Thomas BuckleyThe Morning After Is Never Pleasant … And It Shouldn’t Be
It’s about 11 a.m. The brain activates but you’re not quite sure you can open your eyes.
You experience what Homer Simpson described as “that sweet couple of seconds before I remember why I’m sleeping on the lawn.”
You feel around and breathe a sigh of relief that you are still indoors, slowly open one eye, see your spouse glaring at you, and it all floods back. You had too much fun last night.
The next few days are rough – you hunt for a can of soup because you know with absolute certainty your spouse is not going to be cooking anytime soon, you gobble Advil, and you wonder which is worse – the hangover or the nearly lethal tension hovering in the house.
After a day or so, you start to work your way back to normal – a bit.
And then – in an effort to get yourself completely off the hook for your bad behavior – you write an article for The Atlantic entitled “Let’s Declare a Drunken Party Amnesty.”
And you have the self-satisfied gall of the recently repentant to think “well, that’s over and we should never discuss it ever again because that would be rude of you.”
That’s not how this works.
The actions taken by Emily Oster – who had the narcissistic temerity to write the “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty” – and her many many over-credentialed, under-educated power-mad brethren over the past 30 months cannot be given a pass.
What happened during the pandemic was obviously more than a one-off drunken party moment. Having tee many martoonis does not compare to the whirlwind of destruction the COVID reaction caused.
Massive educational degradation. Economic devastation, by both the lockdowns and now the continuing fiscal nightmare plaguing the nation caused by continuing federal overreaction.
The critical damage to the development of children’s social skills through hyper-masking and fear-mongering.
The obliteration of the public’s trust in institutions due to their incompetence and deceitfulness during the pandemic.
The massive erosion of civil liberties.
The direct hardships caused by vaccination mandates, etc. under the false claim of helping one’s neighbor.
The explosion of the growth of Wall Street built on the destruction of Main Street. The clear separation of society into two camps – those who could easily prosper during the pandemic and those whose lives were completely upended.
The demonization of anyone daring to ask even basic questions about the efficacy of the response, be it the vaccines themselves, the closure of public schools, the origin of the virus, or the absurdity of the useless public theater that made up much of the response.
The fissures created throughout society and the harm caused by guillotined relationships amongst family and friends.
The slanders and career chaos endured by prominent actual experts (see the Great Barrington Declaration) and just plain reasonable people like Jennifer Sey for daring to offer different approaches, approaches – such as focusing on the most vulnerable – that had been tested and succeeded before.
And still, a million people died.
And now Oster asks if everyone would just please move on and forget about it?
Oster kept her job. Oster got famous. The pandemic was good for Oster.
The pandemic was also good for bureaucrats, multinationals, putative experts, the mindless media, and internet scolds. It was good for woke adults who want to remain children, it was good for the national security-industrial complex, it was good for hiding behind, it was good for expanding societal power.
It was not good for people.
There are other aspects to consider when mulling over the request as well.
First, this amnesty idea was wholly predictable, though when I did so I assumed it would entail at least a modicum of shame – see here: https://thomas699.substack.com/p/addicted-to-covid .
Second, the politics – for the Democrats – of the request are incredibly stupid. Placing the misery of the pandemic front and center a week before the mid-term election is beyond a bad idea and is only made the more amazing – and offensive – that it was done purposefully and in the context of demanding a free pass. The fearlessly narcissistic arrogance of the bubble people knows no bounds – see here: https://thomas699.substack.com/p/the-danger-of-bubble-wrap .
Third, as for the “we really didn’t know but we meant well so we’re all good, right?” aspect of the argument, that is a lie. Oster and her merry band of pandemicists knew full well (at least after the first few months) exactly what was happening, exactly the collateral damage being caused was and still actively decided to continue to push the false and destructive narrative of the response. It strongly appears that the reason for the aggressive ignorance was wholly about power, fame, money, societal purchase, doubling down on mistakes so as not to have to admit error, and buying into (and burnishing) their own image as the nation’s saviors.
It cannot be forgotten that until this moment – except for Anthony Fauci, due to his deadly bungling of the emergence of AIDS – 99% of the people who suddenly, like Oster, became experts and got to be on television and publicly worshipped and given real actual power for the first time in their lives were – outside of their narrow fields – utter nobodies. Being the all-praised, almighty center of attention feels good and that is a feeling you will do anything to keep going.
Just the mind-warping act of asking for amnesty shows that nothing has been learned by Oster and her ilk and they will, if given the chance, do it all again exactly the way they did it this time.
Amnesty is pretending something never happened – this episode in our history must never be forgotten if we are to preserve our nation.
Amnesty will not – it cannot – be given.
And please do not ask again.
Thomas Buckley is the former mayor of Lake Elsinore, Cal. and a former newspaper reporter. He is currently the operator of a small communications and planning consultancy and can be reached directly at planbuckley@gmail.com. You can read more of his work at: https://thomas699.substack.com/
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
Change COVID/pandemic to “Climate Emergency /Carbon” and you have a discrete article of equal importance that deserves as much attention.
Even the number of fatalities reported is fundamentally dishonest and we’re likely to never know the full truth. First of all, in the early days of an outbreak of disease (viral, bacteriological, etc.) it is common practice to lump fatalities WITH and FROM the pathogen as a direct way of measuring the speed and scope of the spread. There is a point where doing so is no longer justifiable, yet to this day the government has yet to separate these 2 categories.
Digging through the numerous CDC databases one can find the real data. And what does it tell us? Only 6% of reported fatalities were from the SARS-CoV-2 virus (i.e. FROM the virus.) So take the 1 million reported deaths and multiply that by 6% and you get 60,000 fatalities FROM the virus. This also included people who died from heart attacks, stage 4 cancers, suicide, auto accidents, and homicides. That’s a LOT less than 1 million (about 94% less, actually.) Also, there are 2 influenza seasons per year, Spring and Fall. With 10,000-15,000 deaths being typical per season, we normally lose upwards of 30,000 people every year to the flu.
Do the math…
No, to add some context, the remaining 940,000 people who died WITH the virus had an average of nearly 3 serious medical conditions (comorbidities) and they actually did die, just not exclusively from CVID 19. In these cases it’s reasonable to presume that COVID-19 was certainly a contributing factor in these people’s deaths. But this underlies the truth that was cancelled, deplatformed, demonetized, punished and suppressed by all media and government outlets:
We should have focused on protecting the vulnerable; the very old, the sick, those with serious comorbidities. Instead we had a Stalinesque power grab that ruined millions of small businesses, our entire education system and damaged the psyche of an entire nation. For purely political reasons, trillion of dollars were needlessly added to our national debt, countless millions lost their jobs, cheers were stifled or destroyed for those who went against the official narrative. They were shunned, deplatformed, demoted, cancelled, fired, or had their professional reputations ruined. People like Dr. Robert Malone, one of the world’s leading experts in this area were treated like pariahs.
And those who perpetrated this totalitarian evil want ‘amnesty’? I say to them POUND SAND.
Amnesty for human devastation is how our haughty elite take responsibility.
Hi, Thomas Buckley, author, here.
I have been thinking about the “million” issue myself and, when writing the piece, thought about a different way to phrase the fatality impact.
It is absolutely true that the number of people who died “from COVID” alone and/or primarily is, of course, nowhere near one million – pretty sure even the CDC is side-of-the-mouth admitting that now.
Co-morbidities and advanced age played a huge role in the toll the virus took, and then there were the people who died in a car accident and tested positive at the hospital and were listed as dying of COVID, etc.
That issue is another massive scandal that we will not know the actual truth for years.
But I chose the one million number because that is what they – the experts, the “scientists,” the public health officials, the pandemicists, the media, etc. and/or all the people who lied to the public and caused massive societal disruption – use as a figure.
And since they – Oster is not the only one thinks as she does – claim they did the best they could, they had good intentions, they tried really hard so please don’t be mean to us, it demands a question be asked: if one million people, as you say, died while you were doing your best, exactly how awful are you at your job, why should anyone trust you about anything ever again, and why should anyone forgive your gross incompetence and negligence and systemic – using that word correctly – dissembling? And that’s not even considering the fact that you now admit you KNEW the unnecessary damage you were causing while you were causing it?
In other words, if they are going to claim the pandemic was so serious it cost a million lives, it makes the request for “amnesty” even more unconscionable.
Hope that makes sense and thanks for reading!
Never again!
Are one way helicopter rides over the ocean considered ” amnesty” enough for you? They are cool with me.
I almost died from the “vaccine.”
Not “had a bad reaction.”
No: “Needed one of the most dangerous operations surgeons do.”
I am nowhere in the stats.
NO FORGIVENESS TILL TRUTH AND RECONCILLIATION.
I will forgive c * * * s like her when they stand on a stage in the center of town & read out their crimes then make a sincere apology. Otherwise she should be fully f’ing OSTRACIZED.
I almost died from the “vaccine.”
Not “had a bad reaction.”
No: “Needed one of the most dangerous operations surgeons do.”
I am nowhere in the stats.
No Forgiveness Until Truth And Reconciliation.
I will forgive c * * * s like her when they stand on a stage in the center of town & read out their crimes then make a sincere apology. Otherwise she should be fully f’ing ostracized. Cast out of all polite society.