There are many powerful and influential people who have increasingly begun calling for a government policy of “zero COVID”, meaning that government would implement the harshest lockdowns and behavior restrictions possible in order to attempt to reach a point where all COVID-19 cases are eliminated. It’s an insane, unachievable policy, but these people appear to be willing to sacrifice everything to this chimeric goal. Well, they themselves wouldn’t sacrifice. We would sacrifice, as we suffered under Soviet-style totalitarianism for possibly years. Similar to “zero terrorism”, it is an unachievable goal, but it does hand government absolute power for an indefinite period of time.
Jenin Younes writes about the insanity of the zero COVID movement at AIER:
“ZeroCovid promoters appear to agree that much stricter border controls, lockdowns, and mask mandates are needed than exist in most nations today. Sam Bowman, one of the most prominent ZeroCoviders, claims for instance that the only way to address the coronavirus problem is with “lockdowns, school closures, travel bans, mass testing, contact tracing, and masks.” Likewise, former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair’s think-tank has stated that the only way to avoid another lockdown is to bring coronavirus cases to zero. China, Australia and New Zealand are portrayed as successes by ZeroCovid proponents, and prove that suffering now brings with it the promise of eventual freedom.
While marketing themselves as theoretically opposed to lockdowns, ZeroCovid adherents actually aspire to implement a totalitarian-style state, which we are supposed to believe will exist only temporarily. For example, Devi Sridhar, one of the movement’s most public faces in the United Kingdom, has claimed that the only way out of endless lockdown is a “crude, harsh, catastrophic lockdown” now, the first phase. Given that the third phase of Sridhar’s plan entails an “East Asian and Pacific model of elimination” that prohibits travel abroad, I can only imagine precisely what sort of totalitarian nightmare Sridhar envisions during phase one.”
Madness in the vein of double-masking and social distancing. Instead of doubling down on every failed mitigation measure, we have to trash them all entirely. Far too much has been sacrificed already. It’s time to allow the economy and society to heal from the biggest false-alarm in history.
