Hindsight is 2021 too!
I shouldn’t have to write about COVID-19 restrictions that were still being issued in 2021, but here we are. I shouldn’t have had to write about restrictions from 2020 either, but the point stands.
As time went on, the “new normal” became known more and more for its naked cruelty—especially to children, the disabled, and the elderly. Vaccines came out in December 2020, but this didn’t stem “new normal” totalitarianism for very long—despite earlier promises to the contrary. In the spring of 2021, the CDC issued new guidance for summer camps for America’s children. This guidance was particularly cruel. It urged camps to require children as young as two years old to wear masks at almost all times, including outdoors. It said campers should be compelled to be at least six feet apart during meals. It suggested that campers sneeze into their mask and that they not be allowed to share anything like books, games, or art supplies. This is despite the fact that many camps had few restrictions in 2020 and saw no outbreaks. One immunologist called the CDC’s measures “frankly senseless.”
This isn’t the only time a supposedly serious source recommended sneezing into a mask. Back in August 2020, WFMY-TV in Greensboro, North Carolina, ran a piece urging viewers to sneeze into their mask. This broadcast said to continue wearing the mask after sneezing in it. The following month, NBC’s increasingly idiotic Today also recommended sneezing into masks.
Let it sink in how stupid that is.
Just this morning, incidentally, WFMY ran a piece demanding masks not just for COVID, but for the flu. The story repeated disinformation that had long ago been debunked, and also boasted about the idea of masks becoming permanent.
It appears as if Ontario had three separate lockdowns by the spring of 2021. During at least one of these shutdowns, the province inexplicably banned not only in-person concerts but it also banned livestreamed concerts. Despite Doug Ford’s repeated lockdowns, Ford refused to institute paid sick days. This is more proof that COVID catastrophism only applied when it suited the purpose at hand. When Ford enacted a lockdown four months after vaccines came out, he prohibited almost all outdoor gatherings. Ford gave police authority to stop vehicles at will, and even outdoor weddings were limited to 10 people. This tyranny was blasted by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
The CBC reported that a couple in Kingsville, Ontario, was fined heavily for playing Pokémon Go in their car. They never left their vehicle.
As Ontario’s winter 2020-21 lockdown was starting, it was criticized by Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson, who issued a statement that said in part:
“Today’s provincial announcement has completely blindsided Ottawa residents and small businesses, who have been diligently following the rules for months.
“The Province sets the rules; we follow them; and they move the goalpost.
“We follow the new rules, and then they change them again.
“Despite the fact that we have the best numbers of any large Canadian city, we are now facing a 28-day lockdown that will likely have a devastating impact on our local economy.
“When asked about this potential lockdown on Friday, Ottawa Public Health was not in support, as they did not think it was necessary at this time. ...
“As we face this provincial decision today, there are simply no facts to support a lockdown in the city of Ottawa.”
Ottawa’s positive rate was a mere 1.4 percent.
That provincial lockdown was during the throes of a separate lockdown imposed by Toronto officials on that city. Right-wing Mayor John Tory demanded extending that lockdown and tough criminal penalties for all who defied it. Tory resigned in 2023 when it was found that he had an affair with a former staffer during the pandemic.
The top medical officer in Ontario’s Peel region said the province should not only restrict buying “nonessential” items in person but also online.
The CBC reported that Ford expelled Member of Provincial Parliament Roman Baber from the Conservative caucus because he opposed lockdowns.
In May 2021, the New Democratic Party in Ontario announced it would force a vote on reopening outdoor recreational spaces—which remained closed after more than a year. That was after Ford announced yet another extension of Ontario’s latest stay-at-home fiat.
In February 2021, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis ordered a new lockdown in Athens. Protests erupted against police brutality in enforcing it. A video caught a police officer beating a man.
When announcing more restrictions in May 2021—after vaccinations were well under way—right-wing Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister demonized rulebreakers as “selfish.” As 90 percent of fines imposed in the province hadn’t been paid, Pallister threatened to withhold driver’s licenses and garnish the paychecks of those who did not pay.
Throughout the entire era, Oregon “experts” liked to predict new COVID waves, but rarely did these waves ever materialize. For example, they predicted a horrifying spike in cases in February and March 2021—but instead, cases cratered. They then predicted a May wave that went on to not occur.
The Delta variant was used as an excuse for new restrictions starting in mid-2021—despite the vaccine. Not only was there a vaccine, but it was clear by then that restrictions didn’t work. In addition, the risk from Delta to those who were young and healthy was negligible. Of the more than 1,000 cases linked to a gathering in Provincetown, Massachusetts, no deaths were reported.
The official narrative changed throughout the era. Just before Labor Day in 2020, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards lectured residents to take caution to avoid seeing the sort of spike in cases that occurred after Memorial Day. Yet, two weeks after Memorial Day, Edwards had admitted there was no spike.
In August 2020, media outlets reported that Iowa was plagued by a data error that listed new COVID cases as having happened months earlier. However, this turned out not to be the case, but was being hyped to encourage schools to continue remote schooling.
Jim Jones was a longtime Republican judge and panjandrum in Idaho. He penned a September 2020 op-ed that appeared in the Idaho State Journal and repeatedly attacked “socialist Sweden” for its lenient ways.
Around the same time, many healthcare systems in Colorado dumped old cases onto the state dashboard all at once—making it look like a spike in new cases. A journalist investigated this sleight of hand, but his article was ignored, and many closures were extended because of the data dump.
A snap YouGov poll in the U.K. in September 2020 found that 83 percent of supporters of Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party supported more draconian COVID measures. This suggests that Johnson’s backers were outliers among the British public. The following month, Johnson imposed a new lockdown on Liverpool. Some said it was to punish the city for being a hotbed of opposition to Johnson.
In January 2021, when the Netherlands was in the midst of a months-long second lockdown, protests erupted throughout the country, resulting in hundreds of arrests.
KRQE-TV reported that during New Mexico’s second lockdown, Bernalillo County Sheriff Manny Gonzales, a Democrat, announced he would not be enforcing it. He posted a YouTube video blasting this lockdown.
When Andrew Cuomo issued new limits on private gatherings in New York state just before Thanksgiving in 2020, Putnam County Sheriff Robert Langley Jr., a fellow Democrat, issued a statement assailing Cuomo’s orders. Langley wrote, “As Sheriff, I see a better use of our resources than to disrupt families celebrating this national holiday.” After that, the media’s knives went out for Langley in a big way.
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock made a Twitter post urging the public not to travel for Thanksgiving. Yet he sent that post from the airport as he was flying to visit his family.
When France issued a second lockdown, fascist Prime Minister Jean Castex said people would be limited to one hour of exercise per day, which was to be no further than one kilometer from home. People were also required to carry papers or face a heavy fine. The hated President Emmanuel Macron said this lockdown would not ease until the case count was down to one-eighth of where it was. A poll said that more than half of people in France violated the rules of this second lockdown, and that this lockdown also gutted morale.
Some shutdowns in France continued in 2021. Labor unions and college students displayed banners from theater balconies demanding the reopening of cultural establishments. In Paris, protesters forced their way into a closed theater.
Authorities blamed the “extreme left” for a protest against lockdowns in Dublin.
After the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo were absurdly postponed to 2021, the International Olympic Committee still wouldn’t move on. To keep athletes from having sex—which might have spread COVID—beds at the Olympic village were made of cardboard, so they would collapse if more than one person got on them. Meanwhile, athletes said the outdoor swimming venue “smells like a toilet” because it was full of sewage—but nothing was done about that.
The ableism of Olympic officials was unmatched. Rebecca Meyers—a deaf and visually impaired American swimming medalist—had to pull out of the Olympics because she was not allowed to bring her assistant due to COVID restrictions.
Before every holiday in late 2020, we were told to bunker down, stay home, and skip family visits. We were told not to worry, because there was always next year. That was another broken promise. KHON-TV reported that during Labor Day weekend in 2021, Hawaii authorities went all out in busting up gatherings. Eighteen months after America first locked down, the state reportedly still limited outdoor gatherings to 25 people, and indoor events to 10. Stiff fines were threatened. Authorities also planned to confiscate items like sound equipment, for fear these items would condone gatherings. Naturally, KHON encouraged viewers to report violators.
Furthermore, there wasn’t always next year for some. Many people wished to visit elderly relatives in 2020, and they never got to see them again before they died. Lockdowns do not freeze time.
It wasn’t just the elderly. Just before Christmas in 2021, a London woman who was only in her thirties but had terminal cancer expressed dismay at new lockdowns that seemed to be looming in the U.K.—even though it was one of the most heavily vaccinated countries. She wrote on Twitter, “Lockdown has cost me my life, I have terminal cancer and have been failed over again. This is my last Christmas, my last birthday and I will NOT be following any more lockdowns or restrictions and kept away from my loved ones when time is so precious.” It also wasn’t just the terminally ill. An online commenter posted in early 2021 that they had a teenage relative who had just died in a tragic accident. The comment noted that much of the last year of the teen’s life was spent under lockdown. The fact that lockdowns were imposed over the holidays in 2020—and especially 2021, after officials promised 2021 would be normal—shows the unparalleled cruelty and evil of the lockdown regime.
Antibody tests were a useful tool to determine whether a person had immunity from being infected earlier. This helped show how close a region was to herd immunity—and whether restrictions could be lifted. But the Australian state of South Australia was so intent on continuing restrictions that it began issuing steep fines just for using these tests.
Later in the pandemic, a video emerged from Melbourne of a person merely standing around in a transit station only to be suddenly ambushed by a police officer and slammed to the ground.
In August 2021, police harassed indigenous Australians on their own land in Northern Territory for holding a largely maskless protest against lockdowns. Cops’ rationale for this harassment was that protesters were eating while not being seated.
New Zealand locked down harder than almost anywhere else. The media kept praising it, even though COVID always kept roaring back. A Reuters piece from August 2021 said New Zealand announced a new nationwide lockdown because the country found one new case. That was eight months after vaccines came out. Authorities vowed the lockdown would last only seven days in Auckland and three days elsewhere. Predictably, that was a lie. CNN reported that two men were arrested in September for trying to smuggle KFC takeout food into Auckland. They each faced up to six months in prison and a huge fine.
Predictably, the CDC issued guidelines for Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas in 2021 that strongly discouraged gatherings—despite the promises in 2020 that 2021 would be normal. These guidelines said people should stay outdoors even in cold weather and at least six feet apart, and that if you do have an indoor gathering, children too young to be vaccinated should wear a mask at all times. The CDC’s website included drawings of children and adults wearing masks even outdoors. I burst out laughing at one of the CDC’s suggestions: “Take a food or gift to family, friends, and neighbors in a way that does not involve contact with others, such as leaving them at the door.” A Reddit commenter said most people weren’t going to listen to the CDC’s “dumb dog shit.”
The CDC was so humiliated that the agency then claimed it had mistakenly reposted the 2020 guidance. That was a lie, as the CDC included a section for vaccinated people—and vaccines weren’t available yet on Thanksgiving in 2020. The guidance also included language about the Delta variant—which nobody had heard of yet in 2020. A couple weeks after removing this guidance, the CDC posted “new” guidance that was essentially the same.
It was back in October 2021 that Anthony Fauci had begun talking about how we should all skip visiting family during the holiday season for the second year in a row—despite the promises in 2020 that there was always next year.
Much of Canada suffered under the same “zero COVID” regimen as the United States. Just before Canadian Thanksgiving in 2021, CTV’s Todd Battis reported that “Thanksgiving is essentially cancelled in New Brunswick.” Right-wing Premier Blaine Higgs decreed that nobody was allowed to have visitors at their home at all—which was essentially a new lockdown. This was despite the fact that the province was averaging only about 90 new cases per day and 71 percent of the public were fully vaccinated. Canceling this holiday was another violation of the vow that there was always next year. Almost a year later—in September 2022—the CBC reported that the pandemic death count in New Brunswick in 2021 was vastly overstated. This was the count that was used to justify canceling Thanksgiving—so it was canceled for nothing.
New Brunswick also banned gyms, indoor religious services, and in-person restaurants at least as late as January 2022.
At the same time the New Brunswick numbers were corrected, the CDC corrected death counts from Connecticut and North Carolina. The inflated numbers had been used to justify restrictions in those states.
Many American communities banned Halloween trick-or-treating in 2020—and laughably expected children to have “virtual” trick-or-treating instead. These ranged from the city of Milwaukee to assorted counties in Texas. Officials in Wheeling, West Virginia, waited until the day of trick-or-treating to cancel. Los Angeles County tried to ban trick-or-treating, but the outcry was too great, and the sheriff announced he would refuse to enforce the ban. Justine Bateman criticized the ban too. Some places banned it in 2021 too—predictably breaking the promises that 2021 would be normal. The town of Northmoor, Missouri, even announced it was canceling its Halloween bash in 2022.
A smug article appeared just before Halloween in 2021 about how costume masks won’t protect wearers from COVID—as if most people hadn’t long since stopped worrying about it. Somebody commented on Reddit, “The people that write this shit enjoy the smell of their own farts.” Someone also said of the article, “Trying to ruin yet another Halloween for children I see. Two years in a row. Kids only get a few and once you lose the memories they never come back.”
It wasn’t surprising to hear that Good Morning America then blamed the “upcoming winter surge” on Halloween. That winter saw more digging in on COVID tyranny than even the winter before.
In October 2021, Latvia announced a new four-week lockdown. Ireland had a very high vaccination rate, and nobody under 25 had ever died of the virus there, yet Ireland backtracked on its plans to fully reopen.
Tonga did not report a single case of the virus until that month, when a person with an asymptomatic infection arrived there on a flight from New Zealand—a country that had previously claimed to have wiped out the virus with its long lockdowns. Radio New Zealand reported that Tonga was instituting a lockdown because of this lone asymptomatic case. Tonga locked down despite no community transmission.
Turkmenistan claimed it had never seen a single case of the novel coronavirus, yet it had a lockdown in late 2021.
Elsewhere, events scheduled for June 2022 were canceled eight months before they were supposed to take place. June 2022 was 18 months after the rollout of vaccines.
In August 2021, some maniac wrote an op-ed inexplicably demanding Vermont institute a new lockdown—even though it was the most vaccinated U.S. state (with over 80 percent of adults vaccinated) and had one of the lowest case counts at the time.
Radio New Zealand reported that New Zealand was still catatonically stuck in lockdown mode in November 2021! Naturally, New Zealand saw record case numbers after it cracked down harder. The country announced it might give Auckland residents specified time slots to go out of town during travel season. Officials said this would reduce traffic jams at internal checkpoints. They still had internal checkpoints?
In Northern Ireland, right-wing Minister of Health Robin Swann sued legendary rocker Van Morrison for daring to criticize him over his draconian COVID restrictions. As another example of lockdown catastrophists’ intolerance, they urged the city of Belfast to revoke Morrison’s Freedom of the City honor.
As late as November 2021, Seattle issued a rule for youth basketball games stating each player could have only one spectator—a parent. There was also this ridiculous provision: “If the coach is a parent, then a 2nd parent cannot attend the game.”
That same month, Austria issued a nationwide lockdown that supposedly applied only to those 12 or older who chose not to get vaccinated. Even a limited lockdown like this is bad on principle, but what’s maddening is that it was actually a “papers please” order—as police checked people on the streets and in businesses to verify that they were vaccinated.
Shortly thereafter, Austria expanded its policy to become a full national lockdown—applying to the vaccinated too. This is more proof they lied when they said vaccination would be the ticket out of such tyranny. After the lockdown took effect, over 40,000 protesters took to the streets of Vienna.
The German state of Bavaria canceled all Christmas markets and issued a fresh lockdown for many districts.
KUSA-TV reported that Pitkin County, Colorado, was threatening a new stay-at-home order even though it was one of the most vaccinated counties in America. Back in the summer of 2020, this county had inexplicably lowered its gathering limit from 50 to 10—even though the state had long since ended its lockdown.
New York City announced that its annual New Year’s celebration on Times Square to ring in 2022 would be open to vaccinated people only—the only exceptions being those ineligible for the vaccine. There was rightly much criticism over vaccine passports that limited access to indoor businesses or agencies on the basis of vaccination status, but closing outdoor public streets to the unvaccinated seems to be an even bigger affront to freedom of movement. We should have expected this though, because this was years after the city began treating revelers like criminals and terrorists.
One COVID town crier endorsed “library rules for America.” This was based on the questionable idea that speech spread the virus. Under these rules, every public building, business, and bus would have a sign telling people not to talk.
Finland set a goal of an 80 percent vaccination rate to remove all restrictions. When the country achieved this goal, the goalpost was shifted to 90 percent.
Slovakia enacted a new lockdown in November 2021. After this lockdown took effect, the country then zoomed to its highest case count yet.
Near the end of 2021 came another key development in this sorry saga. That was when the Omicron variant was discovered. Some said Omicron was like the Tea Party version of this virus: loud, noisy, and seeking attention, but didn’t actually do anything. But the media couldn’t contain their joy over finding a new variant. The American media intentionally chose Thanksgiving Day to splash it all over our TV and computer screens. Although Boris Johnson soon claimed Omicron was linked to one death in the U.K., this was not credibly confirmed. The public seemed far less frightened by Omicron than by earlier developments, so the media kept desperately doubling down on the fear. Public officials and health agencies also used this mild variant as an excuse for digging in on restrictions. In Ontario, Doug Ford couldn’t resist. Just days before Christmas, Ford tightened gathering limits and—for no apparent reason—decreed that venues like concerts, sporting events, movie theaters, and casinos could not serve food or beverages.
Around the same time, the Netherlands issued a new four-week lockdown to last through Christmas and into 2022—even though the country had a very high vaccination rate and case counts were plummeting. After the lockdown had been in force for about two weeks, cases soared to a record high.
Quebec enacted a new lockdown even though the province was 85 percent vaccinated.
India’s Delhi territory announced a complete ban on all Christmas and New Year’s gatherings, citing an increase of cases. If there was anyone who still didn’t think officials were just making stuff up, that should have set them straight. Worldometer showed India’s case count was stunningly low at the time and decreasing.
On Christmas Eve, the Canadian territory of Nunavut launched a full lockdown because the number of new cases inched up from three to five. Perth, Australia, extended its Christmas lockdown because the number of active cases skyrocketed to seven. The city was 84 percent vaccinated.
Merry Christmas, everybody!
Later, in January 2022—yes, 2022—New Brunswick issued another full lockdown. Ontario also reportedly had a new lockdown in early 2022 that forbade all household gatherings.
The CBC reported that as late as January 2022, several women who lived in Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation in Manitoba were heavily fined just for venturing out to buy groceries for their children.
Samoa did not issue its first lockdown until March 2022—when it locked down because of one case of community transmission. The island country was about 90 percent vaccinated.
One of the dangers of the despair created by lockdowns is that it creates an opening for demagogues who promote or exploit truly fetid prejudices. Part of the lockdownist playbook though is to falsely accuse opponents of what lockdownists are themselves doing. (You may recall that this series of reports mentioned that they claimed not locking down was a form of eugenics—even though lockdowns were largely rooted in eugenics.) Officials in one small American city claimed health board members received harassing messages after tightening COVID restrictions. However, the evidence that these messages were even real was shaky.
Health officials actually did receive death threats for supposedly being too lax. Dr. Gail Newel, health director of Santa Cruz County, California, practically threw up her hands at one point and noted that it was impossible to enforce a beach closure. After this admission, Newel received threatening messages. One called her a “murderer.” Another read, “If any of my family members or friends die, I’m coming for you.”
One American public official who endorsed a second lockdown had earlier been accused of soliciting a bribe and of committing sexual harassment of a staffer.
When researching lockdown mania, it was sometimes helpful to look into relatively obscure elected officials from years earlier, as you may have assumed from their past corruption and authoritarian initiatives that they would now be on the forefront of “new normal” advocacy. True to form, it turned out that one of these nobodies wrote letters to several governors demanding stiff fines for mask violations. Later, he was the subject of a restraining order for stalking an associate. He reportedly went on to violate that order.
In August 2022, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation—Australia’s official state media—set what was perhaps a record for trying to completely cancel a holiday the furthest in advance. Its website ran this headline: “Christmas could be in jeopardy for a third year as COVID-19 waves set to continue indefinitely, experts warn.” But don’t worry. There’s always next year. This article also encouraged making mask rules permanent.
Just before the 2022 holiday season, the New York Times ran a piece urging readers to take precautions that seemed to be straight out of 2020. A Reddit commenter observed, “Imagine needing the Times to tell you how to make your holiday plans.”
There are enough lockdown failures to fill a set of books the size of an Encyclopaedia Britannica set.