Sunday was the 4th anniversary of the book that took the world by storm (teacup sized), smacked Experts silly, called for protection of the vulnerable before it was cool, and failed utterly in its mission to calm a world determined to grip onto idiotic panic.
Just wait for our next one!
The book was, and is, The Price of Panic: How the Tyranny of Experts Turned a Pandemic into a Catastrophe. Here is a thread on the universal celebration that ensued from co-author Jay Richards:
Four years ago today, @FamedCelebrity, @DougAxe, and I published The Price of Panic–arguing that the lockdowns & hygiene theater were catastrophes that made no discernible difference in the spread of COVID-19, but would harm or kill millions of people.
We had a contract with @Regnery to write the book in late March 2020–just as the lockdowns started. Our planned title was “What Just Happened?” since we thought everyone would wake up in a few months and our book would be an after-action analysis.
But the summer came, and although we had solid data that the lockdowns made no difference, they continued in much of the country. Half the country continued to believe obvious lies, and most of the rest just went along (except the BLM rioters). [He links to our NRO (yes) article: “Stats Hold a Surprise: Lockdowns May Have Had Little Effect on COVID-19 Spread.“]
So we came up with a different title. While writing the book, we watched search engines (especially Google) bury scientific articles that challenged the wisdom of the Biosecurity State. We watched our neighbors and fellow citizens turn into its willing accomplices.
Just before the book was released, the admirable @gbdeclaration came out, with @DrJBhattacharya, @MartinKulldorff and @SunetraGupta, advocating what we also suggested in the book–protecting high-risk people (the sick and elderly) but not locking down the population.
We were thankful for the air cover from these distinguished scientists, and thought that the madness might soon be over. But it was not to be. They were vilified, and soon, we would learn firsthand how the Big Tech platforms censored the debate.
When the book came out, we watched our radio and podcast interviews get pulled from YouTube, Facebook, and elsewhere, for spreading “disinformation” and “misinformation.” But nothing we said needed to be retracted. If anything, given what followed, our conclusions were mild.
E.g., I was quite certain the virus was the result of a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but at the time, we didn’t have the evidence to show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it was the product of gain-of-function research funded in part by our own NIH.
And the catastrophe with the vaccine mandates was still to come. The culprits who brought us the virus and lockdowns have yet to receive justice or even apologize. Still, I’m thankful to the following people (a very partial list), who spoke out when it was costly to do so.
Long-time readers know I was calling for calm in January 2020, when a lunatic Nassim Taleb, shrieking like a teen girl having her cellphone taken away, was calling people “psychopaths” (his word) for not panicking.
In February 2020 I begin a weekly Coronadoom update, as well as posting hundreds of other articles over the next three years trying to reason people into calm. But you can’t reason people out of what they didn’t reason themselves into. People were determined, as I say, to panic. They wanted it, especially Experts and those in the “laptop class”. This was what they waited and longed for all their pitiful short lives.
You’d think the vex (Ann Cherry’s creative respelling to avoid the censors) would have me maddest, but no. You can just understand a panicked populace doing drugs every authority swore was good for them. But not masks. Masks were the supreme stupid act, given that we knew for a full century they were useless. Even the Fabulous Fauci said so, before he realized lying got him better press.
Mass worn by young men made me spitting mad. I am still spitting mad. I have to stop lest I say something indelicate.
During the panic our friend Eugyppius asked us to move over to Substack so that people could see the stats I was doing. I reasoned—you can see my batting average—“What’s the difference where I write? A click to get here is a click to get here?” Funny, right? Substack is now three times the size of the blog, and growing. I should have come over earlier.
Of course, I’m right on top of the latest tech wave, creating something called “videos”. See the Monday Class.
Speaking of the panic, I will be speaking of the panic at something called the True Grit Wellness Sumitt, Friday evening 1 November in Fort Smith, Arkansas. I don’t know yet if these talks will be online, but either way I’ll post the print speech after.
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