Hindsight is 2020
Whether it’s church services, Black Lives Matter, or a toddler’s birthday party, it seemed like any event could be targeted by lockdown despotism. More conservative readers of these reports might be more on guard about limits placed on conservative events, but because of my progressive background, I had more exposure to rules that were wielded against progressive events. Our side had to suffer too. On the other hand, even a Republican official in Cincinnati defended Black Lives Matter’s right to peaceably assemble, so support for the “new normal” must have been mighty shaky across the political spectrum.
Festivals were of course crimped too. In Cincinnati on Labor Day weekend in 2020, the annual Riverfest fireworks display was moved to a location that was not to be disclosed until after it took place. People were expected to watch it on TV instead of in person. As more proof of how media people don’t always think like we do, they smirked and grinned as if “virtual” fireworks were as good as actually being there. Local media outlets actually knew where the secret location was, but they dared not reveal it. News organizations are supposed to be about informing the public—not hiding things—so these outlets weren’t doing their job. But just before the fireworks, word got out about where the event was, and people crowded along roads to watch it. Hiding the location was all for naught.
Cincinnati canceled its New Year’s party to ring in 2021 on Fountain Square—though it was usually a very tame affair even in normal years. Instead, it had a series of small 10-minute events that required reservations and ended well before midnight. A WCPO-TV report said these events included a “faux countdown” to the new year. The story actually said “faux countdown” with a straight face. Not long after—when Mike DeWine gave ridiculously high benchmarks to lift restrictions—an online post charged that Ohio had a “zero COVID” strategy, especially as the state had begun counting probable cases as confirmed cases. A probable case was defined as a case with no positive test but a link with an infected person or a place like a business where an infected person might be. Ohio was counting cases without even showing they were actual cases.
DeWine said in early 2021 that he didn’t foresee how severe the pandemic was going to be. This means he lied at the start of the pandemic when he warned of a much worse toll than what went on to occur.
Yet Riverfest in 2021 went on as normal. Everyone seemed to be long since over COVID panic—except for one person who posted on the “Greater Cincinnati Politics” group on Facebook, a group known as a magnet for extremists of all sorts. She admonished, “I hope everyone who makes the bad choice to go to Riverfest tonight gets rained on, and doesn’t see a single explosion, as punishment for gathering in crowds during the pandemic!” For the record, the city had fine weather for the fireworks show—and a big crowd, all smiling their asses off!
There was no consistency. Despite the joke that was made of Riverfest in 2020, the Fourth of July fireworks display at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was apparently allowed to go on as normal. If D.C. was safe, why wasn’t Cincinnati safe? This inconsistency shows just how totalitarian society had become. With rules changing so arbitrarily and frequently, people could be punished at any moment without even knowing they broke the rules.
Another inconsistency: If Riverfest in 2021 was normal, why couldn’t many schools be normal until at least 2022?
An earlier entry in this series discussed how officials did not follow COVID regulations they imposed, and how the rules were selectively applied. A later entry is in the works about Big Tech censorship of opinions that dissented from the “new normal.” Yet we are skeptical of the belief that Black Lives Matter received favorable treatment. Some folks believe it did. Who can blame anyone for being upset if they thought some causes were favored over others? But Black Lives Matter was actually targeted in ways that were as ridiculous as anything else.
Even now, online posts continue to appear saying that lockdowns were strictly a tool of the political left. Mike DeWine and Charlie Baker are proof that this wasn’t so, even in America. I have voted for the Green Party, yet I can also say with certainty that I have never favored stay-at-home orders or mask mandates. Before 2020, I never asked if political candidates supported these things, because these policies would have been seen as so singularly idiotic that we wouldn’t have thought to ask. We have a right to expect politicians to have at least enough common sense not to support the extreme policies that began with the pandemic. Principles aren’t principles if they can be abandoned because of a pandemic.
The pandemic dominated the news from March through late May 2020. There seemed to be almost no coverage of any other topic. However, on Memorial Day—May 25—George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis. Afterward, protests sprang up all over America and the world as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. Some said this was an example of lockdown hypocrisy, as they believed Black Lives Matter was allowed to defy lockdowns that were foisted on everyone else. Yet I can guarantee Black Lives Matter was restricted too. The main difference is that these protests happened to begin right when many stay-at-home orders were ending. The official narrative actually was pretty rough on Black Lives Matter, as public officials and “experts” stoked fear that these rallies would be COVID superspreader events.
I’m not defending Black Lives Matter because I had already supported it. I’m defending it because it was a target of COVID tyranny. Some will find that surprising, but I’ve seen from my angle that it’s true. As long as Black Lives Matter was peaceful, its right to gather should be as unassailable as other events that have been defended in these reports.
Los Angeles said Black Lives Matter protests must be limited to 100 people—but hundreds more did show up.
The ridiculous White House Coronavirus Task Force told governors that the protests would lead to a spike in infections. CBS predictably amplified this nonsense.
Some COVID sermonizers baselessly claimed that Floyd did not die from police brutality but had actually died of COVID.
Fox News tried to link a COVID case in Kansas with a Black Lives Matter protest, saying a man caught the virus there when he showed up maskless. A Reddit group dedicated to pandemic alarmism ran with the story. However, the story was not confirmed by any other outlet.
A New York Post editorial also accused Black Lives Matter of spreading the virus—echoing one of Deborah Birx’s untrustworthy babblings.
Three weeks into the protests, the Wall Street Journal admitted the events created no spike in cases. But a commenter argued with these findings and blamed political correctness for an increase in cases not being reported. The Philadelphia Inquirer said Philadelphia officials found no case increase. The St. Paul Pioneer Press found the same in Minneapolis. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, health officials in Lexington, Kentucky, concurred. Months later, officials in Multnomah County, Oregon, found no link between COVID and ongoing protests there.
When users of Democratic Underground and one of the whiny dorks from Vox claimed Black Lives Matter spread the virus, the Minneapolis Star Tribune debunked that accusation—noting that cases actually decreased when the protests ramped up.
When COVID could not be firmly linked to these protests, the official narrative changed completely. The media reported that the reason there were no outbreaks was because all the protesters—every single one—wore a mask. This contradicted what they had already reported, as the AP had noted that many demonstrators were unmasked. Birx had noted the same, as this observation was grist for her mill. In fact, I had attended one of the protests in Cincinnati and saw that maskage was far from unanimous.
After Cincinnati tried to crush Black Lives Matter by issuing a curfew—which had been the city’s default response to everything for years—WLWT-TV reported that Councilmember Jeff Pastor blasted this curfew and the COVID lockdown. Pastor—a self-described “new age Republican”—issued a statement that said, “Law and order and the protection of personal property does not mean the suspension of free association, public assembly and peaceful protest.” He said local residents “have had enough.”
Bill Maher said this wave of Black Lives Matter protests may have been fueled in part by the “reckless experiment” of lockdowns. Maher cited a UN report that said hundreds of thousands of children would die worldwide because of economic ruin caused by the lockdowns.
Weeks later, public officials were still chiming in and blaming Black Lives Matter for a spike in cases—though by that time it was clear there was no basis for this claim. In Florida, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos A. Giménez—a Republican known for a particularly draconian COVID response—was among those blaming Black Lives Matter. A Giménez spokesperson said in an e-mail that the spike was caused by protesters not “wearing masks, as mandated.” Always about the masks, isn’t it? After Giménez was elected to the U.S. House, he seemed to be staunchly opposed to mask mandates, but he had been one of the most eager “new normal” boosters in 2020.
A Cincinnati Enquirer article randomly raised baseless speculation that an outbreak at a Dole vegetable processing plant was caused by employees attending these protests.
The Hill reported that Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves also blamed Black Lives Matter and accused the “liberal media” of sweeping the protests’ COVID spread under the rug.
The Ottawa Citizen later disclosed that Canadian military intelligence monitored Black Lives Matter, citing the pandemic as the reason. The military collected negative comments about Doug Ford.
People have every right to be angry about the outright cancellation of other events though. While authorities weren’t as kind to Black Lives Matter as some believed, many funerals were canceled completely. Many of the elderly and terminally ill could not die with dignity, and instead they died alone as their families were not allowed to visit them in the nursing home or hospital. This is inexcusable.
Black Lives Matter wasn’t the only source of protests in mid-2020. Around the same time the wave of Black Lives Matter demonstrations got under way, the AP reported that labor unions marched in Paris to protest the bad conditions faced by undocumented immigrants. Despite all the failures of American unions during the pandemic, many French unions seemed to be better. The event violated the draconian ban on large gatherings, and police used tear gas to disperse protesters.
As Gavin Newsom went down in history as a complete failure for being the first governor in the 50 U.S. states to issue a full lockdown, it still wasn’t enough for some. In late May, Politico reported that a handful of political hacks were complaining that Newsom was reopening California too quickly. The piece even started out calling it his “rapid reopening strategy.” No, I’m not making that up. Naturally, the political criticism came from the likes of State Sen. Steve Glazer, a so-called moderate Democrat who touted his pro-Big Business credentials—the sort of Democrat we used to call a Republican.
A San Francisco Chronicle piece in June seemed to suggest that the Bay Area was reopening too soon—though it had been mostly closed for three months. Among other things, health officials blamed their favorite scapegoat, the Black Lives Matter protests.
If you opposed lockdowns and lockdown culture, militant lockdownists didn’t just disagree with your ideas. They hated you. Accordingly, a hit piece shoved its way through the media that June touting a bogus study that tried to link “psychopathic traits” to noncompliance with pandemic rules. It was reminiscent of China’s oppressive Social Credit System. The study represented projection by lockdownists. They were obviously narcissists, but they claimed dissidents displayed narcissism.
A similar hit piece blasted through in August 2021, charging that those who did not comply were characterized by “amorality” and substance abuse. It was like the moral panic from decades earlier in which they called teenagers “druggies” if they violated their school dress code.
The media contradicted themselves on whether the virus was seasonal. During summer, the media insisted it was not, so restrictions could not be lifted. During winter, the media claimed it was, so—you guessed it—restrictions could not be lifted.
In June 2020, the city of Miami’s Mayor Francis X. Suarez—a Republican—threatened to issue a new lockdown for his city. Two U.S. states—California and New Mexico—did issue a second lockdown by the end of the year, because their “leaders” learned absolutely nothing from the failures of the first lockdown. In addition, some states such as Ohio issued a new nighttime curfew—a partial stay-at-home order, if you will—as if the virus knows what time of day it is. Writing for Vox, Dylan Scott said experts were doubtful that these new curfews would work: “The trend has left public health experts perplexed.”
A 2020 piece by Ben Norton in the Grayzone said the U.S.-backed right-wing opposition in Nicaragua was spreading fake news about COVID to foment chaos. The government of left-leaning President Daniel Ortega was facing a new round of sanctions by the Trump administration. Earlier, the Reagan administration had waged an illegal war against Ortega, leading to the Iran-Contra affair, one of the worst scandals in U.S. government history. Norton reported that when COVID hit, a U.S.-funded right-wing TV station in Nicaragua spread made-up statistics, and saboteurs created a phony Facebook account claiming Nicaraguan schools were closed until further notice. This caused children to miss school when they didn’t have to. At the time of that article, Facebook still hadn’t removed the video. “Opposition hooligans” also impersonated police and other agencies, blamed COVID for deaths that were unrelated to the virus, and claimed photos from other countries were actually from Nicaragua. On the other hand, Nicaragua was one of the first countries in the world to develop a COVID plan—while other countries twiddled their thumbs. Before lockdowns even hit Europe and North America, Nicaragua’s COVID response committee put out a plan to improve the country’s health system. As early as January 2020, Nicaragua even built 18 special COVID wards throughout the country.
Reuters reported that an open letter signed by hundreds of former world leaders and others warned that governments were using COVID restrictions to silence critics. Almost 50 countries had imposed limits on freedom of the press.
The Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale reported that lockdowns created loneliness for elderly Jews in the former Soviet Union, as community centers that served them were closed and they were confined to home.
Today reported that a 38-year-old Pennsylvania man died of a heart attack because COVID restrictions discouraged him from going to a hospital. Many others died because they were told outright not to seek medical care. In England, the Manchester Evening News reported that a 31-year-old woman died of bowel cancer because the lockdown paused her treatment for 12 weeks. In addition, Britain was suffering a backlog in cancer screenings because of the lockdown. In August, it was reported that a 46-year-old man in Retford, England, had been forced to miss lifesaving bowel cancer surgery because of the lockdown. Because of this, his cancer had become terminal—and he later died. Despite these deaths in England, the U.K. was weighing further lockdowns.
A Toronto woman died of kidney cancer because her surgery was delayed three times by lockdowns.
A June 2020 report by the state of Washington said government restrictions “have to-date caused a surge in behavioral health symptoms across the state. This trend is likely to continue.” Damn right it was likely to continue, because the state still hadn’t lifted all its restrictions 2½ years later.
A July 2020 study led by experts at Oxford University said about 5,000 heart attack sufferers in England missed lifesaving treatment because of lockdowns.
The Daily Record reported that cancer deaths in Scotland soared, as about 900 cancer patients were left to die at home during lockdown. Member of Scottish Parliament Alison Johnstone of the Scottish Green Party said, “This reveals some of the detrimental impact of lockdown and demonstrates the urgent need to restart cancer treatment and screening.”
Bloomberg News reported that lockdowns spurred outbreaks of dengue fever in southeastern Asia. Malaysia reported almost 2,000 dengue cases a week. Singapore reported 211 active dengue clusters at the time—the biggest dengue outbreak in Singapore’s history. Oddly, Singapore didn’t enact its lockdown until April 2020. Before Singapore locked down, it was starting to be seen as a civil liberties giant compared to Western countries that had already locked down. The WHO’s Dr. Dale Fisher said lockdowns were ineffective in the long run and urged countries to follow Singapore by not locking down. Singapore being praised for its regard for civil liberties is particularly ironic because the island city-state had been such a model of oppression before then that in 1992 it banned the sale of chewing gum. Let this sink in for a moment: Most countries had such oppressive lockdowns that a country that had banned chewing gum was seen as a bastion of personal freedom in comparison. Singapore also had among the fewest COVID cases per capita at the time, being less than one-tenth the rate of Italy, which was heavily locked down. After Singapore finally locked down, not only did it see record dengue cases, but COVID also skyrocketed. As Singapore subsequently enacted other police state measures, the COVID rate there continued to grow.
Before the pandemic, the American media had a very deep love of Singapore’s authoritarian government. After the country dug in on pandemic tyranny, this love was renewed. It was stated that after Singapore locked down, the American media considered Singapore the gold standard in dealing with COVID.
The Indian state of Haryana banned the sale and consumption of chewing gum in the name of fighting COVID. An online commenter demanded the rest of India follow Haryana’s “lead” because they had seen discarded gum “in toilets.”
The BBC revealed that a 65-year-old disabled woman in Wales was practically confined to her home because pandemic rules barred caretakers from taking her to the store. This is yet another indication of lockdownists’ ableism.
Grants, New Mexico, was a hotbed of dissent against lockdown culture. Mayor Martin Hicks reopened the city in defiance of the statewide shutdown by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a fellow Democrat. Hicks vowed that local cops would fight back if “Lujan Grisham and her Gestapo” tried to keep the town closed. Hicks worked with Cibola County Sheriff Tony Mace, another Democrat, to fight the gubernatorial fiat. Mace asked federal officials to review Lujan Grisham’s orders, pointing out that the lockdown favored big box retailers over small businesses.
Later, the Albuquerque Journal reported that the state tried to fine Hicks $5,000 for allowing a Fourth of July parade. A Lujan Grisham spokesperson called Hicks “a disgrace and a criminal.”
Hicks later said he and his family received 37 death threats over his stance. He also left the Democratic Party, apparently because the “new normal” had begun to form the party’s entire identity.
In July 2020, the Las Cruces Sun-News said that New Mexico Human Services Secretary Dr. David Scrase said deaths from suicide and drug overdoses had increased because of the state’s stay-at-home order. But the state learned nothing from this, as New Mexico later became one of only two U.S. states to issue a second full lockdown.
The BBC said that two women in England were surrounded by police and fined after driving five miles to take a walk. They were also told that hot beverages that they had were not allowed because it was “classed as a picnic.”
Another BBC piece reported that neuroscientists said limits on social contact may have damaging long-term impacts on teenagers. A University of Cambridge professor said, “Several months represents a large proportion of a young person’s life.”
A study by several London colleges found that lockdowns delayed so many people in Britain from being diagnosed with cancer that over 60,000 years of life would be lost by 2025. This represents about 3,620 deaths. The study covered four cancer types and didn’t even account for lives claimed by other cancers. A King’s College professor said, “Lockdown must never happen again.” Yet it did.
CNBC reported that India had become one of the countries hit hardest by COVID—despite its two-month lockdown and some restrictions that continued thereafter.
NBC said a study by Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Studies found that lockdowns doubled food insecurity in the United States. The Brookings Institution discovered that by the end of April 2020, about 40 percent of American families with children under 13 suffered from food insecurity.
In the Indian state of Kerala, 66 children reportedly committed suicide in just over 100 days.
The Guardian reported on new information by Human Rights Watch regarding the situation in Colombia. In Colombia, the lockdown was actually enforced by drug cartels, and their lockdown was much stricter than that imposed by the government. The cartels’ lockdown included a 5 PM curfew. Cartels killed many who did not obey. In some regions, armed gangs set fire to motorcycles belonging to those who flouted lockdowns.
KTVK-TV reported that drug-related deaths in Maricopa County, Arizona, soared because of the lockdown. Experts said social distancing rules contradicted the advice normally given to recovering addicts and kept them away from treatment groups.
The Guardian said cases of child malnutrition in England doubled in the first half of 2020. About 2,500 children were hospitalized.
According to a Northumbria University survey, one in four British adults became at risk of hunger or malnutrition.
The Resolution Foundation, a British think tank, said poorer families in Britain had to dip into their savings and borrow more during the lockdown.
Dr. David Reiss told Salon’s Matthew Rozsa that effects of lockdown isolation would linger. Reiss—a psychiatrist who contributed to the book The Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists And Mental Health Experts Assess A President—said this isolation would breed depression and fear. Dr. Russell Medford, chair of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, said this would force governments to end more extreme measures.
The Mercury News reported that restrictions were creating skyrocketing anxiety and depression throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. A young man suffered a fatal drug overdose after the stay-at-home order kept him from seeing his therapist. A Census Bureau survey found that symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder doubled.
Mass shootings in the United States roughly doubled following lockdowns.
The end of most full lockdowns in the U.S. did as much to discredit lockdowns as anything. Officials had made unrealistically high predictions about the number of cases and deaths that would occur without a lockdown. It wasn’t just modelers like Neil Ferguson but also politicians and bureaucrats with real power. Gavin Newsom, for example, forecast an unrealistic case count if California didn’t lock down. It was the same in Ohio, where Gov. Mike DeWine and Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton said a lack of lockdowns would bring 62,000 new cases per day. It’s unknown how they got this number, but anybody could see how unrealistic it was. Worldometer shows that Ohio never got anywhere close to 62,000 even after the lockdown was over. The highest was about 26,000, and that was on a day that counted a major holiday backlog. After the ridiculous alarmism by DeWine and Acton, the Cincinnati Enquirer tried to hand-pick Acton as the Democratic nominee for the 2022 Senate race, even though Acton worked for a Republican governor.
In August 2020, a series of anti-gay posts appeared online attacking a gathering of gay men in Atlanta because they got together “in the middle of a pandemic.”
As late as that month, Honolulu Civil Beat reported that beaches, parks, and hiking trails in Honolulu were still closed under a mayoral edict. Experts such as Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Julia L. Marcus said these rules defied science. Police dished out 1,350 criminal citations in a single weekend for people who dared to use the parks or beaches. The offense was a misdemeanor punishable by a $5,000 fine, a year in jail, or both. One resident called it “a police state we’re living in subject to the rulemaking of one man.” Marcus said these rules drove people indoors and created issues of economic equity—as places that required an entrance fee were open. A comment on this story said the rules forced elderly residents to walk along dangerous highways instead of through parks. Another comment said a social worker who worked with the homeless went to an appointment at a park where a client lived, and she was ticketed just waiting in her car. Another post said homeless people were ticketed for being in a park.
Also that month, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported that police broke up a large gathering at a Hawaii beach. An enforcement official said the event exposed officers to the virus. Then they shouldn’t have shown up there to break it up.
Throughout the month, Honolulu police issued about 44,000 citations stemming from COVID violations—more than twice the number of all criminal cases in 2019. A motorist stopped for a traffic violation told police he was just “driving around” and was then cited for “nonessential” activity. These citations carried a $5,000 fine or a year in the slammer.
California began requiring that referees at youth football games wear long sleeves. You can catch COVID through your arm?
While international and sometimes domestic and even intrastate travel were often verboten among the general public, the Washington Post reported that celebrities roamed the globe as much as they dared—and they were exempt from mask mandates. Kylie Jenner posted photos of her Paris trip on Instagram—even though the European Union had been closed to American travelers for months. The Post said “high-profile jet-setters” were making use of a different set of rules that governed the rich and famous. Brad Pitt also visited France, while some of the Kardashians vacationed in the Dominican Republic and Canadian rapper Drake went to Barbados. A commenter on the story attacked the Post as a right-wing organ for daring to note that rich celebrities didn’t have to follow the same rules as everyone else.
As more proof that many COVID rules were actually about control, the Utah State Fair in 2020 inexplicably required that food could only be eaten in designated areas. However, many folks including park workers defied this rule.
A few states exempted counties from COVID rules if there were fewer than a certain number of active cases there. To keep their county from being exempted, health authorities in some of these counties would not report it when a patient recovered—thereby falsifying public records, which is a crime.
Even this long entry doesn’t even scratch the surface of lockdown totalitarianism.