{"id":83742,"date":"2022-11-02T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-02T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=83742"},"modified":"2022-11-01T06:06:46","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T11:06:46","slug":"unconditional-surrender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=83742","title":{"rendered":"Unconditional Surrender"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Emily Oster at The Atlantic <\/em>wonders if we mightn’t just bury the hatchet about all that Covid overreaction<\/a>; call a social mulligan; just mooooooove on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation while forgiving the hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge. Los Angeles County\u00a0closed<\/a>\u00a0its beaches in summer 2020. Ex post facto, this makes no more sense than my family\u2019s masked hiking trips. But we need to learn from our mistakes and then let them go. We need to forgive the attacks, too. Because I thought schools should reopen and argued that kids as a group were not at high risk, I was called a \u201cteacher killer\u201d and a \u201cg\u00e9nocidaire<\/em>.\u201d It wasn\u2019t pleasant, but feelings were high. And I certainly don\u2019t need to dissect and rehash that time for the rest of my days.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

David Strom – now writing for Hot Air<\/em> – meets Dr. Oster halfway:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Dr. Oster] has generally been a voice of reason on COVID policy, and even when I disagree I respect her. She supported policies I considered and consider appalling, yet she always shared her reasoning and her doubts. Plus she vigorously opposed the COVID excuse to destroy education, and that deserves great respect…Dr. Oster\u2019s premise is simple and easy to grasp. And, under normal circumstances, one with which I could be sympathetic: during the initial phases of COVID people were making decisions in an environment dominated by near total ignorance of the seriousness of COVID, so we should forgive each other for the mistakes made by people and policymakers<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But…:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once data started rolling in and the true scope of its danger was known, COVID became a political cause for the Left, not a public health issue. Public policy and social behavior was no longer grounded in any connection to reality and became a political signifier, and every single awful consequence that has come from the use of COVID as a political cudgel to attack those of us who demanded a rational, measured response is entirely blameworthy. The people who did this must pay a price.<\/p>

COVID fanatics deserve every single bit of the consequences that are coming for them, and far far more than they will suffer.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I might be inclined to agree with David’s premise – in March and April, maybe <\/em>May of 2020, when we really didn’t know what was going on, and we didn’t know that Covid wasn’t <\/em>going to be a demographic scythe mowing down vast swathes of the population? Sure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once we got to about June or July – when it was very clear to anyone who could read a graph that Governor Klink’s prediction of 20,000 dead in Minnesota by mid-July, best case<\/em>, was off by more than an order of magnitude, and he set about concealing the code for the model that led <\/em>to the prediction because “someone might use it to get different results than we got” (which is the polar opposite of “science”? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For everything that came after – the schools closed<\/a>, the tsunami of mental health issues, the endless emergency declarations, the boarded-over basketball hoops and bans on selling garden supplies – you want “Amnesty?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After this<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I’m going to start the negotiation with “military tribunals”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the many millions who couldn’t get their cancer, heart disease and other chronic, sometimes life-threatening conditions seen, diagnosed or treated? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drumhead court-martials are too good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the bans on funerals? For the loved ones that died alone in hospitals and LTCs? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/twitter.com\/benstanton77\/status\/1587123009663471619?s=46&t=MdTAU8OsNv76xs46QKVYmg\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I’d be hard-pressed to deny those demanding a “purge night” their due, but this is a civil society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the huge advances in the power of the police and surveillance states? For the “emergency powers” seized, and held for well over a year<\/em>, by tinpot piglets like Gretchen Whitmer and Tim “Klink” Walz?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/twitter.com\/stillgray\/status\/1587253046580776960?s=46&t=MdTAU8OsNv76xs46QKVYmg\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Give me some heads on pikes – figuratively – and I I might, might<\/em>, be persuaded to settle for a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”, as long as it has the power to imprison people for a long time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mother suffered from Alzheimers. She and her husband – also very ill – were in a long-term care in Minot. Her husband died in March 2020. The “emergency” rules in Minnesota – and the carnage caused by Governor Klink and the Department of Health’s policies – meant it took seven months to move her to Minnesota. Seven months during which, alone in a nursing home, my mother declined even more alarmingly than she had before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amnesty?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m more inclined toward demanding unconditional surrender. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it’s likely my vote next Tuesday is my only recourse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rot in (figurative, electoral) hell, Tim Walz, Peggy Flanagan, and anyone who votes for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emily Oster at The Atlantic wonders if we mightn’t just bury the hatchet about all that Covid overreaction; call a social mulligan; just mooooooove on: We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation while forgiving the hard calls that people had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[416,320,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid19","category-mndfl","category-liberal-tyranny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83742"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83751,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83742\/revisions\/83751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}