WHERE DID COVID GO?

Despite playing only basic guitar and piano and having a no-frills, one octave voice, I’ve composed and recorded 12 songs, all of which have been played on some radio station or other. I don’t have any DJ friends and haven’t paid any bribes.

My songs have gotten airplay because their lyrics express countercultural perspectives. Using the nom de guerre, Mahwah Paterson, I’ve mocked Disneyworld, sperm banks, Shakespeare and freezing the baseball hero Ted Williams’s head, et al. Some of these tunes were on YouTube until, as with my early anti-Coronamania posts, censors found and removed them. But at least as of this week, my pre-mRNA shot, anti-Pharma song, “Drugged Up Man” was still audible there. My daughter, Cammi, made the amusing, accompanying video.

When I mention these radio appearances to new acquaintances, people are more impressed than they are by anything else I’ve done. Those who don’t know me well think they’re talking to someone mildly famous.

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Many adults become visibly excited around even minor celebrities, no matter why a given individual is well-known. People like to be photographed with even the marginally famous, bask in their reflected glory and share these encounters on Instagram.

Fame creates a halo effect. Many people not only fawn over the famous, these fans/stans believe celebrities have special insights about life, such that they’ll buy products or vote for political candidates that the famous endorse.

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When my daughter, Lena, was 12, she closely followed the televised American Idol singing contest. In 2006, a young woman named Ayla Brown qualified for one of the top 16 spots on this program. A show or two later, Ayla was eliminated from the competition.

Lena had no special affinity for Ayla’s voice; she liked some of the other singers better. But later that year, Lena learned that Ms. Brown would, on a Saturday afternoon, sign autographs at an indoor flea market along a miracle-mile state highway ten minutes from our home. Although Lena was mature for her age, she was motivated to meet someone kind of famous.

I understood this impulse. At her age, I wanted to get an autograph of some pro athlete. It didn’t matter which one. I would have been pleased enough to get a signed picture in the mail. I’m still not sure why I wanted this. I soon got over it.

But because I remembered what it was like to be 12, I agreed to take Lena to the flea market, which I’d never entered before. It was as tacky as could be: a dim, grimy, austere, low-ceilinged, repurposed low-end retail store with cluttered, makeshift stalls displaying Def Leppard mirrors, knock-off Rolexes, hunting knives, Budweiser signs, tube socks, plastic furniture, mass-produced mountain-scape paintings, bongs and a wide array of cheesy knick-knacks.

There were few shoppers. And the turnout for Ayla was light. A line of three people waited for her to sign the glossy black and white head shots she had brought along. Her Wikipedia site says Ayla Brown “did hundreds of such appearances and as many as 500 to 2000 people showed up at each one.”

Wait, aside from elliptical writing, Wikipedia lies? Who knew?

Someone needs to do some fact-checking. And 404 that platform to protect the public from misinformation.

Ayla was tall and pleasant enough. And though I never heard her on TV, I was sure she sang better than I did, at least if you like Top 40. But there she was, in that tawdry setting, having come all the way from Massachusetts to capitalize on her almost- famousness for a little while longer. For her sake, I hoped her appearance fee wasn’t paid in flea market gift cards. And that maybe she’d meet for dinner with a college friend or an aunt who lived nearby.

Seeing Ayla’s humble flea market meet-and-greet made me think about fame, generally. Why do people fawn over celebrities? When and how do some people become famous? And when and how does fame fade enough that one is no longer famous?

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Covid was mega-famous; more famous than Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood combined. As singing contests did with pop singers, the Scamdemic media built a buzz and an aura around a virus. Consequently, American Idol contestants and Covid became overnight sensations.

Every Spring 2020 day, newly-minted American Idols: Fauci, Birx, Collins, Redfield, Cuomo and various news reporters incited fear via TV, radio, internet and print news. As they did with cover-song-singing contestants, most Americans viewed these Covid “experts,” “leaders” and “journalists” as compelling because the media showed them in business attire behind podiums.

Few noticed that the Covid demagogues’ pronouncements were equivocal, internally inconsistent or outright silly. From the beginning, these televised emperors wore no clothes. But in 2020-21, media and internet “content moderators” censored or shadow-banned dissenters who called out the viral overreaction and who noted that less-publicized, better-credentialed experts disagreed with the official narrative.

If people hadn’t had TV and internet news to scare them about a virus, and their friends didn’t echo viral fear, their daily experiences wouldn’t have shown them that a health emergency going on. In March 2020, I knew, directly and indirectly, thousands of people in the New York/New Jersey Metro Area, the belly of the Covid beast. Throughout 2020-21, all were fine.

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As 2022-25 passed, places opened and mask, test and vaxx mandates incrementally ceased. At some point, people with whom I discussed the Scamdemic started saying, smugly, “Covid’s over.”

I often wondered: “Where did Covid go?”

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To answer this question, one should first ask: Where did Covid come from, and when?

When a “novel” coronavirus was said to have reached America’s shores in March 2020, the reported rise in case rates and deaths was sudden and localized, not gradual and geographically diffuse, as one might expect. Why were there no Covid cases or deaths at all and then, suddenly, thousands of them, with nearly all such deaths occurring in hospitals? If this virus was so bad, why were only old, sick people dying?

It certainly seemed as if, in order to foment fear, officials were exaggerating viral cases and deaths, especially in New York City, America’s media capital. Some have said that the NYC numbers used to create the Covid panic were outright lies. Some NYC nursing homes were said to have multiple times as many deaths as they had beds. Additionally, the number of NYC Covid deaths was said to exceed the number of the City’s hospital beds. Why weren’t any of NYC’s thousands of medically underserved, sidewalk-sleepers dying from this purportedly vicious virus? Why didn’t smaller, but still densely populated, cities outside NYC also have many deaths? And didn’t more virus-carrying Chinese visitors arrive on the West Coast than in NYC? The more one thought about NYC’s Covid numbers, the more suspect these numbers seemed.

NYC’s 2020 death tolls later looked even more dubious when thawed 2019 California blood bank samples were said to contain SARS-CoV-2. California reported zero 2019 Covid deaths. Such evidence of early, but clinically unnoticed, spread in California underscored the notion that The Virus wasn’t very lethal. If it had been, populous California should have had a death surge preceding and rivaling NYC’s.

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I even wondered if a virus caused the ostensible Covid deaths. I had seen various bacteria through Biology class microscopes and in agar-ed petri dishes and my wife makes yogurt at home by adding yogurt to warm milk. In contrast to bacteria, viruses are much smaller and less morphologically distinct.

Some say that, despite the widely-depicted, computer-modeled, colorful, spiky SARS-CoV-2 sphere, no such specific virus has ever been seen, even under an electron microscope. I can’t evaluate this statement because I’ve never looked through an electron microscope. Others maintain that a computer model of a theoretical virus’s genetic sequence was used to create the PCR test for SARS-CoV-2, although no disease-causing virus had been confirmed and the PCR test hadn’t been validated against viral matter. Commonly used, high-cycle PCR tests amplified samples so excessively that these tests detected dead shards of a virus, which couldn’t hurt a fly. Pineapples tested positive.

Be that as it may, millions who tested SARS-CoV-2 positive showed no respiratory symptoms. I was one of them. Conversely, many who showed typical, Covid-like respiratory infection symptoms tested Covid-negative. I was also one of them. Further, many who lived in the same households as those purportedly sickened by The Virus, or who tested Covid-positive, didn’t catch it. I was one of them, too. It was also odd that as Covid death tolls swelled, flu deaths were mysteriously absent in 2020 stats. Pneumonia deaths also declined. It seemed that medical staff or administrators were creatively recharacterizing causes of death.

From the beginning, the extreme viral response and the statistical methods used to build support for it both seemed opaque and manipulated. It all felt like a sinister, covert operation, not a good faith, open-minded public health response.

If SARS-CoV-2’s lethality had been subjected to a legal trial, an unbiased jury would have found much basis for reasonable doubt.

In the decades prior to 2020, I had seen people in close proximity to each other get sick in quick succession. Therefore, I suspect that viruses exist. Yet, in March 2020, I wondered how any latter-day virus could be sufficiently different from its predecessors that society should be locked down for the first time ever. Why, biologically, would such a distinct, consequential viral change suddenly occur? Even if some lab had caused viral gain-of-function or had developed some bioweapon, their product wasn’t very lethal.

During the Scamdemic, most people uncritically believed in and aggressively defended governmental interventions they had never seen before and couldn’t explain. Most never thought about, much less questioned, the social, psychological or economic costs of a radical reaction to the threat allegedly posed by a virus.

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If the virus wasn’t either real or lethal, governments could have declared Covid over whenever they wanted to. This largely explains how Covid was made to disappear. It was easy for officials to de-emphasize Covid peril because the alleged viral culprit wasn’t ever uniquely, broadly lethal.

The Virus resembled most American Idol singers: after their season of contrived fame ended, the public no longer saw either as exceptional or compelling, as they had been advertised. Unsupported by media hucksterism, the glorified karaoke singers and The Virus both faded from the public consciousness.

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If, alternatively, SARS-CoV-2 had existed and initially caused a significant number of deaths, its waning lethality can be explained in several ways.

After using statistical and medical chicanery to run up 2020-21 death tolls, in 2022 Covid testing practices and the death attribution process changed. For two years, CARES Act funding incentivized hospitals to characterize patients as Covid-infected and to attribute deaths to Covid instead of accurately chalking these up to old age and/or baseline poor health. When these incentives expired in March 2022, Covid death tolls plummeted.

Thereafter, deaths previously, falsely attributed to Covid began to be more accurately recorded as deaths due to typical, age-driven causes. As testing declined, the number of deaths ascribed to Covid dropped. Case reporting requirements were also eliminated. The CDC also stopped collecting information on the vaccination status of those who died. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” became the new, unspoken Covid policy. In this new context, reported Covid deaths decreased sharply.

Additionally, iatrogenic treatments, such as sedation, ventilation and remdesivir were used less. And some physicians developed safer, more effective protocols.

By the time the phony Covid Emergency was declared over in May 2023, few noticed.

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Some say that Covid deaths decreased because herd immunity developed: enough people got the virus that it evolved to newer, less lethal forms so that it wouldn’t kill its hosts.

Whether this is true or not, even the 2020 form of SARS-CoV-2 didn’t threaten remotely healthy people. Thus, during March 2020, established public health principles didn’t support locking down the majority/healthy. Older people who imaginarily feared asymptomatic spread could have sequestered themselves to avoid younger people. Such self-imposed,nage-based segregation wouldn’t have radically altered society; in 2020, few young people spent much time with the elderly. If a virus had been circulating, healthy, younger people could have passed it amongst themselves, developed natural immunity, and shortly thereafter, resumed normal levels of intergenerational interaction.

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Given vaccines’ historically exalted status in American popular culture, there’s a ready audience for the myth that the shots “crushed” Covid. But crediting the shots rings very hollow. Despite the oft-repeated, unequivocal assertion that the shots would stop the spread, every jabber I know got sick, typically multiple times. By comparison, neither I nor most of my uninjected peers ever got The Virus. Those who did were only briefly ill.

The immune-system-altering shots seem to have promoted illness, not stopped it. Since 2021, far more of the injected, cf. the uninjected, have died from the virus. The shots have also injured millions and hastened many deaths from non-Covid causes. Four years after the mRNA-shot crusade began, all-cause deaths remain elevated in highly vaxxed nations. With traces of the vaccine remaining in many bodies, future vaxx-induced suffering and death seem likely.

Deaths attributed to Covid in 2020-21 were reclassified as due to some other respiratory condition. Pneumonia deaths also increased after the Covid vaxxes, thus allowing such old age deaths to be shifted out of the Covid category.

Despite the repeated assertion that the shots would “end Covid,” news reports occasionally mention that some new variant or other is making the rounds. Some still wear masks in public.

Further, according to the CDC, Covid still hasn’t gone away: 44,000 Americans were said to have died of Covid in 2024. Those who, in 2020, asserted that every death was tragic and unacceptable changed their view. They became part of the “Covid is over” crowd.

Tellingly, most who credit the shots for vanquishing the virus stopped taking these shots after Round 2. By now, Followers of The Science should have jabbed six or seven times. Regarding belief in vaxx effectiveness, their inaction speaks louder than words.

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Someone once told me that, A music star’s career has four stages:

“Who’s Joe Blow?”

“I gotta have Joe Blow!”

“Get me the next Joe Blow!”

“Who’s Joe Blow?”

When enough people succumb to media hype and peer influence, a given music star or band becomes famous. Sooner or later, these trendy singers or bands become uncool. Some end up performing on cruise ships. The more famous fill stadiums with AARP members, though lately such tours are interrupted by performers’ medical problems. Like outdated hairstyles or garments, people laugh about the bands and singers they used to like. One sees many Britney Spears, MC Hammer, Hootie & The Blowfish and American Idol-alumni CDs in thrift stores.

The masses lost interest in Covid because, as with pop singers, the media stopped covering it. People realized that the Covid narrative, like hearing TV vocalists redo songs that others had already sung many times wasn’t compelling. It lacked substance.

As the Covid craze dragged on and most people still knew no one who had died from it, people wanted the next Joe Blow crisis. Following the media’s lead, the tumult-seeking public locked onto George Floyd’s death, the marches regarding which exposed the social-distancing fraud at Coronamania’s core. Thereafter, the Russia/Ukraine War enabled the media to shift attention away from the increasingly implausible “pandemic.” Many credited Putin for curing Covid by invading his southwestern neighbor. The Trump trials and the election campaign, et al. followed. There’s always another shiny news object to distract news consumers.

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Ultimately, the powers-that-be wanted Covid to go away because they had fulfilled their Scamdemic goals. Democrats used Covid to build panic during an election year and provide an excuse to loosen voting laws. Once in office, Biden continued the Covid gravy train to satisfy Democrat donors and Wall Street. Those who made millions or billions from the lockdowns and shots and all of the bailouts were satisfied with the massive haul they had stolen from the public.

Returned to power, neither Trump, Tucker Carlson, RINOs, nor others who endorsed the 2020 lockdowns and 2021 shots wanted the public to remember that they had opened the door to Scam by endorsing the Emergency Declaration and the CARES Act, thus providing a multi-trillion-dollar fund to subsidize lockdowns, school closures, tests, shots and corporate largesse. For most political officeholders and newspeople, the less said about 2020-24, the better. Their Scamdemic Era conduct had been deeply embarrassing.

Nor do those who saw the Scam from the outset, but cynically went along because doing so benefitted them, want others to remember that they enthusiastically backed measures that badly hurt billions—and killed millions—of people, worldwide.

As with the gradual attenuation of pop singers’ fame, the Covid response was walked back so gradually that people didn’t simultaneously figure out that the Scamdemic had ended. This sneaky phase-out strategy prevented the individuals and entities that had deceived them from being held accountable.

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As 1940s-70s media theorist Marshall McLuhan said, “Only the small secrets need to be protected. The large ones are kept secret by public incredulity.”

So it has been with Coronamania. Averting their gaze from the train wreck they supported, it’s easier for the masses to pretend that the theatrical mitigation measures and some shot “crushed The Virus,” that all of the dislocation was worth it and/or that “no one knew at the time” what they were dealing with. Believing these myths is far more comfortable than admitting to others, or to themselves, that their government, news sources and peers duped them throughout.