A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE

I grew up twenty miles from the George Washington Bridge, which connects New York City to New Jersey. You can walk across the GWB. I’ve done so several times.

I have a friend whom I’ll call Ray. I’ll call his best friend Tim. I used to play basketball with them. Both were exceptionally skilled players and good guys; intense, but with a sense of humor. They asked me to be on their over-40, 4-on-4 team. They would have been a delight to have as regular teammates. But when my kids were under 18, I didn’t do any non-work activities that would take me out of the house at night.

One afternoon, about ten years ago, Tim jumped off the Washington Bridge. The span is 212 feet above the Hudson River. Very few survive the impact. Tim left behind a wife and a teenage son and daughter.

I learned of Tim’s death a few months after it happened. I hadn’t seen Ray in five years before the incident, and Tim in ten; I called Ray and expressed my sympathy. Ray said he knew that Tim had been struggling with serious depression induced by an addiction to painkillers that Tim had begun taking following a back injury.

Ray told me that, on Tim’s drive to the Bridge, Tim had called him via cellphone. Ray said that Tim sounded desperate but didn’t indicate where he was headed or what he was about to do. As with other people I’ve known who were close to someone who committed suicide, Ray conveyed a palpable sense of sadness and self-disappointment because he couldn’t stop Tim from taking his own life.

—

I knew, from Day 1, that the Coronavirus lockdowns were a terrible overreaction. Just as Ray wished that he could have comforted Tim and prevented him from killing himself, I’ve regretted that I didn’t know how to get my anti-lockdown and anti-vaxx messages through to more people.

On the March 2020 night before New York State announced its lockdowns, I wrote an essay explaining why lockdowns were wrong. I sent it to ten newspapers. Though all those outlets had published stuff I’d written regarding other topics, none would print my anti-lockdown perspective.

Naively thinking I could organize lockdown opponents, I also emailed this essay to several dozen friends. I received nearly unanimous, hostile responses. Various people pointed out that “people were dying!” Some said I was “selfish” and “not a doctor” nor a “public health expert.” Perhaps they didn’t know that Fauci was neither a practicing MD nor a trained “epidemiologist.” Though he played one on TV.

Maybe I should adopt the prevailing notion that no one should question anything said by anyone calling him/herself a doctor. But life has shown me not to share that view.

The responses to my initial message revealed the Coronamanic zeitgeist. Nonetheless, I made a sign that said, “OVERREACTION” and hung it on my house’s front porch. Then I made and fastened a large “FLATTEN THE FEAR” sign to my car. I told anyone who would listen that it was a poor idea to separate humans from each other. Most wouldn’t listen. Many acquiesced to the lockdowns because these were ostensibly “only for two weeks.”

When the lockdowns were extended to four weeks, I quelled my anger by telling myself that people would soon tire of the restrictions and would reject the bait-and-switch. I was wrong. It turned out that many people liked free money and had a high tolerance for Netflix.

Though I continually engaged everyone I met re: Coronamania and had begun to post anti-lockdown essays on Medium.com, I knew Medium was a fringe platform. I didn’t know how to reach a wider audience. I wasn’t—and still am not—a heavy or savvy social media user. I don’t have a Facebook or Instagram account and don’t post content on Twitter. I had briefly used Reddit a few times long before 2020 but had forgotten that it existed. Over a year after the lockdowns began—way too late—I learned of a Reddit site called “Lockdown Skeptic.” I wished I had known of it in 2020. While this insular group expressed a minority view, reading their comments would have made me feel less alone.

During the Scamdemic’s first week, I heard a PBS interview in which David Katz, a Public Health faculty member at Yale, criticized lockdowns. As, to protect my mental health, I was largely avoiding media, I didn’t hear another Covid dissident until a brief April 16, 2020 call-in interview of some guy named Alex Berenson on WOR, a New York City radio station. While I was grateful that some media outlet was allowing Berenson to speak, his message was more measured than mine was.

Berenson’s credential was that he was a “former New York Times reporter.” Heaven forbid that anyone might consider the anti-lockdown views of someone who lacked a PhD, MD or some institutional title/brand name, and simply applied biology, logic and life experience. Berenson said that he had been concerned about the virus for a few weeks but, after tracking data, had concluded that viral lethality was overstated and that the lockdowns were causing more harm than good. I was certain of this, and a month earlier, had so written. But I was grateful to hear Berenson sensibly weigh in, and to see him stay on task and build readership.

—

Ultimately, both Ray and I wanted to prevent a dreadful occurrence. Ray didn’t know where Tim was headed on that dismal afternoon. On the very dark first night of the Scamdemic, I saw where a locked down society was headed. But I couldn’t get people to listen to, or read, what I said. I didn’t know how to disseminate my message.

Some might say that Ray and I were both motivated by some delusional, Nietzschean Ubermenschen’s Will to Power. But neither Ray nor I desired to control others. Ray just wanted Tim to live. And I just wanted others to refrain from controlling others.

Eventually, I was pleased to hear some others to speak publicly against the lockdowns; the more doing so, the better. But the Covid dissenters got almost no news coverage or op-ed space. If other people were also speaking and writing against the lockdowns, I didn’t know where to find them. The media asked none of the obvious questions and buried dissidents’ message under a mountain of fear porn, phony stats and censorship.

I thought and read a lot about the virus, the lockdowns, the masks and the testing and tracing. I had much information to share and basic questions to ask those who supported these measures. But people wouldn’t discuss the reaction in any detail. They fearfully and gullibly went along with the NPIs. Later, they either enthusiastically or meekly submitted to injection.

Ray and I shared a common, insurmountable obstacle: we were both dealing with a mentally ill audience. Ray’s friend, Tim, had an opioid-addled mind and spirit. My intended audience was subjected to a relentless media propaganda onslaught that caused mass psychosis. Ray and I were trying to get through to people who were unable to process our messages.

—

Some people still say, implausibly, that the lockdowns and shots “saved millions of lives.” Others belatedly admit that “mistakes we made” but lamely alibi that “now we know better.” I, and a distinct minority of others, knew better in mid-March, 2020. We often said so. People hate when we say this. But we won’t stop.

I’ve told myself I did my best to spread my anti-lockdown message but was badly outresourced by a government and media alliance. But ultimately, I feel about my Covid dissent as I think Ray did about his efforts to help Tim: neither of us can fully accept our failures to reach people when it mattered most. Despite the giant structural obstacles we faced, saying we tried our hardest to call out the lunacy doesn’t give us peace. The damage done is too deep, too wide and lasting.