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September 13, 2023 - 10:00am
The Covid-19 pandemic has made it acceptable to spend inordinate amounts of time hand-wringing about the possibility of getting infected with something, somehow, somewhere. Last winter, there were sensationalised headlines about an impending “tripledemic”, although it never materialised. This year, we received a dire warning that “Covid did not take a summer vacation” — except that hospitalisations have remained near an all-time low.
With this unwarranted media frenzy comes the dusting off of the same old strategies: mask mandates and forced isolation, with concomitant absences from class and work, which are regularly foisted upon low-risk populations, predominantly students and health care workers.
Morris Brown College in Atlanta has brought back mandatory masking for its students, and quite a few hospital systems are now reinstating mask requirements for their staff. Some large state universities such as University of Michigan and University of Maryland are banishing students from campus if they test positive. In Montgomery County, Maryland, some kindergarteners in public schools are required to don masks due to an “outbreak” in their class, with the possibility of asymptomatic testing and social distancing on the table.
Well over halfway through 2023, how can this be?
It’s happening because we never successfully cut the head off the dragon. That is, getting policymakers, including the CDC, to admit out loud that masks and many other mitigation efforts were pointless. Mandates went away because cases and hospitalisation rates were low, not because those who imposed them stopped believing in them. In Oregon, the state health authority believes in masks so much that it issued a permanent statewide indoor mask mandate, which is merely suspended when cases are low and can be reinstated when cases rise.
We and others have written for this magazine, and elsewhere, debunking these “mitigation strategies” for the useless theatre that they are. As for masks, Cochrane, a global independent network of health researchers and professionals, conducted a meta-analysis in early 2023 of 17 randomised controlled trials and concluded that “[w]earing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference […] compared to not wearing masks.”
This very large comprehensive study should have sealed the fate of mask recommendations once and for all but, perplexingly, America’s top health leaders have decided instead to dismiss the results. Both former CDC director Rochelle Walensky and former NIAID director Anthony Fauci were quick to minimise them.
The unwillingness to accept defeat in the mitigation wars may be due to public health’s recently ramped-up compulsion to just “do something”. They must have forgotten the old medical school adage: “don’t just do something; stand there”, meaning that one shouldn’t impose useless treatments and interventions just for the sake of it.
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SubscribeWhat became apparent to me during the so-called pandemic was that there were people who actually enjoyed the lockdowns and the mandates. They believed they were being good citizens by masking up, getting jabbed, and scolding others to do likewise. It gave them a sense of moral superiority over those who questioned the media and establishment narrative. They were happy to comply with whatever the authorities told them to do.
Give people the right conditions and they will happily police themselves and each other.
What do you mean by ‘so-called pandemic’?
Because it was based on false information throughout. Fake source, fake IFR, fake CFR, fake science, fake media, fake vaccine information, fake takedown of cheap therapeutics. I could go on. Fake. The only thing not fake was the generation of billions of dollars based on the fakery.
Hmm, I dunno. Not sure 20 million people can fake their own deaths.
That didn’t happen.
No, but the health authorities can fake the causes.
Yes, but if you look at a graph of total deaths, there’s a big lump.
It’s easy to inflate the number of COVID-caused deaths: ‘Joe died of cancer, and he had COVID? Mark him down as a COVID death.’ Playing similar tricks with total deaths is a different ball of wax.
So what caused the big bump in total deaths?
Hats off to Robbie K for his(?) unremitting tenacity. Seriously, Robbie, if you’re not paid for, or owned by, one or another security agency, corporation or other entity your ability and willingness to just keep on coming with comments which you must know are going to prompt a hostile and negative reaction from most other users genuinely is very admirable in a day and age when most other people just would just give up or not bother in the first place. That’s the whole point of “Unherd”, right? Please do keep stating your honest opinion, don’t be afraid of amicable disagreement, and most of all keep an open mind 🙂
Faking the cause of 6(ish) million deaths is easy though.
Well, it only really effects obese, diabetic 85 years old with multiple comorbidities.
Whereas rest of the population is fine apart from few people with compromised immune system.
For whom so called vaccines are useless because they require immune response.
But little Nazçs like you like masking and controlling people?
What a truly brilliant rational argument: “little Nazis like you”.! He didn’t make the decisions and is just saying there is another point of view.
The reaction to covid was over the top and not justified or balanced. But it affected many more people than you say – I know some of them. However meanwhile the hysterical and conspiratorial Right Wing can’t work out if the whole thing was a fake to bring about world government or something, or biological warfare by the Chinese. It cannot actually be both.
In addition this unwarranted reintroduction of mask mandates is entirely a feature of the US. It is not being followed by any country in Europe however gung ho they previously were in their covid response. I wouldn’t be surprised if the extreme current polarisation of the US has unconsciously something to do with it – many Democrats go along with it while it reduces many Republicans to gibbering hysterical fury. What’s not to like, if you are being cynical?
The lack of critical thinking and challenging one’s own position, the resort to as hominem attacks and many other bad debating traits are really rather depressing on this supposedly free thinking forum.
Yes, they were really little Hi”ler and Stalins but they did this for the good of humanity.
I lost many friends in London because of that.
I haven’t been able to understand why. Other than speculate than, in today’s society or moral relativism, there are few opportunities for people to demonstrate they are ‘good citizens’.
I can’t help wondering whether what you are talking about isn’t the best proof we have that the so-called patriarchy is long since dead. Just asking you know.
The entire basis for the elite’s control over the masses is their claim to expertise. To admit they were wrong would catastrophically undermine their authority. Ask yourself: when was the last time you heard any politician or bureaucrat honestly admit they made a mistake? They, themselves–not “mistakes were made”, but genuine accountability?
But, unfortunately, for the elite and experts, their hanging on to voodoo public health measures actually undermines their authority. Nobody with a brain believes a word coming out of their mouthes anymore.
Most individuals in the organisation know this, but any individual saying so will be unpersoned. The organisation is not capable of admitting error.
It’s like with alcoholics – the organisation must hit rock bottom before it can reform itself. Or it goes under.
Unfortunately, not true. Most people I know here in Brooklyn still totally believe the voodoo. Some are already back to wearing masks.
I think that masking satisfies a number of psychological itches for certain people: simple anti-social feelings, fear of strangers. power to withold verbal contact, etc.
Quite often when I encounter these people, I say “take your mask off, you look ridiculous”.
Not to mention they can’t be heard or understood
There are millions who love to be told what to do by the gubmint, because the gubmint acts in the interests of the people. These people either can’t think or don’t want to think.
Yes. Right. It’s like a weird anti-human soup of motivations. Very human.
Lesley, whenever I read your comments I feel we could be very good friends if only we knew each other. But I’m sure one of these days you’ll say something I disagree with. Maybe.
There are conformists and rebels, this is true. However there are also legions of people who base their entire thoughts on any issue on extreme selectivity, particularly focussing on far out corners of the conspiracy oriented internet. They are also anything but open minded.
Don’t the people who wrote this article also claim to have expertise?
What’s your point? Spell it out.
Perhaps so, but the people who wrote this article don’t have the ability to force me to wear a mask and to penalize me if I don’t. I don’t pay the price for the mistakes of the authors of this piece.
If their wrong and you get really sick, isn’t that paying a price?
Plenty of people got sick, even after following the useless ‘mitigation measures’. Use your own common sense, don’t put yourself at risk if you’re in one of the high-risk groups and let everyone else get on with their lives. Take personal responsibility, do you really need the government to tell you what to do?
But Benjamin doesn’t want to take responsibility for his own health.
He imagines, against all evidence, that it is job of other people to save him.
But using measures he thinks work.
Although all the evidence says otherwise.
If he thinks jabs work, well take one.
But he wants other people to be forced to take one to confirm his choice.
Although vaccines do not stop transmissions and cause serious side effects in people who are not in danger from the virus.
You don’t know me. a**hole! Don’t act like you do.
I don’t agree with the majority government response overall to the covid pandemic, especially to lockdowns, and there should always be a balance of costs and benefits in any policy. Sweden adopted a better approach though they did deploy covid vaccines on a large scale. There isn’t much doubt in my mind that the vaccines saved lives and prevented a much worse degree of disease.
However the covid vaccines do not “cause serious side effects in the vast majority of people”. That comment is an anti-vaxx distortion. All those stories of young people dropping dead because they had a covid vaccine (some hadn’t even HAVE the vaccine but their cases were being cited) have been comprehensively debunked.
As far as I know no one was “forced” to take a vaccine in the UK.
You read an awful lot into a simple reply.
I would be willing to bet any amount of money that you have refused to read any of the recent exposés (not opinion pieces) revealing how governments and associated entities colluded to keep us all in the dark about GofF research, how any voices contradicting government policy were ruthlessly censored on social media and in the media, how many deaths of individuals with COVID were reported as being caused directly by the virus and on and on.
Here’s a simple truth: living, as opposed to merely existing, entails risk. Another simple truth is that the weak and cowardly always seek to impose their viewpoints on the strong.
Your ‘simple reply’ speaks volumes.
Bingo.
That is the issue and that is why nothing will ever come from whatever covid review government proposed.
165 million people slipped back into poverty because of Covid policies, I haven’t heard one politician answer to this obscenity, or the regime media hold anyone to account for this. There is no accountability and there never will be, and that’s why it can happen all over again.
At a point a few years ago the tally was half a billion. I think you a referring to a narrower geographic base?
This is from a UN report in July. I wouldn’t be shocked if they are underreporting.
I went to a new doctor yesterday for a general consultation. Lovely young guy and the proud father of a 5-week-old baby girl. Going over my history he said “Oh, no Covid vaccine! Good for you. I don’t recommend the vaxx for anyone, and I certainly didn’t get it”. He added, “They rushed the thing through essentially untested. Then they granted immunity to the pharmaceutical companies against any liabilities for injury. Don’t get me started about Fauci and the CDC . . .”
I’m SO grateful to have found this sensible, honest young doc.
I am surprised he was brave enough to speak plainly to you.
Me too, and d*amn glad he did.
Ditto. The anti-Fauci.
The tide as turned.
Curious how he missed the vaccinations saving the lives of tens of millions of people. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(22)00320-6/fulltext
Since the shots don’t prevent people from getting or spreading Covid, since absolutely nothing the medical and political authorities told us about C19 was true, since the pharmaceutical companies are free from responsibility for the enlarged hearts, blood clots, and sudden deaths of young, healthy kids, why on Earth would I believe anything coming out of The Lancet? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/05/lancet-had-to-do-one-of-the-biggest-retractions-in-modern-history-how-could-this-happen
Do not stress.
The guy is believer.
Unfortunately, his religion is to force others to believe as well and take his “cure”.
Not stressed, Andrew. I used to say this to my daughter in LA, and then just gave up. Also, I suspect Robbie is a female. What man spells his name that way?
Maybe that’s his gender identity.
The idea that legions of young people have died because they have been given a covid vaccine is absolute nonsense and has been completely debunked. There are rare side effects; theses may have been downplayed but it is easy enough to find out about them in mainstream sources. In some of the cases cited, the said young people hadn’t even been administered a covid vaccine.
https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/covid-19-vaccines-and-sudden-deaths
That article claims numbers that are mathematically impossible
Tell me he practices in Montreal!
The overwhelming majority of doctors clearly do not agree. I hope he’s not saying that to his elderly patients. I do actually know people who died of covid. Of course it’s common that respiratory diseases have always been the final cause of death for many elderly people, but that isn’t a reason to shout “being it on” when we can reduce the chances.
Fauci is the ‘star’ of The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert F Kennedy.
He is the proverbial little man of limited ability who has clawed his way to the top of a very smelly pile and ruthlessly clung onto power.
He has presided over the complete capture of the whole process of creation, testing and rubber-stamping of new drugs by Big Pharma.
The whole system is compromised and is all to do with profit maximisation and little to do with patients. It includes scientists, university departments and government agencies.
Even the worst conspiracy theories about Pfizer et al turn out to be little more than the truth. For instance, Muslim fears that drug treatment trial programs for Hepatitis in Pakistan were in fact covert longterm contraceptive programs; I always thought this was transparently paranoid nonsense – but alas, no.
Our own multi-million pound Covid enquiry will avoid the only real question left worth asking since we’ve already worked out that lockdowns, masks test and trace were disastrous failures; did the vaccines which made Fauci and his pals (Bilbo Gates etc) billions in no time at all really achieve anything either?
But like Brexit I fear, we daren’t even go there.
I completely agree with your sentiment except for one inaccuracy. Fauci himself did not make billions out of this. As a federal employee what he can accept and what he makes is very limited (notwithstanding that he was the highest paid federal employee, with a salary exceeding the president’s). But Fauci gained something that is more intangible but worth far far more than money, and that’s fame and immense power, to the extent that he is literally worshipped as a demi-god by half the population of the US.
Fauci did not make billions, but he still made a tidy pile. Federal law allows favoured employees to participate in patent royalties (from patents on medications approved by Fauci’s agencies), and Fauci sat at the spigot for this boondoggle.
Yes, and I believe he refuses to tell Senator Paul just how much he makes in that way.
Yep, that was meant in toto.
Fauci made millions from vaccine patent royalties together with other government health wonks to the tune of $190 million approximately.
Fauci of course was also funding the gain-of-function research at the lab in Wuhan which most likely caused the pandemic and enabled the emergency authorisation of a novel vaccine technology which they’d been trying to find a purpose for with the military since the 70’s. Could there be a link I wonder ?
The UK isn’t much better. For instance, the modelling department at University College London which reliably stoked the Doomsday fear mongering with it’s worst-case scenario of half a million deaths is 100% funded by Bill and Melissa Gates.
Absolutely hilarious, where did you find this stuff? :o)
Is that all you’ve got, Robbie?
Well, to be fair any programme to stop overbreding of Muslims and Africans would be great gift to humanity.
In the US the Covid panic was the test case to limit civil rights and corrupt elections with mail-in ballots. The Leftists are planning on a replay for the 2024 election cycle starting now. The are priming the pump for climate change, gun control among other social engineering goal. This must be resisted.
I still have my bed surrounded by chain-link fencing to keep out the mosquitos.
Oh really? I’ve been using builder’s scaffolding.
I am wearing medieval chain mail.
Is this sufficient against covid?
Or I need full plated armour.
Obviously with blue mask over my helmet?
Without the magic mask the rest of it’s just a waste of money.
The controlling elites discovered the essence of raw power in the pandemic when they realised just how easy it was (is) to remove freedoms from their subject populations and to impose endless restrictions and contradictions upon their compliant electorates.
One example: Initially we were told that masks were completely ineffective in managing Covid; then, overnight, we were ordered to wear them in almost every situation outside the home, with a threat of legal sanction for failure to comply. In Wales, UK, our dictatorial First Minister banned the game of golf, even though it takes place in the open air, and most people do not get anywhere near 2 metres from each other during a game. Even so, the tyrant prevented the entire population from playing golf, which would have done wonders for its physical and mental health during 2+ years of lockdown.
In the aftermath of the pandemic and its tyrannical impositions, the ruling elite, the Woking Class, has implemented the lessons in control and repression it learned during the Covid crisis. In the centuries ahead the Covid pandemic of 2020-2022 will be seen as the key episode in human history that led to the destruction of democracy and its replacement by a vindictive, cynical abuse of power by a small, ruthless, post-modern elite that destroys opposition as the basis of its control over subject populations. The ghosts of H*tler and S*alin loom large over us as the new era enshrouds us.
A SARS Covid 2 virus is between 50nm and 140nm depending on which researcher you ask. For comparison a human hair is between 80,000nm and 100,000nm, making the virus anything between 571 times and 2000 times narrower than something you can barely see.
To be fair, to defeat covidiots arguments you need to use proper data.
Covid virus is transmitted in vapour particles which are much bigger then you quote.
Still basic masks are not capable of stopping it.
There are masks capable of stopping it if properly fitted.
They are expensive and really viable only for critical situations.
What about asking Portadown guys writing article about it?
Fair enough. The aerosols are <4500 nm: at least 17 to 22 times narrower than a human hair.
If the CDC starts admitting it was wrong about this, then they will have to admit they were wrong about many other issues. Issues that represent too much money for them to admit they were wrong.
I am always struck by the way partisans are always sure the studies that support their opinion are right and the ones that don’t are always flawed. The truth is I don’t know the truth about anything related to Covid because it has become so politicized that I don’t trust either side. All I know is I have worn a mask indoors where there are lots of people, like the supermarket, and I have not gotten Covid. Is the mask useful, don’t know and don’t care, it is an easy precaution to take.
I have read articles where the meta-analysis cited by these two has been thoroughly debunked. A meta-analysis of flawed studies would be just as flawed. Again, I am not qualified to know who is right and must rely on experts. That is why it is so depressing to see science politicized.
I am older so I don’t think I would fare well if I got the virus and would likely bid farewell to the world.
Beside I have bad teeth.
I had Wuhan Flu six weeks after my booster shot. I can’t say I enjoyed it – it felt like a cannabis hangover. But it was no big deal, and I went for a 6-7 mile walk every day to shake off the cobwebs. One thing is for sure, and that is that there is absolutely no way I am ever maskurbating again.
I am happy for you if you want to wear mask.
But I object to people expecting others to wear masks.
Basic masks do NOT work.
So if you feel the need to wear mask you need to get FFP3 one with vapour filter.
They used to be 7 quid per mask during pandemic in uk.
Cheaper options would be FFP2 with 98% filtering for about 2 quid.
Anything else, like surgical masks and fabric masks, is just rubbish.
The Omicron version of SARS CoV 2 stays in the upper airways and does not descend into the Lungs as the previous versions did. As a result severe sickness was minimised. I am happy to take a vaccine that will remain in my arm. I am not happy to take a vaccine that will travel all over my body. There is huge potential for Mrna Vaccines in destroying cancer where it is specific for that Individual but not one size fits all. I will continue to take Vitamin D3 and Vitamin K2. I also take Zinc with Quercetin to keep my Immune system fully charged.
Masks are a symbol of fear.
You need fear to sell the cure.
The cure needs to be given to EVERYONE, every year.
All of this for one thing – $$$$$$$.
And power.
I guess America’s top health leaders don’t believe in ‘following the science’.
Offices are an obsolete nonsense. Time to ditch the absurd commuting mandate too:
https://ayenaw.com/2022/06/27/cults-i/
People in Japan have been wearing masks for decades. So what? Have you lot nothing better to do than to get het up about trivia like this?
During covid, I listened, incredulous, to excitable people like you fulminating about the “elite crackdown” etc, in realtion to people being prevented from going to the pub or discouraged from the drudgery of needless commuting. Well, if that was the case, how come they lifted all restrictions?
Only people who have lived very sheltered lives get excited about stuff like this.
https://ayenaw.com/2021/10/23/tyranny-tourism/
https://ayenaw.com/2021/08/31/the-road-to-freedom/
Hilarious satire, thanks! Did you also compose the linked posts?
I wonder how many of your neighbours you grassed up for having a friend or two round, or going our for longer, or travelling further than permitted?
It was for their own good.
Ha ha.
Why thank you Ms. Hayton, don’t believe we’ve been introduced.
Tyranny doesn’t usually start with mass round-ups and shootings . It starts with gradually, then quickly, conditioning people to obey government diktats through shame, fear, and cowardice – all of which was experienced during the ‘pandemic’. During covid, I listened, incredulous, to excitable people like you fulminating about idiot rednecks and chavs who refused to wear masks or get jabbed.
Covid restrictions were lifted begrudgingly when the evidence was overwhelmingly clear that masks and vaccines were doing very little to make things better; in fact they made things worse especially as people began to report hitherto strange aches, inflammations and even strokes. There were even well-known politicians who struck lucrative deals with pharmaceutical companies by getting people to jab up and who were more than keen to lie and do anything to deflect attention off their activities. It took mass protests across the world to finally get restrictions lifted, even though these went largely unreported by the mainstream media, and those that were reported were cast as far-right extremist movements. Many people even lost their jobs because they refused to go along with tyranny.
Your links illuminate nothing, but sneering contempt toward those with legitimate concerns about government overreach.
Your history is completely off. Totalitarian systems in face have in fact never been imposed in the softly softly way you describe, though this is a common trope. The Bolsheviks seized power promising bread and peace, while the National Socialists gained power by a combination of electoral success and machievellian intrigues with Hindenberg and conservatives and the military, in which Hitler eventually out manoeuvred them. Obviously Mao and the Chinese Communists gained power through a brutal civil war, the Cubans a Revolution and another civil war etc etc.
There is a lot to say on the subject of the excessive reaction of western governments to the covid pandemic, but the end was not brought about by mass protests; for a start the restrictions were supported by a majority. Some MPs campaigned on in it in the Tory Party – for all its faults no other party had anyone doing this, plus the costs to the public purse were becoming completely unaffordable.
Why don’t you report us for saying such awful things Frank. I understand the UK has a non crime hate reporting system designed just for people like you. Think how powerful and important that would make you feel.
You maybe posting on the wrong site. This is UnHerdQAnon. Good health to you.
Unherd has no affiliation with QAnon as far as I know. Unless the purpose of your comment was to expressly conflate the two, I don’t see why you would think that.
Must be in cahoots with the nefarious Champagne Socialist.
Maybe he was being sarcastic or ironic?
As Douglas Murray might say to Frank, “This site may not be for you. Indeed, life may not be for you.”
Hee hee.
A ‘sheltered life’ would consist of never leaving the house, keeping 6 ft of distance between yourself and anyone else and covering your face with a diaper at all times. The simplistic crap you link to is the usual tiresome elitist railing against the ‘commoners’. The weak and cowardly need the authorities to direct their lives, to hide behind, and to impose their fearful worldview on everybody else.