How It Ends
As the Covid narrative implodes, many are beginning to wonder what the end game will look like. It could be scary.
Nine days into the quasi-siege of their capital city, Canadian truckers are finally starting to grab the headlines of the European media. The story has been dutifully ignored so far by the European media, at best relegated to the back pages, but now has become impossible to ignore. Here we have one of the biggest protests of the post-war era, and, with European truckers in the starting blocks to stage a similar event in the next few weeks, we could could see unprecedented scenes on the streets of Europe.
While Justin Trudeau and cohorts have been at pains to condemn this as a racist, right-wing event, they haven’t fooled anyone. The Internet is (still) a diverse place, and despite attempts to control this story just like the Covid narrative has been controlled, it is impossible to hold back the millions of images of peaceful protesters, videos of playing kids, interviews with solidary police men and women.
When Ottawa’s mayor admitted to having “lost control of the capital”, it became clear that this was now a war: the people against their government. Granted, not everyone will agree with the truckers’ viewpoints and surely the citizens of Ottawa would rather not have their sleep interrupted by car horns, but the overall situation is clear: a civil war is breaking loose.
If you think this is exaggerated or if you are surprised, you are a fool. When governments starting imposing unseen restrictions on our freedom of movement, our private lives, and our children, they always needed their ROI to be huge. They needed visible success of every restriction and a swift return to normality, the virus lying on the ground bloody and defeated.
This plan went so dramatically wrong that it was always going to end in chaos. Not only did we not return to normality (in fact, many fear we never will) but it is now clear to most that the incredible emotional, economic and physical investment we have made has not yielded very good results at all.
In terms of the threat posed by the virus, not only have the vaccines not eradicated it but there has been an ironic twist - the virus itself has morphed into a largely harmless version, which serves to magnify every insane aspect of the Covid story: the useless quarantines, the inaccurate tests, the isolation of the healthy, the masks - none of it prevents us from being infected. Nor did it ever - but it’s clear now even to the biggest scientific dimwit.
With the fear gone, it is inevitable that elements of truth will now emerge thick and fast. Talk to the man on the street and you will feel a real sea change compared to only a few months ago. Hardly anyone will step back or try and keep distance, or tell you they are worried about this virus. Family life has, in 99% of cases, completely gone back to normal.
Scientific publications like the John Hopkins study, with its “stunning” (not really) finding that lockdowns reduce Covid deaths by 0.2%, are now even reported on, and more journalists are beginning to ask critical questions. Still, when you try to talk about this in private, many will shrug it off, without much emotion, as if it were a minor detail.
Is it cognitive dissonance, the subconscious need to deny that everything we have sacrificed has been in vain? This is the most popular theory but I would like to suggest another explanation: humans’ inability to process scale.
In discussion, I often mention how small the virus is, that all viral particles circulating in the world would fit in a coke can, and my friends usually say “oh” but somehow don’t manage to internalize what this means - that nothing we do can stop it.
The same goes for the scale of the damage that has been caused. In my immediate circle of friends, I know of three separate cases of “best friends” that no longer speak to each other, having fallen out over the Covid debate. You multiply that by the number of people on Earth - this is the scale I am talking about. Children have been masked in schools, though here, too, evidence will appear that shows little to no benefit. We all have been masked and reduced to foolish Muppet Show characters, who wait for a press conference to find out what they are allowed to do and who they are allowed to see in the coming months. Millions have lost their jobs. Tens of thousands of parents and grandparents have died alone, covered in their own shit because no-one was there to check on them, and no family visited them to complain. We have been plunged into an economic crisis that is likely to mean our kids and grandkids will have harder lives than we did. Vaccine deaths, though statistically small, will be rising in the coming months.
Talking about scale. What would be just return on investment for this violent effort that has shaken us to the core? It seems hard to even imagine what it could be. An epic, Bruce Willis-style “we've saved the world” moment, perhaps, with triumphant music and a spaceship departing into sunset.
Does it feel like that to you?
Imagine a movie where Bruce goes off on a dangerous mission to save Earth. During its 200 or so minutes, Bruce has an arm chopped off, sees his newborn baby die in his lap, and lets go of his fiance’s hand when she is hanging over an acid tank because that way, he can kill off those wanting to destroy the planet. Imagine that, after this grand finale, Bruce is calmly told, “thanks for your efforts, Bruce. We regret to inform you that your efforts haven’t really saved anyone, this time. In fact, they’ve made 0.2% of a difference”.
It is true that most of the world’s inhabitants haven’t yet understood that they are Bruce but they will. Their efforts have been equally heroic, and have yielded nothing. With the fear gone and the data not going anywhere, it will become clear that a failure of unbelievable proportions has taken place.
This is unlikely to end with ritual burnings of ridiculous face masks. Something far bigger is on the cards. If you understand scale, you can see how scary this will be.
Unlike anything you have seen in your lifetime, is my guess.
The risk of civil unrest turning into a substantial amount of violence is something I've been thinking about for some time, and an escalation is definitely possible if types the likes of Trudeau refuse to back down no matter what.
On the other hand - in your last piece "the reckoning" you brought up the amusing phenomenon of politicians and scientists "trying to get on the right side of history" (the lockdown skeptics) so as to save their asses before the whole thing breaks down. So it might as well be that the narrative gradually loses power and people tell themselves all is right again.
I'm more concerned about what comes after. Suppose that we're allowed some relaxation of measures and matters calm down, if only for a while, what's going to happen in the background while no one is paying attention? Accelerating digitization and eroding of privacy?
At that point there are two possibilities:
1) we'll have been outrun and we're sufficiently locked in into a digital cage with no further room to move around without being detected and sanctioned.
2) your scenario of hell breaking loose.
In any case, the situation after 2 years is such that the conditions for an ongoing mass formation have worsened even further: more atomized individuals, more disruption of social ties, and a general deprivation of meaningful communication.
Bottom line: it's not over, not even close.
This just might be the reason why people will keep complying.