Is the COVID Lockdown the Greatest Policy Disaster in U.S. History? (AND WHITHER VERMONT?)

Publisher’s Note: Time will tell, but Mr. Whitney makes a compelling case for US, based on arguments we’ve been making here since mid-March 2020. Here in Vermont, we encourage our friends and neighbors to wake up.

“Lockdowns are meant to condition people to obey without question. A nation of people who just do what they are told by the “experts” without question is a nation ripe for a descent into total tyranny.”

—Ron Paul

Donald Trump calls the media “the enemy of the people”, but it’s much worse than that. The media is a national security threat. Just look at the way they’ve handled the coronavirus. The hysterical 24-7 coverage has people so terrified they’ve locked themselves in their homes inflicting catastrophic damage on the economy. That disaster never would’ve taken place if the media hadn’t focused all their energy on scaring people to death. Now the damage is done, millions of people have lost their jobs, tens of thousands of small and mid-sized businesses are facing bankruptcy, and the world’s biggest economy has been reduced to a smoldering wastelands. And what was gained? Nothing. Check out this excerpt from an article by economist Jack Ramsay:

“The magnitude and rapidity of the shutdown of the real economy in the US is unprecedented. Even during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the contraction of the real economy occurred over a period of several years—not months….

…once the contraction in the real economy accelerates and deepens, it inevitably leads to defaults and bankruptcies…. The defaults and bankruptcies then provoke a financial crisis that feeds back on the real economy, causing it to deteriorate still further. Income losses by businesses, households and local government thereafter in turn cause a further decline. Once negative feedback effects within the economy begin, it matters little if the health crisis is soon abated. The economic dynamic has been set in motion. ….The Fed.. can make a mass of free money and cheap loans available, but businesses and households may be reluctant to borrow, preferring to hoard their cash—and the loans as well. In other words, the deeper and faster the contraction, the more difficult and slower the recovery” (“The Myth of V-Shape Economic Recovery“, Jack Rasmus)

Every sector of the economy is shrinking and shrinking fast. Oil prices have plunged, activity in all 50 states is slumping badly, business confidence is at record lows, personal spending continues to shrivel, consumer confidence is dropping sharply, the service sector is tanking, restaurant traffic, industrial production, manufacturing, corporate earnings, business investment, personal consumption, bank lending, imports-exports; are all down, down, down and down. There’s not a glimmer of light to be seen anywhere. The economy is in freefall while people remain hunkered down inside their homes thinking they are stopping the spread of a deadly virus. But lockdowns don’t stop infections, at best they postpone them to a later date, and even that is doubtful.

The whole idea of isolating the healthy members of the population to counter the spread of a highly-contagious virus is delusional. There’s no historical precedent to the policy at all. There was no lockdown during the Spanish Flu in 1918 (when 50 million died), no lockdown during the Asian Flu in 1957, no lockdown during the Hong Kong Flu in 1969, no lockdown during SARS in 2002, no lockdown during the Swine Flu in 2009, no lockdown during MERS outbreak in 2012, and no lockdown during Ebola epidemic in 2014.

Get the picture? There was no lockdown, no time, NEVER.

But just ask someone about the lockdown today and they’ll announce with absolute certainty, “It’s the only way to beat this thing”. Right, by locking yourself indoors and waiting for the economy to crash, is that it?

Three bulletpoints you won’t see in the MSM:

1–There is no historical precedent for lockdowns

2–There is no scientific basis for lockdowns

3–A number of infectious disease experts, like Swedish Professor John Giesecke, believe that lockdowns are the wrong policy to contain the spread of the virus, they’re politically dangerous and they’ll be difficult to end. Here’s what he said:

“When you start looking around now at the measures that are being taken by different countries you find that very few of them have a shred of evidence-based [support] … border closures, school closures, social distancing – there’s almost no science behind most of these.”

Lockdowns are not science-based policy. They’re a faith-based catch-as-catch-can concoction that’s accepted as Holy Writ by the vast majority of Americans who are so terrified by the virus that they have allowed themselves to be duped by a manipulative, agenda-driven media that has convinced them that hibernating while the economy disintegrates is somehow performing their civic duty. But they’re wrong. One’s real civic duty is to engage their own critical thinking skills, skeptically analyze the idiocy that government passes off as social policy, and resist those directives that are clearly destructive to the interests of the American people and the country. Lockdowns certainly meet that criteria. Here’s a clip from Pepe Escobar’s latest article that helps to put things in perspective:

“The notion of a generalized obligatory confinement is not warranted by any medical justification, or leading epidemiological research, when it comes to fighting a pandemic. Still, that was enshrined as the hegemonic policy – with the inevitable corollary of countless masses plunged into unemployment. All that based on failed, delirious mathematical models of the Imperial College kind, imposed by powerful pressure groups ranging from the World Economic Forum (WEF) to the Munich Security Conference.

Enter Dr. Richard Hatchett, a former member of the National Security Council during the first Bush Jr. administration, who was already recommending obligatory confinement of the whole population way back in 2001. Hatchett now directs the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a very powerful entity coordinating global vaccine investment, and very cozy with Big Pharma. CEPI happens to be a brainchild of the WEF in conjunction with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation….

Rumsfeld, crucially, had been the chairman of biotech giant Gilead. After 9/11…That’s when “generalized obligatory confinement” was conceptualized, with Hatchett among the key players.

As much as this was a militarized Big Pharma spin-off concept, it had nothing to do with public health. What mattered was the militarization of American society to be adopted in response to bioterror – at the time automatically attributed to a squalid, tech-deprived al-Qaeda.

The current version of this project – we are at “war” and every civilian must stay at home – takes the form of what Alexander Dugin has defined as a medical-military dictatorship.” (“How Biosecurity Is Enabling Digital Neo-Feudalism” Unz Review)

So, there is no “medical justification, or leading epidemiological research” to support lockdowns. It’s all made-up out of whole cloth. Lockdowns are the result of political manipulation (of a public health crisis) intended to simulate martial law. “Go home and stay home,” that’s the message not “Go home and be healthy” . That doesn’t factor into the government’s calculus at all.

So on whose behalf are these lockdowns being imposed? Certainly not Trump who’s wanted to lift them from Day 1. No, it’s his surrounding cast, like the affable Dr Anthony Fauci who just recently appeared before the Senate and ominously cautioned them against lifting restrictions too soon. His warnings closely resembled those of his colleague and perhaps, benefactor, Bill Gates, whose tentacles are wrapped tightly around the global health network and who, many think, uses philanthropic initiatives as a vehicle for advancing his own malign vision of the future. As for the lockdowns, we’ll let Gates speak for himself: 

“First, we need a consistent nationwide approach to shutting down. Despite urging from public health experts, some states and counties haven’t shut down completely. In some states, beaches are still open; in others, restaurants still serve sit-down meals….

The country’s leaders need to be clear: Shutdown anywhere means shutdown everywhere. Until the case numbers start to go down across America — which could take 10 weeks or more — no one can continue business as usual or relax the shutdown. Any confusion about this point will only extend the economic pain, raise the odds that the virus will return, and cause more deaths….

To bring the disease to an end, we’ll need a safe and effective vaccine. If we do everything right, we could have one in less than 18 months — about the fastest a vaccine has ever been developed. But creating a vaccine is only half the battle. To protect Americans and people around the world, we’ll need to manufacture billions of doses.” (“Bill Gates: Here’s how to make up for lost time on covid-19“, Washington Post)

Here’s one more from Gates in case there’s any doubts about his intentions:

“One of the questions I get asked the most these days is when the world will be able to go back to the way things were in December before the coronavirus pandemic. My answer is always the same: when we have an almost perfect drug to treat COVID–19, or when almost every person on the planet has been vaccinated against coronavirus.” (“Bill Gates — Gates Notes)

What the heck is he talking about? Gates isn’t a doctor, a scientist, an epidemiologist, or an elected official who sets policy. He’s a rich-guy dilettante who made zillions by ruthlessly dominating the software industry. That’s all. Does that make him an expert on infectious diseases? Does that give him the right to order the summary lockdown of 328 million Americans? No, it doesn’t, but Gates’s tentacles are also wrapped around the media (which helps him to shape public opinion) as this clip from an article at Lew Rockwell points out:

“The Gates Foundation gives grants in the hundreds of thousands and often millions to such media organizations as NBCUniversal, Al Jazeera, BBC, Viacom (CBS) and Participant Media …Both Gates and the Gates Foundation are sizable shareholders in Comcast,… as well as….MSNBC and NBC News…In 2009, the New York Times reported that the Gates Foundation was partnering with media companies to write and shape stories to ‘embed’ messages in primetime dramas:”

“’It [the Gates Foundation] is less well known as a behind-the-scenes influencer of public attitudes toward these issues by helping to shape story lines and insert messages into popular entertainment like the television shows ER, Law & Order: SVU and Private Practice…..

“His enormous wealth and the reach of media parent corporations seem to exempt Gates from routine disclosure requirements. …. He is given softball interviews in Comcast-backed Vox without disclosure that he’s a major Comcast investor. Because his stake in media companies is laundered enough times, it’s assumed not to merit mention.” (“Bill Gates, HR6666, Remdesivir, Deaths in Italy“, Lew Rockwell)

Bill Gates has critical contacts across the spectrum of media, global health care and politics. If he wants to his views widely disseminated, all he has to do is say the word. That said, we may never know if the lockdowns were his idea, but he certainly has the power to have them implemented if he so chooses. And for those who remain skeptical on this point, consider these words of warning from James Corbett’s excellent three-part video series on the Microsoft mucky-muck titled “Bill Gates and the Population Control Grid”:

“The takeover of public health that we have documented in How Bill Gates Monopolized Global Health and the remarkably brazen push to vaccinate everyone on the planet that we have documented in Bill Gates’ Plan to Vaccinate the World was not, at base, about money.

The unimaginable wealth that Gates has accrued is now being used to purchase something much more useful: control. Control not just of the global health bodies that can coordinate a worldwide vaccination program, or the governments that will mandate such an unprecedented campaign, but control over the global population itself.”(James Corbett, The Off-Guardian)

The lockdowns are all about power; raw, political power in the hands of unelected, unaccountable “do goodie” oligarchs who are determined to save humanity whether we like it or not.

God help us.