The Covid Doctrine
How policy for Covid-19 is shaping up for 2022
As I’ve said on multiple occasions, the Pandemic ended as a topic of great concern for me in April of 2020 when age-specific infection mortality rates and other data emerged.
It was way back then that we learned:
This is a disease of old, sick, and obese people
Children and young people have virtually no risk above other baseline health risks
Repurposed drugs for early treatment were promising
It’s another coronavirus and it behaves like other respiratory viruses before it
My posts during that period may have helped some people maintain their sanity by putting the realities of Covid-19 into perspective, but unfortunately, most people are largely ignorant of the facts and nuances of the virus and disease.
Our health officials, driven by an egomaniacal god complex and amplified by sensationalist mainstream media painted an apocalyptic and largely irrational picture of what this pandemic was actually about. Combined with early stories and imagery as well as the mishaps of early disease treatment (ex: ventilators), the narrative of overflowing ERs, triaging of patients, and overflowing body-bags was created early on.
Out of this chaos, lack of information, and general promotion of fear, something I call the Covid-Doctrine emerged.
By the time the push-back started to gain traction, it was already too late…the Covid Doctrine had already been established as the unquestionable “scientific” way forward.
So what is the Covid Doctrine?
It’s a completely arbitrary set of principles that were laughably modeled around China’s early Covid policies. Over time they’ve added to it, but in reality, not much has changed since the early days of “15 Days to Stop the Spread”.
What are examples of the Covid Doctrine?
Lock-downs
Quarantines
Mass Testing
Contact Tracing
Mask Wearing/Mandates
Zero Covid/Safetyism - one Covid case or death is one too many
Vaccination and boosting of everybody (including children)
School closings
The five major characteristics of the Covid Doctrine are:
No cost-benefit analysis is necessary when crafting these principles - the only consideration is that any human life is priceless
There is very little room for re-assessment of policy based on new information
Little to vague proof is necessary to establish these principles
There is very little room for nuance - we are dealing with “settled science” after all. If you disagree with any part of the Covid Doctrine, you are an anti-science conspiracy theorist and are no longer welcome in polite society
The Key Feature: There is no defined metric which once achieved would signal the end of the pandemic and therefore the Covid Doctrine
I covered all this before when I pointed out that the policies created for Covid had no resemblance to existing Pandemic Plans drafted by the CDC and WHO. Our public health experts basically made up all the policies out of thin air.
Let’s put things into perspective!
Try this thought experiment:
Imagine how much new information and knowledge has emerged in the nearly two years since the pandemic began.
Now ask yourself how much have the policies or strategies changed?
Finally, ask yourself how this is possible?
These were not time-tested strategies…they were invented in the Spring of 2020. Yet they got them all so correct that nothing has changed in two years?
Here comes Omicron! What should we do? Let’s test our way out of the pandemic…yeah, that’s the ticket!
It’s obvious that something else is going on here because this is not how anything works in real life. The government has never been all-knowing…yet we are required to believe that they are in this case…more likely they want you to think this so that they may become all-powerful.
It’s really about using a crisis (pandemic) to push forward the ideological agenda that Government can solve all your problems…and if they can’t it’s because you haven’t given them enough power.
Despite the efforts of many people who have tried to push back on the Covid Doctrine, public opinion is still mostly split.
Aside from issues such as in-person learning for children and no Chinese-style lock-downs, there is still enough public support for the Covid Doctrine to keep it in place.
This poll was really quite disheartening for me.
Throughout this pandemic, I’ve thought to myself many times that “If only X would happen then we could finally be done with Covid”.
The only problem is that every time that “X” occurred, they just moved the goalposts.
The most blatant example of this is with the Omicron variant.
The history of every respiratory virus pandemic is that the virus evolves to become more transmissible and less deadly. Thus is becomes endemic and we go on with our lives and the virus fades into the background of other seasonal respiratory viruses that freely circulate among us.
Lo and behold, we had the arrival of the new Omicron variant. After getting past the initial concern that it was “monstrously mutated” and was super transmissible, we learned that it was actually not very virulent at all.
In fact, this was the big “X” I had been waiting for. What better news for the Christmas holiday than the fact that Covid was going endemic?
And yet, the Covid Doctrine continues to dominate.
So here we are again in the middle of a Pandemic…a PCR pandemic if you want to be more accurate.
How does this happen?
First, there will always be a Covid-19 variant actively circulating in the populations…forever.
The dirty truth is that Covid-19 will never go away and we’re all going to be exposed/infected by it at some point. Run, hide…it will still find you. That’s a reality that most people refuse to accept.
This dude has been reporting on Covid for ages and is just now coming to terms with the fact that this is not hyperbole.
And just as I am writing this, even Fauci comes out and admits as much.
We’re all gonna get infected eventually.
Small consolation for those of us who have been pointing this out forever.
Anyways…
Second, is a little-known or discussed reality of ordinary coronaviruses.
There are 4 previously existing coronaviruses that are considered the common cold:
HCoV-OC43
HCoV-HKU1
HCoV-229E
HCoV-NL63
These were all more virulent at some point in time. In fact, there is some scientific belief that OC43 may have been responsible for the “Russian Flu” in the 1890s.
They are all now endemic and are at worse a cold for most people.
SARS-CoV-2 will eventually settle into this group as an endemic coronavirus.
But as it turns out, the common cold coronaviruses are actually deadly in their own right…especially for older people.
This has been shown in studies of outbreaks of the common coronavirus where as many as 8% of elderly patients died:
In fact, if we were actively testing for these coronaviruses we might actually think them to be quite virulent.
But we don’t do that, and so they remain known as the common cold because that is what they are to the vast majority of people.
Now enter the dominant C19 Omicron variant. Remember that awesome strategy they came up with: Let’s test everybody for the most transmissible variant yet (this is the part where I roll my eyes). Hey Fauci, Spring of 2020 called and they want their stupid strategy back.
We know that Omicron is much milder, but it is still a coronavirus and like its existing cousins, it will still kill some older or sicker people.
But with all the testing, the experts only see “Covid Deaths”…and under the Covid Doctrine, any death is one death too many…and cases are always considered bad
So where does this leave us?
The Covid Doctrine has been adopted by virtually all first world countries to varying extents…it’s “settled science” in most health institutions
They will still be able to identify Covid cases and subsequent deaths forever because new variants will always emerge and common cold coronaviruses kill
The unvaccinated/unboosted and those opposed to the Covid Doctrine will continue to be the whipping boy for unsuccessful Covid Doctrine policy
We still have no criteria for what the official end of the pandemic would look like
What does this mean for 2022?
I’m not sure how much can change given how Omicron has been handled so far.
It’s the same old playbook, the same old talking points, and the same old figureheads.
I just don’t see the Fauci’s of the world turning around and admitting that cases don’t matter that much and shifting their strategies away from trying to prevent the transmission of a virus that we’re all going to get eventually.
What can be done?
To those who think a Civil War is coming…not gonna happen. I understand the anger and frustration, but violence or secession are not options.
More and more people are speaking out, but the institutions that have the power to make changes are ideologically captive. Change in this context is slow and happens over decades, not months and years.
Political change is the only real solution, but that requires voting and lots of it because you need strong political mandates to try and make the institutional changes necessary to fix a broken system. The upcoming elections will be crucial in this sense.
What would make a huge difference is if people on the Democratic left would come out forcefully against the Covid Doctrine. There are already some voices like Bill Maher, but the backlash from their side would be so big that it’s hard to see enough people sticking their necks out on this.
I tend to be optimistic, but after seeing the evolution of policy surrounding Omicron I’m not sure Covidians are changing their position anytime soon.
Omicron mutated from a nothing burger (which should actually have been considered good news) into a Casedemic with stricter mandates, school closings, and apocalyptic messages from our leaders.
I just don’t see how we easily extirpate ourselves from the Covid Doctrine.
But we certainly can’t and won’t stop trying!
Who knows? At some point maybe it collapses under the weight of its own absurdity.
I think there is reason for optimism. This is the inoculation I was hoping the vax would be. It is infecting a ridiculous number of people in a short time with a mild illness. In my several state travels this week. Nobody cares about covid - except that it's making them short staffed. They are done.
You summed up exactly how I'm feeling. If I didn't have kids in the ages most greatly affected, I probably wouldn't be as depressed. But I do. And they are bearing the greatest burden in their entire garbage scenario.
Still, I have to maintain hope that my fellow Americans will wake up, before it's not too late.