COVID Affects Your Memory – Tablet Magazine
The American Civil Liberties Union, which had previously argued against coercive public health measures, was nowhere to be found. The American left, with which I d always identified because of its claims to uphold workers rights and principles of bodily autonomy, now explicitly advocated for forced quarantines of healthy people and for policies that dramatically increased the wealth of the world s richest at the expense of the working class. After spending four years checking every perceived authoritarian impulse from Donald Trump, the media suddenly called for strict enforcement of government decrees, denounced the noncompliant, punished dissenters, and advocated for Big Tech clampdowns on speech. On Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, users were censored and banned for expressing viewpoints that contradicted the ever-changing messaging from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control. The simple act of sharing official data on the COVID survival rate among different age groups was considered an act of harm that could lead to thousands if not millions of deaths.
By January 2022, however, the failure of the previous two years of U.S. COVID policies has become undeniable. Vaccinated people were once promised that they would be dead ends for the virus, but 80% of the first omicron cases in the United States were double vaccinated and one-third had received a booster. Many cities that implemented mask mandates and vaccine passports are seeing some of their highest case counts of the pandemic. As a result, the original justifications for COVID restrictions are now being openly contradicted by the same people who once argued for them but without acknowledging the pivot. With the 2022 midterms in sight, the narrative is simply shifting without apology, and many of the arguments once made by covidiots are now being backed by Anthony Fauci, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, and the familiar cast of journalists and experts.
It was never social media misinformation that harmed people, but rather a coordinated attempt by public health officials and reporters to limit open discussion and skew coverage of COVID. This campaign manipulated the public into acquiescing to measures with catastrophic second-order effects but little epidemiological value. Now that the damage has been done, the old arbiters of truth and morality will not get back the trust or credibility they ve squandered.
I’ll certainly never look at my country or the world in the same way. And anybody who says they were surprised by nothing is probably a liar.