PREACHING TO THE CORONAMANIA SKEPTICS CHOIR

Some might say that my posts preach to the choir that already understands that Coronamania has been a massive scam. This criticism would be fair, but it applies broadly; nearly all people read, watch and/or listen to people with whom they agree. There’s a biochemical reason for this. Agreement pleasingly upregulates mood-elevating dopamine and lowers stress-manifesting cortisol. Disagreement causes opposite, negative hormonal and emotional effects. Intuitively knowing these effects, people avoid content with which they disagree, both on-line and in-person.

Although “preaching to the choir” is a pejorative, such preaching is often worthwhile. Involved people deserve affirmation. Affirmation is especially appropriate during Coronamania. The simple-minded Twitterverse, the bought news media, the demagogic Democrat Party, ignorant talk show hosts and misled, anxious family members and erstwhile friends have not only vilified those who sensibly refused to succumb to Covid Groupthink; they have, in addition, deprived critical thinkers of access to public places, livelihoods and the ability to disseminate Coronamania criticism. The Corona contrarians correctly suspected that lockdowns, masks, tests and ostensible vaccines (“LMTVs”) made no sense. These skeptics cared enough to spend some popularity by saying so. Props are due.

I’ve hated Coronamania. But writing these posts has enabled me to organize and express my thoughts. Many have thanked me for saying what they were thinking. Some readers have become friends. Most importantly, knowing that many readers return each week, and reading their Comments, confirms what I already knew from reading the Comments on other Substacks, such as Berenson’s, Gato’s, Childers’ and Kirsch’s: many see that the Covid overreaction has caused tremendous, irreversible damage. I’m pleased to have accompanied members of this anti-panic counterculture and to have implicitly reminded them that they weren’t the only individuals who saw the scam. The well-composed Comments on my posts also enlighten and encourage other readers; the whole world has not gone crazy. Thus, having written these fifty story/essays feels like time well spent.

Besides, I also preach to those not in the choir. Since Day 1, I’ve told anyone who would listen why the Corona overreaction was deeply destructive. I sent my writings to many people and media outlets whom I suspected, or knew, wouldn’t like them.

Unfortunately, most who disagreed with me weren’t willing to reciprocally engage. Those who did—via e-mail—blocked me because they couldn’t address concerns that I had raised. They believed that all of the dislocation was worth it “if it just saved one life.” I had known these LMTV-ers for many years. Some who had told me, before 2020, that they loved me or admired my values, called me names in their e-parting messages. I must be a polarizing figure. Even some people who love me, hate me.

I know, from readers’ Comments, that many LMTV skeptics have faced similar hostility. Throughout, Corona emotion has overwhelmed reason. Two weeks ago, I posted 57 questions that LMTV-ers should have asked before they bought into the craziness. But the LMTV-ers were gullible headline readers, not critical thinkers. Instead of marshalling facts and attempting to explain the obvious logical flaws intrinsic to their propaganda-forged beliefs, the LMTV mob has hurled epithets like “Grandma Killer!” and slogans like “Vaxxes Stop the Spread!” at LMTV critics.

When the lockdowns began, public spaces were roped off and, thus, deserted. Incredibly, to me, most people were in fully-terrorized isolation mode. Face-to-face interaction was rare. It was impossible to engage people, in-person.

I owned one of those retro, grooved, black felt boards into which one presses white plastic letters. We used it for family congratulatory messages or private jokes. On the lockdown’s first day, I inserted the kit’s largest letters into the board to spell one word: OVERREACTION. I hung the board from two light-duty chains on my front porch, which adjoins a sidewalk that many people walk by, at least in normal times.

Later that week, while I walked toward my downtown, one of my neighbors passed me on the sidewalk. Swerving away from me—and my germs—she grunted, through clenched teeth and almost under her breath, “I don’t like your sign.”

Looking over my shoulder, I responded. “Make your own sign.”

She didn’t slow down or look back. Nor did she explain why she didn’t like my sign.

The next week, at twilight, while I was in the street outside my house bouncing a basketball, an unfamiliar, overweight, man in his late thirties wearing khakis, a white shirt and tie stormed by on the sidewalk. Without making eye contact, or breaking stride, he pointed to my sign and demanded, “Take that down! I’m a hospital chaplain in Manhattan and I saw five people die today!”

Without interrupting my dribble’s rhythm, I asked, “How old were they?”

I thought a hospital chaplain would be used to seeing old, sick people die and would be focused on aiding the dying on their spiritual journey, instead of using their deaths to virtue-signal. Regardless, like my grunting neighbor had, The Rev didn’t stop to answer my question or to explain how the lockdowns would have stopped those deaths. He just stormed further up the block to a nearby multi-unit house.

A few minutes later, his fiancee, whom I had not previously met, approached me, where I remained, pounding the ball. She apologized for his outburst. I told her that I didn’t mind, except that he still owed me an answer. She told me she was done with him and with the whole overreaction, especially closing the parks. She was sad and angry that the lockdowns had wrecked her dream of having a wedding. It occurred to me that calling off the wedding—permanently—was for the best.

I left the sign up. Two weeks later, Charlie Chaplain might have felt vindicated; on an especially windy night, the sign blew onto the sidewalk, and smashed to pieces.

Undeterred by this setback, I made a wooden bumper sign for my car that said “FLATTEN THE FEAR.” I figured more people would see it.

A few days later, my next-door neighbor, an odd, solo-living dude with whom I had nonetheless gotten along for two decades, said, “I see your signs. What do you think we should be doing differently?“

I began, “For one, kids should be in school.” As if possessed, and resembling Linda Blair, he reflexively, abruptly rolled his eyes and head. To him, I might as well have suggested driving busloads of students off cliffs. He also immediately turned away and then stomped back inside his house. It was safer in there.

Wait. I politely, specifically answered his question. If he didn’t want to discuss this, why did he ask?

This guy is a school psychologist. Did he not know that kids were at near zero risk? Was he oblivious to the mental health damage that school closures would cause? I’m sure his checks kept coming, regardless.

If I had a personal problem that I wanted to discuss with someone, the psychologists I know would be the last people from whom I would take counsel.

When I surveyed people about how many they knew who had died of—really with— the virus, none had heard of any decedent who wasn’t over 85 or already terminally ill. Sociologists talk about Dunbar’s Number, i.e., the number of people that most people can say that they know, typically around 150. Multiply my 150 peeps by my cohort’s own 150, and subtract 7,500 to (generously) allow for overlapping social circles. The result: five very old, very sick old people out of my sample of 15,000 have died in over two years; zero healthy people under 90 have.

A society and an economy were trashed over this.

Of course, I had similar, sometimes pitched, exchanges with people about the “vaxxes.” I told those who disagreed with my no-jab stance that I had read up on this topic and would discuss it with them for as long as they wished. But as with lockdowns, they either walked away or, via e-mail, peremptorily cut off discussion with phrases like “People are dying!” and “Pandemic of the Unvaccinated!”

At that time, I was posting anti-LMTV story/essays on Medium.com. One morning, my boss called me into an unscheduled conference, during which she informed me that a Medium reader had researched where I worked and had e-mailed her, telling her that my employer should “do something to deal with the spread of dangerous misinformation by this rabid anti-vaxxer,” i.e., me.

Because seeking to suppress free speech—and, in this instance, truth—by taking away someone’s job is what “open-minded liberals” do, right?

Though my boss implied that she thought I was wrong about the shots, she knew that I was entitled to say what I wanted outside the workplace. I never vaxxed, never spread the over-hyped virus, and still feel fine. I also passed a rabies test. Though I do sometimes get very thirsty.

In his e-mail, the stalker identified himself as “John Schroeder.” Whatever his real name, he also contacted Medium, which terminated my account, even though everything I had written about the jabs was true. Under a pseudonym, “Schroeder” angrily Tweets multiple times/day to almost no following. He claims he’s a Christian minister. He seems to think non-vaxxers are going to Hell.

As did this unhinged, misinformed, authoritarian screen-stalker, most LMTV-ers declined to rationally discuss viral facts or the LMTVs’ effects. They had watched their trusted TV news sources, listened to their beloved NPR, read their neo-gospel, i.e., the NY Times, scanned Twitter and bought, and sold, the echo chamber fear narrative. No matter how wide the disconnect between what they directly witnessed and what the media portrayed, people trusted the media, not their own eyes.

However, not all of my LMTV disparagement has provoked anger. In contrast to the encounters described above, sometimes, after mocking Coronamania during casual encounters—as I often did—I saw a wave of relief wash over another human’s face, as if to say, “Wow! Someone else knows the media and government have been lying and that none of these measures make sense.” Pleasing conversations followed. Kinship was mutually perceived.

Sadly, though, among people I knew, LMTV skeptics were a minority. Instead of asking questions, most people put their faith in false, medical and political gods and ran with the LMTV mob. The profit-driven, Med/Pharma-underwritten media had squelched dissenting voices. Thus, most people obeyed dishonest or merely unsmart individuals like Fauci, Birx, Biden, Cuomo, Murphy, Maddow, Kimmel, Stern, Colbert and the clown show panelists on The View. It’s unsurprising to see the Colbert Show shut down because of a Covid outbreak. Steve, your dorky, proselytizing needle costume “dancers” assured viewers that the shots would stop the spread. What gives?

Twenty-six months in, my analysis and predictions have been far more accurate than those of all of the aforementioned, or any CNN or MSNBC anchor or commentator, or my neighborhood’s school psychologist or college administrator, who also refused to engage; only true intellectuals would close places full of young people at no risk and decline to discuss it. I also knew better than Trump, who declared an emergency, gave bureaucrats the mic, endorsed the CARES Act potlatch and likened this virus to “The Plague.”

I outperformed all of these “experts” without making a dime or gaining public office. One thinks more clearly when one is not driven by money, peer pressure or politics. Knowing some Biology and Sociology helps.

As I, and many other truth-tellers, have been suspended from various platforms for telling the truth, I’m grateful that Substack has enabled me to reach choir people who benefit from reminders that some sane Americans remain.

When, in March, 2020, I began writing against Coronamania, I only had ideas for two or three stories. But the overreaction dragged on far longer, and become much weirder, than I initially expected. Stuff kept happening, so I kept writing.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll write about Coronamania. It’s not that I see the bottom of this man-made abyss, because I don’t. I just don’t know how much else I can say about the worst, most cynical exercise of public policy in human history.