Introduction

1933: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
1969: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
2020: “The virus decides.”

It’s just for two weeks.
It’s just for two months.
It’s just for two years.
It’s just for three years.
It’s just three feet.
It’s just six feet.
It’s just bars.
It’s just sporting events.
It’s just nonessential businesses.
It’s just nonessential workers.
It’s just schools.
It’s just to “flatten the curve.”
It’s just until deaths go down.
It’s just until cases go down.
It’s just international travel.
It’s just domestic travel too.
It’s just until we get a vaccine.
It’s just until we get a vaccine for kids down to age 12.
It’s just until we get a vaccine for kids down to age five.
It’s just until we get a vaccine for kids under five.
It’s just until we get another vaccine.
It’s just until everybody gets a booster.
It’s just one Easter canceled.
It’s just one Memorial Day canceled.
It’s just one Fourth of July canceled.
It’s just one Labor Day canceled.
It’s just one Halloween canceled.
It’s just one Thanksgiving canceled.
It’s just one Christmas or Hanukkah canceled.
It’s just one New Year’s canceled.
It’s just two Easters canceled.
It’s just two Memorial Days canceled.
It’s just two Fourth of Julys canceled.
It’s just two Labor Days canceled.
It’s just two Halloweens canceled.
It’s just two Thanksgivings canceled.
It’s just two Christmases or Hanukkahs canceled.
It’s just two New Year’s canceled.
It’s just three Easters canceled.
It’s just three Memorial Days canceled.
It’s just three Fourth of Julys canceled.
It’s just three Labor Days canceled.
It’s just three Halloweens canceled.
It’s just three Thanksgivings canceled.
It’s just three Christmases or Hanukkahs canceled.
It’s just three New Year’s canceled.
It’s just a semester of school.
It’s just a year of school.
It’s just two years of school.
It’s just three years of school.
It’s just one prom canceled.
It’s just one graduation canceled.
It’s just two proms canceled.
It’s just two graduations canceled.
It’s just three proms canceled.
It’s just three graduations canceled.
It’s just a mask.
It’s just two masks.
It’s just an N95.
It’s just indoors.
It’s just outdoors too.
It’s just a recommendation.
It’s just mandatory now.
It’s just until flu cases go down too.
It’s just until we eradicate every virus in existence.
It’s just, it’s just, it’s just, until, until, until...

The world has had a front row seat to what seemed to be a once-in-a-lifetime event: the coronavirus outbreak that was discovered in late 2019 and declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. The contagious SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus causes a respiratory disease called COVID-19, which—like other illnesses—has sadly left its share of death.

This virus can and does kill.

Yet the response by many countries around the world has been quite frankly among the biggest policy failures ever. As unimaginable and ridiculous as this failure has been, it was entirely avoidable, an unforced error. It has not only failed to accomplish its stated goal of reducing death but has also destroyed the social fabric and economy of many nations—and has left its own death trail. Indeed, it has probably broken some countries for good.

That policy is that of lockdowns—generally defined as stay-at-home orders or closely related practices.

Saying these policies were successful is an insult to anyone with a functioning brain.

What’s just as shocking is how much the public was bullied into tolerating it. No dissent from it was allowed. Anyone who dared to oppose it risked being called a communist, a Nazi, or both. It’s like on The Simpsons when McBain said, “Under attack by commie Nazis!” Dissidents against frenzied lockdownism were attacked as immoral even though lockdowns defied all standards of ethics. They were assailed as selfish even though many were merely trying to feed their family or keep our social institutions alive. They were censored and even found their careers threatened or destroyed.

It’s strange how everybody is called a Nazi except those who practice censorship or scapegoating—things the Nazis did. We were also called communists by those who based their stances on an experiment by the Chinese Communist Party.

This series of reports deals primarily with the eugenics-inspired lockdowns but also touches on other so-called mitigation measures that became woven into lockdown culture—i.e., the endlessly hyped “new normal.” This series discusses measures on many continents, but because I am more familiar with Western countries, especially the United States, the series has more focus on these societies. These documents describe the materialistic attitude that helped originally fuel the lockdowns, the ways in which this policy failed and led to death, and likely motivations for its ultimate enactment. Hint: follow the money.

Even this introduction is going to be long, so be warned.

One thing is absolutely clear: There were people out there who wanted the world locked down forever. That’s obvious. If you viewed “mainstream” media for very long, it was perfectly clear that’s what some wanted. Whenever a state ended its lockdown—regardless of what political party was in charge—you would hear the media’s negative opinion on ending it, often disguised as a news story. As stay-at-home orders were fading in the U.S., media conspiracism expanded. Talking heads accused some states—including Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—of faking a lower number of new cases so these states could justify easing restrictions. Despite this, a few of those states later imposed some of their most fascist restrictions after the pandemic was essentially over in America. Even in that post-pandemic stage, some nobody accused Nebraska of flat-out lying about its case numbers. A Reddit commenter made this particularly mind-boggling remark about Florida: “Didn’t we already find out Florida is manipulating the data by backdating covid deaths to the date of confirmed death and not reporting them as current?” If they were past deaths, they weren’t current, genius. This conspiracy theory was like QAnon for propellerheads. Pundits’ dedication to expanding draconian measures was pathological and bizarre.

As late as this month—October 2023—the miserable Miami Herald even ran an editorial accusing Florida of undercounting cases so the state could loosen restrictions. This is a conspiracy theory on par with anything Alex Jones puts out. Then again, perhaps that is to be expected from the Herald after it published confidential academic records of a teenage homicide victim.

This series of reports has several themes. One is that lockdowns and the “new normal” were harmful. Another is that there was a deliberate effort to use these measures to harm society. Another theme is that these measures violated the very essence of a liberal democracy, often by being imposed by decree by individual officials. Another is that those who dissented were censored—with the blessing of governments of supposed liberal democracies. For years before, I had complained that Facebook, Google AdSense, and other major actors had censored content based solely on their opinions, and my concerns were brushed aside. I was usually told that content was deleted for another reason or not at all (even if the content was missing). Those who ignored my complaints are looking mighty stupid now.

One columnist called lockdowns “the most authoritarian peacetime measures in the history of democracy.”

With any policy with such a wide scope as lockdowns, the burden must fall upon governments to provide clear evidence to justify them. They did not do so.

Public officials were warned beforehand that lockdowns and other severe restrictions would be ineffective at their stated goal and have negative effects on society. This prediction came true. Not long after these restrictions started, it was confirmed that they were having negative impacts. Yet officials dug in on some of these policies even after negative effects were shown. That means they’re guilty of knowingly causing further pain.

Some in the media could not contain their glee every time case counts worsened or a new variant of the virus was found. Even during lulls in case numbers, they used alarmist language like “surge”, “spike”, “soar”, “skyrocket”, and “swell”—the five S’s. They even had the audacity to make things up out of thin air that could be quickly debunked. Like Oscar the Grouch, they found joy in complaining. They voiced lots of complaints—but no realistic solutions. Just whining, wallowing, and bombast. They were always hungry for excuses to tighten restrictions.

They would say one thing about the pandemic was true, but later say that new data showed the opposite was true—but the restrictions put in place earlier because of the older data would remain. Furthermore, they would say that they never claimed their original statement was true, and that they had been claiming their second statement was true the entire time.

Intolerable restrictions were being enacted anew all over the United States long after the pandemic in the U.S. had essentially ended. The mayor of Fargo, North Dakota, had said the pandemic was over. Illinois had entered what the state called its post-pandemic phase. Iowa had declared the virus was no longer a pandemic but had become endemic—like the many cold and flu viruses we were already forced to deal with. Yet new restrictions kept popping up all over the country—even more than two years after vaccines became available. In fact, new restrictions appeared months after both the WHO and the federal government declared the COVID emergency over in May 2023. Some people said that despite all the restrictions during the pandemic, nobody truly wanted them to remain after the pandemic was over. This clearly is not so. We now live under what seem to be permanent restrictions. It’s also true that there have been some COVID deaths in America even recently—but it is no longer a pandemic disease. That’s simply not what the word pandemic means. The greater point is that restrictions failed to prevent these deaths, yet officials kept doubling down on these rules. We were sold a bill of goods, and it’s beyond outrageous.

I reached many conclusions from statistics, but a death from the virus itself or from the failed government response is not just a statistic. They were real people—somebody’s family member, friend, or coworker.

On the other hand, I had COVID in January 2022 despite being fully vaccinated, having received both vaccine doses in early 2021. Yet this was a very mild case, and many others also reported only mild symptoms—especially by then when later variants were dominant.

Many items in this series of reports are from reliable individuals who posted on online forums or social media websites. To be sure, many are anecdotal, but they are more trustworthy than many established media sources. The crisis showed that the average person is a more reliable source than many major media outlets—some of which have been caught lying outright to serve their goals. Plus, the specifics of how some measures were enforced or followed have had very little analysis or scientific polling.

A note on terminology: The term COVID-19 is commonly used to refer to the virus, though this is not strictly accurate, as this term is supposed to refer only to the resulting illness. This series attempts to balance terminology.

I think of my city—Bellevue, Kentucky—as a bellwether of COVID policies in the U.S., but from country to country and even within the U.S., lockdowns ranged from nonexistent to outright house arrest. Things were by no means hunky-dory in Bellevue through most of that time frame, but the city may have been near the national average. However, the U.S. overall may have been worse than the worldwide norm, especially when contrasted with countries like Sweden.

Don’t like that I wrote such a big series of reports? Tough toilets. None of it would have been necessary if lockdowns and the hated “new normal” hadn’t been foisted upon us. Anyone familiar with my work should have known I’d have something to say about all of this, and if they can’t handle the truth, that’s their problem. I had originally planned only a few brief articles, later settling on a short report, but our rulers kept outdoing themselves with their stupidity. It’s like when you have a letter to a supermarket that you plan to send outlining all the unpleasantries there, but you keep having to add to it. The situation got more ridiculous by the day. I intended to release a report in mid-2020, but the stupidity piled up so much that the report was still not complete in October 2023, when it was up to 204 pages. I can’t believe anyone expected me to let 1,400 files about something as idiotic as lockdowns pile up and just let it slide. What did these dummies think was going to happen?

You’d think the fact that our public officials have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about would make my work easy, but it actually makes it much tougher. They say and do such nonsensical things that by the time you’re able to fight them on it, they’ve said and done gobs of other things that are even dumber. So it just builds up.

Many of our government officials were liars and thugs, and I don’t tolerate it. I especially don’t like bullies. I’ve had to humiliate bullies before, but I guess they didn’t learn, because most stupid people don’t. I saw the same sort of gaslighting and retaliation from school administrators in my youth, and I can’t be fooled for very long. Our public officials fit the classic definition of abusers. Nothing was ever good enough for them. Again and again, they moved the goalposts.

Starting fights is dumb. Reasoning is better. Like the bullies they are, lockdown spokespeople chose to start fights instead of reason.

We were told we were all in this together. That may be the biggest lie of all, because our “leaders” surely did not do their part. They urged us to sacrifice while they wouldn’t make sacrifices themselves. They violated rules that they issued. Instead of reassuring or uniting us, they demoralized us, scolded us, and bossed us around. The only way people were united was when folks who otherwise held differing political views became unified in their opposition to this crap.

I had lived through some of the biggest crises in modern American history, but under lockdown culture, society finally hit rock bottom. I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but America had been agonizingly building up to this fascism for 40 years. Years before the pandemic, I had written that if the trends continued, we would someday wake up in an America we don’t recognize. During the pandemic, my dire prediction not only came true, but things became even worse than I ever thought possible. It is hard to see how we can ever get any lower.

People used to wonder how the Nazis came to power in Germany. In 2020, it became clear how something like that could happen. To put it bluntly, those who obeyed unquestioningly were part of the problem. I sympathize with people who were threatened with losing their jobs if they didn’t obey, but people in other settings were probably safe if they disobeyed, yet they obeyed anyway, which only encouraged more tyranny. They didn’t say no when they had the chance. It’s pretty sad to see videos from 2020-22 in which people are marching in lockstep like obedient robots, for the expanding totalitarianism could have been curtailed if they had questioned it. Damn right it’s my business, because it affects society. In the America of my youth, people would have put up considerable resistance. Yet during the pandemic, there were so many settings where people put up absolutely none. In these environments, the government said to do something, and almost everyone snapped into total, unquestioning compliance. This wasn’t true in every setting, of course, but videos from many venues are like receipts that show people’s cowardice.

I’ve coined a term for this robotic march: Los Alamos goose-step. This name comes from a New Mexico town where I saw it in use.

As the attacks on basic liberty slogged on, one thing became clearer: Those who dug in on these authoritarian and often xenophobic assaults were not good people who were simply misguided. They were actually bad people. Their actions were malicious. Not only did real world proof pile up that their policies had no positive impact, but these acts would have been considered severe human rights violations before 2020. The latter point is important because principles are not supposed to change just because of circumstances. As bad as it was in the United States—which compared very unfavorably with many other nations during this crisis—American “leaders” seemed to approve of foreign governments when they did things that were even worse. Many government officials in the U.S. and elsewhere rejected humanity’s universal values. Some governments outside the U.S. had earlier complained that these values were imposed on them by the Western world. That excuse does not fly, as these ideals apply to all of humanity and are backed up by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Furthermore, some Western nations actually had harsher COVID restrictions than most other countries. Public and private officials in America and around the world proved they had a very evil and sadistic disposition, and the biggest victims were the young. As the crisis extended, harsher policies were aimed at children and young adults, and this is especially inexcusable.

Much of what children suffered was child abuse. End of story. There is no ambiguity about it. Governments that carried out this abuse—including in the U.S.—must face very stiff sanctions. There is no prison sentence long enough for those involved. Being a civilized society means the well-being of children must be a priority, and many governments and institutions around the world failed. I take child abuse very seriously. When children’s welfare is at stake, I don’t play games.

You can judge a society by how much it prizes its children. What does it say about America and other countries when they normalized child abuse in the name of fighting the pandemic?

Not only would some of the more extreme measures have been considered human rights violations before 2020, but these abuses were absent in some other countries—most notably, Sweden—even at the height of the pandemic. Even Sweden wasn’t completely free of some minor restrictions, but it was a cakewalk compared to most of the world. It was reported that the country briefly closed amusement parks and movie theaters—but not restaurants. If Sweden, Nicaragua, and the Faroe Islands could survive the pandemic with relatively few restrictions, why couldn’t the rest of the world? A virus doesn’t know what country it’s in. Supporting the extreme measures found in much of the world was never part of the deal in human rights advocacy.

COVID hall monitors showcased their xenophobia by unnecessarily closing borders. However, at the same time that they displayed such prejudice, COVID maximalists in the U.S. simultaneously betrayed their own country by encouraging the nation to adopt draconian COVID restrictions that they noted were in use in other countries. These quislings couldn’t shut up about how horrible they thought America was because too many Americans demanded freedom.

American lockdownists’ hatred of America has bubbled fluently since the pandemic was declared. They portray those who fight for freedom as reckless cowboys, often contrasting them with subjects of foreign regimes who obey their masters. As another of their lies, they compare COVID restrictions to rules such as traffic laws. The comparison is laughable, as a stop sign does not require you to stop for weeks, months, or years.

Young or old, you’re never getting back the years that were lost to restrictions. Never. Children lost their childhoods. College students lost their college years. Older adults lost their golden years. These years weren’t just lost. They were stolen.

At least through 2022, online feeds were still flooded with people acting like the pandemic was still at its worst stage. As George Orwell said, “The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous.”

There has never been any other crisis in which the behavior of the public was micromanaged to such an extent, or in which the public was so often wrongly accused of acting to worsen the crisis just by engaging in normal activities. COVID restrictions were also marked by mission creep. The stated purpose at first was just to “flatten the curve”, but the goalposts were moved again and again. In 2022—even 2021 in a few areas—these totalitarian restrictions began being used not just for COVID but also other viruses. This is despite the fact that before 2020, these viruses were almost completely ignored, or the media smirked and grinned each time there was an outbreak. At the snap of a finger, we went from expecting people to show up for work or school no matter how sick they were to telling people they were heartless murderers if they stepped out of their home even when they were well.

The hardest part of “two weeks to flatten the curve” was the first three years.

Furthermore, ever since the darkest days of the pandemic, it has seemed as if the sole basis on which public health officials are promoted has been their propensity to carry out and cover up atrocities that were committed in the name of fighting COVID. Some of the worst health bureaucrats have inevitably found themselves in an even more powerful office. They have been allowed to fail upward.

It seems as if almost every claim by the media and government officials about COVID was wrong—and they’ve never issued any corrections. To this day, they continue to dig in and lie about what a “success” lockdowns and other restrictions were. They reported the virus’s fatality rate was much higher than it really was. They lied to our faces about vaccines—and about lifting restrictions once we got vaccinated. They lied about the virus’s origin. Their failure to correct their errors has helped create a dangerous precedent that lockdowns can be issued over other events later.

In brief, the pandemic was met with one of the world’s worst series of human rights abuses in 75 years. Even with the deaths caused by the virus, the biggest story is not the pandemic itself but the permanent restructuring of society by powerful, wealthy elites using totalitarian tactics.