So it’s just a conspiracy theory, huh?
There are lots of goofy conspiracy theorists out there, but it’s pretty sad that the claims of people known to be conspiracy theorists are now more accurate than those of more established media.
Just a few months ago, the media was claiming that reinstating mask mandates was just a conspiracy theory that wasn’t going to happen. That was even while such rules were being reinstated. The trend toward bringing back mask orders hasn’t abated since—even in places with minimal COVID prevalence.
And now it’s not just mask mandates but actual lockdowns too.
The city of Leh in the disputed Kashmir region is not only issuing a new mask order but also an actual lockdown. In 2024. This is not from four years ago. This is a brand new piece dated January 1, 2024.
The new order reads, “The general public shall avoid unnecessary gathering and visiting crowded places.” That, folks, is a lockdown. It is not merely a school or beach closing for a week. It is unambiguously a lockdown.
Why? The pretext for this lockdown is that the city—which has 30,000 people—has had 11 COVID cases over a week. Eleven cases spread out over a week in a city that big is nothing. The school I attended through most of my high school years had only 200 students, and we’d be lucky to have only 11 absent on any given day.
The hardest part of “two weeks to flatten the curve” is the first four years.
This story also means that the WHO declaring an end to the pandemic emergency last May had essentially no effect. Jurisdictions are behaving like it’s March 2020, if not worse. It’s similar to how the Biden administration also declared an end to the emergency last May, yet even federal agencies in the U.S. act as if this never happened, and President Biden himself hasn’t even lifted some of the restrictive orders that accompanied this emergency. In some jurisdictions, it’s forever 2020. In fact, any order issued by Biden could not have been issued until after vaccines came out, as he didn’t take office until January 2021. This alone is proof of governments generally digging in instead of easing restrictions, even after vaccines came. It was bad enough when officials warned there would be restrictions “until a vaccine”, but we’re years past that now, and they still keep doubling down. There is no off-ramp. Anywhere.
Who are the real conspiracy theorists? The media. It actually is a conspiracy theory to claim that the return of mandates is just a conspiracy theory. The American media is made up of the biggest conspiracy theorists you can ever hope to meet. They think everybody else is colluding behind their backs to make up scary memes about lockdowns and masks. Yet it wasn’t I who said that all those states were intentionally undercounting COVID cases to justify loosening controls. That claim was from major media outlets and those who followed them. And it is a conspiracy theory of the craziest sort.