World gone wrong
The Covid debacle has changed me and I know there is no way back - here's my story
Three moments of enlightenment. Three moments was all it took for me to change who I am forever and to make me a different person. I should probably confess that from a very young age, I can remember being allergic to being told what to do, and though I have never considered myself to be anti authoritarian in principle, I always questioned what I was told, and never blindly follow orders.
That said, when Covid started, in February 2020, I had no reason to question what we were told. I was never very politically minded or interested but when we were put into lockdown, there were many things I started doing for the first time: read the newspaper from start to finish, watch the daily debate on television, subscribe to all kinds of newsletters. I was intrigued, as I suppose many were, to be part of our own moment of history, in the middle of something that we knew already to be a watershed moment for our society.
When you are taught history in school as a kid, you are made to believe history is finite - this is what happened in the past (all these crazy things), and now we are here, and now we ARE. You don’t understand that history would have been taught to kids at each of those past moments you learn about, and that they, too, would have felt it to be that way, with history being the way to NOW, the conclusion a situation that we call home, that is immune to insanity, big changes - somehow, we are being made to believe that through history, which ends now, we have found sanity. Our way of life, forever immune to the winds of change of the past.
Though I was caught up in the general narrative, believing like everyone else that I was enjoying the quiet time at home, zoom aperitifs etc, my penchant for questioning what I was told soon got the better of me.
My first moment of enlightenment came when I read an article about the Covid situations in different countries, notably Belgium, where I live, and the Netherlands. These curves looked pretty similar, though I knew the restrictions taken in both countries were quite different. The Netherlands (completely out of their minds now but refreshingly unflustered back then) never closed shops, for example, and life was much less on hold than here. I shared this observation with some friends, and one of them (to this day one of the few friends I have who question the narrative) introduced me to Ivor Cummins and his videos about seasonality. The example of the US, and the “double wave”, which in reality was two different climate zones peaking at different times, was enough for me to understand that human intervention, perhaps, didn’t really play as big a role as we were made to believe.
Even though I had become critical of the narrative, I still quite happily went along with the general restrictions, especially as they seemed to have worked as we opened up in summer, and life became almost normal again. I continued to talk about seasonality with friends, occasionally starting small arguments, but all in all, I didn’t really think about it too much until, with the autumn wave (which I now knew was coming), Belgium exploded into peak insanity.
My second moment was when a guy called Lieven Annemans, who had been made part of the advisory committee and was pleading, logically, for a less panicked approach to Covid health policy, was suddenly blamed by the media and government experts for “having caused” the second wave. The Most Dangerous Man in Belgium, one headline read.
I knew then it was all wrong, and I knew that there was no way for me to disentangle myself from the project, that I would keep searching and writing and fighting for truth in this debate, until reason would be restored.
Belgium went from nervous to mad to complete lunacy. Lockdown was introduced when the curve was falling (a particularly rapid decline was attributed to lockdowns when it was really caused by a stop to asymptomatic testing as the system was being stretched), Christmas was cancelled, and the most bizarre rule in history was introduced: ONE FRIEND. Citizens were now allowed to have one “cuddle contact”, who they could touch, and were to stay away from everyone else at all times.
This manifested itself in many crazy ways but none crazier than when we celebrated Christmas Day with my in-laws, and only one of their two daughters was allowed in the house. My sister-in-law accepted this quite happily, walking in and out of the house she was born in while we stayed outside, in the cold, and ate sausages. We left early.
My third moment of enlightenment came in early spring. I knew Covid was gone for the summer but the news and the government couldn’t stop about the vaccines and how they had already made Covid disappear. A famous image showed a vaccination centre with the banner “Win your freedom back here”.
So didn’t they know about seasonality? Were they reading the stories on Twitter that showed identical Covid graphs for Germany and Sweden, despite the latter famously reacting to this crisis with common sense, while everyone else went crazy?
I still cannot answer the question today if stupidity is the driver, or if they are trying to cover up the destructive policy they now know to be wrong, or if more sinister forces are involved. A combination of all three, perhaps?
So, I finally got Covid, in December 2021. It was bad timing, just as my parents were about to pack their presents into the car and visit us for Christmas. It was heartbreaking to tell my son that they wouldn’t come and that we would spend Christmas alone. Still, when I got ill, I couldn’t help but get excited. All my work over the last year and a half had led here, to this moment of truth. We had managed to show our son a normal life (we never wore masks and visitors who wanted to “keep a distance” etc were not welcome in our house), and we had maintained regular contact with some groups of friends, and though the lunacy was making me nervous, I still preferred knowing it was all wrong over blindly following what was being said.
I got pretty sick for a week, and I could witness in real time how my (unmedicated) immune system was fighting this new intruder but I was never nervous. My experience turned out to be an average experience, like many of the vaccinated or unvaccinated people I knew. For about two hours, I thought, “well, if this gets worse - will it change everything I have believed in for 20 months?”.
It didn’t. I could have never guessed that what I was about to experience would so dramatically confirm my truth and science that I had acquired, through thorough research, debate, reading hundreds of studies, and constantly questioning and discussing the narrative. I ignored the contact tracers (I wasn’t going to tell some student desperate for some extra cash where I’d been, or who I’d seen). After three days and many missed calls, they sent me a text: “We cannot reach you. Please stay home for ten days.” So I did. When I called the friends I had been seeing (as was now expected), their reactions ranged from “Oh! where did you get it?” to “Well, I guess you have been seeing a lot of people.” etc. The obsession with the “whodunnit”, in particular, was striking, and showed how little knowledge they all had about the size of the virus, ways of transmission (I prefer “infection”) etc.
But while all this was crazy and stupid, what blew my mind was that hardly anyone asked me how I was doing. All they wanted to know was the protocol (what were they to do now, did they have to get tested?), and their own risk (the aim of the whodunnit was usually to find out if I had been infected before or after they saw me). Was I well? No-one cared. I was transported back to Christmas Day 2020 - the time a mother was asked by government to choose one of her daughters, and did.
I know my truth. Viral loads are what matters. If you feel well, you’re unlikely to harm anyone. If lockdowns saved one soul, I’d be surprised. Masks are tools to nudge us into behaving the way our leaders want. We are witnessing the biggest mistake in medical history… ever.
Covid has changed me because I no longer believe in the innate good will of most people. It has changed me because it has forced me to confront a reality where decisions are taken that kill and hurt thousands of people, and governments get away with it. I now scan the newspapers every day and with each paragraph I read, I ask myself, “Is this true?” and check other sources. I’ve become an eternal fact checker who trusts no-one.
But it has been brilliant. I’ve got into contact with some of the smartest scientists there are, exchanging analyses and hypotheses, all with one goal: to find the truth. I’ve made friends that will last me a lifetime. I’ve become so much smarter about how the world works.
Again, I find myself thinking about those history lessons. The way I see it, there is a Covid narrative that is the result of big, honest mistakes in the beginning, and all kinds of different agendas that are now coming together. There is also Covid truth, and I really believe the “doubters” are closer to that truth than the media or governments. Which version of events will prevail? What will kids be taught about this period, 50 years from now. And more worryingly, what about the finite history we all learnt at school? The story of how we got here that we are told, always failing to understand that we, too, are only a fleeting moment in history. What if many of the stories we studied for our exams are narrative, not truth?
If you’ve lived through the last 20 months like I have, with a critical mind, then this becomes a huge question, its impact too big to understand. I think about it every day.
Very recognizable first paragraph, fortunately I just escaped military service.
My first two enlightening moments were the Diamond Princess and blog posts by Maurice de Hond.
Similar here except I now think I should have known better. Regarding critical historiography, I think Zinn is a good place to begin. I always noticed that the story of anything I actually knew anything about was very different from what most people thought it was. Clearly the null hypothesis now has to be that this is true generally. The MSM and government agencies are particularly unreliable, but even tenured professors (outside of pure sciences) are often to be taken with a great pinch of salt. Critical thinking is a good thing, but it’s a red pill for sure.