Tag: lockdowns

We All Have PTSD

Two years ago, reports started appearing that compared the effects of lockdowns with post-traumatic stress disorder. As it turns out, one of the symptoms of PTSD is forgetting what happened. It’s an evolved trait that helps the human mind cope with terrible things. Our brains are good at blocking it out. I will explain the neuroscience behind this in a bit but first an anecdote from this morning.

I was speaking to the director of a childrens’ choir and he was speaking about an age gap in his singers. The lead singer just graduated high school, and the next oldest singer is 14, which creates huge problems for the choral competence. I hesitated to do it but I finally just observed that this 3-year gap fits exactly with the lockdown period, child masking, and Zoom school.

He began to speak about what it was like to train a choir on Zoom and then conduct masked singers outdoors on winter nights. He recalled the attacks and the difficulties, and then his voice trailed off.

“Actually I’ve blocked out that whole period of life from my memory. I won’t think about it anymore. Anyway, I need to circulate a bit here but good seeing you.”

That was that.

It got me curious about the relationship between selective memory and trauma. For a long time now I’ve noticed that when this subject comes up, the response is either to quickly change the subject, which is common, or dig deeper into what seems like a bit of catharsis. Some people have so much to share, so many painful memories, so much shock and abuse to report, that once they start they cannot stop talking.

This one comment from this one choir director got me suspecting that vast numbers of people might be trying to forget it all. This is how the political debates manage to pretend like this never happened, how the major media gets away with never bringing it up, and how people like Fauci still get high speaking fees, and so on. It’s not just that they are no-good liars; too often it’s because people really do want to forget.

This is how the number one most shared trauma of our lives is fading so fast into the national and global consciousness.

It’s a well-known feature of child or spousal abuse. The memories are so terrible and grim that the human mind develops the capacity for pretending like it never happened if only so that life functioning can continue. This is fine but actually the trauma is still there and feeds other forms of pathologies like substance abuse and attachment disorders and so on. The point of therapy is to come to terms with the reality itself in the process of healing.

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Just Admit You Were Wrong!

The answer to the question “Will they ever admit to being wrong?” is of course: no. I’m speaking in particular of the architects of the lockdown and mandate policies that wrecked the rights and liberties of billions worldwide.

Now they want to pretend like it never happened or that someone else is responsible. And they do this even as they hammer out policies and treaties that normalize that exact response – OK, some tweaks here and there – in the future, while forging institutions that crush dissent.

Those people we know about. They are rather hopeless.

Let’s address a different case, the run-of-the-mill pundit who got it wrong and just cannot admit it. These are the people who should trouble us more because saying sorry in this case is completely cost-free. In fact, the opposite is true.

Readers would cheer their humility and congratulate them for honesty. The only cost would be psychological in some measure. They are supposed to be these great opinion leaders and cannot bring themselves to admit that they were so bloody wrong on such a huge topic.

This comes to mind because of an effusive and even absurdist article by Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. It was about how and why Taylor Swift is the greatest thing America has to offer.

The language here is intentionally over the top and she knows it. It’s a fun way to write. I know this because I used to write this way all the time, celebrating the glories of vending machine chicken salad or the McDonald’s cheese stick or what have you.

My argument here is not with the hyperbole as such. The problem comes deep into the article where she says the following:

“Downtowns across the country — uniquely battered by the pandemic and the riots and demonstrations of 2020 — are, while she is there, brought to life, with an influx of visitors and a local small business boom. Wherever she went it was like the past three years didn’t happen.”

Battered by the pandemic? Seriously? The pathetic pathogen never closed a single business, school, church, country club, arts theater, mall, stadium or public park. Governments did that, on the advice of crazed experts who pushed for this nonsense with no concern for public well-being.

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Doctors sound alarm over mysterious outbreak of brain infections in Nevada kids – and they believe it’s linked to COVID lockdowns

Health officials are sounding the alarm over a spike in rare and serious brain abscesses in children in and around Las Vegas, Nevada.

Experts at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating the spate of cases, while doctors across America say they are also seeing a rise in cases. 

The number of brain abscesses in minors tripled in Nevada last year, shooting up from an average of four or five a year to 18.

Dr Taryn Bragg, a pediatric neurosurgeon and associate professor at the University of Utah who treats the cases, told CNN she had ‘never seen anything like it’ in her 20 years’ experience.

Physicians are not sure what has caused the rise, but said it could be due to weakened immunity to infections due to Covid measures such as lockdowns. 

Dr Bragg was able to spot the pattern and notify local public health officials because she is the only pediatric neurosurgeon for Nevada. 

After March 2022, she said there was a ‘huge increase’ in brain abscesses, which is ‘unusual’, particularly as ‘the similarities in terms of the presentation of cases was striking’.

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The Devastation is Deeper and Wider than We Know

Three years ago, Covid-19 struck the world. In the face of a rapidly evolving public health crisis, governments and institutions implemented policies to mitigate the spread of the virus. Today, we can look back and see the unintended consequences of these policies, which have had a lasting impact on public trust and our society.

Firstly, the healthcare system experienced significant disruption as a result of the disease but arguably more so from Covid policies themselves. Medical errors increased in hospitals due to the constraints on healthcare resources and mandates. Millions of cancer screenings were missed, potentially causing a future surge in late-stage cancer cases. HIV testing was disrupted, leading to delayed diagnoses and treatment. Additionally, the pressure to report Covid deaths led to inaccurate death counts, prompting more fear and furthering egregious policies.

Many of the Covid models that informed these policies proved to be flawed or unreliable, further eroding trust in the institutions that promoted them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) faced multiple controversies, including accusations of hiding data, unreliable data, and tracking millions of Americans’ phone locations. Additionally, the influence of unions on CDC policy raised concerns about political interference in public health decisions.

Privacy and censorship concerns related to Covid policies also loom large. Governments and private companies used Covid apps to expand surveillance, stop protests, and profit from user information. Reports of CDC collusion with Big Tech have prompted multiple hearings on Capitol Hill.

These concerns were exacerbated by evidence of collusion between the CDC, the White House, and Big Tech companies to suppress free speech and control the narrative surrounding the pandemic. The Twitter blacklisting of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a respected medical expert, is just one example of how dissenting voices were silenced.

The massive spending on Covid relief programs also had significant consequences. In Canada, billions were wasted in poorly managed programs. Similarly, in the United States, billions in aid went to hospitals that didn’t need the funds, raising questions about the allocation and oversight of such spending.

One of the most significant consequences of Covid policies has been the impact on child health and development. Lockdowns led to a distressing increase in infant abuse and a surge in anxiety among children. Notably, the restrictions had a devastating impact on teenagers, as well as causing developmental delays in babies.

The Covid regulations also led to a rise in child labor worldwide, with millions of additional child marriages predicted as a consequence of the pandemic. These policies contributed to a significant crisis in child development.

Furthermore, the development of children was negatively impacted by masks and isolation, as evidenced by issues stemming from Covid’s social distancing, such as speech and expression difficulties. The incidence of child abuse increased significantly during lockdown periods, and the cancellation of sports activities had a severe impact on children. The reporting of abuse was also diminished by lockdowns, and the implementation of Covid regulations led to an increase in cases of child sexual abuse.

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CDC Bought Phone Data to Monitor Americans’ Compliance With Lockdowns, Contracts Show

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) purchased data from tracking companies to monitor compliance with lockdowns, according to contracts with the firms.

The CDC paid one firm $420,000 and another $208,000. That bought access to location data from at least 55 million cellphone users.

The contracts, approved under emergency review due to the COVID-19 pandemic, were aimed at providing the CDC “with the necessary data to continue critical emergency response functions elated to evaluating the impact of visits to key points of interest, stay at home orders, closures, re-openings and other public heath communications related to mask mandate, and other merging research areas on community transmission of SARS-CoV-2,” the contracts, obtained by The Epoch Times, state.

The CDC said it would be using the tracking data to “assess home-by-hour behaviors (i.e. curfew analysis) by exploring the percentage of mobile devices at home during specific period of time.” The data could also be integrated with other information “to provide a comprehensive picture of movement/travel of persons during the COVID-19 pandemic to better understand mandatory stay-at-home orders, business closure, school re-openings, and other non-pharmaceutical interventions in states and cities.”

Under a heading labeled “potential use cases” for the data, the CDC said it could be used to try to connect the forced closures of bars and restaurants with COVID-19 infections and death rates, as well as try to assess the impact of state restrictions on close contact between people outside of their home.

The data could also be used to monitor adherence to mandated or recommended quarantines after arrival from another state and to examine the correlation of mobility patterns and spikes in COVID-19 cases at facilities such as churches, concerts, and grocery stores. It would also enable examining movement restrictions such as curfews to show “patterns” and “compliance,” the contracts state.

The contracts were previously reported on by Vice News, but the outlet only released a screenshot of a single page. Together, the contracts run 71 pages. Both were signed in 2021.

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CIA Agent Cloaks Lockdown Propaganda in Concern for China

On January 24, 2023, Dr. Michael V. Callahan published an opinion piece in The New York Times entitled “The Indirect Ways the U.S. Can Help China Avoid Covid Catastrophe.”

If we assume this was written by a prominent doctor at a Harvard-affiliated hospital – an academic professional who bases his opinions on sound medical principles and scientific knowledge – it makes no sense at all. In fact, it is an embarrassment to the writer and the institution he represents.

If, however, we realize that this is just the latest in the quarantine-until-vaccine propaganda campaign of a CIA agent and top biosecurity cabal member, everything suddenly makes perfect sense. In fact, many of the points in the article map beautifully onto Robert Blumen’s helpful Covid propaganda grid.

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Vatican investigating ‘sex party’ in cathedral

The Catholic Church is investigating allegations of a “sex party” that took place at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Newcastle while the rest of the UK was under strict lockdown rules, the Sunday Times reported. The probe is part of a wider Vatican inquiry into the diocese, involving multiple cases of sexual abuse.

In a letter reported by the newspaper on Sunday, the Archbishop of Liverpool said that he had been asked by the Pope’s advisers to compile “an in-depth report” into events leading up to the resignation of Robert Byrne as the Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle in December.

Byrne was made bishop in 2019, and immediately appointed Father Michael McCoy as the Dean of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Newcastle. 

When the UK was placed under strict lockdown rules the following year, McCoy allegedly approached several parishoners and asked them to attend “a party” at the cathedral, a source told the Times. This event was described by the source as “a sex party taking place in the priests’ living quarters attached to Newcastle cathedral.”

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Lockdowns Were Counterterrorism, Not Public Health 

As previously reported, in the United States, the Covid pandemic response was designed and led by the national security branches of government, not by any public health agency or official. 

Furthermore, we do not have a public record of what the national security pandemic plan actually stated. 

So what? You might ask. Why should we care if Covid policy was determined by the National Security Council (NSC) instead of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)? What’s so bad about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) taking over as lead federal agency for pandemic response, replacing Health and Human Services (HHS)?

National security is about protecting us from threats of war and terrorism

The answer to these questions is, in short, that the national security pandemic response plans, devised under the rubric of biodefense, are aimed at countering bioterrorism attacks. They focus on preventing hostile actors from obtaining bioweapons, surveilling for potential bioweapons use, and developing medical countermeasures. 

According to the World Health Organization, “biological and toxin weapons are either microorganisms like virus, bacteria or fungi, or toxic substances produced by living organisms that are produced and released deliberately to cause disease and death in humans, animals or plants.” 

In the rare event of an actual bioweapons attack – the biodefense strategy can be summarized as quarantine-until-vaccine: keep individuals as isolated from the bioweapon as possible, for as long as necessary, until you have an effective medical countermeasure (medicine/vaccine). 

Bioterrorism response plans – under the broader umbrella of counterterrorism – are not designed to incorporate the complicated nuances of public health principles, which balance the need to protect individuals from a pathogen with the need to keep society as functional as possible to maintain overall well-being. 

If counterterrorism measures are deployed against a public health threat, it is thus not surprising to witness massive disruptions to society, and harms to public health – as we have seen with the Covid-19 pandemic response.

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State Power and Covid Crimes

The three major controversies over pandemic management for the past three years have been lockdown measures, universal masking recommendations and mandates, and Covid vaccines. 

The last was a pharmaceutical intervention using revolutionary new technology. The first two were radical departures from the existing scientific and policy consensus as encapsulated in official documents from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and in several national pandemic preparedness plans. They established the willingness of the state to dictate every aspect of people’s lives, down to the most ridiculous and absurd details. 

For example, people were told when they could shop, the hours during which they could shop, what they could purchase, how close they could get to others and which direction they could move in by following arrows on the floor. Governments also stepped into nations’ bedrooms at home to dictate with whom people could and could not be intimate: a ukase that notoriously turned Professor Neil ‘Lockdown’ Ferguson himself into Professor Pantsdown.

Lockdowns thus proved the extent to which people would comply with state directives without deploying independent critical thinking and, like frogs in boiling water, their almost total lack of concern about the gradually increasing degree of infringements of civil liberties and personal freedoms. 

Compliance with often idiotic rules was ratcheted up to another level still with mask recommendations-cum-mandates, with one additional notable feature. Governments were able to mobilise members of the public to exert peer pressure and societal coercion to enforce compliance, backed by often brutal police coercion against pockets of resistance and protest. 

In retrospect, it’s doubtful if the degree of state and social coercion deployed to increase vaccine uptake would have been possible without the ground having first been prepared with lockdowns and masks.

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Are Lockdown Zealots Incapable of Introspection?

Writing in The Atlantic on October 31, Brown University economist Emily Oster penned a pre-emptive plea for amnesty for Covid-policy hardliners. Why? Because they were all well-intentioned and their pronouncements rested on benign ignorance. 

Judging by the numerous responses in print and social media and online commentary, the viral article lit the fuse on widespread, simmering but still raw anger. To many it suggests the lockdown zealots are incapable of introspection, of accepting culpability. Instead, they just want to move on to the next excuse to unleash blanket authoritarian control all over again.

Jessica Hockett has coined the word “Osterism” to describe the attitude of forgive, forget and move on from earlier finger-wagging, abusive and vile taunts because we didn’t know but meant well. Abracadabra. Puff! it’s all gone. ‘Twas but a bad dream, time to wake up and get going for the day’s activities.

Sorry, but the whole Covid debacle needs to be turned instead into a parable with a moral for the ages, to show how easy it is for a civilized society to be terrorized into believing blatant falsehoods and turn on one another with shocking savagery.

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