On behalf of fellow liberal establishmentarians, Emily Oster barks that they should be granted amnesty for the misery and destruction they inflicted in the name of Covid, on the grounds that they did not know any better. Not everybody is in a mood to forgive:

First, no, you don’t get to advocate policies that do extraordinary harm to others, against their wishes, then say, “We didn’t know any better at the time!” Ignorance doesn’t work as an excuse when the policies involved abrogating your fellow citizens’ rights under an indefinite state of emergency, while censoring and cancelling those who weren’t as ignorant.

Actually, they were not as ignorant as they pretend. There was plenty of evidence indicating that lockdowns and other mandates were not effective.

[T]he ultimate problem, from a legal perspective, with Oster’s call for “amnesty” for the advocacy of totalitarian policies during Covid [is] the implicit assumption that all those who advocated lockdowns, mandates, censorship and an indefinite state of emergency, all the way up the chain of command, did so in good faith. If those who advocated these policies are simply presumed to have done so out of well-meaning ignorance, then any inquiry into the many outstanding questions as to the origin of these policies – and the underlying motivations of highest-level officials who promulgated them – is foreclosed.

Forgiveness is usually a good policy where we find the three R’s of Remorse, Repair, and not Repeating the action. But here it seems progressives are only trying to escape the consequences of their behavior. There is no reason to believe they would not do the same or worse in the future, next time in the name of some other bugaboo, possibly the imaginary climate crisis.

Matt Walsh is in no mood to forgive:

Neither is Kari Lake; no wonder they fear her:

Most important is not to forget. The liberal establishment squandered the last of its credibility on Covid and now must rebuild it from scratch before being trusted with power.

On tips from ABC of the ANC and Jester.

Joe Biden let slip that the pandemic is over. Nonetheless, Covid tyranny continues:

There is no mask mandate in North Carolina, yet when Harnett County resident Gregory Hahn reported to the courthouse in Lillington this week without a mask for jury duty and refused to wear one, he was sentenced to 24 hours in the county jail with no bail for contempt of court.

There are no signs saying masks are required in the courthouse. But a March 2022 joint order from Harnett and Lee County officials (the two counties that comprise this judicial district) grants individual judges or the Clerk of Superior Court or the District Attorney the right to require them in their courtrooms or personal offices.

However,

[N]othing in the joint order says residents can be thrown in jail if they decline to wear one.

Typically, Superior Court Judge C. Winston Gilchrist was not wearing a mask himself as he sent Hahn off to jail in handcuffs. The single father’s request to call his child was denied.

All-powerful government of the type that has been congealing is characterized by arbitrary tyranny on scales both large and small. As the Founding Fathers understood, whatever power is granted to government will be abused.

On tips from R F and Varla.

The Authorities told us we had to submit to a dangerous vaccine to stop the spread of Covid. If it were only our own health at stake, then maybe the liberal motto “My body my choice” (babies’ bodies don’t count) would apply. But no; the vaccine mandates that cost many people their jobs were imposed explicitly to stop the spread.

Now we know not only that the vaccine did not stop the spread, but that it was never even tested to see if it would:

After Covid, how can we ever trust these people again? How can we allow them to hold power over us?

On tips from Jack Bauer.

No one will be surprised to hear that Marvel is once again subordinating children’s entertainment to the promotion of leftist politics, but can you believe that even now they are trying to brainwash kids into nagging Mom and Dad for the Covid jab?

Pfizer has partnered with Marvel to create a comic book to urge people to get their Covid booster vaccines and be an ‘everyday hero’.

The PR stunt comes amid a sluggish autumn jab rollout that has seen less than one in 20 eligible Americans receive their Omicron-specific shot.

Maybe that is because there is no sane reason to vaccinate children against a mild variant of a receding virus when the experimental vaccine is probably more likely to do them serious harm than the virus is.

Democrats have used a heavy hand to force people to get vaxxed even when it makes no sense for them. However, by now even Joe Biden, who has milked the ChiCom virus for the last drop of authoritarian pretext, has admitted that the pandemic is over.

Pfizer is also pushing for its new bivalent booster vaccine to be approved for children aged five to 11.

It’s almost as if Pfizer wants to make money regardless of public health. Imagine the firehose of cash it has been pouring into Democrat coffers.

On a tip from Henry.

As United Nations propagandist Melissa Fleming crows, our leftist rulers “own the science.” That is, science has been repurposed to help them consolidate power. The main emphasis is the fictional climate crisis, but there is still opportunity to be wrung from Covid. Comically cheesy yet genuinely evil California Governor Gavin Newsom has just signed a bill to force doctors to toe the party line.

Via California Globe:

Newsom signed AB 2098 by Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell), which will punish physicians and surgeons for “unprofessional conduct” for advocating for the potential benefits of early treatment with off-label drugs, or those who dare to ask questions about COVID vaccine safety.

Assembly Bill 2098 puts unconstitutional restrictions on free speech by medical professionals. Under AB 2098, doctors will be subject to disciplinary actions by the Medical Board of California and the Osteopathic Medical Board of California if they do not adhere to the “approved COVID treatment consensus.”

Punishment for “unprofessional conduct” ranges from 5-year probation to revocation of the ideologically noncompliant doctor’s medical license.

The bill is aimed at physicians who acknowledged the 1% mortality rate, questioned mandatory masks, school closures, and challenged the claim that the vaccine would shield patients from getting or spreading Covid. It is also aimed at physicians who chose to prescribe therapeutic treatments during COVID.

Although he still exploits the supposed emergency as a pretext to waste hundreds of $billions on student loan bailouts, Biden has said that the pandemic is over. But we won’t have long to wait for the next one. Any virus will do, with sufficient hype from the media.

On a tip from seaoh.

Leftist technocrats like Anthony Fauci and leftist propaganda organs like Reuters may use words to lie, but the words themselves do not lie, as Rand Paul reminded us yesterday while also reminding us that The Science did not always mandate that people should be compelled to take insufficiently tested vaccines for diseases that they have already had:

Among the many reasons that Democrats must be driven from power is that when that happens, Fauci can be held accountable for lies that constituted felonies.

On a tip from Occam’s Stubble.

It has been obvious for years now that Covid tyranny is more of a risk than the ChiCom virus itself — especially to kids, who were never in any more danger than they are of the flu, unless you count the numerous health risks posed by sadistic Covid muzzles. Yet even now, we see public school educrats calling the police on a 4-year-old boy with developmental issues to haul him away for not wearing a mask:

[The] unnamed boy started transitional kindergarten at Theuerkauf Elementary on Aug. 10.

The school happens to be in Mountain View, California, home of our Google moonbat overlords.

The boy suffers from sensory issues and has had difficulty wearing a face mask during the pandemic. The boy became distressed when he had to wear a mask during visits to the doctor and dentist – but the healthcare workers made accommodations for the boy with developmental issues.

Even in the age of Anthony Fauci and Rochelle Walensky, healthcare workers will sometimes place health ahead of repression — in contrast to educrats.

The father – who only identified himself as “Shawn” out of safety concerns – claimed that he began communicating with the Mountain View Whisman School District in the spring. However, Shawn said the superintendent was unresponsive.

In the video below, Shawn is confronted by the principal, Michelle Williams, who apparently calls the cops on the boy:

If this is what we can see happening from outside a public school, imagine what goes on within. No wonder the teachers’ unions are so opposed to cameras in classrooms.

On a tip from Wiggins.

Joe Biden just signed away another big piece of America’s future in the form of the $750 billion tax-and-spend blowout known as the Inflation Stimulation Act. The event was classic Democrat mask theater:

If Joe Manchin is as smart as he is phony and treacherous, he will sterilize the pen he received for selling out his state and his country by voting for the bill. Biden has been diagnosed with Covid multiple times recently, and now his closest handler “Dr” Jill has it.

But I’m forgetting; the on-again off-again mask prop prevents him from spreading germs.

On a tip from Wiggins.

The city that gave us the Speaker of the House remains the national capitol of moonbattery. If you want to see the future of the country under liberal rule, look to San Francisco:

The monkeypox response proves that Covid tyranny was always about tyranny and never about preventing the spread of sickness. On the contrary, the ideology of our degenerate ruling class is itself a sickness, as the response to monkeypox also proves.

On tips from KirklesWorth and Jester.

By this point in 15 Days to Slow the Spread, most of us have figured out that Big Government can crush small businesses and impose degrading mandates, but it cannot contain a virus. Despite all the liberty sacrificed, the very personification of Covid tyranny, quadruple-vaxxed Tony Fauci himself, has come down with the ChiCom virus twice.

His hysterical overreaction to Covid — which caused more damage than the virus itself — has made Fauci a demigod among left-wing authoritarians. Maybe that’s why, after 2+ years of ruining little people’s lives with his ham-fisted tragicomic ineptitude, Fauci’s main regret is that there was not enough senseless tyranny:

“If I knew in 2020 what I know now, we would do a lot differently,” said Fauci in an interview on Monday. “The insidious nature of spread in the community would have been much more of an alarm, and there would have been much, much more stringent restrictions in the sense of very, very heavy encouragement of people to wear masks, physical distancing, what have you.”

What he knows now that he did not know before is how much people will put up with before coming with torches and pitchforks.

On a tip from Bluto.

Despite explicitly promising us that the vaccine would prevent us from getting Covid, quadruple-vaxxed Joe Biden has Covid himself, just like quadruple-vaxxed Tony Fauci has twice. Both belong to the group at most serious risk of dying from Covid; Biden is 79 and Fauci is 81. Both are still with us, further discrediting the hysterical overreaction that enabled Covid tyranny. Yet even now, well over 2 years into “15 days to slow the spread,” degrading and unhygienic mask mandates are starting up again.

Paul Joseph Watson has had enough:

Only one thing can make Covid go away: a critical mass of gullible fools taking the imaginary climate crisis seriously enough that they will submit to the level of oppression that has been imposed in the name of Covid. That’s when our rulers will drop Covid and put their entire emphasis on global warming hysteria.

Public resistance in the Netherlands and Sri Lanka has been a setback in this regard.

On tips from KirklesWorth and Eddie_Valiant.

Even as Covid peters out, CDC chief technocrat Rochelle Walensky now recommends the jab for all children 6 months to 5 years old, despite the ChiCom virus not constituting a significant threat to them. Marty Makary lists six things parents need to know before listening to her:

1. The research was inconclusive

2. The FDA lowered their standards for acceptable vaccine efficacy needed to approve

3. Most children have natural immunity

4. Safety was based on a small sample

5. Healthy children have a very low risk of a serious consequence from COVID-19

6. CDC’s announcement lacked humility

Click through for details.

Regarding the last point,

Less absolutism and more humility by public health officials would go a long way in rebuilding public trust. Not surprisingly, only 18% of parents said they were planning give the COVID vaccine to their child under five anytime soon.

However, Rochelle Walensky remains a credible authority if you want to keep up to date on demands from teachers unions.

On a tip from Varla.

Power seized by government is not readily relinquished. That’s why Covid may never be over. Even if the ChiCom virus dies away completely, restrictions will linger.

Authoritarians in the land of Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler plan to impose mask mandates permanently:

Here’s a link to the study PJW mentions, “Correlation Between Mask Compliance and COVID-19 Outcomes in Europe.” Key quote:

These findings indicate that countries with high levels of mask compliance did not perform better than those with low mask usage.

Mask mandates are a mere inconvenience compared to the underlying agenda. Their purpose is symbolic, like Gessler’s hat. Cheryl Chumley details what they symbolize in her new book Lockdown: The Socialist Plan to Take Away Your Freedom. Via Frontpage Magazine:

Chumley … is not reticent about identifying as “evil” the forces wreaking ruin in the world today; nor is she vague about their aim: leftists “want total and complete lockdowns of individual freedoms, individual rights, individually held liberties so they can stage their reset and reshape a new America, a new world, more in line with their collectivist and elitist beliefs. It’s called destroy, then rebuild. What they’re destroying is the Constitution; what they’re trying to rebuild is cultural Marxism and communist control.”

Jane Fonda isn’t the only leftist who regards Covid as a godsend. As Chumley writes, “Democrats saw opportunity to control. To expand power. To rule. To crush. To subjugate. To usher in political reforms, economic changes, and societal shifts…”

The fight against the ChiCom virus is petering out, but the real menace was always Big Government’s exploitation of Covid. That fight continues.

If pushback is not sufficient, the next pandemic will provide a pretext to move the ratchet yet another notch toward absolute tyranny.

On tips from Blackjack, Lyle, and KirklesWorth.