We’re stuck in a meme. It goes round and round in a circle: New Variant -> Surging Cases -> Lockdowns + Further Restrictions -> Vaccination or Another Booster -> Slight Reopen -> New Variant. Each time we come around full circle we have less freedom left than the time before. It works like tightening a ratchet.
The circular field we are playing on allows the referees to keep moving the goalposts indefinitely.
On a tip from KirklesWorth.
Her absurd overreaction to the mild Omicron variant left egg on the face of New York Governor Kathy Hochul. Rather than wipe it off, she is ratcheting up the Covid tyranny further still, decreeing that privately owned public places like restaurants and stores must demand customers wear Covid muzzles or present proof of vaccination:
The new mandate will take effect Monday and applies statewide. It will remain in force until Jan. 15, when it could be extended, officials said.
Maybe it won’t be extended. Maybe Covid will be completely eradicated by then. Maybe pigs will grow wings and fly. Maybe Hochul will stumble upon a copy of the US Constitution and convert from liberalism to Americanism.
Businesses that fail to enforce the rules could be subject to civil and criminal penalties, including a maximum fine of $1,000 for each violation.
Adding insult to injury, Hochul claims to be inflicting this on behalf of the small businesses against which Covid tyrants like herself have been waging a war of extermination for the past 2 years.
“I have to protect people but also the economy. I want to make sure that the little businesses that were hurt so hard during the pandemic in a shutdown — resulting in their loss of income, [and] the loss of income of all the people who work for them,” said Hochul at an unrelated event in Manhattan, after announcing the mandate. “We have to prevent that from happening.”
Who will protect both the people and the economy from Democrats like Hochul?
On a tip from Wiggins.
Australia is not the only place with Covid concentration camps:
Covid detention camp in Canada 🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/CzvXPqwbRO
— Walton De sousa🇨🇦 (@WaltonDesousa) December 9, 2021
It’s still a soft tyranny for the moment. By the time this is done, no one will be complaining about ugly sandwiches. Once we have surrendered our most fundamental liberties so as to be “safe” from Covid, our treatment at the hands of our masters will deteriorate quickly. What’s to stop it?
The legal framework has already been constructed to impose Covid concentration camps in the People’s Republic of New York.
On a tip from Dragon’s Lair. Hat tip: Vlad Tepes.
Michael McNamara, an Independent member of the Irish Parliament, wonders exactly where the endpoint is to what politicians used to call “2 weeks to stop the spread”:
Michael McNamara questions what exactly the end point is for restrictions.
"Are we going to impose these restrictions until we reach the end of liberal democracy as we know it?" pic.twitter.com/fUQGjF37kY
— JRD (@JRD0000) December 4, 2021
On the other side of the planet, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of the Labour Party provides the answer:
“There’s not going to be an endpoint to this vaccination program.”
We can assume this applies to all aspects of Covid tyranny.
Jane Fonda provided some insight into moonbat theology when she infamously crowed, “I just think Covid is God’s gift to the left.” Her fellow leftists love this gift too much to ever let it go.
On tips from DM and R F.
Combining two recent Breitbart stories suggests that we are ruled by neurotics.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief White House medical adviser, said on Tuesday that the Omicron variant of the Chinese coronavirus, which has been identified in several states, “might even be less severe” than the Delta variant, which is already widespread.
This is a major admission from someone who was lifted to the pinnacle of power by Covid.
Despite the hysteria that caused the Governor of New York to declare a state of emergency, Omicron is so mild that even after it had been found in 38 countries, the WHO admitted that no deaths could be attributed to it. We have known from the beginning that Omicron is extremely mild.
Eighty-two percent of Democrats are willing to wear face coverings indoors at all times due to fears of contracting the omicron coronavirus variant, a Tuesday Axios-Ipsos poll revealed.
Less than half as many Republicans felt that way, at 38%.
The poll also shows 94 percent of Democrats support private mask-wearing mandates at local businesses. Only 43 percent of Republicans agree.
It is highly doubtful that masks are effective at preventing the spread of Covid.
There are two Americas, all right: an American America, and a scared, neurotic, authoritarian America. At present, the latter controls all the levers of power.
Winston Smith has fallen down on the job. He is supposed to edit or erase previously published material that undermines the party line. Yet this embarrassing May 13, 2020 piece from The Atlantic has escaped the memory hole:
When this pandemic ends, and when the reckoning over how the world responded invariably begins, Slovakia will likely be among those highlighted as a success story, whereas the United States—which was supposed to be the country best prepared for such a crisis—will be remembered as among those that suffered the worst. How Slovakia was able to flatten its curve comes down to more than just quick decision making and the widespread adoption of face masks. Perhaps the greatest lesson to be learned from Slovakia is of the value of leading from the front.
“Leading from the front” refers to Slovak politicians ostentatiously posing with masks, whereas Trump made public appearances without one, thereby setting off pearl-clutching among the liberal establishment.
Slovakia was such a leader when it came to smothering every human face behind a mask that it got Taiwan to donate hundreds of thousands of them in a trade agreement.
Now it has come Slovakia’s turn to get hit by Covid:
At over 2,000 new cases per million per day, according to Our World in Data, Slovakia now has more cases per capita than any country in the world. To put this in perspective, that is almost three times the level of the winter peak in the U.S.
It isn’t just Slovakia. Belgium also confirms what studies have found. Masks don’t work:
Cases in Belgium are the highest they’ve ever been, over a month into their new mask mandate and with 87.4% of adults fully vaccinated so I’d love to know why the media hasn’t done a story on how Ron DeSantis managed to create his Florida state guard and invade Belgium so quickly pic.twitter.com/z6fkjV2z9k
— IM (@ianmSC) December 4, 2021
However, Covid muzzles are effective at dehumanizing people by reducing them to faceless NPCs. Mandating the masks serves the same purpose as Gessler’s hat. This must be why Head Start now mandates masks for 2-year-olds, who face no significant threat from Covid, and Oregon has moved to make mask mandates permanent.
On a tip from Mr. Freemarket.
Australia is a wonderful place to visit even under the current biosecurity police state, as this ad for Covid concentration camps confirms:
Just don’t try stepping off your balcony — or else.
On a tip from seaoh.
Sometimes a single song captures the spirit of an era. If the worm turns on the authoritarians who have been exploiting Covid, that song for our era will be “Stick Your Vaccine Mandate Up Your A**”:
Meanwhile, in New York City,
[Mayor Bill] de Blasio has already required vaccines for city government workers, teachers and anyone who wants to eat at a restaurant, use a gym or see a show in the city. This has harmed small businesses and tourism. Yet apparently these mandates aren’t coercive enough for Hizzoner. So now he’s giving the unvaccinated an ultimatum: Get one shot by Dec. 27, leave the city or stay unemployed.
That’s the date by which all private workers are required to be vaxxed.
While vaccines are protective against severe illness, they don’t prevent infection or transmission. Unvaccinated workers are mainly a threat to themselves. Mr. de Blasio’s mandate threatens small businesses struggling under the city’s tax burden and expensive labor regulations.
Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, said businesses “were blindsided” by the mayor’s announcement, adding “there’s no forewarning, no discussion, no idea about whether it’s legal or who he expects to enforce it.”
The mandate—the first nationwide, as far as we know—is a nasty and needless infringement on liberty.
Children as young as 5 will be required to get vaccines in New York City to enter restaurants and other indoor venues, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Monday morning. …
Children between 5 and 11 will also be required to get vaccinated to participate in high-risk extracurricular activities. These activities include sports, band, orchestra, and dance.
The virus is no more of a threat to small children than the flu, and the long-term effects of the vaccines are unknowable. Advancing public health is clearly not the motive for the mandates.
Tyrannical moonbats and those who want to live free are speeding trains heading in opposite directions on the same rails. We are in for a hell of a crash.
On tips from 100Bravo and Varla.