Astounding article:
“That is why all over the world they prefer to claim that [Sweden] was wrong. But in the end, the truth came to the surface. In a world where decision makers, their advisers and the media were able to admit their mistake and the initial panic that gripped them, we would have long since returned to routine. The ongoing destruction due to the inability to admit this mistake, despite the epidemic’s small mortality numbers, is outrageous. History will judge the hysteria.”
“If we had not been told that there was an epidemic in the country, you would not have known there was such an epidemic and you would not have done anything about it,” he said emphatically. “The fact that this issue runs all day in the media inflates it beyond its natural dimensions. If black death had raged here, as in the 14th century, you would not have had to follow the situation in the news, the bodies would have piled up in the streets. We were not and we are not in this situation today.”“
This last point is by far the most important. The “epidemic” is entirely the conjuration of the news outlets. If we stopped talking about COVID, it would go away. Instead, our government brought the modern world to the brink of total collapse, giving in to the reality-detached hysteria that was manufactured by the news. It’s still being manufactured; “If it bleeds, it leads” is the bread and butter of corporate news. It generates the clicks, the attention. Bloody, world-ending stories are far more interesting than the ones that tell us that there actually isn’t anything to worry about. People want to be afraid. They want to feel the cinematic escapism in their normal, uneventful lives. An apocalyptic pandemic is a fireworks show, and they are prepared to sacrifice everything to continue the illusion. But look at what has been sacrificed .Two centuries of economic and cultural progress have been dangled over an abyss, treated entirely as a throw-away item. The modern world produces tantrum-throwing, middle-aged adolescents for leaders, kids who have found their father’s gun and are now wielding it with no discipline, and no regard for the lives of others. This modern world of relative freedom, tolerance, and openness, was bought at the highest of prices. Could you imagine anyone today dying for the idea of liberty? We’ve been coasting on the fumes of the sacrifices made by martyrs and philosophers past for far too long. Few today are defending this ideal, and no one seems to want it. They have no idea what they’re giving away, but, to paraphrase an 80’s ballad, we won’t miss this world until it’s gone. When we’ve successfully dragged the human race out of the light of modernity, and mired it in the sub-animal morass that it has been in for most of its existence, then we will understand truly what we’ve let go of.
