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I refuse to declare blanket amnesty for the pandemic. Yet that is what one opinion writer for The Atlantic believes should happen. Generously award blanket amnesty, move on, and don’t hold anyone accountable.
In April 2020, with nothing else to do, my family took an enormous number of hikes. We all wore cloth masks that I had made myself. We had a family hand signal, which the person in the front would use if someone was approaching on the trail and we needed to put on our masks. Once, when another child got too close to my then-4-year-old son on a bridge, he yelled at her “SOCIAL DISTANCING!”
These precautions were totally misguided. In April 2020, no one got the coronavirus from passing someone else hiking. Outdoor transmission was vanishingly rare. Our cloth masks made out of old bandanas wouldn’t have done anything, anyway. But the thing is: We didn’t know.
Oh honey, we knew a LOT by April. We knew even more by May of 2020. Wilful blindness and following the “experts” like sheep is ZERO excuse.
It may not have been evident to Emily and her family, but we for damned sure knew that the lockdowns continued past the entire “three weeks to flatten the curve” bullshit would bring harm far too many. And…they did. It wasn’t just the horrors of good people dying in nursing homes, or lone paddle boarders getting arrested WHILE on the ocean. Oh no, it was way more than that.
It’s too bad we shut the entire economy down & took on tyrannical powers that have never been used before in this country—looking back, you should have been able to go to church and use public parks while we let people riot in the streets—but it was a confusing time for everyone.
— Matthew J. Peterson (@docMJP) October 31, 2022
Oh but Emily knows that some harm has come to our kids as she now realizes there is a wee bit of concern about the devastating learning loss we are now seeing as a result of the lockdowns. But since, as she said, “we didn’t know,” don’t blame her! Don’t blame the experts! We knew NOTHING.
I call BULLSHIT. We ALL knew the lockdowns were harmful, and stupid. Fauci and Birx spoke out of both sides of their mouth on multiple occasions and, as we now know, they were hiding information that was relevant to LIFTING the lockdowns. Teachers unions led by people like horse-faced Randi Weingarten advocated for schools to stay closed indefinitely.
But NOW she’s trying to rewrite history by claiming that everything they are doing now is to protect democracy and get our kids education back on track.
Teachers didn’t like remote learning either, she protests, and Betsy DeVos had praised it pre-COVID. Randi, in fact, opposed Secretary DeVos’ early drive to reopen the nation’s public schools for full-time, in-person learning as soon as it became clear that it was perfectly safe.
In July 2020, Weingarten told WABC’s John Catsimatidis, “There’s no way that you’re going to have full-time schools for all the kids and all the teachers the way we used to have it.”
May I remind her about the teachers who sent obituaries to the school boards, or did idiotic ‘keep schools closed dances?’ Randi, just like everyone else MUST be held accountable. No amnesty for her. Period.
What Emily, Randi, Fauci, Birx and far too many others are doing is engaging in some of the most egregious gaslighting ever. It’s indeed a master class.
The narrative now goes something like this: Lockdowns never really happened, because governments never actually locked people in their homes; but if there were lockdowns, then they saved millions of lives and would have saved even more if only they’d been stricter; but if there were any collateral damage, then that damage was an inevitable consequence of the fear from the virus independent of the lockdowns; and even when things were shut down, the rules weren’t very strict; but even when the rules were strict, we didn’t really support them.
Put simply, the prevailing narrative of the mainstream left is that any upside from the response to Covid is attributable to the state-ordered closures and mandates that they supported, while any downside was an inevitable consequence of the virus independent of any state-ordered closures and mandates which never happened and which anyway they never supported. Got it? Good.
Yet we are supposed to issue blanket amnesty and just move on. I. Don’t. Think. So. Why? Because loved ones died with NO ONE BY THEIR SIDE.
Oh no, @ProfEmilyOster. Many of us won’t ever forgive or forget. Especially when it comes to the seniors who died in nursing homes after leaders flooded their residences with covid patients and never told us or protected them. They knew better. We deserve justice first. https://t.co/b7pFsW0NWx
— Janice Dean (@JaniceDean) October 31, 2022
After she died the hospital shut down all deliveries & refused to allow them to have her body shipped home for a funeral (was in NC, live in SC). Said it would be months. Had to get a lawyer & SC govt officials involved to get body released (yes, really happened).
— Let Them Eat Cake (@bclpbclp) October 31, 2022
People were forbidden to hold funerals. Mothers gave birth with no family with them. Essential workers went to work while too many of their kids had teachers barely phoning it in via Zoom classes. Churches were closed and too many medical procedures were canceled which has now caused residual and long-lasting medical harm to many, plus a huge rise in non-Covid excess deaths.
My 82-year-old mother is still being forced to wear a mask – with hearing aids and glasses – in her housing & at all medical appts, despite being 4x-vaccinated.
— Anitra (Yes, with an “R”) (@mrsnightskyre) October 31, 2022
Few are willing to unmask so she can read lips and have a better understanding of what they say.
It isn’t just the United States who is suffering from the consequences of the lockdowns. New Zealand and Australia were two of the most draconian countries outside of China to engage in years-long lockdowns. They too are realizing the consequences of operating out of fear instead of rational reasoned thinking.
But not Fauci. Oh no. He’ll be insisting he is THE SCIENCE until he finally dies. He knows all and is here to tell you that, despite all the evidence proving otherwise, the lockdowns saved lives.
No it didn’t. The lockdowns didn’t save lives. There is zero quantifiable evidence showing that. Instead, the evidence pendulum goes the opposite way. We now know how grave the learning loss was. We are just beginning to find out how shutting down medical procedures for months or more is now contributing to even worse health issues for some rather than healing. More people went hungry DURING the lockdowns than prior to the country shutting down. The list goes on.
The pandemic has harmed us all immeasurably in numerous ways. But to suggest that we just issue a blanket amnesty to those who aren’t even remorseful for their role in the lockdowns?
“The conservative case for not holding people accountable after their politically-motivated totalitarianism destroyed millions of lives and small businesses.” pic.twitter.com/MZF4IcSj1p
— Aurelian of Rome ☪️ (@AurelianofRome) October 31, 2022
No. And Hell to the NO. Accountability FIRST and then perhaps forgiveness can be considered. Perhaps.
Welcome Instapundit Readers!
Feature Photo Credit: Pandemic playground by Queven via Pixabay, cropped and modified
John in Indy says: The non-lethality of Covid 19 was known by February of 2020.
The knowledge came from the cruise ship the Diamond Princess.
Cruising off Japan with a younger crew, and a thousand passengers 65 to 85. That most vulnerable cohort.
With only the ships’ embarked doctor and support staff, quarantined without additional medecines or equipment, the disease ran its’ course, resulting in a death rate of under 3%.
Worse than the seasonal flu that we didn’t have in 2020, but not the Black Plague.
The actions of the administrative State and the globalist interests were deliberate, and planned ahead, either waiting for the opportunity that Covid provided, or helping this occur.
Looking at Pelosi, with her close relationship with China, holding the news cycle open by waiting to file her second (bullsh*t) Articles of Impeachment, while encouraging people to go celebrate Chinese New Year, which was the superspreader event which hammered Northern Italy, as most of the “Made in Italy” fashions and accessories are made there by Chinese, who flew home to Wuhan for the holiday. China having locked down people domestically, but encouraged international air travel, just to share the joy.
Their actions, and those of their supporters were deliberate, and no forgiveness is possible without admission of wrongdoing, and justice for those whose lives were destroyed for political purpose.
Never forget.
John in Indy
Joan Carsey says: Mainly it was to cheat in 2020 election and ruin the economy.
Cameron says: I remember when we last tried amnesty in this country and it was a disaster since Democrats were negotiating in bad faith.
So no. Fuck anyone who asks for amnesty. We want retribution. We want the people responsible held to account and never allowed to bring harm to normal people ever again. That’s my only counteroffer.
Taylor says: The Left and their lapdog media allies saw a golden opportunity to grab power and control over peoples day to day lives and they took it (not to mention a golden opportunity to weaken Donald Trump for November, 2020). It is interesting that what brought Andrew Cuomo down was his womanizing and sexual harassment instead of his disastrous policy of sending infected people into nursing homes.
GWB says: These precautions were totally misguided.
Yes. And a huge chunk of America was trying to tell you this. But you wouldn’t listen. Noooo, you had the ‘experts’ telling you how “deadly” this was, and they constantly used the word “pandemic” to play on your fears (since every pandemic you had read about in your pathetically lame history classes had been truly deadly – at least a little), and you just turned off your brain and followed them.
But the thing is: We didn’t know.
The thing is, you should have. The information was out there. The Diamond Princess info was publicly available. The info from the French researchers about HCQ was publicly available. The info on co-morbidity was available publicly. Heck, the info on the Wuhan Lab escape was initially publicly available. So, you not knowing is not an excuse for your stupid beliefs and other people’s evil actions. It’s evidence for the indictment against you.
the devastating learning loss
It goes beyond that. There’s normal developmental loss – things like language development, visual affinity, human interaction.
they were hiding information
They were hiding it from the sheep. Most of the rest of us knew it because some people read original sources and propagated that information outside of the gatekeepers like Twitter and Farcebook.
They knew better. We deserve justice first.
THIS. ^^THIS^^
He’ll be insisting he is THE SCIENCE until he finally dies.
Which should be much sooner, rather than later. Of course, that should have happened when he screwed up the HIV response in the 80s. His progressive ‘virtues’ caused a self-fulfilling prophesy of AIDS not being just a disease of lifestyle.
Accountability FIRST and then perhaps forgiveness can be considered.
This is how justice should work.
Which is why we’ll likely never see justice for this tyranny. Consequences aren’t something we do anymore.
Maybe this will push enough people over the edge the Tree of Liberty might get a little watering.
HarvardR says: “Our cloth masks made out of old bandanas wouldn’t have done anything, anyway. But the thing is: We didn’t know.”
Oh bullshit, yes we did. There are experts in the field of respiratory protection, and they aint the bunch of doctors and epidemiologists and virologists who were paraded about to tell us to wear masks. Industrial hygienists are experts in the field of respiratory protection (more so a Board Certified IH, of which there are thousands) but you never saw any of those experts trotted out to explain the minimal utility of non-fit tested N95 respirators or the absolute futility of cloth or surgical masks (what we called “spit shields” pre-2020). And the discipline of respiratory protection has been around for decades. There was nothing new about COVID it terms of respiratory protection, you just had a bunch of quacks pontificating on something they knew remarkably little about.
Scott says: Torches, pitchforks, tar and feathers. Then maybe we can talk
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