I have been waiting for this moment for quite some time now – and I must say – I thought this day would never come when I can finally end the long saga of covid-19 blogs, posts, and anything else related to the topic. That is, of course, until something new ramps up again. But this is dedicated to covid-19, the virus that gripped the world in 2020, 2021, most of 2022, and briefly, in spurts, in 2023. It was on this day, March 24, 2020, when I wrote my first-ever piece on covid-19 titled Finding a Rational Middle: Objective and Systematic Literature Review of SARS CoV-2 Research Articles. This was my first foray into discussing covid-19 after extensive research on it and wanting to get my ideas out. The objective of the article was to find any preliminary research on covid-19, and past research on other coronaviruses, to develop a clearer picture of what we are dealing with. I’ll get more into this piece later, but I think to start this out it is important to say that I am very glad this is my last post on covid. Considering if you have read my previous posts, I have wanted this day to come for quite some time.

I. In the Beginning

I have always liked to think my blog was not always dominated by covid topics. The whole point of Carson’s Education Blog is to create an interdisciplinary discussion about many topics. Although the main theme was education, it extended beyond into culture, history, philosophy, politics, art, and business. Looking back and moving through, I am happy to say that I was glad to weave some other topics in at the time of covid lunacy. Naturally, I think this was for my sanity, to not think about the craziness of the world and talk about things like Socialism vs. Capitalism, Alexis de Tocqueville, Chisholm’s Paradox, C.I. Lewis, and Analytic Epistemology. These are some of my least-read blogs, but I kind of like that. Strangely, it means that I was able to effectively remove myself from the craziness and just write about things I enjoy – even though, for myself, the anxiety of the situation was present. Unfortunately, this anxiety wasn’t about the virus, it was about the societal reaction – I’ll discuss this more at the end.

But I go back to my first blog on covid four years ago. What did I find in that literature review? Well, I settled on 4 key conclusions:

  1. Social distancing and quarantine are highly beneficial measures for members who are at risk (elderly, immunocompromised, congenial heart issues, chronic co-morbidity, etc.) through case-by-case isolation.
  2. The closing of schools does not mitigate the threat of COVID-19.
  3. Like Singapore, we must practice social responsibility at schools, in the workplace, and out in public. Much like the WHO and CDC guidelines of washing hands frequently, stay home if you feel ill, cough and sneeze into your arm or a tissue, and be cognizant of social distancing measures.
  4. Economic issues will continue with drastic quarantine measures.

First, where was I wrong? Looking at it now, I don’t think any social distancing or quarantine, even for the elderly or infirm would have worked. I think covid would have found a way regardless, and case-by-case isolation was tried and failed. But considering what I wrote, and what we did with social distancing and quarantine, was overhanded and well beyond the rational comprehension (i.e. closing businesses, cordoning off areas, curfews, etc.). I conclude my conception of social distancing and light quarantine was considered ‘not enough’ and ‘grandma killer-ish’ by the people who make decisions. However, numbers 2, 3, and 4 I think provide some insight to what became true later in the pandemic. Closing schools does not mitigate the threat of covid-19, and I should add now that, is extremely detrimental to the learning competence of children. Classic measures of typical flu season protection were the only way to mitigate a virus like this, and economic issues were massive – something we are still dealing with in 2024.

II. The Mask Craze

This was perhaps the most bothersome policy for me, that they would try and force us to wear a garment against our will with zero scientific evidence of efficacy. Most can say that now, but people in my circle have been saying it since 2020. My first post about masks came on June 21, 2020, when my local health unit decided to mandate masks inside commercial establishments. It was titled Critically Questioning the Efficacy of Masks for COVID-19, and that is what I attempted to do, critically assess whether these things work or not. At that time, all of the significant articles that discussed mask efficacy showed statistically insignificant findings – reflecting that masks do not work at slowing the spread over a population. Some of the studies suggest that masks are more beneficial for “peace of mind” but do not protect you from transmission. I concluded that it should be someone’s choice to wear a mask but should not be mandated.

Of course, that didn’t happen as people became mask crazy to the point you were seen as a bad person if you weren’t walking outside with a mask on. We were inundated with narratives such as “my mask protects you, your mask protects me” which is a logically inconsistent phrase (see Glaucon’s Mask). Or the many memes from people claiming wearing a mask is akin to wearing pants when you pee yourself? There were quite a few at this time who understood the mask insanity because they looked at the research. Unfortunately, the problem from 2020-2022, when most of the mandates were implemented, good science was being suppressed or de-amplified in favor of bad studies on masks.

In my blog A List of the Worst Mask Studies Ever Produced, out of the 10 studies I featured, 4 were Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR) run by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), perhaps the largest and most highly funded public health agency in the world. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how challenging it is when 1000 people, heck…call it 10,000 people, are struggling to get the truth out about mask efficacy showcasing good studies vs. a public health agency, with close to 10 billion in funding, amplifying bad studies – the bad studies will win out in this case. Mainly because the mask narrative was pushed by irrational fear funded by public health to the tune of millions of dollars. Not only was it favorable messaging for them, but stifling the message of dissenting, truthful voices about the efficacy of masks were also to their benefit. The CDC spent a lot of time and man-hours influencing social media companies to censor content that does not follow their policies – as outlined in the famed Twitter Files.

III. What was COVID about in 2020?

This has been a topic of much discussion. What really was covid about in 2020? A normie’s view would think it was just about a virus – normies who oddly want to think that 2020-2022 was some odd dream and that they didn’t advocate for the crazy things they advocated for, such as school closures, mandated medical treatments, lockdowns, or loss of healthcare to the people who do not follow the public health edicts. Collective amnesia aside from current and past covidians, rational people have wondered was covid something more than a virus? This could bring us into a little bit of conspiracy theory territory, but I do believe there is evidence to justify these ideas on ‘covid’ being more than a virus.

Eric Weinstein has always had a great understanding of how our world works and how it affects our social views. In discussing Jeffrey Epstein, he sees it as we stumbled on a construct of elite pedophile rings and called it Jeffrey Epstein – a construct because of all the strange circumstances surrounding the case. Perhaps we stumbled on some sort of construct, and we called it covid, meaning covid was just the identifier, but the actions were part of a larger plan? In talking to many individuals about this, here are some potential explanations of what covid was really about in 2020.

  1. To remove Donald Trump from office.
  2. To push us toward a digital society, largely because of climate change.
  3. To coalesce medical power within governments and NGOs.
  4. To have large corporations obtain more power, harnessing technology.

I think #1 is quite relevant and true for the time – considering one significant study that looked at covid coverage in the media – almost exclusively attaching the troubles to the Trump Administration. One narrative used by the covidians – who on a large scale support the Democratic party – suggests that Trump’s leadership directly caused covid deaths. Remember “Trump Lied People Died,” even though most died under President Joe Biden – with a vaccine. #2 With the digital society has always been a push with global NGOs to limit human travel. There is not much I can say without getting into the weeds, but if you want a deeper understanding of the NGO push on a global scale – and for a long time – take a look at Jason Bradley’s YouTube channel @everybodyshook. This is not some absurd secret, a push for digital ID has been in the works for a greater part of the last decade – another explicit example, Klaus Schwab’s and Thierry Malleret’s COVID-19: The Great Reset.

Number 3 fits in nicely with number 2, only adding the influence of the World Health Organization wanting to create a treaty that puts them in control of pandemic guidance rather than nation-states. Number 4 relates to certain large companies gaining profit by limiting workers and paying less for online work, all while keeping their productivity up – netting 1.5 Trillion in profits. All of these areas are deserving of their own blog, and I am sure they are out there, considering how dense and convoluted these topics are.

IV. Is that Sunlight, No, It’s a Train Light! Covid in 2021-2022

Covid in 2021 was something else, given that they fended off Trump through interesting methods involving the 2020 Election – see this Time Magazine article which all but concludes businesses, government orgs, social media, and lawmakers changed the rules of the election during covid, in favor of Joe Biden. Oddly, two days after Biden defeated Trump, Pfizer is suddenly ready to announce that their covid vaccine is ready. However, it was also in 2021 when we started to see the unraveling of the covid narrative come about in a big way. I think this was because more and more people started to see the absurdity of the situation. More and more studies came out showing that the masks were ineffective – notably the Cochrane Mask Study, which drew the ire of the institutional class. The biggest narrative in 2021/2022 was not about the virus itself, but the vaccines produced for the virus.

This is where we saw the insanity of the covidians reach a peak level, and in my opinion, saw their downfall. Full disclosure, if anyone wanted to get the covid vaccine, I and many other rational individuals said “Go right ahead, good for you!” But that wasn’t enough for the covidians, they needed everyone else to get the vaccine to feel safe. They put themselves in a contradiction – in a sense a societal oxymoron, if you will. Not only did they need to get the vaccine to protect themselves, but they also needed you to get the vaccine, or else…their vaccine wouldn’t work? I think comedian Tyler Fischer presents this contradiction perfectly.

This vaccine situation also saw the implementation of many controls by the government to stifle speech and movement as well, which should not be the objective of a public health plan – this should be obvious now but was not in 2021/2022. Long covid became a talking point in 2022 and still is to this day, even though there is no significant understanding of symptomatology and that it tends to be more psychosomatic than an actual impairment. In my December 18, 2021 piece Once Again, The Fallacy of Long-COVID found that all the covid research concludes that this impairment is in-between extremely rare to non-existent. One study from the U.K. Office of National Statistics found that supposed long covid symptoms were more prevalent in individuals without confirmed infection compared to individuals with confirmed infection.

We are now in this weird stage of people trying to forget what happened over the past few years (i.e. the collective amnesia I mentioned earlier), like a weird vivid dream. I think the absurdity around covid will go down with other famous mass hysteria moments like The Dancing Plague of 1518, or The Tanganyika Laughing Epidemic of 1962. I think in 2022 covid fatigue did set in, and people were tired of it controlling their lives. Rationalism did win out eventually, but at what cost? From the massive learning loss of students to the massive wealth transfer from the middle class to the upper class. Mass inflation is an outgrowth of covid, and it didn’t need to happen.

V. Future Implications and Questions

I have seen many on social media wonder what is next. Personally, the experience of covid has changed us in many ways for the worst, but there is a silver lining to take from this. I will get to that, but many have implications and questions moving forward. I would like to answer some of these questions.

What do I do about people who were covidians for a long time and are now asking for amnesty?

This is an interesting question and one that should be explored. Two key events earned the win for the rational side against the covidians. The first event was the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, Canada showing the draconian measures the government would take to stifle free speech. I wrote about how the actions Trudeau took during that time were a losing strategy, and proved to be true after a federal court ruled that his action to use the Emergency Act was unjustified. This started to turn the tide on the narrative of covid and weeks later mandates involving pretty much everything were lifted.

The second event was a piece in The Atlantic called Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty. This is clear confirmation – in a socio-political narrative sense – that the actions undertaken by leaders, institutions, and individuals who followed the covidian narrative, were wrong. However, there were moments in this piece where individuals used the escape of “we didn’t know?” This is a lie given all the information from people who have been on the rational side since April of 2020. This article was a slap in the face to all rational individuals and an out for the covidians to say “my bad” for all the harmful ideas and narratives pushed onto people during this time.

I feel, moving forward, it would be best to ask one question to covidians asking for amnesty, and exactly this question in its exact order:

Will you apologize for how you acted during covid-19?

If they answer yes, and only yes without a caveat such as “knowing what I know now…” I say provide amnesty. If the answer is no, I think you have to accept that these individuals are stubborn, self-centered, and will never change their stance for anything. From there you can move on with your life knowing the kind of person they are, and you can choose whether to engage further.

What do I do to ensure this does not happen again?

This is an even tougher question to answer given that there is still a push by large institutions to obtain control during health situations – just read about the WHO Pandemic Treaty, which is a clear obstruction of human rights in favor of multinational NGOs, subverting citizen freedom as established by a country’s laws. I feel this is the biggest threat coming from the covid pandemic as it goes beyond a virus, it focuses on the big picture implementation of centralized control on what we can do or say about a public health situation; ultimately, deferring to the failed policies that put us in this 2+ years covid condition.

I do think some vigilance is still needed, and yes, we will have another pandemic in our lifetimes. However, when it comes to covid, for myself…I am done. I mentioned the silver lining and where it has taken us. I think more people are vigilant now about the institutional narrative, and are asking more thorough questions, holding our leaders to account. We shouldn’t trust governments and large multinational companies ‘whole cloth’. If that was an outgrowth of covid, critical thinking, I call that a success.

Alas, as I leave the narrative of covid moving from a rational middle to just rationally correct, please enjoy this video of covid absurdity to remind yourself how crazy this was…or…how crazy you were?

Published by cbabich26

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