Requiem for the COVID Regime: Last Week in Liberty 11/27/22
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Last Week in Liberty. Every week we break down the biggest stories from the past week from a Liberty-minded perspective. I’ve just awoken from my stuffing-induced food coma, but I believe my mental faculties are still (mostly) intact. Let’s get started.
A Last Hurrah
Coming into 2022, COVID was still by far the biggest story in the news and the primary resident of our collective consciousness. As we approach the end of the year, however, COVID all but disappeared. In fact, you would be forgiven for not knowing that this past week was Dr. Anthony Fauci’s last White House press briefing before he steps down as the president’s chief medical advisor, a position which he has held for almost 40 years.
To be fair, 2022 has been a particularly newsworthy year: The War in Ukraine, gas prices, inflation, midterm elections, the FTX collapse, etc. Regardless, it’s difficult to ignore the disappearing act that COVID has played in the midst of all this. 2020 and 2021 were newsworthy years as well, but COVID remained relevant throughout. Now, COVID and all that came with it seem almost a distant memory from where we stand today.
This past week, the Washington Post published an article that received quite a bit of attention. Its headline reads, “Covid is no longer a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Here’s why.” In the article, the author explains that for the first time (beginning in August of 2022), more vaccinated individuals were dying of COVID than unvaccinated. Now, most people were sharing this article around without actually reading it (shocking, I know), so they didn’t actually see the explanations the author gives for why this is the case:
“At this point in the pandemic, a large majority of Americans have received at least their primary series of coronavirus vaccines, so it makes sense that vaccinated people are making up a greater share of fatalities.
Individuals at greatest risk of dying from a coronavirus infection, such as the elderly, are also more likely to have received the shots.
Vaccines lose potency against the virus over time and variants arise that are better able to resist the vaccines, so continued boosters are needed to continue to prevent illness and death.”
Do these explanations make sense? Sure they do. But no matter how you spin it, this fact alone is incredibly embarrassing for the COVID Regime narrative. If you remember back to the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021, do you remember how these vaccines were sold to the American people? They were sold as the end-all be-all for stopping COVID in its tracks. If you got it, you wouldn’t get COVID and wouldn’t transmit it to others. Once you got the vaccine, you would be safe.
Of course, this turned out to be transparently false. There is evidence to suggest that receiving a COVID vaccine, you are less susceptible to catching COVID, but this increased immunity only lasts for a time before waning (even after receiving a booster shot). After it wears off, you are essentially just as susceptible to getting COVID as someone who was unvaccinated. Those who receive a COVID vaccine can also transmit the disease to others as well, with some evidence (study 1, study 2) showing that they do so with a similar viral load to unvaccinated individuals. So much for keeping grandma safe.
It wasn’t just the vaccine narrative that has fallen apart, either. Remember those stickers on the ground telling you where to stand to make sure you were six feet apart from everyone? That magical six feet distance doesn’t do much to prevent transmission (study 1, article), which shouldn’t be surprising, considering that number was just arbitrarily chosen in the first place.
What about the COVID lockdowns? Surely, those had to have helped “slow the spread”, right? While lockdowns probably did help somewhat (as they were mandating precautions that people would have taken anyway), recent literature suggests that strict lockdowns have greatly decreased returns compared to softer measures. In other words, we would have been better off with much lighter lockdowns, or even none at all. All of the businesses that were closed, jobs that were lost, and livelihoods that were destroyed were all for nothing.
Unless you regularly read alternative media, you probably haven’t heard about any of this. In fact - as we stated earlier - you probably haven’t heard much about COVID at all in the preceding months. This conspicuous silence is indicative of one thing: defeat. Whenever the media and establishment class are embarrassed, they never come out and flatly admit that they were wrong all along and that their skeptics were right. They just stop talking about it. We can see a similar pattern with the “RussiaGate” and Ukraine Impeachment hoaxes. These were supposed to be some of the biggest stories in recent memory. When was the last time you heard anything from mainstream sources about either of those?
With the retirement of Dr. Fauci, and the vaccine admissions in the Washington Post, it feels like the swan-song of the COVID Regime has finally come. It has nothing left to stand on. Its biggest salesman is hanging up the cleats, its product doesn’t work as advertised, and nobody really cares anymore. The narrative, as it was promulgated and sold to the American people, is dead. Without that, what will the media report on? The facts? Dont’t be silly.
Of course, there won’t ever be an admission of wrong-doings or any final closure of that sort. Nevertheless, this is an ignominious end for the most consequential historical event since 9/11. It fades into history - in the oft-quoted words of Hemingway - not with a bang, but a whimper.
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Russia Stops Selling
According to Bloomberg’s estimates, Russia has lost over 90% of its market share in European Oil. Before the outbreak of the War in Ukraine, it was selling roughly 1.2 million barrels a day. That number has now fallen to just 95,000 barrels. This lack of demand clearly hurts Russia, whose economy was largely dependent on oil exports. However, it also hurts Europe as well, who was dependent on those oil imports for their energy needs.
The big question is: what happens now? If Europe - and the NATO countries, more specifically - are permanently soured on doing business with Russia, then they will have to reconstitute their energy policy in order to keep their economies afloat. With the still-unsolved destruction of Nord Stream II, that possibly looks ever more likely. In the long run, I’m sure they will be looking to more to greener energy sources, but that doesn’t answer any of their short-term concerns. They need oil now, but where are they going to get it? Well, there’s always the United States…
A Winter of Want in Afghanistan
The Red Cross has issued a warning that the upcoming winter could lead to a humanitarian disaster for the people of Afghanistan. Ever since the Taliban overthrew the US-backed government, harsh sanctions have been imposed on the country. As a result, Afghanis have had trouble meeting even their basic needs, as much of the country still lacks and real organization or infrastructure under the new Taliban rule. The Red Cross has already had to intervene in the country to ensure that disaster, even going as far as to directly pay the salaries of doctors to provide medical care to the sick and elderly.
What can be done to help? Other than providing donations to organizations - such as the Red Cross - with boots on the ground, not much. What should be done? The sanctions imposed on Afghanistan by the U.S. and allied countries should be lifted. Sanctions, though imposed to punish governments, only ever punish the people living under them. The Afghani people have already been through so much in the past two decades at the hands of the United States; continuing to inflict suffering upon them is incredibly cruel. In any case, pray for Afghanistan.
The Cancelled Come Back
As part of Elon Musk’s new regime at Twitter, he has announced a “general amnesty” for previously banned accounts. Some notable accounts that have returned to Twitter are Donald Trump, Carl “Sargon of Akkad” Benjamin, Andrew “Top G” Tate, etc. Notably, Musk clearly stated that Alex Jones will not be reinstated, demonstrating that Musk’s professed free-speech absolutism is not quite absolute.
I don’t agree with many of the people who have had their accounts reinstated, but I believe that they should be on the platform nonetheless. Censorship of ideas, even fringe ideas, tends to promote falsehoods and suppress truth. Even if Twitter as a platform doesn’t change much under Musk, his skepticism towards strict content moderation will be a massive improvement for the site. As for what Twitter under Musk really looks like, we will probably have to wait several more weeks at least until we can see the fruit of the vision he has for the company.
Interesting Links:
YouTube censors reality and boosts disinformation
The horrors of the “Turkey Trot”
How socialism nearly killed the Pilgrims
Quote of the Week:
“Writers about population growth usually mention a greater number of mouths coming into the world, and sometimes note more pairs of hands, but never mention more brains arriving.” - Julian Simon
Well, friends, that’s all for this week. Maybe nothing interesting will happen at all over the next seven days and I can talk about something fun next time instead. I can hope, at least. I’ll see you all next week.
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