The Catastrophic Covid Convergence

We must remember just how much reality has been warped since March 2020 and try to understand how that warping occurred

• Maybe if we understand what happened, we can prevent it from happening again
• How did my family, friends and neighbors - who I thought shared my liberal, humanist values - turn into a group-thinking, bullying herd? What forces were exerted to erase scientific and intellectual integrity from the minds of literally millions of doctors, scientists, economists, journalists, educators and other normally curious and compassionate people worldwide?

Pandemic panic was driven from above

• From the highest echelons of the most powerful governments to populations primed for disaster and perpetually on the verge of a nervous breakdown
• It had to be a lab leak
• The Wuhan lab leak makes sense as the source of initial panic because the research there is highly sensitive and controversial
• A small group of top intelligence and national security officials knew, or suspected, that a virus had leaked from a lab studying EPPPs, there would be huge levels of apprehension and hysteria in that group

When it came to the pandemic, this meant that:

• If Trump warned that prolonged lockdowns would wreck the economy, left-leaning economists derided anyone who put economic concerns over human life.
• Every Democrat was convinced it would kill their own children and everyone else’s, and schools should be closed indefinitely
• Trump said masks don’t work, doctors believed masks should be mandated everywhere forever
• Anyone elected on a pro-lockdown, zero-Covid agenda was incentivized to continue advocating for the strictest measures for as long as possible
• Propaganda
• Everything from social media bots to China-friendly editorial boards at prestigious medical journals was leveraged to denigrate any state or nation with a less restrictive approach.

Big Tech

• In 2021, Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook had combined revenue of more than $1.2 trillion

Test Makers and Sellers

• Abbott Laboratories made $1.9 billion in COVID-19 testing, up 48%
• Other beneficiaries were labs that process PCR tests, drugstore chains like CVS and Walgreens
• Pfizer made $37 billion in sales from its Covid-19 vaccine

When they found out, top US intelligence and public health officials panicked

• They disregarded real-world data about the virus and abandoned basic epidemiological principles and best practices in public health
• The Chinese authorities adopted scientifically nonsensical zero-Covid policies
• In a brilliant propaganda coup, they turned the pandemic into a celebration of their authoritarian measures, convincing the world to follow their example

 

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-catastrophic-covid-convergence/