Wait! There’s more!

You thought we were done?

I published zines and blogs through times of severe assaults on civil liberties, the Iraq War, and the Tea Party, yet the incompetent response to COVID-19 dwarfs all of my past topics. That says a lot. There were news stories from Bill Clinton’s first term that I never covered because something bigger would always happen, but only weeks of COVID swamped the decades before.

It took real effort for our rulers to be this awful. You can’t be this bad by accident. It’s not just incompetence but malice.

A Socialist Alternative article dated way back on March 6, 2020, warned that draconian policies could last even after the pandemic ends, saying “there is no guarantee that any of these ad hoc measures will not remain long after the crisis is over.” No truer words were ever written. It’s just like how the tyranny put in place after 9/11 still hasn’t been lifted. New mandates have been issued today.

As days seemed like years during America’s main lockdown era, countries around the world still were not safe from the effects of lockdowns. Some news outlets reported on it, but were ignored. Gulf News reported that lockdowns in India led to deaths by causes such as starvation, suicide, and denial of medical care: “Nearly 200 people have reportedly died because of the lockdown.” Some were mowed down by vigilantes for violating lockdowns, and others were killed by speeding vehicles because lockdowns forced them to walk along dangerous highways. It was expected that there would be an increase in human trafficking and sexual violence.

The Associated Press reported that lockdowns were linked to an increase in accidental poisonings across the United States with cleaners and disinfectants.

Socialist Worker reported that police in Kenya enforcing a COVID curfew shot a 13-year-old boy to death as he was sitting with his family on their own balcony. Soldiers in Rwanda allegedly raped women while enforcing the lockdown. This includes the rape of a woman who intervened when a soldier barged into her home and beat up her husband.

The AP said lockdowns in the Mideast stymied humanitarian efforts, as the Norwegian Refugee Council could not reach 300,000 people in Syria, Yemen, and the Gaza Strip.

Domestic violence continued to increase. Haaretz reported a horrifying rise in domestic violence—in addition to sex crimes—across Israel. In a separate piece, the paper reported an international surge in crimes against women, much of it caused by lockdowns forcing women’s shelters to close.

Agence France-Presse said Iraq also saw a startling increase in domestic abuse. A police official said some areas saw a 50 percent increase.

The Barbados Advocate said Barbados experienced a domestic violence spike due to the lockdown. One official called it the “shadow epidemic of COVID-19.”

Even the Los Angeles Times acknowledged that not only did domestic violence increase during lockdowns, but injuries were more severe. Yet California enacted a second lockdown later. The Times also reported that a Boston hospital found that the proportion of injuries from domestic violence almost doubled.

U.S. News & World Report told of a stark increase in disappearances, rapes, and murders of women in Latin America.

WRTV-TV reported that the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence found an 86 percent increase in domestic violence deaths in Indiana during the lockdown. A 21 percent increase in domestic violence was found in Minnesota, according to the Star Tribune. KING-TV reported a quadrupling of domestic violence deaths in King County, Washington.

In Italy, diabetes patients suffered an increase in gangrene-related amputations under the lockdown. In India, 115 million children were at risk of malnutrition because they lost access to school lunches. Also in India, healthcare workers were evicted from their homes because of fears that they were spreaders of the virus.

A series of studies found a worldwide increase in stillbirths caused by lockdowns disrupting healthcare.

A study by Boston University School of Public Health found that depression symptoms in American adults soared from 8.5 to 27.8 percent during lockdowns. The situation was worse among those with less than $5,000 in savings.

When Myanmar imposed a second lockdown in September 2020, many more people were put out of work, and hunger became so bad that residents had to eat rats and snakes.

The AP reported that families in Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India offered up their young daughters who were only in primary or high school for marriages with adult men because of the financial burden caused by lockdowns harming the economy worldwide.

Lockdowns caused many children to miss needed surgeries at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

In March 2023, the Star Tribune reported that the Mayo Clinic found an “unexpected” spike in malnutrition deaths in Minnesota during the lockdown. However, it was not actually unexpected. Many people warned of such deaths before the lockdowns were instituted, and officials chose to ignore these warnings.

NBC reported in October 2020 that nine people in Minnesota—mostly long-term care patients—had died of social isolation from June to September. The “new normal” was a form of elder abuse.

Australia’s Nine News reported that four newborn infants in Adelaide died of heart conditions because interstate travel restrictions kept them from being transferred to hospitals where they could have received lifesaving surgery.

The Washington Post reported that the isolation of lockdowns led to the suicides of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The United States Department of State told Agence France-Presse that Russian-based social media accounts were behind a worldwide misinformation campaign regarding the virus. Officials said this campaign involved thousands of phony accounts posting in different languages. On the other hand, many people are skeptical of any scandals surrounding Russia, and the U.S. Department of State has credibility issues of its own. Reddit users said the Chinese Communist Party was behind a similar campaign on numerous social media sites promoting totalitarian COVID measures. One Reddit commenter said they saw a post that praised Chinese vaccines but hoped Western vaccines would fail.

Throughout the pandemic, several memes appeared online claiming that certain deceased famous people would have supported the draconian restrictions—despite the lack of evidence supporting these claims.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported that Hawaii used the pandemic as an excuse to suspend open meeting laws. No effort was made to open the meetings even using remote video. The state also purchased drones to force people off the beaches. “I’m not saying there shouldn’t be some restrictions,” said attorney Jeff Portnoy. “I’m just saying we have to be very, very careful at a time of crisis that our civil liberties don’t become the victim.” Common Cause Hawaii sent out a letter demanding a reopening of the meetings using remote means.

Stand-up comedians in Philadelphia weren’t laughing at the rules the city put in place for outdoor comedy shows. The audience was required to stay in their cars and listen to the show on their car radio, as the show was transmitted by a miniature pirate radio station. The audience was not allowed to laugh, and was supposed to flash their headlights instead.

Lockdowns decimated Kentucky’s craft brewing industry. At least three small craft brewing businesses closed, and many more were at risk. Much of this was because of limits on restaurants.

Hostility to the arts among COVID maximalists ran deep. The Wall Street Journal reported that classical music performances essentially disappeared, and live performers were put out of work. It was announced in 2020 that performances were already canceled through most of 2021.

Lockdowns also destroyed New York’s jazz scene, as jazz clubs were forced to close.

In Panama, lockdowns meant that men could only leave their homes on certain days, and women on other days. Peru had a similar system. An online comment said police in Panama set up checkpoints to stop motorists to check for passports even for travel within the country.

The far-right government of Honduras decreed that people could leave their homes only on days based on the last digit of their national identification number. Nobody was allowed to leave their homes on Saturdays and Sundays.

Even places that never had a full stay-at-home order weren’t completely safe. As one of many new rules around the world that were enacted months after vaccines came out, South Korea imposed a new rule saying music in gyms couldn’t be faster than 120 beats per minute. The connection between this rule and fighting COVID remains unclear. Later, the government decreed that fans at a concert by the singing group BTS were not allowed to cheer or sing along.

In March 2022, health authorities in New South Wales inexplicably recommended a ban on singing and dancing.

In California, Santa Clara County—the heart of Silicon Valley—was known for particularly extreme enforcement. Fines in that county totaled almost $5 million—versus only $82,000 in six nearby counties put together. San Francisco reported issuing no fines, and Alameda County reported no citations at all. Some of the Santa Clara fines were against small businesses for having a TV set on or playing “non-ambient music”—as if these “offenses” spread COVID. The county particularly targeted Latin music. Naturally, Santa Clara ended up with the highest case rate in the region—while Alameda and San Francisco found themselves with the lowest.

Santa Clara County also scrutinized checks written by customers of a particular restaurant to make sure they ordered meals and weren’t just frivolously gathering.

Across the state, Los Angeles County under miserable health director Dr. Barbara Ferrer banned restaurants from having TV sets on.

Trinidad & Tobago apparently kept beaches and rivers closed until January 2022. When rivers reopened, gatherings there were still limited to 10, and music there was banned. Beaches were still only open for a few hours a day. The island country also reportedly did not allow retail outlets to reopen until August 2021.

It wasn’t just the Easter 2020 incident in Kentucky that showed that even churches weren’t always safe. Back in California, Santa Clara County launched a sophisticated surveillance campaign against one particular church. This church had closed for over two months during the original lockdown, but then it reopened as normal. The county still banned singing in houses of worship, yet this church allowed singing. Enforcement officers showed up at the church to note violations, but after officers were barred from the site, the county entered into an agreement with a church next door to spy on the renegade church.

A judge allowed the officers to enter the property of the targeted church, so they showed up to observe private events. They cited congregants for “crimes” such as drinking coffee in a hallway and having chairs “arranged in a manner that did not allow for social distancing.” The health department even snooped at congregants’ cellphone data to track how many people were at the church on each day. The county spent taxpayer money purchasing this data from a company that compiled it by matching GPS data to a shapefile of the church’s property. It was later revealed that the county used data like this to track people visiting shopping centers and entering and leaving the county. The church faced millions of dollars in fines.

In March 2022, U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman—an Obama appointee—warned Santa Clara County that its surveillance of this church may be unconstitutional. Freeman admonished, “The U.S. Supreme Court has clarified the law over the past two years and I intend to abide by the law as described.”

Meanwhile, CBS reported that a man in Hughesville, Maryland, was sentenced to a year in jail for holding parties that exceeded the state’s gathering limit.

In one locale, there was a period of nine months when people could not adopt stray cats. Instead, animal shelters killed the cats. This led to a black market for cats that was rife with scams. Later, restrictions in New South Wales resulted in one rural government shooting dogs who were slated to be sent to a shelter, as the shelter volunteers were not allowed to travel to pick up the dogs. There were reportedly no active COVID cases in that community at the time.

In March 2023, the Guardian reported that the British government had considered killing all pet cats in the name of fighting COVID.

Albuquerque announced it would allow only New Mexico residents to use its bus system and that passengers would be required to show an ID.

Back in March 2020, Cincinnati ordered the local bicycle sharing program shut down for two months. Somehow, this prohibition extended into neighboring cities in Kentucky, but—to the best of anyone’s knowledge—these cities were not consulted. Given the fascistic statements by at least one local political leader, not consulting them may have actually been a good thing. Then again, he may have wanted the bike program to stay open in case he got his driver’s license revoked if he got another drunken driving ticket. Meanwhile, Cincinnati urged people to ride a bus instead of these bikes—even though viruses spread more easily on a bus.

A condo complex in an unspecified jurisdiction declared that residents who left for the holiday season were required to isolate for two weeks upon returning home—though there was no government order in that area requiring this.

Lockdowns continued to create hardship for people with disabilities that ranged from mobility limitations to mental health conditions. Vice reported that it created additional challenges in India, as lockdowns there prevented disabled people from having caregivers come to their home to assist them. Visually impaired people could not travel because public transport was shut down.

The Queens District Attorney’s office reported that lockdowns led to a twofold increase in suicides.

During lockdowns, the poor got poorer and the rich got richer. Forbes reported that the 400 richest Americans added $4.5 trillion to their wealth in 2020—a 40 percent increase. That was while many workers and small businesspeople found themselves financially ruined. The value of stocks and real estate soared, which helped wealthy investors more.

One of the heaviest millstones around America’s neck was the blogosphere’s hypocritical champagne “liberalism.” Starting in mid-2020, one of their favorite punching bags was, oddly enough, a Democrat: Virginia State Sen. Chap Petersen. Petersen wrote a message to constituents noting that case counts were rising under lockdowns and urging a reopening of Virginia. Petersen wrote, “For 60 days, I have watched as the most fearful voices have dictated the policies of this Commonwealth. That must change.” A Daily Kos diarist responded with a post with the over-the-top title “VA State Sen Chap Petersen (D) wants to kill my parents.” The rest of the fake “progressive” blogosphere marched in lockstep to this irrational rhetoric. Blue Virginia—a blog in the same mold as the discredited Forward Kentucky—began attacking Petersen too. The mantra of websites like Daily Kos and Blue Virginia was “Vote blue no matter who.” Yet they hoped for an electoral challenge against Petersen. However, when a series of scandals engulfed Democratic leaders in Virginia back in 2019 and led to a political crisis, “progressive” blogs had stuck by those politicians through thick and thin. This included the admission by Gov. Ralph Northam that he appeared in blackface in his medical school yearbook, and allegations that Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax had committed sexual assault. Even if these allegations were never proven, it shows the blogosphere had more much tolerance for these scandals than it did for Petersen daring to oppose lockdowns. As the knives went out for Petersen, corrupt Virginia Democrats refused to renominate him for another term in 2023.

Police in Orlando arrested a homeless man walking a bicycle because he was violating the stay-at-home order. In Hawaii, a man accused of stealing a car battery—which was usually only a misdemeanor—found the charge enhanced to a felony because he was breaking the stay-at-home order. He faced 10 years in prison. Meanwhile, more serious crime continued unabated. In May, Washington City Paper reported that Washington, D.C., saw a ballooning number of homicides while the COVID emergency was in force.

A particularly ugly incident took place one morning in Vermont under the guise of COVID. A Black family driving through the state was flagged down by a mob of motorists who noticed the New York license plate on their car. The man was told he was unwelcome in Vermont.

One study said strategies like lockdowns would cause the average person to suffer 0.205 years of lost life. Yet this loss would actually be borne by 2.1 percent of people—who would suffer an average of 9.79 years of lost life.

The Guardian reported that the Stop TB Partnership forecast that 6.3 million people worldwide would develop tuberculosis because of lockdowns—resulting in 1.4 million deaths. Efforts to eradicate the disease were set back by five to eight years. It was reported elsewhere that the fights against AIDS and malaria were also stymied, especially because patients could not travel for treatment.

Anorexia treatment was limited too. Still another report linked lockdowns with a rise in chipped or cracked teeth induced by stress.

CTV reported that a 30-year-old woman in Woodbridge, Ontario, with stage 4 colon cancer had to have lifesaving surgery postponed indefinitely because of COVID-inspired restrictions that persisted into 2022.

A Guardian story in May said lockdowns in Britain were causing mental health issues in people with no history of mental health problems. That followed a warning by the United Nations that lockdowns could create an “upsurge” in people—especially children—needing mental health care.

A later report said the U.S. saw a 29 percent increase in homicides in 2020. In Chicago, it was 55 percent. In New York City, 41 percent. In Los Angeles, 30 percent.

KGO-TV said doctors at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, California, said they had seen more lockdown-induced suicides than COVID deaths. Dr. Mike deBoisblanc said, “Personally, I think it’s time” to end the lockdown—because it was clear hospitals had the resources to take care of COVID patients. DeBoisblanc said, “We’ve seen a year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks.” Most victims were young adults. DeBoisblanc later said he was reassigned as retaliation for questioning lockdowns.

The Washington Post said lockdowns fueled drug overdoses in West Virginia. Plus, according to Kentucky’s Office of Drug Control Policy, fatal overdoses in Kentucky increased by 49 percent in 2020. The Lexington Herald-Leader said this increase was “a dreaded reality many in addiction recovery saw coming.” That this spike was foreseen makes lockdownists guilty of knowingly causing harm. The Vermont Health Department reported that opioid deaths in Vermont were up by 38 percent in 2020.

WCVB-TV reported that an HIV outbreak among the homeless in Boston was linked to lockdowns.

The Guardian reported that alcohol-related deaths in Scotland rose to the highest level since 2008.

A 25-year-old woman in England was left fighting for her life because lockdowns halted her treatment for ocular cancer.

In Wales, an elderly woman became blind because lockdowns delayed her glaucoma treatment.

An elderly woman in Scotland starved to death because lockdowns made care services unavailable.

The CBC reported in November 2021 that lockdowns had caused a spike in late diagnoses of tumors in children. In many cases, it was too late to treat it. The piece tried to shift blame for these delays to the pandemic itself rather than lockdowns. However, if the media hadn’t created so much panic, fewer people would have missed medical treatment.

The Independent reported that lockdownists were placing nail traps to ensnare hikers and cyclists in England. One admitted constructing a barrier of rocks and branches across a cycling trail.

Domestic violence continued to spiral out of control. As stay-at-home orders were drawing to a close, Sheriff Joe Lombardo of Clark County, Nevada, said domestic violence calls had jumped 13 percent. A domestic violence charity reported a 70 percent increase in calls from victims seeking resources.

The BBC reported in March 2021 that a new UN report said that COVID-related disruptions like lockdowns had killed an estimated 228,000 children under five years old in southern Asia. Child mortality rose by 15.4 percent in India. Maternal deaths rose by 21.5 percent in Sri Lanka.

The Guardian reported in June 2021 that lockdowns had made at least 130,000 households in England homeless.

Sweden—still widely considered the gold standard for remaining open throughout the crisis—dodged the economic crash that plagued most of the rest of the world. Bloomberg News and CNBC both reported that it was one of few countries where the economy improved. The BBC said Sweden’s economy contracted by only 8.6 percent from April to June 2020—compared with 11.9 percent for the European Union overall and 18.5 percent in lockdown-plagued Spain. The shrinkage in the Swedish economy appeared to be largely because of the country’s dependence on exports. A piece by John McCormack in National Review predictably blasted Sweden, however.

South African health officials said that lockdowns were filling hospitals with cases of child malnutrition for the first time in decades.

In Isle of Man, a man was jailed for five weeks for “instigating a gathering.” The dependency’s strict enforcement prompted criticism from Amnesty International.

WCET-TV, a PBS member station in Cincinnati, was not allowed to conduct its Action Auction fundraiser in the spring of 2020 because of the lockdown.

By September, Nicaragua had the lowest cumulative COVID death rate in Central America following its lax approach.

A new curfew that afflicted many California counties—which apparently took effect before the new statewide lockdown—was said by a Bay Area attorney to be racially discriminatory. It was feared that police would use the curfew as a pretext to pull over motorists on the basis of race. It was noted that Black men were targeted during the original stay-at-home order.

California’s second lockdown was widely ignored. Even some shopping malls ignored capacity limits. Nate Silver noted that in Los Angeles, you weren’t allowed to go jogging with a friend. “Few people are going to abide by those rules and you lose your claim to being science-driven,” he wrote. Former Barack Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau said Los Angeles County’s statements about the rules were issued with “an overly officious chiding tone.” In addition, Dr. Monica Gandhi of the University of California, San Francisco, said new lockdowns in California were not justified by data.

In perhaps most of the U.S., gathering indoors was illegal anywhere except private residences for over a year, even when full stay-at-home orders were not in effect. Sometimes it was private residences too.

Contrast the U.S. with not just Sweden and Nicaragua but also many other countries such as the Dominican Republic. A video from the Dominican Republic from December 2020 showed people happily skipping about an indoor shopping mall—many of them maskless—while much of the U.S. was under house arrest over Christmas. In the U.S., the California malls that brushed aside the inconsistent restrictions were the exception, not the rule.

It wasn’t just the U.S. that missed Christmas in 2020. In Canada, the city of Edmonton threatened to fire municipal employees if they attended any Christmas family gathering. Canadian Tire told its employees the same. As the labor movement in Alberta consisted largely of just one corrupt union—which staunchly favored job-killing lockdowns—nobody went to bat for these workers.

The BBC reported in June 2020 that lockdowns forced at least 10,000 people in Britain to miss eye care, putting their eyesight at risk of irreversible damage. Only 10 percent of urgent procedures were even taking place.

Also in June, Vox—in an increasingly rare display of honesty—reported that lockdowns in the U.S. hit Black-owned small businesses especially hard. A staggering 41 percent of Black-owned small firms went under. Even among small businesses in general, the situation was bleak, as America lost 22 percent of small firms.

It appears that just before America had its first lockdowns, the country—at least in some areas—tried to limit evictions. As gentrification has jacked up housing costs in town after town, this issue is near and dear to many tenants. At the same time, however, very few people would seriously argue that tenants have an unlimited right to refuse to pay rent. After evictions were halted, property owners filed lawsuits to allow evictions again—and they usually won. Courts agreed with their argument that the COVID emergency should have expired—and it’s hard to dispute that. Yet, strangely, courts and other government bodies said the emergency shouldn’t expire for any other policy. They said it should only expire for policies for which they wanted it to expire.

That said, this was a no-win situation. Renters could not pay their rent, because they had lost their jobs to lockdowns. Small landlords could not afford the expenses of owning properties, because their tenants could not pay the rent.

Despite all this, the official lifting of the emergency in the U.S. in May 2023 seems to have made no difference regarding other policies. Federal agencies are still expected to enforce mask mandates in counties with “high” COVID transmission, even though the emergency is officially lifted. What goal has to be met to end this?

The above stories are just a cross-section of events from that era—which are sure to anger the right and left alike. We’re not even close to covering everything. In some institutions, there are still no goalposts—anywhere.