“
The AIDS pandemic forced humans to cover their genitals with condoms. The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing them to put on masks. It is as if many people weren’t already going through life putting on a million masks and changing them based on convenience and self-interest. It is as if countless humans on this planet weren’t already forced to keep their mouths shut and endure the misfortunes imposed on them by the ‘fortunate’ few. I wonder which body part we will be forced to cover next. I wonder if, in the first place, all of this is happening because our eyes were covered all along. Are we heading to a time when staying safe becomes akin to a death sentence with stay of execution?
”
”
Louis Yako
“
You couldn't do this and you couldn't do that, but life went on.
”
”
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
“
Social psychologists have likened the effects of COVID-19 to that of the great World Wars for the characteristics are all there down to the sirens and curfews; it is after all a life-altering event that has blanketed the world with uncertainty and an unfathomable restriction on personal freedoms.
”
”
Aysha Taryam
“
The reserves of emotion pent up during those many months when for everybody the flame of life burned low were being recklessly squandered to celebrate this, the red-letter day of their survival. Tomorrow real life would begin again, with its restrictions. But for the moment people in very different walks of life were rubbing shoulders, fraternizing. The leveling-out that death’s imminence had failed in practice to accomplish was realized at last, for a few gay hours, in the rapture of escape.
”
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Albert Camus (The Plague)
“
Last year we stepped onto an elevator.
We politely asked the white lady behind us
If she could please take the next lift
To continue social distancing.
Her face flared up like a cross in the night.
Are you kidding me? she yelled,
Like we'd just declared
Elevators for us only
Or Yous must enter from the back
Or No yous or dogs allowed
Or We have the right to refuse
Humanity to anyone
Why it's so perturbing for privileged groups to follow
restrictions of place & personhood.
Doing so means for once wearing the chains their power
has shackled on the rest of us.
It is to surrender the one difference that kept them separate & thus superior.
Meanwhile, for generations we've stayed home, [segre] gated, kept out of parks, kept out of playgrounds, kept out of pools, kept out of public spaces, kept out of outside spaces, kept out of outer space, kept out of movie theaters, kept out of malls, kept out of restrooms, kept out of restaurants, kept out of taxis, kept out of buses, kept out of beaches, kept out of ballot boxes, kept out of office, kept out of the army, kept out of the hospitals, kept out of hotels, kept out of clubs, kept out of jobs, kept out of schools, kept out of sports, kept out of streets, kept out of water, kept out of land, kept out of kept in kept from kept behind kept below kept down kept without life.
Some were asked to walk a fraction / of our exclusion for a year & it almost destroyed all they thought they were. Yet here we are. Still walking, still kept.
”
”
Amanda Gorman (Call Us What We Carry)
“
The rule through pandemic medical and emergency decrees is nothing more than a coup d’état on a worldwide scale and it therefore follows the same patterns, not necessarily in the same order, observed in banana republics:
First, pointing to a threat, lockdown of the borders, and restrictions of the means of transportation; checked.
Second, full control of the media; checked.
Third, declaration of a state of emergency and deployment of forces on the ground; checked.
Fourth, restrictions of assembly and civil rights; checked.
Fifth, repressive measure for those not cooperating; checked.
Sixth, changes to the figures and political scene as some go away and old ones come back; checked.
Seventh, attempt to return to normalcy; checked. - On Tyranny Through Emergency Decrees
”
”
Lamine Pearlheart (Awakening)
“
No surprise, pharmaceutical interests launched their multinational preemptive crusade to restrict and discredit HCQ starting way back in January 2020, months before the WHO declared a pandemic and even longer before President Trump’s controversial March 19 endorsement. On January 13, when rumors of Wuhan flu COVID-19 began to circulate, the French government took the bizarre, inexplicable, unprecedented, and highly suspicious step of reassigning HCQ from an over-the-counter to a prescription medicine. Without citing any studies, French health officials quietly changed the status of HCQ to “List II poisonous substance” and banned its over-the-counter sales. This absolutely remarkable coincidence repeated itself a few weeks later when Canadian health officials did the exact same thing, quietly removing the drug from pharmacy shelves. A physician from Zambia reported to Dr. Harvey Risch that in some villages and cities, organized groups of buyers emptied drugstores of HCQ and then burned the medication in bonfires outside the towns. South Africa destroyed two tons of life-saving hydroxychloroquine in late 2020, supposedly due to violation of an import regulation. The US government in 2021 ordered the destruction of more than a thousand pounds of HCQ, because it was improperly imported. “The Feds are insisting that all of it be destroyed, and not be used to save a single life anywhere in the world,” said a lawyer seeking to resist the senseless order.
”
”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
“
In March, at HHS’s request, several large pharmaceutical companies—Novartis, Bayer, Sanofi, and others—donated their inventory, a total of 63 million doses of hydroxychloroquine and 2 million of chloroquine, to the Strategic National Stockpile, managed by BARDA, an agency under the DHHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.56 BARDA’s Director, Dr. Rick Bright, later claimed the chloroquine drugs were deadly, and he needed to protect the American public from them.57 Bright colluded with FDA to restrict use of the donated pills to hospitalized patients. FDA publicized the authorization using language that led most physicians to believe that prescribing the drug for any purpose was off-limits. But at the beginning of June, based on clinical trials that intentionally gave unreasonably high doses to hospitalized patients and failed to start the drug until too late, FDA took the unprecedented step of revoking HCQ’s emergency authorization,58 rendering that enormous stockpile of valuable pills off limits to Americans while conveniently indemnifying the pharmaceutical companies for their inventory losses by allowing them a tax break for the donations. After widespread use of the drug for 65 years, without warning, FDA somehow felt the need to send out an alert on June 15, 2020 that HCQ is dangerous, and that it required a level of monitoring only available at hospitals.59 In a bit of twisted logic, Federal officials continued to encourage doctors to use the suddenly-dangerous drug without restriction for lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Lyme and malaria. Just not for COVID. With the encouragement of Dr. Fauci and other HHS officials, many states simultaneously imposed restrictions on HCQ’s use.
”
”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
“
For CDC chief Redfield the Chinese failure to close down international flights was disastrous. He told colleagues the United States had silently filled with Covid-19 infections “from Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Great Britain, Belgium.” All this late-winter travel brought clusters of Covid to the United States. “Also unknown to us that probably half of those clusters weren’t even symptomatic, so you couldn’t find them” with airport screening. “It was difficult to understand how China had aggressive travel restrictions within China, and yet did not move to any travel restrictions” for people who wanted to leave China and go abroad, Redfield said. “If there could have been one major, global action that could’ve really saved hundreds of thousands of lives, it’s if they had just shut down their out-of-China travel at the same time they shut down their intra-China travel. “They really started moving in the latter part of January. That’s where they quarantined people. That’s where they shut down the city. That’s where they stopped the trains. They really locked down all of Wuhan at one point. I think they quarantined over 11 million people. You couldn’t go from Wuhan to Beijing, but you could go Wuhan to London.
”
”
Bob Woodward (Rage)
“
The rule through pandemic medical and emergency decrees is nothing more than a coup d’état on a worldwide scale and it therefore follows the same patterns, not necessarily in the same order, observed in banana republics:
First, pointing to a threat, lockdown of the borders, and restrictions of the means of transportation; checked.
Second, full control of the media; checked.
Third, declaration of a state of emergency and deployment of forces on the ground; checked.
Fourth, restrictions of assembly and civil rights; checked.
Fifth, repressive measure for those not cooperating; checked.
Sixth, changes to the figures and political scene as some go away and old ones come back; checked.
Seventh, attempt to return to normalcy; checked. - Tyranny Through Emergency Decrees
”
”
Lamine Pearlheart
“
Musk’s push to move faster, take more risks, break rules, and question requirements allowed him to accomplish big feats, such as sending humans into orbit, mass-marketing electric vehicles, and getting homeowners off the electric grid. It also meant that he did things—ignoring SEC requirements, defying California COVID restrictions—that got him in trouble.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Elon Musk)
“
After widespread use of the drug for 65 years, without warning, FDA somehow felt the need to send out an alert on June 15, 2020 that HCQ is dangerous, and that it required a level of monitoring only available at hospitals.59 In a bit of twisted logic, Federal officials continued to encourage doctors to use the suddenly-dangerous drug without restriction for lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Lyme and malaria. Just not for COVID.
”
”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
“
This table only counts physical health effects due to disruptions that took place in the Illusion of Control phase. It considers both short-run and long-run effects. Each of the claimed effects is based on a published study about that effect. First on the list is the disruption to vaccination programs for measles, diphtheria, cholera, and polio, which were either cancelled or reduced in scope in some 70 countries. That disruption was caused by travel restrictions. Western experts could not travel, and within many poor countries travel and general activity were also halted in the early days of the Illusion of Control phase. This depressive effect on vaccination programs for the poor is expected to lead to large loss of life in the coming years. The poor countries paying this cost are most countries in Africa, the poorer nations in Asia, such as India, Indonesia and Myanmar, and the poorer countries in Latin America. The second listed effect in the table relates to schooling. An estimated 90% of the world’s children have had their schooling disrupted, often for months, which reduces their lifetime opportunities and social development through numerous direct and indirect pathways. The UN children’s organisation, UNICEF, has released several reports on just how bad the consequences of this will be in the coming decades.116 The third element in Joffe’s table refers to reports of economic and social primitivisation in poor countries. Primitivisation, also seen after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, is just what it sounds like: a regression away from specialisation, trade and economic advancement through markets to more isolated and ‘primitive’ choices, including attempted economic self-sufficiency and higher fertility. Due to diminished labour market prospects, curtailed educational activities and decreased access to reproductive health services, populations in the Illusion of Control phase began reverting to having more children precisely in those countries where there is already huge pressure on resources. The fourth and fifth elements listed in the table reflect the biggest disaster of this period, namely the increase in extreme poverty and expected famines in poor countries. Over the 20 years leading up to 2020, gradual improvements in economic conditions around the world had significantly eased poverty and famines. Now, international organisations are signalling rapid deterioration in both. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) now expects the world to have approximately an additional 100 million extremely poor people facing starvation as a result of Covid policies. That will translate into civil wars, waves of refugees and huge loss of life. The last two items in Joffe’s table relate to the effect of lower perinatal and infant care and impoverishment. Millions of preventable deaths are now expected due to infections and weakness in new mothers and young infants, and neglect of other health problems like malaria and tuberculosis that affect people in all walks of life. The whole of the poor world has suffered fewer than one million deaths from Covid. The price to be paid in human losses in these countries through hunger and health neglect caused by lockdowns and other restrictions is much, much larger. All in the name of stopping Covid.
”
”
Paul Frijters (The Great Covid Panic: What Happened, Why, and What To Do Next)
“
Doctors often try to get family members to come in if they think the patient will die, because seeing a trauma team desperately trying to save their loved one is enormously comforting later on. That is particularly true for parents. Barbara told Kohler that the ambulance crew had said Covid restrictions would keep her from going inside the building, but he overrode that. “I wouldn’t drive a hundred miles an hour,” he said to Barbara, “but if it were my wife, I would go as fast as I could.
”
”
Sebastian Junger (In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife)
“
Watkins’ case is more evidence that society’s fixation on identity politics can miss the ways in which individual circumstances change the game. Watkins, together with her longtime boyfriend, was a bar owner in the tiny rural town of Woodstock, Ohio. This small business, that she’d had such high hopes for, had been struggling due to restrictions imposed by the state government to decrease the spread of Covid-19. She didn’t blame the virus. She blamed Republican Governor Mike DeWine, the man who declared an emergency in March 2020 in an attempt to contain the virus’s spread. DeWine’s order that closed bars and restaurants to indoor customers was lifted in late May 2020. But business still lagged. And during the idle hours imposed by the pandemic, Watkins developed a penchant for watching videos produced by the conspiracy site, InfoWars.
”
”
Anita Bartholomew (Siege: An American Tragedy)
“
She was preoccupied, though, and explained that she was worried because she could not reach her mother in Milan. She said the region had been “put under lockdown.”31 I remember the sense of vertigo I felt when she said that. What? That could not happen in Italy — in a free, modern nation. I understood that “lockdown,” the holding of citizens against their wishes in one area, the restrictions of their liberty to assemble freely — only happened under totalitarian systems.
”
”
Naomi Wolf (The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and The War Against the Human)
“
So what were these “restrictions” really for? Why were they proliferating and shape shifting day by day and week by week? Gradually, it became clear. The true reason had nothing to do with medicine. The true reason is that, in the elites’ war against Western humanism, “restrictions” had become the weapon of choice.
”
”
Naomi Wolf (The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and The War Against the Human)
“
This is the reason why a favorite buzzword in tech CEO circles is “disruptive.” The primary thing every digital company wants to “disrupt” is a human society from which they are not profiting. The more that tech platforms and policies are able to shut down human community, and restrict the freedom of humans, the wealthier the Big Tech corporations become.
”
”
Naomi Wolf (The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and The War Against the Human)
“
Why develop policies that punish, encumber and restrict human contact in humane/analog (unsurveilled, unmediated) spaces? Because human contact is the great revolutionary force underlying human freedom.
”
”
Naomi Wolf (The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and The War Against the Human)
“
The worst type of research on this will tend to produce a monocausal explanation—it will assume that everything that happens in a given period is due to one factor. Lockdown skeptics sometimes have the tendency to ascribe the whole economic downturn through this pandemic to government policies, for example, ignoring that the virus clearly disrupted much private economic activity anyway. Even at the time of writing in December 2020, those most critical of how state governments reacted to the pandemic continue to talk of “lockdown policies” as shorthand for any public health interventions introduced since February 2020, even though a lot of the initial restrictions I describe as lockdown in this chapter have since been lifted in most places, either partially or fully.4 So defining what lockdowns are and what they are not is critical.
”
”
Ryan A. Bourne (Economics in One Virus: An Introduction to Economic Reasoning through COVID-19)
“
There’s a feeling after a year of restrictions that people will do anything to ‘get back to normal’. But declaring your health status to use businesses and services has never been normal. The introduction of a health status ID to access products and services will cross a rubicon.
”
”
Laura Dodsworth (A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic)
“
A highly respected pair of researchers put the odds that such an effort (in this case involving a hypothetical strain of a novel influenza) could create a dangerous pathogen that would accidentally escape from a lab and trigger a pandemic at 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 100,000 per lab year.64 This was a meaningful risk. The US government imposed a moratorium on gain-of-function studies in 2014. No such restrictions were imposed in China. The US moratorium was later lifted by the NIH in 2017 and gain of function experiments continued including one widely cited study that was done by US researchers in collaboration with the WIV.65
”
”
Scott Gottlieb (Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic)
“
In June 2019, about twenty weeks before the start of the COVID pandemic, Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, summarized the conclusions of GPMB’s pandemic report, warning that “we are entering a new phase of high impact epidemics” that would constitute “a new normal” where governments worldwide would strengthen control and restrict the mobility of citizens.
”
”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
“
Religion gives meaning to actions and moral choices. Else, both mass murderers and honest go through the same biological decay of their skulls after they die. One can decide to do an act morally as an end in itself and not merely as a means to a material end with the knowledge that there are deterministic rewards beyond the interpersonal relations in the world. If one believes in this life only; then that person will be more selfish to get everything in this life. If we restrict our existence confined to this world alone with no accountability in the afterlife; then, I am "just" as long as I am "just" in front of the society even though there could be crimes that the society could never have seen me doing. Contrarily, I could be regarded as "unjust" by the society if it convicts me based on evidence which could have been untrue. Life hereafter gives meaning to all our actions by promising each and every soul a just reward.
”
”
Salman Ahmed Shaikh (Reflections on the Origins in the Post COVID-19 World)
“
Prof. Stephen Hawking once said: “I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look around carefully before they cross the road.” Religious faith does not mean that after accepting faith, one can walk on water, fly in the air or defy physical limits in any other sense. Religion concerns with moral content in choices made with free will. Repeatedly, Qur’an asks people to strive for knowledge, discovery, exploration and virtuous livelihood. Nowhere there is a restriction on planning or in using material resources bestowed by the Creator.
”
”
Salman Ahmed Shaikh (Reflections on the Origins in the Post COVID-19 World)
“
Restrictions
can't stop our music, can't stop us.
”
”
Karen Comer (Grace Notes)