The Rona --- 5 years later

 I originally started this blog to document some of the things that happened during the Coronavirus era so that I wouldn't forget them.  Now it's 5 years later and a lot of retrospection is going on in some circles.

In some ways, for me personally, it seems like Covid-19 never happened.  Things have been back to normal for quite some time now and honestly there were bigger issues that I personally had to face during 2020 (notably: cancer).  Yet at the same time, it seems like a liminal moment: there was an era before Covid and a different era after. I've taken to calling the before-time "BC" (Before Corona).  It's a memorable enough event that I can identify whether something has happened BC or not.  I don't have a clever name for the after-time.

One notable indication of the effect of the virus on American society is that Donald Trump was re-elected President of the United States.  Trump, of course, was president when the Rona hit these shores and it was his administration that shut down the economy and schools and even publicly objected with Georgia started opening the state back up.  There's widespread anger about the Rona task force, especially Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx.  Birx would later resign when it was revealed that she violated her own ban on holiday gatherings.  That article proved three often assumed tropes

1. She didn't really believe what she was saying about the travel ban
2. Women have more shame than men or at least are more sensitive to public ridicule as men, as Fauci made many violations but was shameless enough to stick around.
3. A humble public servant own three houses in some of the most expensive areas of the country.  That's not suspicious at all.

But upon Donald Trump's return he essentially promised revenge against the establishment that he lead. 

• His Director of HHS is now Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has been skeptical of vaccines in the past and is currently downplaying a measles outbreak that the media is trying -- without much success -- to turn into another profitable wave of panic.  
• His director of the NIH is Jay Bhattacharya who, as a researcher in Stanford was the author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized lockdowns and promoted herd immunity.  In response, he was censored and basically excluded from polite society.  However, many of this statements are considered mainstream now but he's still a heretic in some circles for having made them.  As I write this, our do-nothing RINO Senate has still not confirmed him, believing that Running out the Clock is the better part of valor.
• His director of the FDA is the delightfully named Marty Makary who criticized the FDA for the rushed approval of the Covid-19 vaccines and who also criticized vaccine mandates.  Our do-nothing uni-party Senate has so far failed to confirm him, believing that nothing good ever came from an honest day's work.
• His director of the Education Department is Linda McMahon, who has pledged to shut the department down, or at least break it up.  This is could be seen as a swipe at the Teacher's Union, which was one of the worse lockdown-addicts, keeping schools closed for a couple years in some cases and education scores still haven't recovered.  By shutting down a Federal Education bureaucracy, power would return to the states and subsequently it will be harder to enforce a national response to some future emergency.  Our do-nothing, corruption-loving Senate did in fact confirm McMahon, having decided that there's not enough graft from the Education Department to make it worth the voter blowback that would come from stonewalling.

RFK may in fact be out for revenge, but it seems like the rest of Trump's health team (MAHA, or Make American Healthy Again) is more interested in making sure that 2020 never happens again. That the Government and scientific communities don't censor contrary views and that journals don't put their finger on the scale to let shoddy, but politically approved, papers get published (they might want to look at Alzheimer's research in that case).  RFK gave a speech to his HHS staff outlining those very ideas: that good science must be at the forefront of HHS' mission.  

His message is needed. Trust in health agencies has dropped since the pandemic.  Most of it squandered by the rapid approval of covid vaccines and the endorsement of Black Lives Matter protests while otherwise banning any indoor or outdoor gatherings (including baseball games).  And of course, there's the simple fact that people lived through the pandemic and suffered the effects of the lockdown, but the health authorities have displayed no empathy, let alone regret, for the suffering they caused.  Of course, Republican demagoguery hasn't helped.

And of course, the main cause and beneficiary of the pandemic panic and lockdowns, the media, is suffering greatly.  Layoffs have come to major networks and trust in the media continues to drop.  I believe that they hyped up Trump in order to get him elected, even though editorially they hate him.  But by stoking Trump outrage, they can get their viewers back.  And that may work in the end, but in the immediate aftermath of Trumps election, several outlets like MSNBC, ABC, Washington Post and others have announced layoffs and editorial changes.  Good riddance to them.

Most companies have mandated a return-to-office policy in the past few years.  The Federal Government followed suit after Trump was re-elected.  In both cases, that was widely seen as a "shadow layoff" as some people would decide to quit or retire rather than return to the office.  Some people may have move away for various reasons like cost of living, or to be closer to family, and so moving back would be too much of a burden and they'd retire or find work closer to their new homes.

For my part, I notice a few stalwart people wearing masks particularly during flu season, but it's very few.  In my suburban Catholic Church there are a few ladies that wear veils, which is quite a statement in our influencer-driven age of sex appeal and the number of veils is almost always higher than the number of masks.

I'm just kind of over it.  While nothing would make me happier to see some of the more enthusiastic promoters of the lockdown locked up themselves, our do-nothing, corruption-loving, crime-loving establishment in DC seems unlikely to do much at that front.  For all the chest-beating that came out the election, interregnum and inauguration, precious little has been done to change the culture in DC.  There are been some layoffs and some especially swampy departments shuttered, but still plenty of stonewalling.   The JFK files, MLK files, Jeffry Epstein Files have all been promised but none have been released as of now.  The Swamp always wins.

And that's probably the most important point to take away from the last 5 years.