From early in 2020 until well into 2022, government officials in most countries imposed an array of draconian policies that were said to be necessary to protect the populace against COVID-19. In supposedly democratic nations like the United States, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, officials didn’t bother with legislation – they just decreed that schools must close, masks must be worn, people must submit to vaccine jabs, non-essential businesses must close, and other mandates. They also imposed numerous prohibitions, such as gatherings for religious, sporting, or cultural events, and even enjoying a day at the beach. Enforcement of all their dictates was vigorous, occasionally brutal.
When a few people dared to question the need for or legality of the COVID policies, officials replied that they were only doing what “the science” said was the right response, usually followed by the insinuation that doubters were dangerous, retrograde people who didn’t care about putting lives at risk. Even infectious disease experts who disagreed that there was any scientific justification for the panoply of rules were ridiculed, smeared, and “deplatformed.” The last time there was such a concerted attack on freedom of speech in the US was during World War I, when the Wilson Administration pulled out all the stops in an effort to silence critics of the war.
The COVID response led to a huge contraction of liberty. But officials and their many allies scoffed: “So what? Foolish people shouldn’t be allowed to make up their own minds when experts know what’s best.”
But now, despite efforts to suppress it, information has leaked out, showing that the COVID policies were a great mistake, imposed by arrogant officials who were not following science, but rather were following their own authoritarian instincts. They were not telling people the truth about COVID, but lying to justify their assertion of power. They weren’t doing what was in the public interest, but rather what was in the interest of certain pressure groups.
Many people are angry over the harm that has been done by the tyrants who made the COVID decisions.
One of them is James Allan, a professor of law at Queensland University in Australia. In his recent article “I Am Still Seething Mad at What the Political Class Did to Us,” he explains why the politicians and their allies are utterly contemptible. He writes of their heavy-handed approach:
It was despotic, thuggish and overwhelmingly flew in the face of the data – data we had at the time, to be clear. Also culpable were the preponderance of the doctorly caste and the vast majority of journalists who exhibited zero skepticism and became barely better than PR fearmongering agents for the Government, not too unlike Pravda in that regard.
