I did not get everything right about the path of the pandemic, but goddamn did I ever call the general course we’d take in the US.

Here’s what I said on February 29, 2020:

“I suspect Covid-19 will likely reveal America’s true status as the world’s richest Third World nation as we’ll be completely unable to deal with the disease and its consequences. The reasons I assert this is that we have:

• • A horrifically bad health care system that is about profit, not care. Many people simply will not visit a doctor no matter what because they know they cannot afford it.

• • Work cultures and workplace tyranny that forces sick people to work, which will cause exponential transmission.

• • Neglected agencies staffed by the fearful and the incompetent who will not be given the proper resources and haven’t had good leadership for years.

• Inability to impose adequate containment measures because concern with individual rights (metastasizing libertarianism) makes proper quarantine and isolation impossible.”

I hate being right. But it was honestly not that hard to call this one.

i wish I had some friendly holothurians https://t.co/oZM3uUc2Fz

— Faine Greenwood (@faineg) August 10, 2021

I did not know about friendly holothurians, but now I need some as well.

People do not understand crash physics at all. You want the front of the vehicle to crumple in a serious crash! Otherwise you body will absorb the impact

— Angie Schmitt🚶‍♀️ (@schmangee) August 9, 2021

Most people are brainless, so it’s ok that the crumple zone is their head. It’s fine.

How long before all vendors take screenshots of your screen every five seconds, do some bullshit “neural hashing” of the output, and examine it for any sign of thoughtcrime, etc.?

I give it a decade, probably less. Of course all for your own good, as the libs like to say.

The problem with writing about the past now is that if you write about things we actually did and said in a realistic manner, the wokesters will come for you. If I wrote a novel about growing up in rural North Florida it’d be just peppered with offensive words and ideas, because that’s how it was.

It makes me wonder what’s been left out of “realistic” accounts of the past. A damn lot, I bet, and a lot that was important.

I also am not understanding the liberal discourse that is saying "we have to stop acting like kids can't get it and finally take this seriously" – I am seeing this a lot. Who's been acting like kids can't get it?? Schools were closed for A YEAR. Am I the only one seeing this?

— much ADU about nothing (@normalvariance) August 8, 2021

Liberals have gone assclownishly nuts about their “completely safe” horseshit. Which of course nothing ever is and never will be.

Youth, the pandemic and a global mental health crisis.

Remember when we were gaslighted and told this was not happening? I do! But of course it was happening.

“We know from other studies that rates of depression and anxiety in youth tend to ebb and flow with restrictions,” says Dr. Sheri Madigan, Ph.D., co-author of the paper, a UCalgary clinical psychologist and Canada Research Chair in Determinants of Child Development. “When more restrictions are imposed, rates go up. Being socially isolated, kept away from their friends, their school routines, and social interactions has proven to be really hard on kids.”

Another reason lockdowns should be brief, rare, and have a definite end date. It’s terrible for everything, and not even all that effective at preventing the spread of Covid unless you keep it up for a really long time, make no mistakes, and have 100% compliance.