COVID-19 and the Government Response

It has been over three years now since I was knocked flat on my back by a mysterious respiratory bug. This was after the emergence of COVID-19 as an international news item, but before it was officially here in North America. I still don't know what it was. This looming threat of a novel coronavirus soon led to "two weeks to flatten the curve" in March of 2020, followed by many weeks of continued shutdowns and slow return to any semblance of normalcy even in relatively light-handed states.

Since then, we have had ample opportunity to see the consequences of different response policies. Despite the proclamations of our prophets of doom in academia and the media, states with less strict mandates and enforcement did not suffer overwhelming death, and strict states did not see significant statistical improvements. Sure, many a snapshot has been claimed as proof that lockdowns worked, but aggregate data is far less convincing.

I am not in the camp of conspiracy theorists insisting viruses don't even exist or that COVID is a complete hoax. However, I do find it odd that the lockdowns were so effective that the seasonal flu and other viruses effectively vanished from all statistics nationwide, yet we were so reckless in disregarding those same lockdowns that we deliberately caused COVID-19 to proliferate unchecked.

Early on, the "COVID deniers" warned that the economic consequences of prolonged lockdowns would destroy the economy and bring long-term damage through delayed medical care, depression, and other social impacts. Additionally, they said the virus was likely to mutate faster than any vaccine could be adjusted to adapt, and the new MRNA technology was untested in efficacy and safety. Dissenting epidemiologists with serious credentials include the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration who advised a response tailored to protecting the vulnerable while allowing those at less risk to resume normalcy, taking whatever precautions they deemed appropriate. This was treated as "misinformation" to be silenced at all costs. Officials could make dire pronouncements without challenge, though. Remember when Joe Biden warned of, "... winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm"?

State and federal governments of the US and many foreign countries imposed arbitrary restrictions which struck many of us as counterproductive. Dissenters were excoriated by officials, and social media corporations squelched people who refused to toe the line. People who refused the new vaccine were often fired. Economic policies boiled down to money supply inflation and massive handouts to corporate cronies resulting in the ongoing price inflation on top of supply chain issues still rippling through the economy today and disproportionately harming the working class along with anyone on a fixed income.

Now, the same sanctimonious authoritarians who demanded their critics be silenced are admitting what the "deniers" were saying all along. The numbers have been skewed from the start, and death tolls included suspected COVID cases and people dying with COVID instead of from COVID to inflate the numbers. While the vaccine may have been effective early on against the alpha variant, it certainly does not prevent infection or transmission of later variants as promised by officials and experts on many occasions. Claims that it prevents worse outcomes are dubious at best, because the predicted severity of outcomes tended to be wildly exaggerated in the first place. Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence of MRNA vaccine risks continue to mount, although I hesitate to fully endorse such claims for now.

Based on both my philosophical preconceptions and the global records after the fact, liberty should have been the policy. Instead, we got economic chaos and a massive political wealth transfer to the politically-connected with a dusting of inflation and debt. People were divided based on how they accepted or challenged the constant deluge of fear porn from politicians and pundits. The disingenuous conflation of direct COVID consequences and the effects of political intervention in response continues to confuse most commentators.

Now, in 2023, the fear is mostly gone, but the new framework for expanded tyranny remains. I will not willingly comply with people who have been factually and morally wrong but never suffer the consequences for the harms they inflict. They claimed to have knowledge that proved untrue, and were absolutely certain of things that proved wrong, but the cost of their error is borne by others as always. I do not consent.