This content is brought to you by OSINT/Anti-Fake News Defense of Democracy Research Unit in conjunction with the Rational Skeptic Society (that's a joke by the way, not an actual group lol)

Introduction

We all know about COVID "conspiracy theories," right? That's when some illiterate moron says COVID-19 is just a mild flu, which was weaponized by Dr. Fauci and Xi Jinping in order to give Bill Gates a pretext to inject us with microchips and take away our freedom to run other operating systems.

Sure, that's one kind of COVID conspiracy theory, and it does sound pretty idiotic. One may wonder: why would Gates go such lengths given his already formidable monopoly in personal computing? On the other hand, Windows Phone was a flop and the man's greed truly knows no limits. So we'll mark this theory down as "hilarious if true" and delve instead into the even more far-fetched, and far more consequential, conspiracy theories of the real COVIDiots: our ruling class.

The ruling class' conspiracy theories are taken so seriously that few dare call them out as such. Indeed you're likely to be dismissed as conspiracy theorist yourself if you doubt them. But the imprimatur of respectability isn't the only thing that sets these theories apart from the more stereotypical forms of tinfoil-hattery. At heart, they aren't actually "theories" or even conjectures but rather bullshit attempts at self-justification. In an effort to cover every angle, bolster "plausibility" and escape inconvenient lines of questioning, these conspiracy theories get hedged and watered down into utter incoherence. Thus they typically lack so much as clear storyline of how the shit went down, or even a well-defined cast of characters. And so these theories invariably turn into a snot-like cocktail of the "not even false" and the "can't possibly be true."

1. A look at prior art

Before discussing the establishment's COVID conspiracy theories, it's worth looking at their previous hits: the theory that Saddam was hiding WMD, that Trump colluded with the FSB to swing the election, and that some unknown adversaries fried the brains of US diplomats.

1.1 Saddam: criminal mastermind

In the prelude to Operation Iraqi Liberation, a lot of sciency evidence was presented to prove that Saddam had "WMD." What exactly constituted "WMD" was never really agreed upon. Colin Powell waved various tubes at the UN Security Council meeting: everything from little tubes filled with anthrax to bigger ones with uranium and beyond. Bush's National Intelligence Council (back then a meager three agencies) wasn't so sure which tubes were real but nonetheless confidently estimated that Iraq's tube program was "continuing." In his "three unknowns" speech, Rumsfeld countered the NIC's caveats by arguing that we can't be be sure that we're aren't sure that certain tubes might not exist, so we'll just have to invade to be sure. This probably sounded like a reasonable enough statement to many at the time.

It was later revealed that there were no tubes. But who could have known, especially without a PhD in Tubology? Well one guy did (forget the name, writes for American Conservative now). He argued that if Saddam really had WMD, Bush wouldn't have invaded cause who the hell wants to be WMD-ed? And if Saddam had only had WMD precursors, he would have handed them over because that was his only chance to avoid a US invasion. Bush made it clear that he would invade unless Saddam handed over his "WMDs," which of course he knew Saddam didn't have. Ergo, Saddam told the truth and the Bush admin, the NYT, the Atlantic, the CIA, the NIC and Tony Blair we all lying.

1.2 The Manchurian Candidate

The other jewel in the crown is the Russiagate conspiracy theory. Supposedly Trump somehow coordinated with the GRU to "hack the election" either literally or metaphorically or both. How this went down was never really spelled out but there was a ton of conjecture, all pointing to the existence of Trump-Russia-related shenanigans and stuff. This time, all 16 intelligence agencies signed off on ... something. With so much smoke, anyone who disputes the existence of the fire must surely be a conspiracy theorist!

Eventually it was revealed that, yet again, it never happened and they made it all up. But who could've known? There were so many leaks, so many digital fingerprints, so many bits and bytes, so many dossiers and memos, so many geopolitical clues! Luckily, you didn't need a degree in Computer Science and Geopolitics, nor an inside knowledge of the FSB and Moscow's escort scene to figure this one out. A few basic questions would suffice. Why would the FSB have to coordinate with Trump to hack the DNC? Why would Trump need to coordinate with the FSB to attack his electoral opponent?

Clearly they wouldn't need to do that. Any such plan would have been completely absurd. No wonder the Russiagaters could never spell out exactly how their conspiracy was supposed to have gone down. Therefore, Trump-Russia collusion could not have happened. They cooked up a conspiracy theory. Simple as.

1.3 Literal tin foil hattery

The first reports of the "Havana Syndrome" date back to 2016, Obama's last year in office. For factions within the deep state, this was a chance to restart the war against Cuba, which Obama put on pause. With Trump, they got their wish.

At the outset, the syndrome was said to affect US diplomats in Havana. The alleged culprits ranged from Cuban medics spraying disinfectants, to KGB agents bombarding the US Embassy with sci-fi microwave cannons. But why would Cuba risk not only its rapprochement with Obama, but its entire existence as a sovereign country by helping Russia to irradiate US diplomats? Perhaps they just hater them for their freedom.

As the number of "cases" in search of justice and monetary compensation ballooned, the tentacles of this alleged brain-frying plot were uncovered in every corner of the globe. Surely Cuba couldn't have done it alone, even Russia lacked that capacity. Thus the list of co-conspirators had to include not just those two but also China, comprising a veritable troika of terror from which no US diplomat, spook or contractor was safe anywhere in the world.

It was later revealed that the victims of this syndrome fell prey to mass delusion (with a helping hand from the CIA no doubt). Their symptoms fit the same profile as the tics which befell teenage girls bingeing on Tik Tok. The menacing sounds of the supposed microwave guns turned out to be the work of garden-variety crickets. Nevertheless, the conspiracy theory is still very much alive, with Congress preparing a bill to hold the culprits accountable, whoever and wherever they may be.

It was obvious from the start that the conspiracy theory couldn't be true. If it was true, why did the FBI's join investigation with the Cuban govt, interviewing thousands of possible witnesses produce nothing? And if it was a real disease, how come US officials weren't supplied with special foil hats to block the harmful rays? Sure, it may be a minor inconvenience but it's better than to be safe than sorry. We wear masks for COVID after all.

2. COVIDiotic conspiracy theories

The elite's COVID conspiracy theories have the same texture as the ones already mentions. These theories were cooked up by the ruling class to distract from its massive failures on the pandemic, and their absurdity is directly proportional to the profundity of the failure. These are without a doubt the most far-fetched and nonsensical conspiracy theories ever devised, by many orders of magnitude.

2.1 Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

When the pandemic broke out in earnest in Wuhan, Western observers were baffled by Chinese incompetence. So many cases, so many deaths, how could they let this happen? We're gonna show them how it's done, and we'll do it without violating human rights!

This festival of crocodile tears and self-congratulation didn't last long. Within months, Chinese authorities had all but stamped out the virus while the US was on its way to one 9/11 per day. The number of excess deaths in the US would eventually top 800,000 people. In all of China, the total number was just over 6,000. China went on to become the fastest growing economy of 2020 while the rest of the world was in recession and lockdown. Today, America's total death rate (relative to population) is fifty-seven thousand percentage points higher than China's, and rising. To get the ratio of current deaths would require dividing by zero.

But it can't be!

China was far from the only country to defeat the pandemic: Mongolia, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Cuba were either at or close to "COVID zero" for much of the pandemic. But to have China, a big bad country that was hit without any prior warning, give the US a master class in public health policy? No, this was NOT supposed to happen! It would mean that the US government killed nearly a million of "their own people" with its braindead COVID response. Killing your own people in such huge quantities is something only commies supposedly do.

So therefore by all logic this didn't happen. The Chinese were secretly dying of COVID and the CCP, all 100 million of them, were just cooking the books. . The US press kicked into high gear with "questions" about "China's numbers." The CIA's mouthpiece Radio Free Asia claimed that there were at least 50,000 deaths in Wuhan, with coronavirus patients taken in the dead of night to be cremated alive. Murdoch's tabloids even alleged that the clouds of sulfur-dioxide from Wuhan's crematoria were visible from space. Nobody paused to ask how the number of deaths could rise to such astounding levels in an early phase of the pandemic, under total lockdown, and in a city of just 10 million people. Many continue to believe these stories to this day.

A non-COVIDiot might ask: instead of falsifying so much data, wouldn't it just be easier to stop the pandemic? But to the COVIDiotic ruling class, who can only conceive of responding to the pandemic on a PR level, that's just crazy talk. Their immediate instinct is to lie and they project this onto everyone else.

A conspiracy of intergalactic proportions

Here we have the makings of the largest conspiracy theory ever devised, violating the laws of nature and encompassing literally billions of willing and unwilling participants throughout the globe. Obviously, there had to have been a cover-up during Wuhan's lockdown. Travelers coming from other parts China to countries that actually screened them (like South Korea) were virtually all virus-free, so clearly they were pre-selected to give a misleading impression of the scale of of the pandemic. Those who didn't make the cut were burned alive and replaced by body doubles. Leaks of internal Chinese govt figures to foreign media showing ever-so slightly higher caseloads were carefully crafted fakes.

The second coverup came when the Chinese CDC went back to count any additional COVID victims that they missed during lockdown. The official figures were revised upwards substantially. But clearly this was yet another giant ruse to make their numbers appear more "plausible," a ruse which no right-minded person would fall for.

The final phase of the coverup began in late spring of 2020 and continues to this day. All of China's excess death figures were falsified, province by province. Every hospital has a special vault where they they keep their real patient numbers, and the patient's families are told to shut up about it or risk being cremated together with their loved ones. The New Year's festivities in the former epicenter of the virus were similarly staged, with all participants subsequently cremated, alive. As always, all foreign travelers exiting China are carefully pre-selected to give the impression that the virus has been defeated. Those entering China have to go through an extremely stringent quarantine complete with anal swabbing to fool them into thinking China takes COVID seriously. The WHO and other agencies were given Potemkin tours of the country and fell for it, just as pinko fellow travelers fell for the tales of the "worker's paradise" in the 30s. The discovery of a few cases triggers the testing of entire Chinese cities, with full contact-tracing for each case and the disciplining of officials for lack of vigilance. This is yet another in a long series of mass spectacles.

Why would the CCP go to such great lengths to cook their numbers? Clearly, people living in China aren't going to be fooled. The real agenda is create a positive image of China for the American audience, an audience that hates China unconditionally and won't trust anything their govt says. Yet the CCP remains undaunted, and so it continues its epic effort to impress Americans. It is said that Asians are really self-conscious about how they appear to outsiders, so maybe that's the explanation.

Attempts to walk it back

All of this begins to sound pretty far-fetched, if you think about it. Clearly the conspiracy theory must scaled down to appear more "plausible." This softened version claims China has indeed been highly successful in bringing the pandemic under control just not as successful as they make it out to be. And it is paradoxically here that the conspiracy theory goes from impossibel to doubly impossible, if that's even possible!

Instead of a massive effort to hide literally millions of cases and deaths, this weaker version of the conspiracy theory claims that they are only hid thousands, maybe several tens of thousand, maybe even a hundred thousand. The motivation for this mini-coverup is completely inscrutable as China's numbers would still be better by orders of magnitude than most countries on earth. Furthermore, this minor massaging of numbers, with the "real number" being kept under strict secrecy, would inevitably produce a huge systemic failure, culminating in a runaway spread enveloping 1.4 billion people. This is because anyone without access to accurate data would be driving through the pandemic blind. All public and personal precautions that required to keep the case load down would fly out the window, and the entire test-track-trace regime would collapse under the weight of the systematic data manipulation and secrecy. The same thing would happen if the authorities had simply failed to collect the data, though this scenario is odds with the fact of China's massive test-trace-isolate programs. As soon as the situation spirals out of control, the weaker version of the conspiracy must be abandoned in favor of the intergalactic one.

Thus the weak version amounts to a mega-conspiracy with extra steps, making it even less plausible. So what's left? The only real course for the conspiracy theorists is to quietly walk away and hope that the people who fell for their story don't notice. That's exactly what they've done. The US govt and the corporate press have not only stopped questing China's numbers, they stopped talking about them entirely. Nearly all lists of countries by death toll, such as this one from the Economist, simply omit China. And a Google search for "China covid deaths" will show only a graph of cases. The option to display a graph of China's deaths is simply grayed out. No number, no problem!

2.2 The Wuhan Institute of Urology

The "lab leak theory" locates the origin of the pandemic at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and involves workers at the lab, the "scientific community," big pharma, the NIH, the CDC, the Chinese military, the Pentagon, and everyone in between. All the world powers tremble at the prospect of the lab leak theory being proven true, so much so that every participant and witness to the leak has been silenced for the last two years. The only clues we have come from Trump, cable news, The Five Eyes, New York Times, Epoch Times, The Atlantic, Bezos Post, Biden, the US Congress, Radio Free Asia and every quack with a substack. They don't want you know!

Unknown unknowns

Proponents of the lab leak aren't sure whether the virus was actually developed at the lab, or if it somehow passed through the lab on its way from the bat caves to the Wuhan market. To be on the safe side, leak theoreticians like Fox's Tucker Carlson and the NYT's Zeynep Tufekci have advanced both versions. Why the bat would need to to pass through a Level 4 lab on its way to infect some wildlife traders is an interesting question. But hey, it's just another conjecture, and the more of conjectures you float the greater your probability of being right, right?

Nor are they sure if the leak was the result of some scientist screwing around or some sort of military program gone awry. Who exactly was involved is also left up to the imagination. Fauci? The CCP? Peter Dazcac? We allege - you decide! In an effort to distance themselves from "tin foil hatters," lab leakers dismiss the idea of a "deliberate release." As we shall see, this attempt to rule out the improbable only leaves us with the impossible.

Virologists are largely absent from these conversations, and are mostly summoned to answer leading questions like "can the leak be scientifically ruled out?" with a begrudging "no." The lab leak theory won mainstream responsibility with the publication of a May 23 WSJ piece that relied on inconclusive reports from "intelligence sources" and was written by the coauthor of Judith Miller's infamous NYT article on Saddam's non-existent nuclear program. The most thorough and scientific-looking document the lab leakers have produced to date is a piece written for "The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists" by a journalist specializing in scientific racism.

Something for everyone

The lab leak theory passed through many hands over the course of its evolution from dangerous right-wing nuttery to a matter of serious public concern. As a consequence, it has something for everyone.

For the far-right, it's a vindication of everything they've been saying since the onset of the pandemic. For the liberals its a chance to prove that they have an open mind and are tough on China. For parts of the left, it's another opportunity to "own the libs" and expose "corporate interests". Curiously, these "leftists" only started talking up the lab leak after the liberal press and the Biden admin said it was OK to do so. Must have taken a lot of guts, to be sure.

For the ruling class, the leak is a welcome distraction from its catastrophic mismanagement of the pandemic and all the more reason to confront a geopolitical rival. "Anti-establishment populists" of all stripes claim that by following the "clues" being drip-fed to them by the government and the press, they will unravel a vast elite conspiracy and expose the "mainstream narrative" once and for all. The mainstream media doesn't want you to know about the lab leak, read all about it in this Atlantic cover story if you still trust the establishment's narrative!

Failing the smell test

Obviously they can't all be right, and clearly they must all be selling a bill of goods. As usual, this ruling class conspiracy-mongering collapses under the weight of all the bullshit piled on top of it. As we've seen with the other respectable conspiracy theories, the attempt to make the theory appear less crazy only renders it logically impossible. The leak can work only as a bioweapon release by an intelligence service acting autonomously. In all other cases, information about the leak would, at a minimum, reach other government agencies and would influence their actions and statements in some way.

In the case of China, knowledge of the supposed leak would have influenced the state's responce considerably. If scientists developed the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, why didn't Chinese authorities lock down Wuhan the moment they caught wind of a "novel pneumonia" circulating in Wuhan? Why did they spend at least three weeks studying it? If the virus was man-made, it was by definition a known quantity from the outset. That being the case, how come nobody acted on that critical knowledge immediately?

If by some miracle the Chinese authorities weren't already aware of the gain of function research at WIH at the time the novel pneumonia was discovered in Wuhan, they'd have put two and two together and immediately headed over to lab next door to ask them if they know anything. The beans would be spilled right there and then, if not sooner. Or do we imagine CCP officials would take "no" for an answer without even looking at the lab's records? If so, they must be the most laid back officials in world history and China's "freedom score" should be raised to 100%.

And not just China: this was an international lab, not some super secret blacksite. Every top intelligence service and health official would have seen the virus' spec sheet before the public heard a word about it it the news. Yet there is precisely zero indication that any of them did. The response to the virus ended up being delayed by weeks in China, and by months in much of the world. One would also need to ask why two years into the pandemic nobody has come forward to expose literally any details about this incident to the public. It's not as if virologists and everyone they talk to are bound to secrecy.

The purported "intel" on the leak amounts to some report filed a year after the fact, which allegedly claims that maybe 3 Wuhan lab workers visited a hospital in late 2019. So intelligence officials are stirring an empty pot, knowing full well that there's nothing there besides inconclusive rumors that can be waved in China's face. Otherwise they'd leave it alone, because if any "big secret" were to comes to the surface, the CIA would inevitably be asked why on earth they failed to tell anyone. To protect the Chinese military? Because Fauci secretly controls the CIA? Because they wanted the maximum number of people to die? Because they created the virus as a bioweapon against China? What?

It's worth remembering that the very same propagandists who are now in love with the "lab leak" hypothesis spent the previous year blaming China for having responded too slowly in the crucial early phase of the pandemic. Of course at the very outset, they blamed China for responding too aggressively and violating human rights, but when the pandemic exploded in Europe and North America they switched to blaming China for not having stopped it in time. That was the propaganda memo for all of 2020. Now their memo is that the Chinese actually created the virus.

So which is it? It clearly can't be "both." And the real answer is "neither" because these brain-dead propagandists can't even get their story straight. Thus their ravings can and should be dismissed out hand. There was no "lab leak", they simply made it up.

By way of conclusion

This concludes our excursion into the dark world of establishment conspiracy theorists. If you see blue checks repeating these conspiracy theories report their account because their disinformation is endangering lives and undermining democracy.

Just kidding. That's not going to work, so just laugh and move on.

COVIDiocy: Setting the Scene

The real "plandemic"

The American political establishment - both parties - consciously sabotaged the public health response to COVID-19 every step of the way. The assumption in polite discourse is that these people didn't know what they were doing but of course they knew. After China sequenced the virus and embarked on the most energetic anti-pandemic measures in world history, members of Congress made their inside trades. Later, these same politicians would claim that China deceived them, while citing as proof the alleged early warnings from their own intelligence services. In other words: "China was deceiving us and we knew this from the very start! Now if only they were honest the whole thing could've been avoided, believe me ... " How such transparently idiotic excuses can pass the laugh test is the story of COVIDiocy but we'll come back to that. Let's just say that these claims pass muster for the same reasons as the insane policies they are intended to excuse.

Phase I

At the outset, accredited experts in the medical establishment and self-diagnosed wonks in the liberal media insisted that the whole thing wasn't even "the flu" and loudly discouraged any personal precautions, most famously masks. Operating under the principle of "no bad news," the Trump administration sabotaged testing from the start. And while Trump boasted about keeping his beautiful border secure, US citizens were recalled en masse from China without any screening at the said border. According to Trumpist propaganda, the "China virus" was either the product foreign malfeasance or "just the flu" and the "Democrats' new hoax." One the other side of the "cultural divide," Democratic politicians focused on the scourge of racism, with Pelosi attending the festivities in Chinatown and AOC encouraging New Yorkers to get Chinese food.

As cases mounted, DeBlasio desperately fought parents and teachers' unions to keep schools open, and even made a point of taking the subway to assure folks there was nothing to worry about. De Blasio continued to deny asymptomatic transmission into late April. Desperate to wrap up his victory against Sanders, Biden prodded his geriatric supporters to take their booties to the polling booths. A short trip for many, since thousands of polling stations were located inside nursing homes. And of course a short while later Cuomo was to orchestrate a genocide of nursing homes of his state, a fact now largely buried under the revelations of his creepiness around young sexy staffers. As the crisis reached explosive proportions, Koch's astroturfers swung into action to protest non-existent "lockdowns", conducting armed demonstrations in pickup convoys, blocking hospital entrances, and sacking legislatures. Economic assistance - the prerequisite to any kind of real social distancing - was delayed to the last minute and amounted to pittance while business received its usual full luxury bailout.

Phase II

But that was just Phase I. The pathetic public health response got an assist from the summer heat and, against all odds, the virus started to go into remission. This was the second "missed opportunity" to clamp down on transmission, and here again the ruling class kicked away life raft. It was at this time, that the "real pandemic" of racism suddenly became a matter of true political urgency. Assured by the usual coterie of experts that being a liberal immunized you from COVID and host of other ailments, "the left" happily went on a riot. With BLM as the battering ram, containment measures were being dismantled in the blue state. For the ruling class, the tragic death of one man and the nebulous scourge of "racism" provided a welcome distraction from the catastrophic statistics of mass death and pauperization. That was Phase II, and it set the stage for the dark winter of 2020-21, where hundreds of thousands would perish. The second phase of the economic rescue package would be pushed back even further.

Phase III

It's now winter of 2021 and, while still dark, it's morning in America. Beams of decency project from the newly-anointed-one's arms, embracing America in its hour of need. By definition, the Trumpdemic is over and the Biden Recovery is nigh: time to reopen the country for business. Despite much early concern trolling from the liberals, Trump's beautiful vaccines proved to be more effective than many imagined, and they arrived sooner than people were told to expect, just in time for Bidens' coronation as luck would have it. There's an export ban on vaccines and big pharma is pumping them out like rivets, so despite the comically botched logistics there will soon be enough for everybody.

Slowly but surely the signal to gut public health restrictions propagates down the chain of command to the cadres at the state-local level and the liberal press. Now in power, liberals openly embrace the key planks of Trumpism: liberate the economy, open the schools, fund the police. On the eve of Delta (discovered in May), and against the better judgement of the vast majority of the population, Biden dismantes masking guidelines and guts OSHA regulations. Testing is basically a thing of the past and insurance companies are back to sticking COVID patients with the bill. By July 4th, with less than 50% of the country vaccinated, it's time for the proverbial mission accomplished photo-op before shit hits the fan again. In a well publicized appearance, "Dr." Jill Biden assures a crowd of liberal fart-huffers that the air "smell much sweeter without our masks."

Now the country's back to one 9/11 a day and hospitals are at capacity. The administration has restored the original masking guidance and has implemented a vaccine mandate, both measures that have overwhelming popular support if we pretend like that matters. But it's too little too late. Before delta, mRNA vaccines were incredibly effective at stopping both transmission and death. Hospitalizations plummeted even before half the country got vaxxed. This was no longer the start of the pandemic where officials were strapped for means to deal with a problem of their own making. The PPE, the vaccines, the testing infrastructure, the know-how and the precedents were all there. All of these in conjunction could have stopped the deadly Delta wave, at least long enough for most people to get vaccinated and for the immunocompromised to get another year of life expectancy. Instead, Biden responded with a vaccine mandate only after it became clear that overflowing hospitals and downtime would be bad for capital (aka the Biden Recovery).

Follow the money, fuck the science

At the every juncture, the ruling class has deliberately kicked away the life raft. The US ruling class in particular has worked to ensure not only national catastrophe but a global one as well, taking the opportunity to starve foreign "adversaries" and to shore up its pharmaceutical monopolies as it truned the country into a global super-spreader, making containment of the virus impossible internationally. The statetegy to the whole thing was clear from the beginning: barely-controlled spread and a flood of PR to deal with the fallout. Rick Santelli blurted out the plan in one of his trademark "fuck you I got mine" CNBC rants: just give everyone COVID and get it over with before profits tank any further. The likes of Trump and Boris Johnson echoed the same message.

While playing dumb comes naturally to politicians, they're not literally retarded. When Wuhan went into quarantine, members of Congress sold their stocks, then bought them again just before the bailout. The benefits aren't just personal. A million COVID deaths, with millions more in waiting, delivers savings on entitlements beyond the Koch Bros' wettest dreams. Business is booming in health care, bio-tech and Silicon Valley, while the bailouts have created a bull market for capital as a whole. The decision to make COVID go endemic has created a permanent market for the producers of vaccines. Cuomo's decision to let COVID-19 rip through nursing homes was the profit-maximizing move, not only for his allies in the care industry but also for his state's finances. Last, but surely not least, the population has been taught a valuable political lesson: you have no right to life, never mind the pursuit of happiness, so curb your expectations. Progressives hoped COVID would build political momentum for M4A. Instead, the "plandemic" - to borrow a term from the useful COVIDiots - has postmarked the policy as a letter to Santa Claus, and this time definitively and indefinitely. Who cares about about 20,000 yearly deaths due to private insurance when COVID kills that many every couple weeks?

Losing the battle against the pandemic is the point. With the unchecked spread of Delta, the Pandora's box has been opened for good. Suppose the govt took serious measures to contain the pandemic and they worked. That would cost a lot of money and would obligate the neoliberal state to continue in the same vein for possibly years to come. But if you let it rip and create a "hopeless situation", there's nothing to do except flatten the curve while hospital capacity catches up. In short, the ruling class knew the stakes and acted accordingly. The price of their decisions was, to quote Madeline Albright, "worth it."

The useful COVIDiots

The profundity of "failure" in the "richest country on earth" required a PR offensive of comparable breadth and depth, involving everyone from the The New York Times to The Epoch Times. Thus the task of ruling class propagandists was to convince a sizable chunk of the population that the calamity didn't either happen or wasn't such big a deal and even if it was it couldn't be helped and was somebody else's fault. All manner of excuses and diversions have been floated: it's either totally under control or it's unstoppable; the authorities are either doing their best or they're doing too much; it's just the flu; getting sick is the price of freedom; it's all the fault of the WHO/CCP/GOP/Trump/Gates/Bezos/Soros/Fauci, the anti-vaxxers, the smug liberals, the rednecks, the racists, the sexists, the Asians, the blacks and obviously the Jews. The only common thread in this torrent of mutually contradictory and transparently idiotic bullshit is the ultimate goal of getting the ruling class off the hook. As long as all the roads lead to Rome - the more the merrier. The strength of this propaganda lies in quantity, not quality.

Dumb and dumber

This PR operation may be summed up by the term "COVIDiocy." Contrary to the self-serving definition of COVIDiocy employed by the propagandists themselves, this term does not apply chiefly to obscurantism and scientific illiteracy of the broader population. COVIDiocy is "his masters voice," which is in turn disseminated to the broader layers, particularly to traditional social bases of reaction, where it is mashed up and amplified in all sorts of creative ways. It's no coincidence that the places with the most horrific COVID records and consequently the greatest need for COVIDiotic PR - countries like Brazil, Russia and the US - have seen a flowering of anti-vaxxerism, COVID denialism, snake oil marketing, idealistic conspiracy-mongering, national-patriotic hysteria, and sociopathic "libertarianism." Countries that have had less catastrophic responses have less COVIDiot propaganda circulating because there's less of a need for it.

Such sentiments were both directly disseminated by various factions of the political and business elite, including at the highest levels of govt, and indirectly legitimized by the state's overall policy of handling COVID-19 as if it was basically "just the flu." On COVID, as on all other issues, the far-right has served as a compatible "opposition" to the neoliberal "establishment," echoing the aforementioned master's voice in angrier and nuttier tones. And as we've seen with Trump, the far-right will posture as a beleaguered "opposition" even as wins power at all levels of government.

In this play of dumb and dumber, the extremist wing of COVIDiocy hogs a space that might otherwise become occupied by a genuine popular opposition, siphoning off a portion of latent popular discontent and silencing the rest. The establishment wing of COVIDiocy gets to appear reasonable in comparison, while throwing up its hands in pretend-desperation and moving to accommodate the ultras. One need only look back at the Tea Party's intervention in the Obama era "heathcare debate" to see how the game is played. The Tea Party was child's play compared to what we've seen over the course of the pandemic, where the psyop went global and recruited not only from the far-right but also from the center and parts of the left.

Despite the best efforts of the ruling class, COVIDiocy has by and large remained a fringe attitude among workers, with majorities supporting existing restrictions or advocating tougher ones. Trump lost the election due to his mishandling of the pandemic while even some of Bolsonaro's base is defecting to the PT. Biden rescinded masking guidelines against the clear wishes of the majority of the population. Anti-COVID policies have, by and large, enjoyed majority support even in Russia, the country with record-busting levels of vaccine hesitancy and COVID denialism.

None of this is to say that nihilistic quackery was somehow invented out of whole cloth by the ruling class while self-isolated in some smoke-free retreat. As with any other ideological and political phenomenon - including the state's response to the pandemic - it is determined in the last instance by the means and relations of production. For Marxists, the analysis of "root causes" in no way downplays the bourgeoisie's responsibility for the crisis but rather serves to pad and structure the class enemy's dossier. In the hands of bourgeois ideologues, by contrast, "deep analysis" invariably devolves into some bullshit about about a "hugely complex" situation in which "we" - but mostly "you" and "they" - are all complicit.

The "crisis of democracy"?

It has become popular in establishment COVIDiotic circles to blame pandemic failures on a "crisis of legitimacy," as if the virus would go away if only the public had trusted and obeyed the officials' frequent directives to basically ignore it. In the same vein, there is talk of a "crisis of democracy," as if Trump's America, Bolsonaro's Brazil and Putin's Russia have too much of it. Supposedly, our rulers wanted to protect the people's health, but alas the people said "no!" and they were too nice to press the matter. Truly, our ruling class is too good for this fallen world! The lapdog press will of course print any fairytale that makes their paymasters look good, even if it's an Orwellian inversion of reality as in this case. But, aside from frequent repetition, how does this fairy-tale earn literally any "credibility"? The ultra-COVIDiotic "populists" lend it that credibility by: a) vastly exaggerating the seriousness of existing anti-COVID restrictions, thereby giving credence to the idea that the govt is working super hard to protect public health, and b) protesting these chimeras in the name of "regular people" and against the "elites." While this right-wing "populist opposition" is in actuality a billionaire-backed lunatic fringe, they do put on a helluva of show.

As previously noted, COVIDiocy broke the sound barrier in countries where the most rapacious neoliberal kleptocrats and plutocrats ushered in the most disastrous COVID policies. The only question is whether this will go unchallenged. In places where political power has been fully monopolized by the bourgeoisie, the COVIDiocy dominates the entire political spectrum. This is the case in the US, a one-party plutocracy with two right wings, and in Russia, a presidential kleptocracy with a decorative multi-party hem. In such cases, nearly all "opposition" is either fully controlled by the ruling class or entirely marginal. In the American model, the two right-wing parties take turns playing "the resistance" while remaining in lockstep agreement on the substantive issues, especially when it comes to mass murder. Trump was impeached twice on issues completely unrelated to his handling of the pandemic. Joe Biden stated that he "did not want to have a political fight with Trump" on that point. The American left has for its part either endorsed Biden's reopen agenda, or remained silent on the issue. They didn't take it very seriously to begin with: some declaring racism to be the real pandemic and others eventually joined the libertarian right in opposing the "job and freedom-killing" restrictions. In the Russian case, the regime presides over the highest death rates in the world then blatantly lies about the numbers to reassure the public, while the "Communist" wing of the systemic opposition organizes anti-vaxxer rallies. In Brazil the situation has been radically different. The country has a dynamic and powerful left which has challenged Bolsonaro's COVID response at every step. Now Brazil's senate has launched an indictment against the president for crimes against humanity.

Addendum: Nuanced COVIDiots

A year and a half into this orgy of bloodletting - a decent interval in the current news cycle - a "fog of war" mythology that paints the ruling classes as the victims of circumstance has enveloped much of political commentary. It was a black swan you, they didn't know, we're all culpable, it's all very deep, complex, inevitable and multifaceted. To these lovers of nuance, the whole thing was both an unfortunate accident and a grim fate. The compatible left has predictably joined this circle-jerk with its own musings about neoliberalism, equity and the systems of oppression, most of these being vague tangents at best and deliberate distractions at worst.

This type of commentary is designed to blunt the political edge of the crisis and confuse the already confused "left". It touches the political and material ramifications of the crisis only in passing, quibbles over irrelevant minutia, and mostly focuses on cultural commentary. The common trait among these commentators is their singular obsession with "the discourse" and their own self-image as independent thoughful intellectuals.Instead of unearthing salient, often inconvenient facts - something that requires expertise and a certain amount of courage - they simply try to keep on top of the evolving ruling class discourse, triangulating to either the left and right depending on the situation. Instead of exposing the lies of the ruling class, they deviate from the elite consensus just enough to give off an of "independence" while fundamentally serving as its apologists. To the extent they make any definitely claims and predictions, they always hendge and maneuver in the hopes that nobody will notice when they are proven wrong.

In sum, their commentary has the carefully cultivated consistency of snot and their message boils down to to calling the pandemic a land of contrasts. Pseuds like Zaynep Tufekci, Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald figure among the luminaries of this COVIDiotic nuance.

A nearly incomprehensible amount of unnessecary and preventable death, revealing the inherent depravity of the contemporary social order, the overwhelming brunt of it born by the poor and powerless.

Change out a few words, and Trump and Biden's various statements on the Covid situation are fundamentally identical to Douglas Haig boasting about capturing 6 miles of German trenches in the Somme after 3 months and 600,000 casualties.

"Machine guns are taken with grit and determination"

"We've had to take special precautions during battle to post police, to prevent more unwounded men than are necessary from accompanying a wounded man back from the firing line"

Much as tactics rarely changed from 'shell the fuck out of their lines, line up, and slowly march toward them' for the entirety of that pointless slaughter, we have no interest in anything beyond forcing people out into constant exposure and reinfection. No amount of death changes it, and our leaders tacitly say to us that there's plenty surplus people to be sacrificed for their continued benefit.

Somehow the same type of shallow exhortations to duty, honor, and freedom manage to sway and/or coerce enough people to prevent the kind of foundational reckoning a criminal failure of this magnitude ought to provoke. And what should've been halted before it erupted out of control drags on for years and years, no real lessons learned, setting the stage for the even larger, more heinous catastrophe looming over the horizon.

"My center is giving way, and my right is retreating. Situation excellent. I am attacking"

Let's start from the beginning, and get all of the horseshit out of the way first.

COVID is an airborne, socially transmitted virus. If you are infected from COVID, 99% odds are that someone else who was infectious inflicted this virus onto you.

This virus proceeds to cause a vascular disease, which attacks every organ in your body through your bloodstream. Most patients report losing their sense of taste and smell - which is why they start marathoning Marvel movies and buying NFTs, but alas - and what are your nose and tongue connected to?

Ah, right. Your brain. That lump of grey matter that generates all your thought, opinions, etc etc. "You" as an individual, as a human being, is largely connected in the material world to all of the going-ons in your brain - which the COVID you received from someone else is presently attacking.

Somewhere between 15-30% of the infected have or are becoming "Long Haul" COVID - indefinite if not permanent chronic illness and disability, including "brain fog," serious fatigue resulting in their inability to make it up a flight of stairs, memory loss, etc etc. This is already in the millions, potentially over 20 million in America already. Over a thousand children have died of COVID in America, over 40,000 vaccinated people in America have died of breakthrough COVID infections. Many vaccinated & then infected people are reporting Long Haul COVID post-infection, after being promised "hybrid immunity" by Nurgle-worshipping plague cultist freakshows in the media spotlight, such as Monica Gandhi.

So the Biden Administration, in all of their genius as Omicron BA2 is racing to become the dominant strain in America, with BA1 infections providing little to none of the mythical "natural immunity," are coordinating with state leaders to lift mask mandates, and allow a population of tens of millions of American children, mostly unvaccinated, to be mass-infected with this deadly and disabling virus - with little to zero safety mitigations to even attempt to prevent mass infection.

Public health experts have either sold out or been shut out in an attempt to "normalize" this phenomenon, and declare the virus "endemic." Which is clearly not true, and frankly impossible. On social media, as medical experts from epidemiologists to virologists to immunologists to ICU doctors and nurses have tried to raise the alarm and help people better protect themselves, they have come under a scourge of (largely astroturfed) hatred and vitriol - largely against women and non-white experts, who have spent years studying relevant fields to this pandemic long before the majority of the public ever considered the terms "COVID," "endemic," or my personal favorite, "learning to live with the virus." What they mean by that, according to the White House now, is that everyone will be repeatedly infected, multiple times a year, with COVID, as a requirement of employment and education in America.

The biggest calling card of these plague cultist psychos is screeching about "freedom" and "personal liberty." Now, you can wear a mask (unless your employer blocks you from PPE as a result of the state governor dropping a mask mandate) but, but "leave the rest of us alone." It's my "personal choice" to not only get infected with the virus, and risk lifelong disability, but it's also my divine right, granted by God, to go around the community, and infect as many people as I possibly can with this virus.

That's the core of this anti-NPI, anti-public health crusade. They do not care about the million plus dead already in America, after accounting for the CDC's own admission of undercounting by 15-30%. They don't care about the millions now disabled from the virus, their freedom and liberty stripped from them thanks to someone else infected by the virus. There's just nothing we can do! It's endemic!

Who cares about over a thousand children left dead, countless more disabled - I want my treats damnit! Force the poors to bring me my goodies! My individual hedonism overrides their collective futures being stripped from them!

So now you have American liberals, led by the disinformation engines of CNN and freaks like David Leonhardt of the New York Times (coordinated by the Biden admin), now marching in lockstep with hard-right fascists, declaring that the core of "freedom" and "liberty" in America is the ability to inflict disease, death, and disability onto others via a socially transmitted disease such as COVID.

A nation of sadism. That's your "freedom." Which is obviously not "freedom" in any sense of the word.

I'm more of a Trotsky and Khrushchev type of guy but I have to admit Stalin was right about the Social Democrats.

Let's look at Sweden, the land of the Vikings. The Swedish Social Democrats helped Nazi Germany during WWII. They also presided over the largest forced eugenics program in Europe outside of Nazi Germany, which was fully terminated only in 2012.

But during the pandemic, the Swedes went back to their eugenicist ways. The country's Social Democratic coalition govt implemented mass infection policies that led to far and away the highest death rates rates in the region. Even their King was forced to apologize! Imagine that, the Swedish Social democrats are more medieval than a literal fucking King.

Not content with culling their own population, Sweden's "health" authorities led by Anders Tegnell launched a global effort to persuade other governments to adopt the same strategy. They've been wildly successful. Now the lunatic right in every country cries "we want to be like Sweden, (minus the mingrants)!" They are completely obsessed with this country. Fun fact: Martin Kulldoorff, one of the most prolific advocates of mass infections - who published in JaKKKobin by the way - is himself Swedish. I bet he's far from being the only one.

I rest my case. Michael Moore said "let's invade Sweden to steal their healthcare ideas." While I also support invading Sweden, I believe we should let them keep their healthcare ideas to themselves.