Monday, September 27, 2021

Lara Logan’s sobering pushback message: ‘Freedom today in the US is an illusion’



Never before in the nation’s history have the founding principles of America been under assault as they are today with authoritarian politicians and unelected health care bureaucrats trampling freedoms and weaponizing institutions against the people.

For nearly two and a half centuries, America has served as an inspiration to the free world with a constitutional republic that protected the rights of all, a land of boundless opportunity which was famously referred to as a “shining city on a hill” by former President Ronald Reagan, but things have taken a very dark turn over the last 18 months.

The unexpected outbreak of COVID was immediately seen by power-mad Democrats and the national security state as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to radically transform America into a place more to their liking and they have exploited the health crisis to accrue sweeping new powers that they have ruthlessly executed.

While many remain woefully ignorant and willfully blind to the perilous state of the nation, former CBS reporter Lara Logan laid it out in a stunning Twitter thread that pierces the fog of media propaganda and should serve as a wakeup call that the freedoms that have long been cherished by Americans are dangerously close to being stomped out of existence, if they haven’t already.

According to Logan, “Freedom today in the US is an illusion. We live in fear not liberty,” she wrote, “We self-censor/hide/give up our rights & stopped fighting because we think we won’t win. When we lose faith in our govt/elections/law enforcement/media/institutions – that’s what they want. It’s easier for them.”

She continued by lamenting the silencing of free speech by a “public-private partnership” that works hand in hand with the Biden administration to censor any contradictory messaging on vaccines, along with the quashing of critical thinking and diversity of thought by Silicon Valley tech giants doing the government’s dirty work.

She emphasized that it is imperative to recognize the reality of the situation and that the only thing that really counts is the truth.

Perhaps more importantly, Logan recognizes that there is nobody coming to the rescue and that placing hope in a “white knight” at a time when Americans are being held in solitary confinement as political prisoners and cancel culture moves into the corporate domain is futile.

Logan adds that those who may believe that flying under the radar is an option are badly mistaken, “If you think you can just keep your head down & follow their rules & somehow you’ll be ok, that’s an illusion too. What you’re clinging too is already long gone.”

It is a powerful and sobering message that should result in plenty of buzz, but what is really needed is for Americans to take action if they are to preserve the freedoms that they have long taken for granted.



X22, Red Pill news, and more-Sept 27


 


It's another week, folks! Here's tonight's news:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/total-bs-view-co-hosts-ana-navarro-sunny-hostin-claim-got-false-positive-covid-19-tests-kamala-harris-interview-video/

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/another-hip-hop-superstar-claps-back-mindless-compliance-rihanna-follows-nicki-minaj-standing-free-thinking-wears-anti-censorship-slogan-t-shirt-nyc/

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/audit-counties-az-state-rep-mark-finchem-pima-county-az-nationwide-petition-need-500k-signatures/

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/breaking-exclusive-huge-despite-tens-thousands-issues-already-identified-arizona-audit-likely-hundreds-thousands-ballots-no-legally-required-chain-custody-documentation/

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/us-golfers-break-record-ryder-cup-score-points-team-since-new-format-crush-europe/

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/200-business-owners-file-federal-class-action-lawsuit-againt-nyc-mayor-will-first-domino-endcovidtyranny-nationwide/

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/breaking-az-state-senator-kelly-townsend-files-s-b-1487-maricopa-county-unanswered-questions-july-hearing-audit-report/

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/09/not-making-headlines-az-audit-not-find-identity-86391-voters-dont-appear-exist-73-8-democrat-no-party-affiliation/

After 40 Seasons, Husband of Pregnant F2M Trans Man Gets the Word ‘Guys’ Banned from ‘Survivor

 


Breitbart. Article by Alana Mastrangelo

The word “guys” has been banned from the 41st season of CBS’ reality series Survivor after one woke male contestant suggested the word was not inclusive enough.

During Wednesday’s season premiere, titled, “A New Era,” Survivor host Jeff Probst asked the contestants what they thought of his trademark phrase, “Come on in, guys!”

“For 20 years, I have used one phrase to call people in for challenges,” Probst said. “I love saying it. It’s part of the show. But I too want to be of the moment.”

“In the context of Survivor, is a word like ‘guys’ okay? Or is it time to retire that word?” the host asked, to which the contestants agreed he should keep the phrase.

One contestant, Evvie, told the host, “I personally think ‘guys’ is okay. ‘Come in guys’ is such a signature expression. I, as a woman, as a queer woman, do not feel excluded by ‘guys.'”

But later in the episode, before the first immunity challenge, a second contestant, Ricard, delivered a monologue in which he advised Probst to drop the word “guys,” adding that he didn’t speak up earlier because he was “half crying” and his hair was “messed up.”

“So when we saw you on day one, you asked us a question,” Ricard began. “You asked us how we felt about, ‘Come on in, guys,’ and the reality is, there was so much going on — so much commotion, cameras, my hair is messed up, I’m half crying, I don’t have the capacity to do what I’m really supposed to do, which I regret.”

“I don’t agree that we should use the word ‘guys,’ the contestant finally blurted out. “I fully agree that we should change it, whether it just be dropping the ‘guys,’ changing it to something else, I just don’t really agree with it."

“The reality is, Survivor has changed over the last 21 years, and those changes have allowed all of us, all of these brown people, black people, Asian people, so many queer people to be here simultaneously,” Ricard added.

Probst reacted by stating Ricard was courageous for suggesting he scrap the word “guys.”

“It’s a great point, and I gotta say, I love that you thought about it more,” Probst said. “I love that you had the courage inside a million-dollar game — in which standing up anytime is risky — to bring it up again, because I’m with you.”

“I want to change it,” the host proclaimed. “I’m glad that was the last time I will ever say it.”

“And realizing in this moment somebody right now is on social media saying, ‘Oh, he caved.’ It’s @JeffProbst at Twitter, I’ll probably never read it anyway,” Probst added, implying he knows his decision to ban the word will be met with backlash.

“Alright, I love that. We just made a change. From now on it is, ‘Come on in,'” Probst affirmed.

Ricard is also married to a pregnant woman who identifies as a man, according to a report by the Seattle Times.

“I left my husband eight months pregnant [for Survivor],” the contestant said. “He was not the happiest, but he was ecstatic I got to live my dream.”

The Symptoms of Our Insanity - VDH

What explains these insanities that are insults 
to the American people’s intelligence?


Think for a minute.  

When did we become a nation of socialist AOCs wearing “Tax the Rich” dresses to $35,000-a-ticket celebrity galas, without mandatory masks, while being served by masked servants—a now tired script from the Obama birthday bash crowd to the grandees at the Emmys?  

When did we discover that we must listen to oppressed billionaire Oprah from her $90 million Montecito estate commiserating with a billionaire Lebron or royal Meghan Markle about the racist white establishment? Is there anyone in the recent Washington intelligence and investigatory hierarchy who has not lied or feigned loss of memory under oath—a low bar that nevertheless excludes, among others, John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Robert Mueller, or Peter Strzok? 

Did anyone just five years ago believe the following could possibly happen in America—and invoke almost no popular outrage from a somnolent public? 

Item: The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, does not deny that: 1) he deliberately aborted the legal chain of operational command—that is, violated the law—by recalibrating established protocols for using nuclear weapons in times of crisis. And he says his interventions were based on his own diagnoses (after prompting from opposition leader, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) that the commander-in-chief was crazy, and thus could be circumvented.  

And 2), in freelancing style, Milley, on more than one occasion, called the top figure of the Chinese Communist People’s Liberation Army, General Li Zuocheng. He reportedly announced that his own country was currently in crisis (experiencing “messy” democracy), reassuring the Chinese that if he, Milley, the newfound autokrator, sensed there was any chance of hostile and aggressive action on the part of his own country, then on his own initiative he would tip off the Chinese in advance. And far from resigning or being fired for his Strangelovian efforts, Milley would then be hailed as a hero by the popular media and progressive civil libertarians. In other words, for the Left, it is as if Burt Lancaster’s movie character, Air Force General James Mattoon Scott, was the real hero of Seven Days in May. 

Milley has also become the Zelig or Forrest Gump of our times. He turns up at almost all our recent military melodramas and disasters. Milley appears variously in the photo-op/federal troops/tear-gas spoof, the virtue-signaled rumored resignation, the talking referent in anonymously sourced books, puff-piece op-eds, and backgrounder quotes, the Inspector Javert of “white rage,” the student of How To Be An Antiracist, the Afghanistan progress reassurer, the “righteous” drone striker, the adjudicator between January 6 “coups” and 120 days of “penny packet protests” costing $2 billion-dollars in riot and arson destruction and 28 deaths, the Article 88 violator, the reductio ad Hitlerum promulgator, and the underappreciated but rumored polymath bibliophile. 

To understand Milley’s gambit, imagine Admiral Ernest King, some time in November 1941 secretly contacting his Japanese imperial counterpart, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, to warn him and the Japanese high command that Admiral King felt President Roosevelt was both too trigger happy for a Pacific war, and was also increasingly infirm and unsteady.  

And thus, King would step forward to promise Admiral Yamamoto and the Japanese military grandees that if he felt there was any possible aggressive or peremptory presidential order against Japan, King would tip him off first.  

Note that critical contemporaries had complained both that Roosevelt was pining for a pretext for war with Japan and that his closed circle had hidden many of his serious health challenges from the public—and note also that the chances that a President Roosevelt or Trump would have ever staged a preemptive attack on a belligerent neutral were—absolutely zero. 

Item: The United States military in the middle of the night abandoned the largest air base in Central Asia, after investing hundreds of millions of dollars in retrofitting the vast complex, as part of a hasty end to a 20-year presence in Afghanistan.  

In the last few remaining hours of our withdrawal, Americans would skedaddle to the airport, lose 13 soldiers to a suicide bomber, while guarding our final escape route, retaliate for the killing by accidentally blowing up a civilian relief worker and killing 10 of his family and friends including 7 children, wait almost 2 weeks to disclose said disaster, abandon a $1 billion embassy, dismiss 8,000 NATO allied troops in Afghanistan to fend for themselves, leave behind for Taliban terrorists some $80 billion worth of weaponry and training investment in their usage, fly into the United States some 100,000 unvetted, unvaccinated Afghan refugees in the midst of a pandemic, while leaving behind among the Taliban thousands of Afghans loyal to the U.S. mission—and likely 100-200 Americans.  

Is malleable General Milley in the chain of command when he wishes to interrupt operational protocols about nuclear weapons, or to call to warn the Chinese military, but then he is not when he mysteriously becomes only a Joint Chiefs “advisor” without any operation control of or responsibility for the greatest military defeat and humiliation of the last half century?  

Item: In the fiscal year 2021-22, how could an anticipated two million illegal aliens simply swarm the border, illegally cross it, continue to reside in the United States illegally, and do so in a time of a pandemic without either a COVID-19 test or vaccination? Who has unilaterally decided that U.S. executive officials could forsake their oaths to enforce existing laws, and simply decide to nullify American immigration law? 

Are we a neo-Confederacy in which the nullification of federal law is now normal, whether at the border or in some 550 sanctuary jurisdictions? Most of the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens have headed northward in response to the wink-and-nod open borders advocacy of Joe Biden and his brag that he had stopped all construction of the supposedly impractical replacement and new sections of the border wall—whose current cessation point doubled as the start-off point of the current mass influx. 

Item: The nominal head of the COVID-19 administration task force has been forced to admit under oath that he directed the U.S. government to route, through a close associate and third-party medical group, hundreds of thousands of dollars of American research funding to the Chinese Communist-controlled Wuhan virology lab, the likely ground zero of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Yet Dr. Anthony Fauci would strenuously deny under oath that such funding enhanced gain-of-function virology research, despite clear evidence and agreement in the scientific community that it did. Fauci, in addition, would concede that for over a year he has denied any connection between the pandemic and ongoing efforts at the Wuhan lab where the Chinese military played a prominent role in overseeing viral research.  

At various times during the pandemic, Fauci would praise the role of the Chinese government in dealing with the plague, dismiss initially the need for a travel ban to prevent spread of the virus, urge Americans not to wear masks, to wear masks, and at times even to wear two masks. And at 80 years of age, he would become the revered COVID-19 icon who sought to protect us from the virus that likely originated in a top-security Wuhan virology lab, possibly the product of a human-engineered, gain-of-function experiment which was partly funded through likely advocacy of—Dr. Fauci himself 

Item: The U.S. government will mandate that all federal employees and soldiers must be vaccinated to retain their tenures even though such a requirement of U.S. citizens does not apply to the hundreds of thousands of aliens entering the country illegally. Moreover, after the “science” has finally established that naturally acquired immunity from prior COVID-19 infections is superior to protection offered by vaccination, it nonetheless still requires those with superior levels of immunity to be vaccinated.  

The administration promised to release from the military and fire from the government any soldier or worker with natural immunity who refused to become vaccinated. If the government’s position is that naturally acquired immunity is superior to vaccinated immunity, but nonetheless it still requires additional vaccinated immunity, will such a mandatory, double-indemnity policy also require vaccinated Americans to get needed additional superior immunity through exposure to COVID-infection? Who is better protected from the virus—those who recovered from COVID-19 (according to the CDC, 1 in 3, or over 100 million Americans were infected) but are not vaccinated, or those vaccinated but who have never had COVID? 

Item: As the U.S. national debt edged toward $30 billion, as annual budgets continued to run over $1 trillion in the red annually, as annual inflation is headed toward a per annum increase of 6-8 percent, and as the U.S. economy faces historic shortages of workers, in part because of generous unemployment stipends, the Biden Administration unveiled the most dramatic growth in U.S. spending and expansions of social services in the last half-century.  

Is the idea that raising taxes even higher to pay for some of the even more gargantuan spending means that it is not really spending because the government is nearing the limits of realistic borrowing, and now proposes to hike taxes to pay for a bit of the huge deficit agendas?  

Item: The president of the United States now most often lectures the country on two themes: one, for the rich to “pay their fair share,” when he proposes huge new increases in taxes and spending; and two, “systemic racism” and the need to address white privilege by reparatory action.  

How then can it be that he reportedly has used loopholes and then legal tax manipulation to have welched out on some $500,000 of prior income taxes to shield his past, vast multimillion-dollar income, no doubt some of it gained when, as the “big guy” of Hunter Biden’s emails, he purportedly received “10 percent” of his son’s multimillion-dollar chronic grifting? 

And how can the president berate the affluent for using their privilege to warp the system when his own son is currently hocking bad, paint-by-numbers art to wannabe and mostly foreign lobbyists seeking favors from the well-known Biden, Inc. quid pro quo apparat? 

If the president is convinced of the pathologies of white racism, might he first promise to cease and desist from his serially racialist language in which he calls one of his African-American subordinates “boy,” demeans black journalists with put-downs such as “you ain’t black” and “junkie,” has called the former president of the United States the first “clean” and “articulate” black presidential candidate in history, revved up audiences with his racist “Corn Pop” sagas in which mighty young Joe Biden took on inner-city thugs with his custom-made chain, and warned a group of black professionals that Mitt Romney would “put y’all back in chains”?  

Was it from this font of such serial racism, that young Hunter Biden, familiar with the use of the N-word obscenity, agreed with his similarly racist procuress cousin (who warned the libidinous Hunter “I can’t give you f***ing Asian sorry. I’m not doing it”) that a “domesticated foreigner is fine. No yellow”?  

Is the president simply warning others who are not racists and tax avoiders about the dangers of bias and not paying their fair share, since he knows from his and his family’s own first-hand trafficking in racism and tax avoidance that neither is good for the country? 

What explains these insanities that are insults to the American people’s intelligence? Did Americans go mad because of the perfect storm of COVID-19, the quarantine, recession, riots, looting and arson of 2020, the wild November election, the post-election hysterias and riot, and the Biden-socialist Faustian bargain?  

Or do these symptoms of long-standing illnesses arise from the media and university, where the twins of incompetence and ideology ruined the critical consciousness of an entire generation of young minds?  

Or is the culprit the affluent, bicoastal woke professionals, who, as both narcissists and projectionists, feel the consequences of their own ideology should never apply to themselves, while fobbing off their own sins onto others as a way of squaring the circle of their own illiberality? 

There is only one bright spot for the moment: perhaps the Chinese, Russians, North Koreas, and Iranians see us as so crazy, weird, and self-loathing that they have no idea what our best and brightest nihilists might do. And for now, they all are trying to determine the relative deterrence of a nuclear-armed, wacky social-justice nation led by a president who, by any past measure of what is required daily of the commander-in-chief, is not really president at all.


Race Card is the Reliable Glue for a Fractured Left

If anything can hold together these disparate groups with otherwise irreconcilable differences, it is the prospect of playing the race card against the Deplorables. 


Today’s Left is riddled with contradictions. It is hard to imagine what unites black nationalists, Islamicists, feminists, and LGBTQ+ activists except for their shared loathing for white male heterosexual Christians and for those identified with this hated group, like Israelis or Larry Elder. 

Members of the Left’s alliance are already aware of their obvious, irreconcilable differences and have begun to lash out against each other. This should be expected. Some alliances make long-term sense, like economic and military cooperation among European states or fraternal associations among the Islamic monarchies in the Gulf States. But I can’t think of a glue that is strong enough to keep together, in a permanent coalition, feminist Pecksniff Elizabeth Warren, the transgendered, black gangs in our crime-ridden urban centers, and sexist American Muslims.

Carl Schmitt had a point that one’s adversaries often determine one’s friends. But there are narrow limits as to how far certain implausible alliances can go, for example, the Soviet-Nazi Pact, or the 16th-century alliance of Catholic France with the Ottoman Empire against the Hapsburgs and for a while, the Pope. Such relationships are fated to dissolve almost from the time they are established. What holds our Left together would be even more tenuous, were it not for the survival of the shared enemy and the support received from those who are payrolling the Left for their own benefit, starting with big tech, the more traditional media, the deep state, and the culture industry.

Despite this impressive support system, it is hard to defer indefinitely the surfacing of inherent contradictions within the Left’s exceedingly “diverse” crew. Such a contradiction is playing out right now between whatever part of the Left is trying to profit from the COVID epidemic and a rising tide of black activists. Black Lives Matter has swung into action in New York City against the administration of Bill de Blasio, which requires evidence of vaccination for those wishing to enter restaurants and other centers of commerce. According to Hawk Newsome, the cofounder of Black Lives Matter New York, the vaccine mandate discriminates grievously against blacks, most of whom have undergone no more than one vaccine. Demonstrations have begun against the mandate, and this black backlash gives the lie to the mainstream media efforts to pin vaccine skepticism mostly on MAGA voters. It is blacks who are refusing the vaccine in disproportionately high numbers, and they are turning against the white Left that is pushing lockdowns, vaccine passports, and other restrictive measures those leftist administrations have been able to inflict on docile white populations. 

Not at all surprisingly, black activists are claiming a special right for members of their race not to have to receive the vaccines being imposed. After all, the Left does insist (when convenient) that blacks are a designated victim group with special status due to white privilege.

I shall not hide my Schadenfreude as I happily process such information. The Left deserves all the grief coming its way, for having aggravated racial and gender divisions and for taking away our freedoms. Unfortunately, these tensions will not lead to a permanent riff in the strange coalition described. 

Those in charge of damage control are already on hand and are trying to shift the attention of their electorate to more congenial issues. Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)—the black militant who is the congressional representative of Harvard and the surrounding areas of Cambridge and Somerville—has called for letting black Haitians come across our Southern border without being hindered, a position that also seems to be that of Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Al Sharpton. This has created further tension between the “moderate” and “progressive” Democrats but is also diverting attention away from the vaccine mandate to the supposed moral claims of nonwhite illegals.

We also have the multi-trillion-dollar Democratic spending bill that mandates money for public housing and daycare. This can be packaged as something aimed at addressing intolerable group disparities. Finally, the Democrats can repeat what they did so successfully in California when they turned the black vote against a black Republican by labeling that candidate surrealistically as a “white supremacist.” Since that smear worked before, why not play the race card once again, for the millionth time, to get blacks away from noticing the mandate requirement?

I also wouldn’t put it past the Democrats in New York or anywhere else to decide that blacks, like the illegals streaming in from Mexico, won’t be required to take the vaccines or have to offer proof of being vaccinated. Because of their victim status, as proved by CRT, members of this group should be exempt from the obligation of being vaccinated before entering restaurants and bars. Since the white Left is delighted to use the race card, mostly against the Deplorables, it is doubtful that it will complain very loudly if this move is taken. CDC director, and an unmistakable liberal Democrat, Rochelle Walensky has already declared white racism to be a “public health threat.”  


Eco-warriors Meghan and Harry arrive back in California on private jet after VIP tour of NYC. So, were Duchess' OTT outfits, Prince's mystery wire and that cameraman clues that they were secretly filming their Netflix series?

 

Harry and Meghan have touched down in Santa Barbara, California to be reunited with their children Archie and Lilibet after their whirlwind tour of New York - after a wire poking out of Harry's pocket suggests the trip will be part of their multi-million dollar Netflix deal.

Exclusive pictures obtained by DailyMail.com show the Duke and Duchess of Sussex returning home Saturday night.

Touching down in their private jet, the virtue signaling couple and fossil fueled ‘eco-warriors’ embraced members of staff who had accompanied them on the pseudo royal tour before heading back to their Montecito mansion.

 

 Landing back in California late Saturday Meghan, 40, ditched the block color power dressing that saw some social media users mock her as a Michelle Obama wannabe.

 

 

  • Harry and Meghan have touched down in Santa Barbara, California to be reunited with their children Archie and Lilibet after a three-day tour in NYC
  • Meghan, 40,  appeared casual, dressed in loose camel sweater and black pants
  • The couple took part in string of worthy meetings across three days 
  • On Thursday, the Sussexes visited  the World Trade Center memorial and in the company of Mayor Bill de Blasio and new governor Kathy Hochul 
  • A wire poking out of Prince Harry's pocket on Friday and cameras following the couple around suggest the couple may have recorded their New York tour as part of their multi-million dollar Netflix 
  • Earlier, the couple had wrapped up their three-day stint on the East coast with an appearance on stage at Central Park’s Global Citizens Festival  



  • https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10030443/Eco-warriors-Meghan-Harry-return-California-private-jet-VIP-woke-tour-NYC.html?ito=native_share_article-masthead

“The Strongest Smell of Fear is Coming From Government” – “It Smells Like Victory, Hold The Line”


Neil Oliver hits the nail on the head again.  I cannot recommend watching this monologue highly enough.  As you have read on these pages, we hold the exact same opinion.

Mr. Oliver takes examples of what is happening in real time, such as Australia, and puts exactly the correct prism in place to consider them.

What Oliver is stating is supported by a basic truth in human nature: ‘Control is a reaction to fear‘.  As a consequence, the need for control is a conscious reaction to something being feared.   Those who live atop society, in politics or positions of affluence, are becoming increasingly fearful.

Recent references are not limited to COVID lockdowns and arbitrary totalitarian rules put into place.  The way the government responded to the “yellow vest” movement in France; or the U.K. government efforts to fight Brexit; or the U.S. government response to Donald Trump’s election; these are all examples of those holding power being fearful of the us – a free people.   The elites are fearful, and they will lose.


Those who hold power are fearful. One of the mechanisms they use to manage their need for control is division.  They need vaxxed -vs- unvaxxed. They need left -vs- right. They need identity politics.  They need class war.  They need racism. They need support from Big Tech.  They need to control the media.  They need compartmentalized scrap-grabbers constantly looking down; because if enough people start looking up and seeing through the division, the masses will find unity.

Those who hold tenuous power know the intelligence agencies alone will not be able to protect them from a unified people.   Neil Oliver is 100% correct.


Macron egged by protester shouting 'Vive la revolution'

 



An egg was thrown at French President Emmanuel Macron during his visit to a restaurant trade fair in Lyon.

The man who threw the egg was immediately removed from the room after the incident and detained.

The egg bounced off Macron's shoulder without breaking.  


The Public Health Officials Say “Trust Us.”

 The Public Health Officials Say "Trust Us." The Data Says Otherwise.



I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Ben Shapiro, but feelings trump facts when it comes to covid-19. This is thanks entirely to the love triangle forged between the corporate press, government officials, and tech giants whose sinister and divisive campaign of fear and censorship spawned a reaction so virulent that society was upended in a matter of weeks for a virus with a 99 percent plus survival rate.

In no time whatsoever sacrificing for and preserving “public health”—costs be damned—became the chief end of mankind. Relegating oneself to a life of unquestioned submission to lockdowns and mask mandates became the greatest calling one could fulfill—at least until the vaccine arrived.

As our most fundamental human rights were stripped away, did any president, prime minister, governor, or mayor suggest that maybe “the people” have a vote to determine whether or not every aspect of their lives should be subject to manipulation on a daily basis? Of course not. As it turns out, your “sacred right to vote” may only be exercised so long as the ruling class permits. It appears that our only job in times of emergency is to wait for marching orders from those with political power.

What many should have come to realize over this past year and a half are two lamentable impulses of the average person: (1) the trained instinct, learned primarily in government schools, to revere and please those in positions of perceived authority and (2) the desire for safety over liberty. Fused with modernity's cushy standards of living, these two traits enabled a series of effortless goalpost shifts, starting from “We’re all in this together!" to “Three jabs or weekly testing, else you and your family can starve.” Mind you, anybody who predicted far less draconian policies in the early stages of the pandemic was promptly labeled a conspiracy theorist.

At their core, these pandemic schemes—lockdowns, curfews, capacity restrictions, vaccine mandates, and more—relied heavily on a blind trust in the ruling elite’s public health pronouncements and our desire to behave in a socially approved, conflict-free manner. But as it turns out, all of the big-picture covid data from the past eighteen months regarding lockdowns, and vaccine uptake thoroughly implicate the ruling elite.

The Covid-19 Data We Need to Accept

There is zero meaningful correlation between lockdown strength and covid-19 outcomes.

Prior to 2020 lockdowns had never been recommended as a public health response, even for severe respiratory outbreaks. However, with a little bit of media-induced panic, social pressure, and a theistic reverence for computer modeling, it was quickly accepted that these historically and scientifically unprecedented public health measures saved lives. In turn, it was simply agreed that more stringent lockdowns would be more effective than weaker lockdowns.

All costs and moral arguments aside, heavy skepticism toward lockdowns was justified as early as April 2020, when it was shown that a region's time to lock down made no impact on its death toll.

Covid Deaths per Million

Fast-forward eleven months and we find that data from March 1, 2020, to March 1, 2021, show that lockdowns were always a nonfactor in mitigating the spread of covid-19. The following data was split into four three-month periods to better account for changes in each nation’s stringency index. The period of measurement was cut off on March 1, 2021, to exclude any significant vaccine uptake. Because Israel was the only nation in the following graph that had significant full vaccination rates going into March 2021, it has been excluded from the last period of measurement.

Lockdown Stringency
Source: Our World in Data COVID-19 dataset (stringency_index, total_cases_per_million, total_deaths_per_million).

Quite plainly, more stringent lockdowns, regardless of population density—illustrated by the size of the dots—had no greater effect on covid-19 outcomes than less stringent lockdowns. In fact, the minimal correlation that does exist slopes in the opposite direction of what we’ve been trained to believe about lockdowns.

Similar conclusions can be drawn about lockdowns in the United States. Due to data constraints on lockdown stringency, the following state data is broken down into two periods: one much larger period extending from March 1, 2020, to January 1, 2021, and a second period extending from January 1, 2021, through March 1, 2021.

Lockdowns and Covid
Source: Data on cases and deaths from Our World in Data COVID-19 dataset (total_cases_per_million, total_deaths_per_million); data on hospitalizations from HealthData.gov (COVID-19 Reported Patient Impact and Hospital Capacity by State Timeseries); data on stringency for January 2021–March 2021 from Adam McCann "States with the Fewest Coronavirus Restrictions," Wallethub, Apr. 6, 2021; and through Dec. 31, 2020, from Laura Hallas, Ariq Hatibie, Saptarshi Pyarali, and Thomas Hale, "Variations in US States' Responses to COVID-19" (BSG Working Paper Series BSG-WP-2020/034, version 2.0, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, December 2020). Data on population density from World Population Review (US States – Ranked by Population 2021).

Again, we find no statistically significant correlations between lockdown stringency and cases, deaths, or hospitalizations. Population density, again noted by the size of the dots, was also a nonfactor.

Quite plainly, no matter the intensity, duration, or location of the lockdown mandated by government authorities, no respiratory virus can be legislated away. The claims that lockdowns are some sort of life-saving public health measure and that the strength of a region’s lockdown is inversely related to covid-19 incidence is simply not borne out in the data.

Briefly I would like to note one glaring cost of lockdowns based on recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates, namely the abnormally high level of drug overdoses that have persisted since the first half of 2020.

Drug Overdoses
Source: Data.CDC.org (Early Model-Based Provisional Estimates of Drug Overdose, Suicide, and Transportation-Related Deaths).

While there are many more costs associated with lockdowns than can be discussed in one article, it is important to realize that even if the lockdowns were costless, their inefficacy is enough to render them useless as a public health measure.

Hospitals, on the whole, were never overrun.

While it is tempting to generalize based on a few extreme cases that exist at the tail ends of a distribution, these cases are not representative of the whole. This temptation is succumbed to most frequently when manufacturing panic about overrun and overcrowded hospitals. While these stories are seemingly endless, they are nevertheless statistical outliers. A brief review of United States hospitalization data confirms as much.

Inpatient Occupany Rates
Source: HealthData.gov (COVID-19 Reported Patient Impact and Hospital Capacity by State Timeseries).

From consuming corporate press headlines one may have the impression that just about every hospital is operating above or near 100 percent capacity. As it turns out, inpatient bed utilization—these are staffed inpatient beds that include all overflow and surge/expansion beds used for inpatients, including all ICU beds—across the United States has stayed below 76 percent over the course of the pandemic while inpatient bed utilization for covid-19 patients has never surpassed 15 percent. However, judging by the fact that the 2021 seasonal summer surge—which has already peaked—has surpassed the 2020 seasonal summer surge, these rates will likely be exceeded when the deadlier seasonal winter surge arrives in the coming months. Nevertheless, it would be mere speculation to suggest that hospitals are going to exceed or reach nearly 100 percent capacity as winter rolls around.

While 76 percent utilization may seem high, former medical director James Allen points out that an 85 percent occupancy rate is commonly considered to be optimal operating capacity. Allen remarks that having too small of an occupancy rate means that workers and resources are sitting idle, which can lead to layoffs. On the other hand, a near–100 percent occupancy rate would be too much of a strain on resources, leaving patients without care.

While there are certainly extreme cases of hospitals being pushed beyond capacity, the idea that United States hospitals, on average, have been operating at or beyond 100 percent capacity is absolutely ludicrous.

Vaccine uptake is not preventing case growth.

The covid-19 vaccine just may be the most hyped pharmaceutical product in medical history. Marketed to the world as nothing short of global salvation, the vaccine was supposed to kickstart our return to normalcy. Despite this belief, the data suggest that increased vaccination rates are failing to slow the spread of covid-19.

First, let’s assess the following claim made by Anthony Fauci during a June 3 CNN interview: "When you’re below 50 percent of the people being vaccinated, that’s when you’re going to have a problem . . . With 50 percent vaccinated I feel fairly certain you're not going to see the kind of surges we've seen in the past.” Mind you, if Fauci believed that 50 percent vaccination rates were going to halt surges, you can bet a majority of the nation felt the same way.

daily new cases
Source: Data on cases from Our World in Data COVID-19 dataset (new_cases_smoothed_per_million); data on vaccination rates from Data.CDC.gov (COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States Jurisdiction).

As you can see, mere weeks after 50 percent full vaccination rates had been achieved in twenty states, cases in each one of those states erupted. It comes as no surprise that authorities are now calling for 70, 80, or 90 percent vaccination rates to get things under control.

Looking at the entirety of the United States since March 1, 2021, there is no statistically significant indication that states that have administered, on average, more vaccine doses are faring any better than states that have administered fewer doses on average.

Doses Administered vs Cases
Source: Data on cases from Our World in Data COVID-19 dataset (total_cases_per_million); data on vaccination rates from Data.CDC.gov (COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States Jurisdiction). Date range is Mar. 1, 2021–Sept. 9, 2021.

Moving along to full vaccination rates, there is again no statistically significant indication that states and countries with higher percentages of their population fully vaccinated are mitigating case growth any better than states with lower percentages of their population fully vaccinated. As before, fully vaccinated rates are taken as an average of the past six months.

Vaccinated vs Cases
Source: Data on cases from Our World in Data COVID-19 dataset (total_cases_per_million); data on vaccination rates from Data.CDC.gov (COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States Jurisdiction). Date range is Mar. 1, 2021–Sept. 9, 2021.
Vaccinated vs Cases Intl
Source: Data on cases and vaccination from Our World in Data COVID-19 dataset (total_cases_per_million, people_fully_vaccinated). Date range is Mar. 1, 2021–Sept. 9, 2021.

Additionally, a recent vaccine surveillance report from the UK shows that fully vaccinated individuals between the ages of forty and eighty are getting infected at higher rates than their unvaccinated counterparts. For those under forty and over eighty, infection rates among the vaccinated are lower than in the unvaccinated, but still significant.

Infections by Vaccination Status UK
Source: Public Health England, COVID-19 Vaccine Surveillance Report – Week 36 (London: Public Health England, 2021).

If this isn’t enough to raise some eyebrows, there are plenty of instances of countries—only a few shown below—having experienced a surge in cases or even their highest case levels of the pandemic amid ever-increasing rates of vaccination.

Daily New Cases vs Fully Vaccinated Intl
Source: Data on cases and vaccination from Our World in Data COVID-19 dataset (new_cases, people_fully_vaccinated).

Keep in mind that the percentage of people who have received at least one dose is higher than what’s displayed above. So the assumption that simply getting jabs out to people—not having to fully vaccinate them—was going to bring cases to a screeching halt is also incredibly dubious.

Pertaining specifically to the month of August, we find that a number of highly vaccinated nations are experiencing worse total case numbers amidst the highly vaccinated summer of 2021 as opposed to the unvaccinated summer of 2020.

Cases per Million in Highly Vaccinated Countries
Source: Data on cases and vaccination from Our World in Data COVID-19 dataset (total_cases_per_million, people_vaccinated).

How can it be the case that a 0 percent vaccinated country had far fewer cases last year than it did once 60, 70, or 80 percent of its population was fully vaccinated with what is professed to be an incredibly effective vaccine? Why, despite these far worse metrics, are we no longer seeing the strict lockdown measures like business closures, curfews, capacity restrictions, or stay-at-home orders that defined the summer of 2020? Collegiate and professional sports arenas that were empty just one year ago are now packed to the brim; and little to no effort is being made to check for vaccination status or proof of negative test at the gate. Are we seriously expected to believe that our political leaders have any desire to preserve the “public health” when they’re allowing their economies to operate with practically no mitigation measures in place despite climbing metrics? Maybe you are starting to realize that these “public health” measures and the new vaccine mandates never had anything to do with your health.

Despite all the data we have on lockdowns, hospitalization trends, and newly emerging vaccination data, one can only marvel at how trust in the public health system and ruling elite can persist in any capacity.