Freedom in the Wake of Tyranny

Sometimes I take time to contemplate how fortunate I have been in life thus far. I have parents who have supported me relentlessly. I was granted acceptance into this wonderful Ivy League university. But above all, when I consider how I have been most privileged in life, I look not to my skin color or to my gender; I simply remember how fortunate I was to escape the tyranny of the State of Minnesota for the free State of Florida during the COVID-19 pandemic. I was reminded of this recently when I attended a conversation hosted by the Rockefeller Center between Professor Stephen Macedo and Professor Francis Lee of Princeton University.
The two professors gave a talk seeking to address what they considered to be the root cause of the failures of COVID policy: truth-seeking institutions became polarized, politicized, and intolerant of dissent. These institutions include science, journalism, and our universities. This allowed the government and its corrupt politicians to go unchecked in their exploitation of a crisis for political control. Of course, the true root cause of the tyranny we observed lay with the politicians who propagated fear over facts. However, politicians can never be held accountable, so those who complied with their orders (the truth-seeking institutions) are mostly to blame. The politicians are bad; science, the media, and universities were corrupted. But this is not to say that an ignorant, cowardly, and stubborn population was not also to blame. What COVID did was not only destroy millions of people’s faith in government permanently, but it also destroyed their faith in humanity and in their fellow citizens. I was fourteen years old in 2020; this was my introduction to politics.
This is not to say COVID was not a terrible pandemic. Certainly, it was. It was the worst pandemic since the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919. Millions of lives were lost across the world, particularly among the elderly and those with underlying health conditions (cancer, obesity, etc.). But COVID also brought about the worst economic crisis in nearly a century and certainly the worst education and mental health crises this nation has ever seen. We must acknowledge the public health crisis that was COVID without letting fear corrupt the facts. The public health measures responsible for the latter three crises did not necessarily help mitigate the damage done by COVID itself.
With the recent outbreak of the Hantavirus, it is unclear whether the disease will be contained or whether it will spread across the world as the Coronavirus did. If one thing was made clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, however, it was that Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) did not mitigate the spread of the disease. Destroying the economy, the education system, and nationwide mental health (especially among the youth) was a terrible decision overall and there is no evidence that it had any impact on mitigating the spread of the virus. What saved lives had nothing to do with forced masking or the closure of small businesses and schools, but a quality healthcare system and the production of an eventual vaccine.
According to Professor Macedo and Professor Lee, there is no evidence that states that implemented stay-at-home orders earlier or for a longer duration of time had better COVID outcomes. At a seminar hosted the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, Professor Lee highlighted that “Imposing stay-at-home orders more quickly did not make a difference in mortality outcomes.” She continued: “States that kept schools closed longer did not fare better in COVID outcomes than states that reopened schools more quickly. The Oxford Stringency Index showed that states imposing more stringent COVID restrictions did not fare better than states with less stringent restrictions.” According to an interview she had with PBS, “Democratic states stayed locked down for 2.5 times as long as Republican states. Even as Democratic states began to reopen, they still maintained more restrictions than Republican states. But when you look at cumulative COVID mortality at the time the vaccine rollout started, there’s no difference between states that pursued more stringent COVID containment policies and states that were more lax. We can’t conclude from this that means these measures don’t work, but it means that there’s still a lack of evidence that they do work.”
This is not evidence that popped up out of nowhere and that we can only now reflect on. In May, 2020, Florida began significantly reopening and embracing common sense COVID policies. At a minimum, people could eat at patios outdoors. They did not have to wear masks outside, and they were not all forced into the same community Walmart to get supplies. It became evident after a short time that the drastic NPIs Dr. Fauci had initially warned about were not working (or at least that they were doing more harm than good). Florida followed the science in the true meaning of the phrase. The evidence was always there. That said, why did “15 days to slow the spread” turn into “one year later in March of 2021, 50% of U.S. public schools would still be closed?” This is unforgivable. Of all groups that were not at risk of dying from COVID, and of all the industries that were most essential, why was education put last in priority by our politicians? Why was the mental health of a generation sacrificed? This was all while Newsom and Pelosi, and all the other corrupt (primarily Democratic) politicians continued living their social and lavish lifestyles. This is tyranny. It is almost immoral the fact that states continue to bargain with teachers’ unions in any way after their role in keeping schools closed during COVID.
Not only did truth-seeking institutions lie to us constantly, but in a 1984-style fashion, they would revise their lies. Anthony Fauci was the worst of all. It’s hard to say why he changed his professional opinion so many times (although likely for the advancement of his political career). In fact, he had warned against many of the destructive NPIs that would end up failing. His initial recommendations were in line with the guidelines for the World Health Organization at the time, as well.
In March, 2020, he said publicly, “When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is” (Foundation for Economic Education). He continued, “And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face” (ibid). He wrote privately in February, “Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection. The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out [sic] gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you. I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a very low risk location” (ibid).
At first, they told us not to mask. Then they told us to mask. At first, masks were supposed to protect ourselves from getting COVID. Then they were to protect others, not ourselves. At first, officials claimed cloth masks were making a difference. By the end, KN-95 masks were often expected. It was all nonsense, tyranny, lies, and chaos. In January, 2020, Fauci rebuked the idea of shutting down social and economic activity: “Historically, when you shut things down it doesn’t have a major effect.” We know where he ended up standing a few months later.
And why? He was wrong, of course. The measures he would later recommend only helped destroy the country. Either he completely changed his professional perspective within a few months due to new evidence (which did not exist) or he did so to advance his political career and power.
And what did all this get us? We saw massive unemployment, the destruction of thousands of small businesses, and the wealth of minority families disproportionately damaged. We saw social unrest and riots, the depopulation of downtown business districts, and church attendance and volunteering permanently decrease. We saw unprecedented drops in reading and math scores from which there has not been a large-scale recovery since. We see that chronic absenteeism has not recovered either. We saw an uptick in excess deaths not related to COVID. In counties with more stringent NPIs, we saw higher levels of anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. COVID lockdowns also created a loneliness and social isolation epidemic that still has not returned to baseline levels.
Fortunately, we have already been through a pandemic and have learned the damaging costs of NPIs in which there is no evidence of any positive effect whatsoever. If a new virus like the Hantavirus spreads. If – for some reason – it operates completely differently where it can be determined NPIs are genuinely worth their cost, we should not expect to see widespread public confidence in the truth-seeking institutions that support the measures. The government can never be trusted, but more importantly, the credibility of science, journalism, and universities will never be the same post-COVID.
This is because the science was not being followed. Journalism was not being honest. Academia was not welcoming dissent. People are not going to let what happened during COVID happen again. There will always be cowards in a population willing to sacrifice their freedom for a science that does not exist or a cost that is unreasonable. However, recent history has taught the brave citizens of America that freedom is always worth defending in the face of tyranny and fear.