Cracks appear
Dissent against the lockdown thought police was hard to find for a while, but we eventually started seeing more dissidents on both the right and left. On the left, there was the “LockdownCriticalLeft” forum on Reddit. There were also “Socialist Against Lockdowns”, “Liberals Against Lockdown”, and “Left Lockdown Sceptics” on Twitter. Northern Kentucky DSA—our local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America—roundly blasted mask mandates and “biopower.” Northern Kentucky DSA’s Twitter page didn’t appear in Google’s search, of course. The Dublin branch of the Communist Party of Ireland wrote, “If the rights and freedoms of the people are expendable in an emergency, the ruling class will continue to manufacture emergencies indefinitely.” Conservatives had their share of dissenters from lockdown culture too. Lockdowns were questioned as more people realized that civil liberties were being curb-stomped and the economy was being destroyed. (Northern Kentucky DSA later disbanded because the national DSA threatened to expel “ultraleft” figures and supported breaking a strike by rail workers. The national DSA had the word socialists in its name but was not recognizably socialist. Gee, where have we heard that before?)
One of the first voices I saw opposing lockdowns in the U.S. was an antifa activist commenting on a website. I might not have noticed except someone falsely accused this person of threatening to kill police who tried to enforce these measures. But this fight against lockdowns was a lonely one for many weeks—which seemed like years.
The repeated extension of lockdowns tested everyone’s patience. During lockdowns, our public officials provided no exit strategy and kept extending lockdowns beyond the relatively short periods they promised. I got so sick of hearing the word can’t all the time. Can’t, can’t, can’t. That was their favorite word. Our “leaders” did nothing but complain instead of finding a way out of lockdown. They sounded exactly like the Whiners, a couple who appeared on Saturday Night Live in the 1980s: “I’ve got diverticuliiiiitis!” Governors said there weren’t enough tests. Certainly, the Trump administration was incompetent at rolling out tests, but governors knew by April that the federal government wasn’t doing its job, so it was up to them to step in and get the tests. If they didn’t do it, that shouldn’t have been our problem. When more and more people became infected during lockdowns, the chattering class decried the very concept of immunity. They said there was no evidence the virus produced antibodies. But why would this virus be that much different from other coronaviruses? They also said antibodies didn’t produce immunity. Then what do antibodies do? They said that because antibodies don’t produce immunity, we’d have to stay locked down until a vaccine was available. Uh, vaccines provide immunity by producing antibodies, you idiots. They thought herd immunity wasn’t even real and treated it as a four-letter word—even though without herd immunity, vaccines wouldn’t work. At best, they kept insisting the herd immunity threshold was 70 percent—maybe higher—despite considerable evidence that it may have been lower. The 70 percent figure seemed to be arbitrarily chosen. Later, when it was generally agreed that more than 70 percent of the public had immunity, restrictions still were not fully dropped.
We heard excuse after excuse after excuse as to why we couldn’t end lockdowns.
Some countries were relatively lenient in their COVID measures. Sweden was often considered the gold standard, but an AP story from April 2020 said that while Japan declared a state of emergency for some regions, it was not a lockdown, as lockdowns were not legally enforceable and violators generally could not be punished. The Japanese Constitution has strong protections for civil liberties. Then again, so does the U.S. Constitution, but these safeguards were ignored.
The Hill reported that Japan—with no lockdowns or mandatory social distancing—reported a healthy decline in cases while so many other countries suffered under lockdowns.
Sweden’s lax approach produced a bump in polls for the Social Democratic Party, which carried out this lenient policy. The Social Democrats’ main opponents were two far-right parties that demanded tough lockdowns and mask mandates. (Another reason not to portray lockdown culture as “leftist.”)
Even Business Insider reported in May 2020, “Most people in Sweden are happy with the country’s coronavirus strategy that has avoided a full lockdown and left restaurants, parks, and schools open, according to polls.” The piece noted that the death rate there was lower than in places with tougher measures. A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial in November also suggested the Swedish approach wasn’t as bad as some thought.
Ireland’s Socialist Party featured an article describing how police in India issued beatings to enforce lockdowns. Several people were reportedly beaten to death, including an ambulance driver and a man buying milk. The piece called the lockdowns “badly planned and implemented.”
In Germany, the influential Ethics Council urged a debate on ending lockdowns because of the ethical questions that had arisen. Some commentators raised ethical concerns about lockdowns in France, where authorities required people to fill out a form just to leave their home. These papers had to be shown on demand. France also decreed that each person would get only one hour per day for grocery shopping and had to stay within one kilometer of home. Punishments included fines and jail.
Unfortunately, those who expressed even the slightest skepticism of lockdowns were still shouted down by forces that wanted lockdowns to continue as long as they dared. Mob rule by elites prevailed. Neel Kashkari, the Republican president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, told Face The Nation in April 2020 that 18 months of rolling lockdowns might face the nation. Even in August, Kashkari still wouldn’t shut up, as he told Face The Nation that the U.S. should “lock down really hard” for another four to six weeks. His main argument was that it would benefit the economy. This was after lockdown opponents were wrongly attacked for allegedly placing the economy ahead of lives.
Tough luck, Neel. Why should we put the Federal Reserve’s concept of a good economy ahead of real quality of life?
When I think of who to trust on medicine and epidemiology, I don’t think of the Federal Reserve.
This was reminiscent of a proposal by President Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for a three-month lockdown—which Daily Kos regulars cheered.
Even as dissent grew, there were still plenty of lockdown apologists in high places. Rich Lowry, editor of the right-wing National Review, wrote a piece for Politico that sniffed that the case against lockdowns was “unpersuasive” and “contradictory”—though he failed to make any persuasive arguments himself. Later in the crisis, however, there actually were a precious few articles in National Review against lockdown culture that looked like they were written by a dyed-in-the-wool 1991 counterculture icon.
Also frustrating was when somebody said that some methods of fighting COVID were unacceptable intrusions on freedom, while they brushed aside more extreme measures like lockdowns and mask mandates. They may have had a point at times, but some of the efforts they criticized were voluntary and no more invasive than what took place during past disease outbreaks. I gave my consent to participate in certain efforts to track the virus’s spread, but I did not demand that others take part. Yet some health departments discontinued these methods as early as March 2020—just as COVID was spreading the fastest. Authorities had no business forcing people to keep wearing masks three years after voluntary programs were completely spurned.
Spain suffered one of the worst lockdowns in the world and inexplicably barred children from even going outdoors at all—for almost any reason. The BBC reported in April 2020 that left-leaning Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau urged an end to this evil practice. The Guardian called it a “silent trauma.” Colau told the paper that her own two children hadn’t even been able to leave their house for five weeks. Calls to lift the barbaric rules were echoed by a petition launched by a psychologist that received at least 54,000 signatures. The New York Times reported that—as the lockdown was expected to be extended into May—the hashtag #NiñosEnLaCalleYa (“children on the street now”) was circulating on social media. A Madrid psychiatrist also criticized the idea of young children wearing masks, because they were “at an age when smiling is the most important form of social interaction.” He said masks would “leave children traumatized.” Spain’s policies hit poor families the hardest.
Days later, Newsweek reported that Colau urged an end to the lockdown altogether and criticized an “excessively adult-centric society.”
Spain announced in October 2021 that it would reimburse the hundreds of thousands of residents who were fined for breaking lockdown rules. Some fines had never even been paid. This announcement came after the country’s Constitutional Court ruled that lockdowns had violated the right to freedom of movement.
Even AlterNet still had flashes of sanity. An April 2020 piece by Corey Hill criticized governors’ attempts to use the pandemic as an excuse to cancel elections and the Trump administration’s demand to suspend constitutional rights and allow judges to detain people without trial.
Also in April, comedian and commentator Bill Maher ripped the media over their “apocalyptic” COVID coverage. The New York Times, Washington Post, Daily Mail, Yahoo, and Politico were blasted for their fearmongering. Maher warned that this coverage boosted Trump’s electoral prospects by allowing him to appear to be more optimistic. Maher criticized lockdowns many times throughout the crisis. He later said states without major restrictions were “a joy” to visit, while those with harsher rules were “a pain in the ass.” Maher told his audience in October 2021, “I know some people seem to not want to give up on the wonderful pandemic, but you know what? It’s over.”
Britain’s Socialist Worker reported in April 2020 that lockdowns were causing hunger to hit millions of people in Britain. Meanwhile, restaurants had to throw away food because they were forced to close. In addition, Michigan farmers faced financial ruin as lockdowns depressed prices and destroyed markets for dairy and other products. A provision in Michigan’s lockdown that closed garden retailers threatened to put greenhouse farmers out of business. Dairy farmers in the states of New York, Vermont, and Wisconsin had been forced to dump milk. Fruit and vegetable farmers in other states had to leave strawberries and other items to rot in the fields. All this while hunger spun out of control.
Jacobin ran an interview in September 2020 with Harvard biologist and epidemiologist Dr. Katherine Yih and Great Barrington Declaration coauthor Dr. Martin Kulldorff in which they urged a more realistic and measured approach to the pandemic. They noted that the poor and working class suffered a disproportionate share of hardships. Yih said, “I don’t think it’s wise or warranted to keep society locked down until vaccines become available.” Kulldorff observed that “the lockdown is the worst assault on the working class in half a century.”
A Canadian outlet reported that more food was wasted as it spoiled in students’ lockers because schools were not open for them to retrieve their belongings.
Oxfam warned in July 2020 that hunger caused by lockdowns would kill millions worldwide. This warning was ignored by officials who continued to enact lockdowns.
Cleveland Clinic found an increase in stress cardiomyopathy—also known as broken heart syndrome—a condition that results from distress and causes heart muscle dysfunction. The symptoms of this dangerous condition may mimic a heart attack.
In Israel, right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu imposed one of the most draconian lockdowns in the world. Haaretz reported that the lockdown forced Holocaust survivors living in Israel to relive past trauma. An 85-year-old man said the lockdown “throws me back into my childhood in hiding.” He went on to say that “for those of us who were in hiding, there are definitely parallels to be drawn.”
Police in Preston in the Australian state of Victoria used lockdowns as an excuse to criminalize a protest supporting the rights of refugees—who were confined in crowded conditions even during the pandemic. Anyone who attended the rally was threatened with steep fines. This was despite the fact that the protest was actually a motorcade where everyone could practice social distancing.
For years, I had thought of Democratic Underground as the website of record for the plantation aristocracy wing of the Democratic Party. Some of the venomous comments posted on DU regarding pandemic behavior confirmed how horrible the site was. But when an article appeared about Hong Kong police arresting democracy activists, one DU commenter made a rare foray into sanity. This user said of the pandemic, “I can see the current crisis being exploited for people on both sides of the political spectrum to use emergency powers and the like to wipe their asses with the United States Constitution. I can easily see the restrictions on gathering going on for many years after the virus is gone with our side conditioned to look down their noses at people who want to gather.” That’s pretty much what ended up happening—especially because most of DU wasn’t on our side to begin with.
Then again, this is the same DU that screeched to holy high hell when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz—a Democrat—made even tiny steps to reopen his state. DU commenters actually accused Walz of caving to Republicans. In my opinion, he caved to Republicans when he didn’t loosen restrictions. More accurately, he caved to Republicans who became DU followers. They’re the ones always harping about how they were Republicans before Trump came along—but that means they were still Republicans under George W. Bush and when early lockdown enthusiast Newt Gingrich was their House Speaker.
Andrew Cuomo conceded in April 2020, “The situation we have now is unsustainable. People can’t stay in their homes for this length of time, they can’t stay out of work. You can’t keep the economy closed forever. You just can’t.” Yet he extended New York’s lockdown anyway. Not long after, an absurd situation emerged in some states such as Georgia and Ohio: Those states allowed more businesses to reopen, but the stay-at-home order continued. Thus, while those businesses could open, nobody was allowed to use them. More and more often, the media was referring to the closures and reopenings in strictly economic terms—not social.
Ohio’s stay-at-home order may have been extended solely because a prominently displayed Cincinnati Enquirer editorial urged doing so. America essentially had government by Gannett. Yet some statements in this editorial were factually wrong. Other Gannett newspapers, such as the Louisville Courier-Journal, also ran editorials in prominent places urging expansion of draconian COVID measures such as mask mandates. Though they were opinion pieces, they were mixed in with news stories that appeared near the top of the website. Few other topics have received such treatment.
In Jakarta, labor leaders announced their intent to violate lockdown by organizing a leftist parade expected to draw 50,000 people.
Protests against lockdowns sprang up in Russia—in violation of stay-at-home orders. Police arrested some demonstrators.
Even Vox wasn’t completely out of touch. It’s surprising Vox still had any worthwhile content, because it was governed in part by members of the same elitist cadre who did so much to tar the “progressive” blogosphere’s good name. In addition, Comcast owned 34 percent of Vox Media. But in April 2020, a piece by Kelsey Piper that appeared on Vox said Florida was fine to reopen beaches, because beaches posed a very low risk. After all, as the article noted, fresh air is good for you—and most beaches are big enough that social distancing could easily be practiced. Piper also acknowledged that some photos on other sites purporting to show crowds on newly opened Jacksonville beaches were misleading. This seemed to be a reference to sources that used an old photo from Rio de Janeiro and claimed it was from Jacksonville. The article pointed out that even photos that actually were from Jacksonville were misleading because the camera lens made it appear as if beachgoers were closer together than they really were.
An article by Henry Grabar posted on Slate that month also backed the reopening of beaches and parks. Grabar also attacked “widely shared bullshit” that said runners should stay 65 feet away from each other.
An article on the African Arguments website noted that lockdowns in Uganda hit the poorest the hardest. This was as predictable as the day is long, because few if any countries would have enacted lockdowns if they had placed much burden on the rich. According to this article, President Yoweri Museveni said that opposition politicians who tried to distribute food to lockdown victims would be charged with attempted murder.
The CBC later reported that lockdowns in Uganda prevented from people from obtaining medications for other conditions. At least seven women died while giving birth because they could not get medical help.
Over 800 American health and legal experts sent an open letter to Vice-President Mike Pence and state and local leaders urging voluntary measures instead of arrests, as this was “more likely to induce cooperation and protect public trust.”
Also in April 2020, weekly protests against lockdowns were seen in Berlin. At least one of them drew about 1,000 people. Police arrested demonstrators, for lockdowns banned gatherings of more than 20. Al Jazeera reported that the protests “attracted mainly far-left activists.” Vice said the German protests were organized by leftists, but charged that they were made up of “left-wing and far-right conspiracy theorists” who were “united in the paranoid belief that elites are imposing an oppressive ‘corona dictatorship’ on the public.” They think it’s “paranoid” to be worried about elites’ power? Also, are we left-wing or right-wing? Make up your damn mind, Vice.
That month, Dr. Daniel G. Murphy, head of the Department of Emergency Medicine at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, wrote an op-ed supporting lifting of lockdown rules. Murphy knew more about COVID than most people did: He worked in the emergency room every day for weeks and caught COVID himself. Two daughters caught it too and recovered. Murphy called COVID “the worst health-care disaster of my 30-year career” but noted the outbreak had peaked weeks earlier and herd immunity was taking hold.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk cut to the heart of the matter that month when he called stay-at-home orders “fascist.” Musk said, “This is not democratic. This is not freedom.” In May, Business Insider reported that Musk called Neil Ferguson an “utter moron” after the discredited epidemiologist was caught breaking COVID rules to meet his mistress.
The WHO praised Sweden as a “model” for other countries in April. The WHO’s Dr. Mike Ryan said there were “lessons to be learned” from Sweden’s policy of self-regulation.
Reuters reported in June that Sweden had just recorded a week in which the number of deaths from any cause was lower than the average from 2015-19. Even the disgraced Ferguson was forced to admit that Sweden suppressed the virus without ruinous measures.
Dr. Isaac T. Tabner of the University of Stirling in Scotland noted five ways that lockdowns worsened inequality: reduced access to money, reduced access to work, reduced access to education, effects of social distancing on health, and societal division.
Writing in Psychology Today, Dr. Joseph Burgo laid out the liberal case for opposing lockdowns. He warned, “The problem with authoritarian governments, even ones you like, is that they don’t restrict their exercise of power to ends of which you approve.”
Even on Daily Kos, a diarist urged readers to consider a mild approach promoted by Dr. David L. Katz, founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center—citing the terrible social and economic impact of lockdowns.
Salon reported that whistleblower Edward Snowden warned of the surveillance state being expanded under the guise of lockdown. The piece also warned that COVID measures would not be enforced without racial bias. The article said police brutalized a man on a Philadelphia bus for not wearing a mask.
UNICEF said in May that lockdowns would kill about 1.2 million children worldwide. This model was devised with help from researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Lockdowns would disrupt healthcare and contribute to diseases like malaria and pneumonia. Vaccination campaigns against measles and other illnesses were stifled.
After President Trump lambasted Sweden for being relatively open, even he seemed like he might have been switching gears. The Trump administration even promised the country would reopen by May 15. Dr. Samir Farhat, who ran the emergency room at New York Community Hospital, told the Telegraph, “It’s not often I agree with Trump, but I think that we should open up on May 15.”
Matthew Yglesias wrote in Vox that parks should reopen, acknowledging that brief outdoor encounters pose at most a minimal risk of spreading COVID. He noted that Washington, D.C., had closed parks because of children playing basketball there.
Some of the most draconian COVID measures in the Western world occurred in the Australian state of Victoria under Premier Daniel Andrews. Central to understanding the “new normal” is the fact that Andrews regularly hobnobbed with Chinese Communist Party officials and even signed a deal with the party encouraging it to launch projects in Victoria. Keep that in mind. Through much of the pandemic, Victoria prohibited anyone from visiting other households, and public protests were strictly banned, as Andrews threatened police action. But May 2020 saw a protest outside Victoria’s Parliament. Police promptly arrested 10 people—tackling some—and promised to track down all other attendees.
Also in May, science journalist Faye Flam wrote a useful op-ed on lockdowns for—of all places—Bloomberg News. Flam was previously known for her blog that drew criticism from creationists. Her piece on lockdowns reminded us that these orders were only supposed to save hospital capacity. Authorities were shifting the goalposts from the stated “flatten the curve” goal. Flam noted that “leaders resorted to measures that were both draconian and impotent.”
Joel Kotkin wrote in the Hill that socially and economically ruinous COVID measures represented “hygienic fascism”—in which public officials deferred to unelected “experts.” Kotkin wrote, “Ideologically, hygienic fascism is neither right nor left, nor is it simply a matter of taking necessary precautions. It is about imposing, over a long period of time, highly draconian regulations based on certain assumptions about public health. In large part, it regards science not so much as a search for knowledge but as revealed ‘truth’ with definitive ‘answers.’ ” The measures were likened to George Orwell’s 1984.
Protests sprang up in Slovenia against COVID restrictions imposed by the country’s right-wing government.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran an op-ed in May by Dr. Cyril Wecht, the celebrity former coroner of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, who was once a Democratic nominee for U.S. senator. Wecht blasted COVID “hysteria and panic” and said that shutdowns were keeping new college grads from finding employment and limiting basic medical services and even the court system. He also noted that many deaths were being attributed to COVID without even a proper diagnosis.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Philadelphia area Democrats were out of patience with restrictions enacted by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a fellow Democrat. State Sen. Maria Collett wrote a letter to Wolf saying constituents “have not yet seen evidence that your administration recognizes and sympathizes with the added physical, emotional, and financial suffering they are facing as a result of our prolonged stay-at-home conditions.”
A writer known simply as House noted that lockdowns “do not represent a balance of interests”, citing a study published in the Lancet showing that the world risked 1.2 million additional maternal and child deaths in six months in poorer countries if lockdown mania continued. The writer noted that human well-being should take priority and that continued lockdowns were unsound on these grounds. The article said that in the first two weeks of America’s lockdowns, a sexual assault hotline reported a 22 percent increase in calls. Schools with better resources were better able to move to distance learning—putting students at other schools at a disadvantage.
In May, a Daily Kos diarist managed to get away with a diary titled “A Progressive who is done with Lockdown.” This reflected a time when the old Daily Kos was devolving into the new Daily Kos, as the piece noted that lockdown opposition had become scarce on this once-respected site. The greater point was that lockdowns were not workable as a continuing strategy and vastly reduced quality of life by creating social isolation. Naturally, this diarist was attacked. One reply echoed Laura Kelly’s idiotic “too bad” mantra and showed how mean, nasty, and uncaring the lockdown maximalists were, reading in part:
“Boo, f’in hoo! Weak, whiny, poor, poor baby! Can’t handle a couple of months alone with only your own thoughts and company to entertain you—well, after reading your post, I can understand? If I take it in order, Life comes before Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. ...
“Well, my advise [sic] to you is this: Suck it up buttercup! We’re under siege here!”
That sounds more like a tirade by an out-of-control narcissistic bully than progressive insight.
This toxic tone defined militant lockdownists throughout the crisis. Later, in a series of Twitter posts defending the “new normal” afflicting children, some goblin posted several gems that were vintage lockdownist. One post read:
“Kids need to toughen up, if children don’t like what they are told to do.
“The pandemic is doing a good job showing the USA how fragile and whiny the children are, and it is entitled, whiny, weak parents...that never taught them how to steel themselves in crisis.”
Gee, that’s real freedomy! Just after that, she wrote this equally scolding blurb:
“I am afraid for this generation of young parents and their school children.
“Children should be on board with what their parents say.
“We have a problem with whiny ‘freedom loving’ parents that might not even know how to get out of a burning building.
“Not good role models.”
But the floodgates of dissent were open. Daisy Cheung and Eric C. Ip of the University of Hong Kong expressed concern that “the suspension of a wide range of human rights” was a “dangerous” precedent that threatened mental health.
Oxford University epidemiologist Dr. Sunetra Gupta became a leading voice for lifting lockdowns, citing the burden on the poor and the low death rate for people under 65: “We can’t just think about those who are vulnerable to the disease. We have to think about those who are vulnerable to lockdown too. The costs of lockdown are too high at this point.” She also pointed out that a significant number of people had immunity by then.
Agence France-Presse said questions were arising about models that forecast an unrealistically high number of deaths. One epidemiologist called Ferguson’s model “the most egregious case.”
Helaine Olen wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post that blasted “armchair epidemiologists” who criticized those who attended parties: “We are asking people to sacrifice in a way that’s clearly unsustainable, and then dumping hate on them when they fail to live up to an inhuman ideal.” Olen also criticized Trump for not ordering medical gear or rolling out tests early enough—a fair criticism.
Dr. Richard A. Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, wrote a piece saying that lockdowns were a “vast experiment in social isolation” that made his friends and patients feel “unfocused.” Friedman wrote that prolonged isolation “seems also to have negative effects on the brain and the ability to think.” He wrote that while adults might recover relatively quickly, children faced more serious effects.
As the totalitarian French government clamped down, left-leaning Marseille Mayor Michèle Rubirola fought back, saying she felt “astonishment and anger.” A local senator, Samia Ghali of the Socialist Party, said Marseille police would not ticket businesses that remained open.
The BBC reported in September that hundreds were marching in Madrid against new lockdown restrictions that discriminated against low-income neighborhoods. These restrictions closed parks and barred residents from leaving small zones.
When similar protests swept Italy in October, officials said the Mafia was behind them—a completely baseless claim. Naturally, Politico repeated this lie. A piece in the left-leaning Jacobin expressed skepticism of officials’ claims: “With Italians again subject to nighttime curfews and bans on social gatherings, is it really true that Mussolini nostalgics and mafiosi are driving events?” The BBC said the protesters were “a mix of far-right and far-left agitators.” How can one be both?
In Britain, the Social Democratic Party came out against mask mandates and new restrictions on social gatherings that “threaten to permanently undermine the liberties and freedoms of the British people.”
In the U.S., the Green Party’s National Black Caucus opposed lockdowns, compulsory vaccine passports, and other mandates. The group wrote on its website:
“The National Black Caucus of the Green Party of the United States strongly opposes the use of forced vaccination via mandates and the discrimination that is being generated around these policies. ...
“Lockdowns, mandates and passports are the major issue of the day with millions of people protesting against them worldwide. In fact, what has become known as the Medical Freedom movement is arguably the biggest and most diverse international movement in world history.
“Vaccine mandates and vaccine passports are among the most vile, unconstitutional, immoral, unscientific, discriminatory and outright criminal policies ever enforced upon the population and goes against everything the Green Party stands for under Social Justice. These policies are coming from an out-of-control government at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry. The mainstream media and social media are also working in lock-step to censor any and all doctors, scientists, and investigative journalists who have an opposing view or who even question the current mainstream media orthodoxy.
“Workers are being forced out of their jobs, many with medical exceptions from their doctors, students are being denied entrance to educational institutions, needed medical treatment is being denied, medical privacy is being violated, constitutionally protected rights to movement and assembly (including the right to travel) are being threatened, rights to normal societal participation are being decimated.”
American antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan spoke out against lockdowns, mask orders, and prolonged school closures. She also published a document about Andrew Cuomo’s nursing home disaster. In March 2020, Sheehan made a webcast opposing COVID measures. This webcast also featured artist and Nation contributor Anthony Freda, who said, “Shelter-in-place is basically just putting you in a prison.” Freda feared that people would not be allowed to return to work unless they could prove they were vaccinated. That may have sounded like a conspiracy theory back then, but that’s precisely what eventually occurred.
A study compiled by Joseph H. Manson that was released in late 2020 charged that it was authoritarians on both the left and the right who supported punitive COVID measures. Manson wrote that the crisis provided an ideal time to study left-wing authoritarianism. He wrote, “Reacting to the severe public health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spring 2020, many citizens of liberal democratic nations have tolerated, or even demanded, actions from their governments that they would view as unacceptably heavy-handed under normal conditions.”
A University College London study said lockdown compliance was lower among lockdown advocates.
A few countries continued with very few COVID restrictions. Tanzania even stopped reporting case numbers after its national laboratory returned false positives on papayas. After Tanzania resumed reporting cases, very few cases were ever found. A relatively lenient policy in Egypt also paid off, as the country saw few cases. A travel video showed life in Egypt continuing as normal. It was reported that Uruguay did not have a lockdown, and it fared much better than neighboring Argentina, which locked down hard. The President of Uruguay worried that a lockdown represented a “police state.” Iceland appears to have had no nationwide lockdown and looked almost anarchic compared to most other Western countries. Malawi’s high court struck down a lockdown issued by the President before it could even take effect.
The Faroe Islands reportedly had some of the fewest restrictions in the world. The territory briefly closed schools, but never had full lockdowns or mask mandates. A leading official there observed, “Masks do not prevent infections.”
Haiti reportedly lifted major restrictions very early, and very few people there wore masks or practiced social distancing. Outdoor markets there were never fully closed. Haiti ended up with one of the lowest COVID death rates in the world, despite also being one of the world’s poorest countries.
Belarus did not have a lockdown. Later, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken considered appointing a special representative to aid opposition forces there, in apparent retaliation for the lack of a lockdown.
Greenland was said to be much more lenient than most places but has reported only 21 COVID deaths so far.
BuzzFeed ran a story in December 2020 about countries around the world where life had already returned to normal. It was great for folks in those countries, but people in “zero COVID” prison states like the U.S. asked themselves why their own country was still mired in martial law. Unfortunately, some of the countries in the article dug in on restrictions later, but at least they had a stretch of freedom that much of the world lacked.
Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg said she actually regretted enacting lockdown measures that were too tough. The Norwegian Institute of Public Health had in fact suggested a lighter approach. German Health Minister Jens Spahn similarly conceded Germany’s lockdown rules were too harsh.
After California ended its first stay-at-home order, it still forced businesses to close in counties that were on an arbitrary watch list. This practice was blasted by San Mateo County Health Officer Dr. Scott Morrow, who called the list “fundamentally flawed.” He said closing businesses was “a bit like looking for your lost keys under a streetlight even though you lost them miles away.” Morrow acknowledged, “For those who want to drive the spread to zero, this is simply not possible.”
In Tripoli, Lebanon, hundreds of protesters defied the nationwide stay-at-home order to take to the streets to denounce the lack of economic aid. Police killed at least one person.
The Guardian’s economics editor Larry Elliott wrote that lockdowns created too many economic and social woes, calling them “toxic” for such an advanced world. He said the government would almost certainly not lock down again. But many governments did—over and over.
A Twitter commenter wrote regarding lockdowns, “There is no way to reconcile progressive values with a containment strategy that leads to such widespread destitution.”
Of course, not everyone was so sensible. An online comment attacked Michigan when it lifted its lockdown, screaming, “This is disgusting. The last governor that hasn’t caved in to pro-virus extremists just caved in. We needed an iron fist of command to defeat this virus and we no longer have it.” An “iron fist of command”? At the same time, another commenter assailed North Carolina for the lifting of its lockdown.
But, as powerful as reactionary lockdownists were, they’ve lost in the court of public opinion.