COVID is Never Over: Remembering Those Whose Lives Have Been Changed Forever
Key Highlights :
It is quite common these days to say that COVID is over. We say it all the time here at Twitchy. But when we say that, we mean the pandemic itself is over. The pushing of ineffective vaccines (and even more ineffective masks) is over. Locking kids out of schools is over. Shutting down businesses is over. All of the lies are over.
But for some people, it can never be over and it is important to remember that. No, we are not talking about 'long COVID' nonsense. We're talking about people whose lives were changed forever, not by the virus, but by COVID policies. On Sunday, Jennifer Sey -- the former Levi Strauss executive who was ousted from the company for her defiance of COVID narratives, particularly with school closures -- reminded us of all of the people for whom COVID can never be over.
To those saying Covid is over: Not if your child dropped out of high school Not if your child fell so far behind in school he can’t read Not if you have a special needs child who was denied necessary services for 2 years Not if your business went under Not if you lost your job…
Here is the full text of her tweet: To those saying Covid is over: Not if your child dropped out of high school Not if your child fell so far behind in school he can’t read Not if you have a special needs child who was denied necessary services for 2 years Not if your business went under Not if you lost your job and incurred tons of debt or had to declare bankruptcy Not if you’re a kid who is chronically absent or worse, lost in the system and hasn’t returned at all Not if you overdosed or your child did Not if you started using Not if you became depressed from the hopelessness and isolation Not if you were hospitalized for mental illness Not if you developed an eating disorder Not if you were censored Not if you pushed back against the mainstream narrative and your reputation was ruined Not if it happens again and government and public health officials do the exact same thing all over again.
Plenty of people replied with their own reasons it is not over, many of them tragic. Not if you said goodbye to a loved one through a window or ipad screen Not if you had a friend, as I did, who drank herself to death - literally, the cause of her death was alcohol poisoning - due to loneliness, isolation and despair. Not if your kid killed themselves due to isolation. Hardest stories to hear during that madness. May I add? Not if you helplessly watched a loved one get euthanized by the institution that was supposed to try to heal them. Not if you were forced into early retirement It's not over if the lies the experts told about the unvaccinated destroyed family relationships. Not if you couldn’t go to AA, NA, OA, FA, GA, Alanon, etc 12 Step meetings when you desperately needed to And, not if you loved ones are injured from the 💉 and now you have to care for sick parents + young children. It’s pressing damn crushing, so no— it’s not over for me.
Some of the replies are extremely difficult to read. But it is important to read them because the last sentence in Sey's tweet is critical: 'Not if it happens again and government and public health officials do the exact same thing all over again.' People are easily distracted. With all of the other disasters going on right now, both domestically in America and abroad, it is understandable that people might forget the arrogance with which so many were ready to take away our freedom because of a virus.
This. ALL OF THIS. I hate when people say "why are you still talking about?" Because the effects of what was done will last for years. Lives were destroyed. Covid will NEVER be over. Every day I walk or drive Colfax, the damage wrought by CO and Denver’s Covid policies are front and center. From Broadway east to CO, it’s a sea of vacant buildings, that were thriving businesses in early 2020. Deemed non-essential, now husks, plywood, graffiti, fences. Dead. The Covid policies were the most sweeping and callous in all of US history. There was never a cost / benefit analysis. There was never a legal underpinning. It destroyed lives, upended a healthy economy and politicized the science profession. The aftershocks will be felt for…
I WILL NEVER BE OVER IT, NEVER FORGET & NEVER FORGIVE IT. EVER. No one in govt at any level/position who had any part in the Covid response, who doubled/tripled down instead of correcting the response when it was evident it needed to be,should ever be in positions of power again. The only way forward is through accountability. The people in power who pushed lies (often knowingly) on the public, who restricted freedoms for no reason, who destroyed lives, and who decimated institutional trust for a generation if not longer have to be held to account for their words and deeds. If not, history WILL repeat itself.
As Captain Malcolm Reynolds says in the movie Serenity: 'As sure as I know anything, I know this: They will try again. Maybe on another world. Maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, 10, they'll swing back to the belief that they can make people ... better. And I do not hold to that.' No one should. Aim to misbehave.
And this writer for one will be very careful before writing the words 'COVID is over' ever again
