We have all recently been given a taste of the Chinese curse of living in interesting times. While the pandemic was dangerous to the elderly, for most of us there was never any risk beyond a day or two in bed and a sore throat. The response was the most fascinating thing I have seen in my life. Decisions were made in the early days of the pandemic that proved impossible to unwind. Eminent doctors and scientists were silenced. Children given vaccines that were not needed. Healthcare workers were mandated to take vaccines that didn’t reduce transmission. The scariest part of it was the inability for the government and a large percentage of the population to absorb new information. They became like the bus in the movie ‘Speed’, with a few wise leaders trying desperately to drive the bus in circles where it could do no harm. There was no slowing it down and at one stage it was looking like vaccines would be mandated across the entire population. The madness was all driven by the media. A widespread propaganda campaign used tactics straight from the writings of Edward Barnays, Robert Caldini, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein to manufacture compliance. It was an extraordinary example of what persuasion tactics mixed with fear could achieve.
Interestingly many people were not susceptible to these persuasion tactics. They were a rabble of people who come from a few different backgrounds. The scientists where the most wonderful of the skeptics. They did what they were trained to do. When confronted with the pandemic and the control measures they became analytical and studied everything. Scientists such as Robert Malone and Kevin Mckernan gradually broke through to the minds of those captured by the propagandists. Another group that was not susceptible were the Christians, Muslims, Orthodox Jews and new age spiritual types. They identified the coercion as a test of sorts. The other group was the conspiracy theorist, they already had a paranoid view of the world. The more they were forced the more it confirmed their preconceived ideas. In some cases with fatal consequences.
In any case it is largely thanks to the skeptics that the fear was lost. Those who wanted the vaccines got them, some may have been saved by them. Some who didn’t need them may have had their lives shortened, as the non covid excess deaths reveal. Are those who forced the vaccines responsible for these deaths? Of course they are. Just as the doctors of the past are responsible for the Vioxx deaths, the Cutter Polio vaccine deaths and Thalidomide malformations. In their panic governments dropped the responsible testing procedures for medical products. Should they be held criminally liable? Perhaps not, there was no criminal intention, they were simply driven by a fear and propaganda campaign the same as everyone else. But they do need to lose their jobs and new safeguards must be put in place.