. That’s what they do - particularly respiratory viruses generally passed via aerosol particles (as in, dissolved in air) with animal hosts.
We’ve destroyed a generation of children, destroyed the social bonds of community, destroyed medicine, and destroyed confidence in public health. The only way we work our way back is to learn from it. As anger seeps in push it away. Hug a friend. Smile at a child that so desperately needs to see faces. Most importantly, hold the people responsible for the lies responsible - chief among them the media, censoring big tech, and corrupt “leaders” of the NIH, CDC, and FDA. It might be irritating those red state conservatives were right all along - but those are NOT the people who caused the harm. Remember that.
"But I’m out of step with my city." ~ No, your city is out of step with you. YOU are your locus. Your city is the effed up one, is the one out of step with reason and data and evidence and rational behavior.
"...our lives are still being controlled by the pandemic" ~ No, its governments' reaction to the pandemic, and TOO MANY citizens' obsequiousness toward their government masters that is enabling the despots to exercise their tyrannical instincts over us.
As a meme says, "You comply so that this will end, but your compliance ensures that this won't end" or something along those lines.
You want this to end? STOP COMPLYING. With everything. Walk through airports and DON'T wear your mask. I've been in SJU, BWI, ORF, ORF again, BWI again, PWM, BOS, and SJU again over the past 3 weeks. I never wore a mask other than when queueing to board a flight. Walked throughout those airports, probably more than I otherwise would have under normal circumstances, and never, not once, was confronted by any authority.
Even in deep-blue Boston, over about a 10-minute span, I walked past - as in the opposite direction, so we all saw each other face-to-face - I walked past at least a dozen TSA agents, Boston city cops, and MA state police. NONE of them said boo. And I was the ONLY one unmasked. So if half the airports are unmasked, they certainly won't do anything, if no one did anything to l'il ol' me.
DO NOT COMPLY, with any of it, and push everyone you know to do the same. If a store tells you to mask up, do so to get in, then take it off when you're inside and carry on. Laugh at your friends when they ask you to stick a rubber hose up your nose. Ridicule the ridiculous, and it's ALL ridiculous now.
Only when the tyrants no longer get their tyranny-porn-jollies will they start to back down.
Up until recently, my wife and I would chuckle to ourselves about all the craziness surrounding covid. Yes, we got vaxxed, got our 13 year-old son vaxxed, and wore our masks, like good little citizens. Now, with a Jan. 31 deadline to receive a booster from my university, the craziness surrounding covid is less... chuckle-worthy. I am fortunate to be healthy and I DO NOT want this booster, and while my wife understands ... the tension is rising, because to refuse the booster means to get booted from my PHD program -- it means going back to square one.
In retirement I read more medical literature than I ever had time for when I was in practice, and certain things have become abundantly clear. First: Therapies work. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine work, and they work well - particularly in combination with other, nonprescription medications such as zinc, quercetin, and several vitamins, primarily vitamin C and D3, but they must be administered early to be effective. I've also had personal experience administering ivermectin, and I would have to characterize its effectiveness as nothing short of remarkable. Second: It never occurred to me that I would see it in my lifetime, but U.S.. government health agencies have become thoroughly political and are not to be trusted. In my opinion they are using the panic porn that they have themselves generated for an ulterior motive, and that motive is complete control of the public. We are not alone; it's going on worldwide, where the elites are going for broke in their push (putsch?). Effective therapies represent a huge wrench in their domination-gears, and they are pulling out the stops to block them. All I can say is thank God for the Internet, upon which the U.S. gub'ment has not been able to impose the Great Firewall of China - yet. And thank God for Substack and newsletters like this one; we just may survive this.
I never bought into the hype and was completely skeptical of it. I always thought that instead of locking things up and isolation, it would have been better to let the thing rip and run through the population. I always thought the focus on cases was weird because that means nothing. We never focused on colds or flu cases before. I always washed my hands when getting home from the stores, I always sanitized the carts and I always had sanitizer in my car - Pre-scamdemic. Why? Well have you seen the hygiene of people in stores?
I was always amused by those who would double mask and wear gloves to go shopping, but never sanitized their carts. Everything they touched would be contaminated after the first touch - duh. I was extremely skeptical of the vaccine particularly when they came out for the need of boosters so soon, within months and now the fourth and the fifth. I am not vaxxEd but I did get the covid and SURVIVED!!!!! Huzzah! I didn’t get it because my doc said it exacerbated shingles and again skepticism. Turns out I was right to be skeptical. The shot changes women's menstrual cycles. Heavens only knows what else it does internally. It also causes the spikes which are infectious. It’s really the vaxxEd that are spreading covid.
And now we know we’ve been conned. How many of the deaths are really FROM covid? We don’t know but Walensky says maybe 25% don’t have 4 comorbidities. (Course now the media and the government are trying to walk that back) How many of that 25% had three or two or one? How many people died of a car accident and then they tested positive? There have been those. It’s all about the money honey, from big pharma down to hospitals.
This has been great for totalitarians and sheep. No thinking required. It’s astonishing how Americans have gone along and those who haven’t are vilified.
I don’t wear a mask and no one says anything. And they don’t work anyway! Neither do ped the plexiglass. And the 6 foot distance thing was pulled out of someone’s ass at the CDC. FraudcI is still lying and smarming his way around, whining about Rand Paul asking him tough questions.
The only thing this scamdemic has been good for is showing the immense rot and incompetence in our government and in many companies. But that’s a small benefit out of the very high price everyone has had to pay. Well most everyone, big pharma and the democrats have done very very well.
Has this all been a trial run on imposing authoritarianism? I see it that way now. And there are plenty who willingly bow down and obey. Masks on two year olds. What went wrong with the minds of their parents?
The “thought leaders” on Twitter have become the inquisitors of the Spanish Inquisition. Believe! Obey! If you question, doubt, you will be burned at the stake. And Cardinal Fauci is the Grand Inquisitor.
I hope everyone uses this moment to reflect on the size and scale of our federal government. This is exactly the type of crisis where it’s role should be providing information and helping to speed scientific advance. Leave local authorities to determine the actions to take based on that information.
The federal government failed miserably this time. Let’s not do this again. Central planning does not work for pandemics just like it doesn’t work for economies.
It was never a question in my mind that you are a talented journalist.
However, during your times in NYT, occasionally reading your articles made me question your ability to stay an independent thinker and an objective (as much as humanly possible) reporter in the face of the both biases.
The Common Sense publication had restored my faith in your intellectual independence and bravery.
Although, some of my political views, as a non native US citizen, are diametrically opposed to yours, I have great respect for your writings and enjoy Your Common Sense.
Hence, my subscription.
Thank you. I feel I can breathe again, despite the mask on my face. {sigh}
2 Years of bumbling incompetence AND WORSE of politicizing healthcare. Healthcare is the LAST thing that should be politicized. Lives cannot be played with.
> I don't care if you're Dem or Repub - my family's life is not yours to play political games with. To be accurate, they should be using the phrase "Follow the Politicized Science"
Taxpayers pay $ billions to fund CDC and NIH. The people who work there get paid handsomely with robust government healthcare and other benefits. They are supposed to protect us from stupidity of politicians and the diseases of the world. THEY FAILED. FAILED MISERABLY.
I cannot participate today, but would be very interested to know why any of these doctors are not concerned about the data in VAERS. VAERS has had a wide range of "underreporting factors" estimated, exacerbated by the unwieldiness of the system and coercion, of varying degrees, not to report. Further, the Swine Flu Vaccine was pulled after far fewer reports of death as an adverse reaction.
“But for many of us in America, our lives are still being controlled by the pandemic.”
————————————————————
Excellent piece by Bari, but I really need to understand why people do this. Especially when smart people like Bari do it. Why do people insist on pretending the virus did this to us? The government did this to us.
Your lives are being controlled by scumbag politicians and bureaucrats.
We decided, a while ago, that everyone needs to go to college and as a result we now have a shortage of forklift drivers and waitresses and a surplus of unintelligent, ineffective, dangerous assholes with name tags and parking passes and real power.
Their jobs need to be eliminated. We can’t just move on from the pandemic. We need to eliminate this problem or it will keep coming back.
OSHA is a threat to freedom. It needs to be eliminated. The CDC is a threat to freedom. It needs to be eliminated. The CDC had one chance to ‘control disease’ and the result was 15x worse than if we did not have a CDC at all. Eliminated.
Give the money to single mothers or pay reparations. I don’t give a shit what you do with the money. Eliminated.
I want Washington DC to look like like Enron and Lehman Brothers with people crying and carrying their little cardboard box from their office out to their car knowing their pension is gone, the ‘industry’ they work in has been dismantled, and they have to start their life over from scratch.
And don’t bother coming to me with
“Oh but we need the CDC because they…..”
I’m sure they do a few things that are worthwhile. That doesn’t matter. The marginal benefit does not outweigh the *extreme* threat that they pose to liberty.
ELIMINATED.
I love you Bari but it is time to stand up to unreasonable requests. I finally did it this Christmas when my brother's girlfriend wanted everyone (16 people) to get tested before Christmas Eve dinner. I said, "No, If you are scared don't come. I understand everyone has different ideas on Covid but at this point these are the rules in my house, and we will miss you, but I will not ask people to get tested, vaxxed, wear mask etc..." Yes, my brother and my mother called me selfish (Really?) but they came, and everyone had a great time. I also stipulated- NO COVID TALK. I said all of this calmly and sweetly but held firm. A wonderful evening!!
COVID has already stolen so much from me and my family (and everyone!), including causing the deaths of three close friends. Why is my city, Los Angeles, allowing COVID to continue stealing what is left of our lives and especially what is left of our kids' childhoods? I cannot take it anymore. I have fantasies about moving to Florida or Texas - yes, liberal me, the despondent Hilary voter in 2016 who shouted, "Fuck Trump!" and "Not my President!" as I marched in countless protests against Trump and "crazy" Republicans. Now, it's the Democrats (race-obsessed/defund the police/mask even if you're vaccinated) who are nuts and I secretly hope Republicans win every elected seat possible so maybe Democrats can regain their sanity. I do not understand why my fully vaccinated elementary school aged kid who is in public school (LAUSD) and is tested every week for COVID (always negative) and is still required to wear a mask from 8am to 6pm (aftercare) even outdoors, even "in between bites and sips" at lunch and snack times. All staff and teachers are fully vaccinated because of the vaccine mandates for them. I'm fully vaxxed and boosted. So is his dad and everyone we know. We wear masks when required/asked to. LA has high vax rates. And I'm willing to bet that the majority of the kids and families are fully vaxxed, boosted etc because we take our kid to a "nice" public school in a fancy neighborhood about 45 minutes away in LA traffic. Yet despite every single conceivable precaution to "keep you safe," my kid is only allowed to play on the apparatus once a week and prohibited from taking a sip of water in class or anywhere inside a building and can't have fun with his friends at lunch without being scolded to mask up and stay apart. Prior to COVID, our school was one of the very few in LAUSD that welcomed parents on campus and to volunteer in the classroom and we hosted numerous activities like fall festival, winter dance, talent show, movie nights, and other fundraisers. It was truly a special school community where parents got to know one another, our amazing principal, teachers and each other's kids. That's all gone now. Since COVID and even now, parents are NO longer allowed on campus and no outside activities. There's no camaraderie among parents at drop-off or pick-up when everyone is wearing a mask outside and afraid to get closer than six feet. (I tolerate dirty looks from other parents because I refuse to participate in this "security theater" by wearing a mask outside on the sidewalk or even inside my own car at drop-off/pickup when I'm vaxxed/boosted.) Playdates and birthday parties are a rarity even when we know each other's kids are vaxxed and test negative for COVID every week. If there are, other parents insist on all the kids AND parents wear masks even while outside in a park and the adults are all vaxxed! There's no escape. When I signed my kid up for a sailing camp over the summer - outdoors on a boat in the ocean - they still required the kids to wear a mask because the fully vaccinated captain wanted the fully vaccinated crew and (at the time) unvaccinated kids to wear masks. I had to get permission to not wear a mask during drop-off/pick-up outdoors on the dock by telling the captain I was fully vaccinated. During the end of camp "family sail," families were also required to wear a mask, regardless of vaccination status, on the boat deck outside as we sailed around the harbor in the open ocean. We were the ONLY people on boats in the harbor that were masked, by the way. I'm pretty sure I could detect a lot of frowns under the masks of parents. There's countless idiotic masking requirements for LA kids and their adults like at the event to teach kids how to fish on the LA River or to watch the king tides (mask + social distancing) on the pier or on a guided tour of the tide pools at the beach or during a beach clean-up event. But you're not allowed to even complain about masking or any of the countless and pointless COVID rules in LA or else you're accused of being a White supremacist, Trumpist, right wing, anti-vaxxer. In fact in LA, to "be a good person" you have to show off how "seriously" you take the pandemic by professing your LOVE for this insanity, dutifully wearing your mask even when not required, never leaving your home, and demanding that everyone be as neurotic as you are. I am not even allowed to ask questions like why is it racist and Jim Crow 2.0 to ask a person to show their ID to vote, but it's not racist to demand ID and vax card to eat a Big Mac at McDonald's, especially when young Black men in LA have the lowest vax rates? Or why are Democrats/progressives perfectly content to accept the obvious risks of injury and death in my neighborhood that comes with their insane Abolish Police & Prisons! ideas, but refuse to tolerate the risk of allowing my fully vaxxed and COVID negative kid to go without a mask? Am I really "saving lives" when I put my mask on in a restaurant to walk 2 feet to the bathroom when everyone in the restaurant is required to be vaccinated? Is it really White supremacy to want my kid to go to school in person as the teacher's union president said? When will sanity return and what will it take? I have always loved LA and California and "felt safe" here. I don't want to leave, but I don't know if I will have much of a choice if these insane policies continue. My kid has only one childhood and I refuse to allow him to lose anymore than he has already lost.
I've seen it floated elsewhere that masks (literally and figuratively) are the left's MAGA hats. I think there's something to that. What they - and the emerging Covid "passports" - really embody is a visible symbol of total, utter compliance with the state. Horowitz once quipped that inside many liberals is a totalitarian screaming to get out. Here we are, living that in full color.
Here in MA, I watch people drive by my house out in the burbs fully masked. Fully vaccinated teens are in the high school double and triple masked - surgical plus N95 - while others are wondering why, as seniors, they have only had one normal year of high school and their winter sports are being canceled for the third year in a row. The hysteria I see on the local FB groups is intense. If anyone ever wondered how the mass hysteria that dominated in Salem happened hundreds of years ago, how folks went along with Japanese interment, and how McCarthy had his day in the spotlight, I think we get it now. I'm waiting for the "V" to arrive for my coat - up for fully vaxxed and down for the "unvaxxed" who may even have two jabs but, of course, that was never the point. That was never going to be "enough."
Covid has become a smokescreen for something more insidious in our political system and it's worrisome on so many levels. Too many on the left are in a lather over covid and there is absolutely nothing scientific about it. There hasn't been anything scientific for quite awhile, frankly. The types of laws these folks are promoting and willing to tolerate is chilling and the growing sense of comfort they have at othering, dehumanizing, and punishing is especially chilling.
I've studied political violence, unrest, extremism, radicalization, and human rights abuses for most of my career. I'll say it here in the same way I've said it at home. We are in a moment. We are in that kind of inflection point that goes one of two ways - it either settles down or it moves fully into unrest. I see no signs of it settling down and that concerns me on a professional level, much less a personal one. As in similar historical moments, this one also isn't limited to the United States.
I pray every night that some sanity prevails. However, when you have the ADL and other commentators on MSNBC daily commenting that Republicans running for local office are engaging in a far-right conspiracy to take over the government by - wait for it - being elected, we're in trouble. I fully expect, within the next few weeks, for that discussion to move from the Hungary/Turkey examples being trotted out at the moment to 1932 and Germany.
Right now, I personally don't care what party you are. Folks need to show up at the ballot box in November and vote this level of crazy out and demand that a new Congress immediately reinstate the "equal time" in media law for all mainstream media outlets.
"What's a specific example of that kind of panic porn?"
Well Brian, let's start with that death counter your network ran every day until right around January 6, 2021.
The story of this pandemic is not the inconveniences that those of us with options have had to endure nor is it the incompetence of the public health establishment... it is rather about the class divisions within our societies in the West and how the poor and marginal are suffering and dying in exponentially larger numbers ...and how the laptop class can only consider their personal inconvenience. This pandemic has shown a pretty ugly light on our society that has nothing to do with left or right or race. Simply old school class distinctions (socioeconomic) and a certain class of people thinking they're better and more enlightened than everyone else.... Even to the point of taking away people's personal freedoms and othering them like has not been seen since the middle of the bloody 20th century.
Look at world o meter numbers. This is over. Well, in 6 weeks it’s over - gonna be a nutty 6 weeks though. The charts are crazy.
By today 75% of the US population has previously had Covid, regardless of jab status, or is currently infected. We are around peak. It’ll continue to breakout across the country in different places the next 3-5 weeks. By mid March, it’s over. By mid April it’s dead - just another common cold of the dozens of causes of common cold.
Think I’m nuts? Write a note today and come back April 2nd. I’ll Venmo the first 25 people who can show I’m wrong $20 bucks. I’m not rich, I just love data. And it’s clear we are in the last throws of the crazy (from the virus - people I can’t predict. I’ve been wrong for 2 years. I can’t believe how long people have lived in fear - particularly those who face the lowest risk from this virus).
The virus won. It always was going to. That’s what they do - particularly respiratory viruses generally passed via aerosol particles (as in, dissolved in air) with animal hosts.
We’ve destroyed a generation of children, destroyed the social bonds of community, destroyed medicine, and destroyed confidence in public health. The only way we work our way back is to learn from it. As anger seeps in push it away. Hug a friend. Smile at a child that so desperately needs to see faces. Most importantly, hold the people responsible for the lies responsible - chief among them the media, censoring big tech, and corrupt “leaders” of the NIH, CDC, and FDA. It might be irritating those red state conservatives were right all along - but those are NOT the people who caused the harm. Remember that.
"But I’m out of step with my city." ~ No, your city is out of step with you. YOU are your locus. Your city is the effed up one, is the one out of step with reason and data and evidence and rational behavior.
"...our lives are still being controlled by the pandemic" ~ No, its governments' reaction to the pandemic, and TOO MANY citizens' obsequiousness toward their government masters that is enabling the despots to exercise their tyrannical instincts over us.
As a meme says, "You comply so that this will end, but your compliance ensures that this won't end" or something along those lines.
You want this to end? STOP COMPLYING. With everything. Walk through airports and DON'T wear your mask. I've been in SJU, BWI, ORF, ORF again, BWI again, PWM, BOS, and SJU again over the past 3 weeks. I never wore a mask other than when queueing to board a flight. Walked throughout those airports, probably more than I otherwise would have under normal circumstances, and never, not once, was confronted by any authority.
Even in deep-blue Boston, over about a 10-minute span, I walked past - as in the opposite direction, so we all saw each other face-to-face - I walked past at least a dozen TSA agents, Boston city cops, and MA state police. NONE of them said boo. And I was the ONLY one unmasked. So if half the airports are unmasked, they certainly won't do anything, if no one did anything to l'il ol' me.
DO NOT COMPLY, with any of it, and push everyone you know to do the same. If a store tells you to mask up, do so to get in, then take it off when you're inside and carry on. Laugh at your friends when they ask you to stick a rubber hose up your nose. Ridicule the ridiculous, and it's ALL ridiculous now.
Only when the tyrants no longer get their tyranny-porn-jollies will they start to back down.
Up until recently, my wife and I would chuckle to ourselves about all the craziness surrounding covid. Yes, we got vaxxed, got our 13 year-old son vaxxed, and wore our masks, like good little citizens. Now, with a Jan. 31 deadline to receive a booster from my university, the craziness surrounding covid is less... chuckle-worthy. I am fortunate to be healthy and I DO NOT want this booster, and while my wife understands ... the tension is rising, because to refuse the booster means to get booted from my PHD program -- it means going back to square one.
In retirement I read more medical literature than I ever had time for when I was in practice, and certain things have become abundantly clear. First: Therapies work. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine work, and they work well - particularly in combination with other, nonprescription medications such as zinc, quercetin, and several vitamins, primarily vitamin C and D3, but they must be administered early to be effective. I've also had personal experience administering ivermectin, and I would have to characterize its effectiveness as nothing short of remarkable. Second: It never occurred to me that I would see it in my lifetime, but U.S.. government health agencies have become thoroughly political and are not to be trusted. In my opinion they are using the panic porn that they have themselves generated for an ulterior motive, and that motive is complete control of the public. We are not alone; it's going on worldwide, where the elites are going for broke in their push (putsch?). Effective therapies represent a huge wrench in their domination-gears, and they are pulling out the stops to block them. All I can say is thank God for the Internet, upon which the U.S. gub'ment has not been able to impose the Great Firewall of China - yet. And thank God for Substack and newsletters like this one; we just may survive this.
I never bought into the hype and was completely skeptical of it. I always thought that instead of locking things up and isolation, it would have been better to let the thing rip and run through the population. I always thought the focus on cases was weird because that means nothing. We never focused on colds or flu cases before. I always washed my hands when getting home from the stores, I always sanitized the carts and I always had sanitizer in my car - Pre-scamdemic. Why? Well have you seen the hygiene of people in stores?
I was always amused by those who would double mask and wear gloves to go shopping, but never sanitized their carts. Everything they touched would be contaminated after the first touch - duh. I was extremely skeptical of the vaccine particularly when they came out for the need of boosters so soon, within months and now the fourth and the fifth. I am not vaxxEd but I did get the covid and SURVIVED!!!!! Huzzah! I didn’t get it because my doc said it exacerbated shingles and again skepticism. Turns out I was right to be skeptical. The shot changes women's menstrual cycles. Heavens only knows what else it does internally. It also causes the spikes which are infectious. It’s really the vaxxEd that are spreading covid.
And now we know we’ve been conned. How many of the deaths are really FROM covid? We don’t know but Walensky says maybe 25% don’t have 4 comorbidities. (Course now the media and the government are trying to walk that back) How many of that 25% had three or two or one? How many people died of a car accident and then they tested positive? There have been those. It’s all about the money honey, from big pharma down to hospitals.
This has been great for totalitarians and sheep. No thinking required. It’s astonishing how Americans have gone along and those who haven’t are vilified.
I don’t wear a mask and no one says anything. And they don’t work anyway! Neither do ped the plexiglass. And the 6 foot distance thing was pulled out of someone’s ass at the CDC. FraudcI is still lying and smarming his way around, whining about Rand Paul asking him tough questions.
The only thing this scamdemic has been good for is showing the immense rot and incompetence in our government and in many companies. But that’s a small benefit out of the very high price everyone has had to pay. Well most everyone, big pharma and the democrats have done very very well.
Let’s go Brandon!
Has this all been a trial run on imposing authoritarianism? I see it that way now. And there are plenty who willingly bow down and obey. Masks on two year olds. What went wrong with the minds of their parents?
The “thought leaders” on Twitter have become the inquisitors of the Spanish Inquisition. Believe! Obey! If you question, doubt, you will be burned at the stake. And Cardinal Fauci is the Grand Inquisitor.
I hope everyone uses this moment to reflect on the size and scale of our federal government. This is exactly the type of crisis where it’s role should be providing information and helping to speed scientific advance. Leave local authorities to determine the actions to take based on that information.
The federal government failed miserably this time. Let’s not do this again. Central planning does not work for pandemics just like it doesn’t work for economies.
Dear Bari,
It was never a question in my mind that you are a talented journalist.
However, during your times in NYT, occasionally reading your articles made me question your ability to stay an independent thinker and an objective (as much as humanly possible) reporter in the face of the both biases.
The Common Sense publication had restored my faith in your intellectual independence and bravery.
Although, some of my political views, as a non native US citizen, are diametrically opposed to yours, I have great respect for your writings and enjoy Your Common Sense.
Hence, my subscription.
Thank you. I feel I can breathe again, despite the mask on my face. {sigh}
PEOPLE ARE PISSED-OFF NOW
2 Years of bumbling incompetence AND WORSE of politicizing healthcare. Healthcare is the LAST thing that should be politicized. Lives cannot be played with.
> I don't care if you're Dem or Repub - my family's life is not yours to play political games with. To be accurate, they should be using the phrase "Follow the Politicized Science"
Taxpayers pay $ billions to fund CDC and NIH. The people who work there get paid handsomely with robust government healthcare and other benefits. They are supposed to protect us from stupidity of politicians and the diseases of the world. THEY FAILED. FAILED MISERABLY.
I cannot participate today, but would be very interested to know why any of these doctors are not concerned about the data in VAERS. VAERS has had a wide range of "underreporting factors" estimated, exacerbated by the unwieldiness of the system and coercion, of varying degrees, not to report. Further, the Swine Flu Vaccine was pulled after far fewer reports of death as an adverse reaction.