The COVID emergency is finally over. So, how did the pandemic change you? | Readers’ essays

NJ.com ^ | May 11, 2023 | Guest Columnist

[SaveFerris]

Well, then you had people like this guy:

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4121787/posts?page=48#48

[nonliberal]

Exactly. Vladimir Putin didn't close businesses and gyms. Vladimir Putin didn't try to get me fired for not taking an experimental drug. I waited out the company I work for and they dropped the requirement after it was ruled unconstitutional. Still a pureblood. Vladimir Putin didn't impose mask mandates. It wasn't Vladimir Putin's police force who enforced all of this.

Who is the real enemy?

[The Louiswu]

No Vax, no Covid, no problem.

[peggybac]

It didn’t effect me as it did the regular person. I live alone, have no social life, love staying home, and made few grocery trips then started having them delivered. I was working PRN at a nursing home and my hours increased so I made more money. I received an exemption so I didn’t have to be jabbed and was was Covid free until March of 2023. What DID effect me was the loneliness and isolation my residents experienced during all this. It was heartbreaking.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Whoa...the truth slipped in there!

The COVID pandemic had a profound impact on me. It taught me not to trust — not to trust my government, not to trust the CDC, not to trust FDA, not to trust WHO, and not to trust the people who should have been guiding us and telling us the truth.

Sounds like that person is a FReeper!

[The Louiswu]

I believe this takeover was supposed to happen under a Hillary presidency in 2016, Trump's election interrupted that time table and precipitated the release of a massive barrage of phony allegations against Trump, the use of mail in ballots and other schemes in order to derail and damage his presidency.

Now, with the release of millions of illegals, most of whom WILL be voting in 2024, I believe we've seen that last Republican administration and the ever decreasing Conservative voices in our government until, at last, the Left outlaws both the Republican party and Conservative movement.

How did covid change me...well it opened my eyes that's how.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

“I’m still seeing a lot of morons walking around with masks on, which tells me they are willing to wear them for the rest of their lives.”

Yep, same observation here in Santa Clara County, CA. People walking alone outside in a stiff breeze, nobody within 100 yards, all masked up. I was on a hiking trail a couple weeks ago and an Asian woman was passing me going the opposite direction. She moved to the edge of the trail (by the drop-off to the canyon below), turned her head away from me, and pulled her mask up over her mouth and nose. We were in the great outdoors, nobody else in sight, sunny day, nice breeze.

It tells me that a lot of our population is absolutely devoid of all common sense and they cannot think logically about anything. They are incurious, willing to believe government nonsense, and do not want to learn.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

...to believing most of the politicians are pure evil and will do anything to get rich.

[peggybac]

I also started taking Dr. Zelenko’s Z-pack (I purchased my own vitamins, C, D3, Quercetin, Zinc because it was cheaper). I was fine until March of this year.

[G Larry]

Placed me further at odds with more friends and relatives....

[jps098]

And she was likely not given anything at the hospital like ivermectin because most of the medical establishment is utterly corrupt.

[DoodleBob]

There has been an explosion of research and reporting. Some of it is very good. Some of it is trash.

I try real hard to dig in on sensational stories. Many times, the headline quotes aren't even in the stories. There is some awful "reporting" even on "our" side.

Earlier this week I saw this story, https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/4152137/posts, about "WEF Member Calls for 86% Reduction in World’s Population." I thought, "here we go again...more sloppy fearporn." Well, it turns out it was accurate.

Now it was just one dude, one of the main authors of the Club of Rome’s 1972 pro-depopulation book “The Limits to Growth.” So I dug in a little. And yes, they published this stupid little screed, a demon-spawn of Paul Ehrlich. Nothing new...someone always wants to Save the Whales by not saving the Little People.

I stumbled upon THIS story from 2014,

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse

Suggesting that doom study was right. Researchers allegedly back-tested the charts and they look accurate. Uh huh...sure.

What caught my eye, however, was this paragraph:

As pollution mounts and industrial input into agriculture falls, food production per capita falls. Health and education services are cut back, and that combines to bring about a rise in the death rate from about 2020. Global population begins to fall from about 2030, by about half a billion people per decade. Living conditions fall to levels similar to the early 1900s. (emphasis added)

This Guardian article is from eight years ago.

Parenthetically, evil no longer lurks in the shadows. It feels safety in numbers. In turn, I see The Holy Trinity in action where previously maybe it'b be considered "a coincidence." I read the end of the Book. I know who wins. And for me, I am not afraid, for in union with God there is no need for fear.

Now, do I REALLY believe that some "managed population" fanatics published a book in the Vietnam era, with a plan whereby the book will seem to prescient because "....and then we will release a virus in 2020 that sends cattle to a shot in 2021 that isn't tested and subsequently thins the herd of healthy people suddenly"?

For the record, no I don't believe that. Evil is evil, but it is also often stupid.

But...

[Blood of Tyrants]

I have a meme for that, too.

[Blood of Tyrants]

“What made able bodied men willingly load themselves and their families into boxcars?”

They trusted the government.

[DoodleBob]

Placed me further at odds with more friends and relatives....

Looping in Sam, who had a similar experience.

I will say, at work things have normalized and friends and family are less vaxx and mandate strident. Indeed, it wasn't my facts and figures that changed their mindset as much as it was everyone getting covid despite shots, masks, and isolation. Nobody apologized, nobody said "you had a point there, Bob" but they simply dropped the Party Line.

But the fact that these friends and family and coworkers had the CAPACITY to respond in such an ugly manner, is well-noted.

[woodbutcher1963]

I do not trust ANYONE in the medical profession anymore.

[vpintheak]

My opinion of my fellow man has reduced greatly. So many people are sheep and braying donkeys. And people are more isolated and irritable these days.

[Red Badger]

Now you know why Gates is buying up farmland, to take it out of production.................

[metmom]

How did it change me?

I lost virtually all trust in the medical community and absolutely any that I may have had in the government.

[cgbg]

“What made able bodied men willingly load themselves and their families into boxcars? Now I know.”

I have a negative view of human nature but I was always hoping that people would prove me wrong.

They didn’t.

It definitely can happen here.

The vicious and hostile treatment of the unvaxxed reminded me of the Salem witch trials.