It’s not about fighting the virus, but punishing political and cultural enemies.
The problem isn’t just the China Virus. It’s that we adopted the China Model to fight it.
Public health experts adopted China’s draconian lockdowns without knowing how well they really worked and in a country that, fortunately, lacks the power to truly enforce them.
China’s deceptiveness and lack of transparency meant that we did not know how well anything that the Communist dictatorship did to battle the virus that it spawned actually worked. Despite that, our public health experts, and those of most free countries, adopted the China Model.
We don’t know how well the China Model worked for the People’s Republic of China, but it failed in every free country that tried it. Lockdowns eventually gave way to reopenings and new waves of infection. This was always going to happen because not even the more socialist European countries have the police state or the compliant populations of a Communist dictatorship.
Desperate, the public health experts adopted China’s compulsive mask wearing, a cultural practice that predates the virus, as if wearing a few flimsy scraps of fiber would fix everything.
It hadn’t and it didn’t.
But by then the public health experts and the media that had touted them were moving fully into the scapegoat portion of the crisis. The China Model had failed, all that was left was shifting the blame to more conservative and traditional populations, and away from the cultural elites.
In New York City that meant falsely blaming Chassidic Jews for the second wave. From Maine to San Francisco, Democrat leaders and their media blamed conservative Christian gatherings. Their national counterparts loudly blamed President Trump for not wearing a mask all the time.
A New York Times headline captured the cynical broad spectrum cultural scapegoating with, “N.Y.C. Threatens Orthodox Jewish Areas on Virus, but Trump’s Impact Is Seen.”
The uncomfortable truth was that the lockdowns had failed economically, socially, and medically.
Even blue states and cities were no longer able to carry the impossible economic burden much longer. The Black Lives Matter riots and the onset of summer broke the #StayHome taboos, and medically, the lockdowns had been useless efforts to meet a fake crisis of hospital overflows.
America, like too many other countries, put the experts in charge and they failed. Miserably.
Democrats claimed that they were superior because they were “listening to the science”. They weren’t listening to the science, which is not an oracle and does not give interviews. Instead, they were obeying a class of officials, some of them whom weren’t even medical professionals, who impressed elected officials and the public with statistical sleight of hand. And little else.
The entire lockdown to testing to reopening pipeline that we adopted wholesale was a typical bureaucratic and corporate exercise, complete with the illusion of metrics and goals, that suffered from all the typical problems of bureaucracy, academia, and corporate culture.
The system that determines reopenings and closings is an echo chamber that measures its own functioning while having little to do with the real world. Testing has become a cargo cult exercise that confuses the map with the world, and the virus with the spreadsheet. It gamifies fighting the pandemic while dragging entire countries into an imaginary world based on its invented rules.
When the media reports a rise or decrease in positive tests, it’s treated as if it’s an assessment of the virus, rather than an incomplete data point that measures its own measurements.
The daily coronavirus reports have become the equivalent of Soviet harvest reports. They sound impressive, mean absolutely nothing, and are the pet obsession of a bureaucracy that not only has no understanding of the problem, but its grip on power has made it the problem.
The smarter medical professionals understand that the theories have failed, while the administrators who put the theories into practice confused their system with science. The politicians listen to the administrators and when they tell us to trust the science, they mean the bureaucracy. The medical professionals can’t and won’t backtrack now. It’s too late.
The best and brightest spent the worst part of a year shuffling rationales like a gambler’s trick deck, wrecked the economy, and sent tens of thousands of infected patients into nursing homes to infect the residents, accounting for at least a third of the national coronavirus death toll.
Like most national leadership disasters, it was a combination of misjudgement, understandable mistakes, tragic errors, and acts of incomprehensible stupidity or unmitigated evil.
A lot of people are dead, a lot more are out of work, and the problem is far from solved. Someone will have to be blamed and they certainly don’t want it to be themselves.
The lockdown and the rule of the public health experts has become too big to fail.
Mistakes were made, as the saying goes. Projections were built based on bad and incomplete data. Everyone followed the path of least resistance by doing what China had done. And everyone in the system, from the experts to the administrators to the politicians to the media, is complicit. That makes the massive error the world has been living under too big to fail.
There are only two choices left. Admit the magnitude of the mistake or find someone to blame.
The establishment that touted the experts is blaming its political and cultural enemies, the people it has been priming the public to see as strange, selfish, irrational, and dangerous. And also the very people who have been the loudest opponents of lockdown culture.
Given a choice between admitting the system was wrong or blaming the system’s failure on its critics, the establishment has followed the same pattern as every authoritarian leftist regime.
The lockdowns didn’t fail, they were failed by conservative Christians and Jews, by President Trump, by people who were too selfish to give up their lives, businesses, and religion for the greater good. And if only they had, the coronavirus would be gone and everything would be fine.
The China Model promised something that its proponents quickly knew it couldn’t deliver. Everything since then has been a scam to cover up the original quackery and hackery. The louder they blame critics and dissenters for the failure, the more obvious the coverup becomes.
Lockdown culture needs patsies to take the fall for why it didn’t work. Like every leftist social and economic experiment, its defenders are left to argue that it was never properly tried. If only it weren’t for Trump, and for the dissenters, for the Chassidic Jews in Brooklyn, for Christian weddings in San Francisco and Maine, for gyms, bars, and beaches, it would have worked.
Yet the simple truth is that the China Model hasn’t worked in any country that isn’t China.
It doesn’t matter who the leader or the ruling party are, whether the public wore or didn’t wear masks, the resurgence is not a political phenomenon, science doesn’t speak, and the virus doesn’t listen. But of all the countries in the world, America was especially ill-fitted to adopt an authoritarian public health model. The sheer size, openness, and diversity of the country makes us unique and should have made it abundantly obvious that no such system would work.
Anyone but an expert or administrator would have understood that these plans were doomed.
But what the system failed to accomplish in battling the virus, it made up for by providing the leadership that had enacted it with a wonderful opportunity to settle its political scores.
The lockdowns don’t exist anymore as a prophylactic policy, but as a political vendetta. The more people die, the more businesses are ruined, the more everyone suffers, the more vicious the vendetta grows as it hunts for scapegoats, political and religious, for the great error of terror.
Leftist regimes turn to political terror as their policies fail. When the idealism dies, and the theories fall apart, the organizers pursue misery for the sake of misery, using fear, deprivation, and hate to maintain their grip on power while crushing the political threats to their rule.
The rule of the experts isn’t fighting the virus. It has become the virus.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
This from England’s Daily Mail: “Dead at 31 after her chemo was ‘paused’ due to Covid: Cancer sufferers are fighting for their lives
Liz Hull
Aged just 31 and with a six-year-old son she doted upon, Kelly Smith had everything to live for.
But the ‘vivacious’ beautician, who was suffering from bowel cancer, was robbed of her future when the pandemic hit.
Doctors told her in March that her chemotherapy was being paused for three months. Her cancer spread and she died on June 13.
Miss Smith is just one of thousands of cancer patients abandoned by the NHS when the coronavirus crisis hit.
Hospitals desperate to clear beds for Covid patients cancelled virtually all procedures, including vital tests and operations, when the country shut down on March 23.
Kelly Smith, 31, was told by her doctors in March that that her chemotherapy was being paused for three months – but her cancer spread and she died on June 13
Kelly Smith, 31, was told by her doctors in March that that her chemotherapy was being paused for three months – but her cancer spread and she died on June 13
Many had their diagnosis delayed while others, especially those with secondary cancers, such as Miss Smith, who were relying on treatments, drug trials or surgery to buy them time, missed out on procedures, leaving them facing curtailed life-spans.
The backlog is so long that 3 million are now waiting for screening, says Cancer Research UK.
Charities estimate up to 35,000 extra deaths next year may be caused by cancer as a result of the pandemic.
As the UK teeters on the brink of a second wave, doctors, campaigners and MPs are demanding the Government prevents a similar shut down of cancer care.
If they don’t, the NHS will be left with a cancer time-bomb, with tens of thousands dying in the months and years to come, they say.
‘Now I won’t see my daughters grow up’
Life could hardly have been much better for primary school teacher Jennifer Eldridge in March.
She and her husband Jonathan had just bought their first home, he had been promoted in his Civil Service job, and their elder daughter was settling into her Reception class.
Then at Easter the active, healthy-living 40-year-old began experiencing back pain.
It was impossible to get a face-to-face appointment at the local surgery, and it took a month even to secure an online consultation. She was prescribed painkillers.
Four months later, concerns raised by a blood test she eventually had finally saw Mrs Eldridge referred for a colonoscopy – and a consultant said he had seen what seemed to be a tumour.
Jennifer Eldridge, who has stage 4 colorectal cancer, is pictured with her daughters Lina, five, and Jasmine, two
Jennifer Eldridge, who has stage 4 colorectal cancer, is pictured with her daughters Lina, five, and Jasmine, two
Specialists told her she had stage 4 colorectal cancer which appeared to have spread to her lungs, and she was left coming to terms with a terminal diagnosis.
She believes that had it not been for the pandemic, she could have been diagnosed sooner – boosting her chances of seeing daughters Lina, five, and Jasmine, two, at least reach their teens.
Mrs Eldridge, of Bristol, said: ‘I’ve been told my cancer has likely spread to my lungs, meaning it is incurable and I could have just two years to live.
‘If I could have seen my GP earlier, if those supposedly ‘non-urgent’ tests had been carried out… the cancer might not have had the chance to spread. To suddenly have your future as a family ripped from your hands is the worst part. I won’t be there with Jonathan to guide Lina and Jasmine through their childhoods.’
The couple have launched an appeal to help pay for treatments not covered by the NHS.
To donate, visit: uk.gofundme.com/f/mu6nw-help-me-beat-cancer
Professor Karol Sikora, a consultant oncologist at the University of Buckingham, warned: ‘Cancer is not a disease where you can put people on the shelf for three months. It’s not like hip replacements or cataract surgery where patients on the waiting list face immense discomfort – if cancer isn’t diagnosed and treated promptly, it can spread, and more people will die.’
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said: ‘There will be tragic consequences if ministers do not restore cancer services and guarantee patients the treatment they need.’
Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘This obsession with one issue – Covid – is disastrous. A second lockdown would be an unmitigated disaster in health terms: fewer cancer patients will get treatment, and there will be more deaths.’
Professor Pat Price, a consultant oncologist and founder of the Catch Up With Cancer Campaign, told the Mail: ‘The stark reality is that if we don’t get through this backlog, patients won’t get the treatment they need and will die. Cancer patients are as important as Covid patients.’
Miss Smith, from Macclesfield, was diagnosed with bowel cancer in April 2017. She underwent an operation to remove part of her colon but the cancer had spread to her liver.
Over the next three years Miss Smith, mother to six-year-old Finn, underwent several rounds of chemotherapy and immunotherapy but each time the cancer returned. In December she was told it had spread to her lungs, liver, intestines and brain.
She was midway through another round of chemotherapy, which she believed was buying her time, when the pandemic hit.
Shortly before her death, Miss Smith said: ‘I’m angry at Covid and that I got put on this break because I don’t think I should have.
‘I’m terrified – absolutely terrified. I don’t want to die. I feel like I’ve got so much more to do.’
Craig Russell, 51, Miss Smith’s step-father, told the Mail that her life had been ‘traded’ for those of Covid patients.
‘Kelly’s loss has been devastating to our family. So many people have suffered the same as we have, losing loved ones. We will never really get over the fact we lost Kelly.’
Mr Russell and his wife, Mandy, Miss Smith’s mother, have set up a petition, which has gathered more than 316,000 signatures, urging the Government to end cancer treatment delays in the pandemic.
Last week the couple met Health Secretary Matt Hancock to express their concerns.
Mr Russell said: ‘Cancer is a far bigger threat than Covid ever could be. Every day 500 people die from cancer and those numbers are starting to increase because there is no treatment. Sadly, it is too late for Kelly, but there is still time to save others.’
Maxine Smith, 32, a hairdresser and a mother of two, is another cancer sufferer who feels her life may be cut short because of the virus.
She said: ‘Cancer patients like me were just left, like sitting ducks. The cancer has been eating away at my body. I feel like I’m being murdered, plain and simple.’
Jennifer Eldridge, 40, had a delayed diagnosis because of Covid, and was only diagnosed with stage four colorectal cancer in August – four months after her symptoms began.
The married mother of two has been given just two years to live.
She said: ‘It’s utterly crushing to think if this hadn’t happened during a pandemic, things could be so different.’
Responding to the heartbreaking accounts, Professor Sikora said: ‘This really illustrates how the virus has created so much suffering indirectly. The Government mustn’t make the mistake of shutting everything down again. That would be the wrong decision.’
Dying mother: They need to stop focusing just on Corona
A mother-of-two whose lung cancer spread to her brain after her operation was cancelled said: ‘The NHS should be for everybody, not just Covid patients.’
Beth Purvis, 41, said: ‘My prognosis is not good. I’ve likely got four months to a year left to live.’
Mrs Purvis had been scheduled to have a tumour removed from her right lung on March 25. But it was cancelled with only a week’s notice amid the pandemic.
Mother-of-two Beth Purvis’s lung cancer (pictured with husband Richard and children Joseph, 12, and Abigail, 10) spread to her brain after her operation was cancelled
Mother-of-two Beth Purvis’s lung cancer (pictured with husband Richard and children Joseph, 12, and Abigail, 10) spread to her brain after her operation was cancelled
She said: ‘I was devastated, I just burst into tears. It is a critical operation because it could help buy me time.
‘I will never know if that operation could have saved my life. It might have done. But it was cancelled, and then I found out at the end of May it had spread to my brain.’
Mrs Purvis said she and husband Richard, a painter and decorator, have always been up front with their children, Joseph 12, and Abigail, ten, about her treatment.
She said: ‘At the time, I did understand why the hospital needed to free up beds. But that didn’t make it any easier. My message to the Health Service is to try to focus on not just Covid. The Government haven’t made it as clear as they could.’
Mrs Purvis, a legal assistant from Essex, added: ‘Who knows what will happen. I have to stay positive.
‘If I can help prevent someone else going through this, then what’s happened to me hasn’t happened for no reason.’
‘I had to bring our wedding forward’
Maxine Smith is looking forward to marrying her builder fiance, Mike Peacock.
She has brought the wedding forward to next week because she has no idea how long they will have together.
Miss Smith, 32, mother to George, seven, and Mia, five, was diagnosed with cervical cancer two years ago.
Maxine Smith, 32, has brought her wedding to her builder fiance Mike Peacock forward to next week after she discovered that the cervical cancer had returned
Maxine Smith, 32, has brought her wedding to her builder fiance Mike Peacock forward to next week because she has no idea how long they will have together
She was in the middle of a course of chemotherapy when the country locked down in March.
The former hairdresser finished that treatment and was declared free of tumours, but a drugs trial to keep the disease at bay was shelved.
Last month, she discovered the cancer had returned. She says patients such as her were left like ‘sitting ducks’.
‘Everything was put on hold because of Covid (but) the cancer has been eating away at my body. I’ve now got four tumours. Lockdown has… allowed my cancer to progress and stolen precious time from me. I just want to see my kids through school, I just want more time.’
Miss Smith, of Cheadle, Manchester, added: ‘I still work, I pay my taxes, but I was left when Covid came.
‘I’ve never been so disgusted in my whole life.” ”
The lockdown has caused the death of millions, of lives worldwide as doctors and hospitals neglected critically ill non-COVID patients, led to a fall-off of vaccinations for other illnesses, etc. Someone ought to do a class action suit to collect from all the governments that have caused non-covid patients to die in large numbers. Maybe that would stop the madness.
The Ban on prayer in “Ultr-Orthodox” synogogues in both New York Stare and Israel is truly outrageous. So is blaming the “ultra-Orthodox” for the pandemic. De blasio, an arch-antisemite, has even tried to ban Jewish children from getting exercise and fresh air in parks,although he hasn’t tried to close down other parks, where non-Jews and non-Orthodox Jews go.
Tragically the same situation, including the blatent discrimination against “haredim. ” prevails in Israel.