Hot on the heels of my recent piece about the calls for Covid amnesty, plenty of rona-bots have come out in force to attack me for what I said. Some did not grasp what I had written about forgiveness (more on that in a moment). But much of the criticism came in the form of denial: ‘No one is calling for amnesty!’
Or they are poo-pooing one main source of this: a piece in The Atlantic. They claim it is no big deal. Never mind that a noted economist wrote for arguably America’s most influential magazine. But ignore that piece for now. Is it true that none of our elites think amnesty should be on the table?
Um, they have always thought this way. The very notion of being exempt from prosecution for faulty vaccines and the like is a major type of amnesty of course. And this has always been the case, even with the rona vaccines. Recall this from October 8, 2020:
The Morrison government has given the suppliers of two COVID-19 vaccines indemnity against liability for rare side effects that experts say are “inevitable” when a vaccine is rolled out. But the government will not set up a statutory compensation scheme, which the president of the Australian Medical Association, Omar Khorshid, said meant Australians who suffered “extremely rare” side effects from the vaccines would face a tough battle to seek compensation.
So too was the initial aim to keep things under wraps for 75 years! That too is a type of amnesty. As one law site put it:
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Food and Drug Administration asked a federal judge for permission to make the public wait until the year 2096 to disclose all of the data it relied upon to license Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. That is not a typo. The FDA wanted court approval to have up to 75 years to publicly disclose this information.
The article, written in January, is worth quoting from further:
The purpose of FOIA is government transparency. When it comes to the Pfizer vaccine, the need for transparency is unprecedented. A majority of Americans are now mandated to receive a Covid-19 vaccine under penalty of losing a job, or worse. This has never been done before. Typically adult vaccine mandates have been limited; even the seminal U.S. Supreme Court vaccine mandate decision, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, only involved a state-imposed $5 penalty, and school vaccine mandates have historically had liberal religious or personal belief exemption policies.
Even more problematic is that Americans, if injured, cannot sue Pfizer. There is virtually no other product where a consumer is prohibited from suing the company that manufactures, markets, and profits from the product. Decoupling a company’s profit interest from its interest in safety creates a moral hazard and departs from centuries of product liability doctrine. Thus, it is extraordinary that Americans must take this product under penalty of expulsion from work, school, the military and civil life, but they cannot sue Pfizer for any resulting injuries. The federal government created this unprecedented situation. It granted the immunity, licensed the product, and aggressively sought mandates. This situation therefore warrants unprecedented transparency.
The whole issue of the Big State and Big Pharma wanting to be exempt from any punishment or payback for what they did is built into the very way they have been carrying on for years. So the demand for amnesty – whether explicitly stated or not – has been there from the beginning.
Why we need a reckoning, not a whitewash:
The excuses heard over and over again for why there should be blanket amnesty is that no one knew what was going on in the early days. These folks claim we were all in the dark and none of us had any useful information to run with. This is patently false.
Plenty of folks knew plenty of things, but for daring to speak up and for daring to challenge the rona narrative, they were mercilessly attacked and demonised. They were censored and even threatened. Only one point of view was allowed throughout this period. It was not unlike living in any other totalitarian state such as North Korea or Communist China.
One can spend a long time discussing all the things that we DID know, even early on. But let me draw upon one article which very nicely offers a summary listing of the many things we knew but were prevented from talking about. The piece begins:
The claim is now everywhere: we had to lock down because we just didn’t know about this virus. It was all very confusing and we had to play it safe. We had no other option because we just had no clarity about what we were dealing with. The precautionary principle dictated the unprecedented actions. Actually, the precautionary principle goes both directions. It also dictates that we not enact policies that we know for sure would wreck lives and liberties. They did it anyway, without sufficient knowledge that the measures would achieve any positive good.
Here is part of their list:
2019: WHO Global Influenza Programme recommends against lockdowns and masks.
Sept 2019: Johns Hopkins pandemic preparedness study recommends against lockdowns.
Jan 24: Doctor warns that mass quarantine won’t work and will devastate society.
Jan 30: Obama health adviser says stop panicking.
Feb 5: Fauci says there’s no asymptomatic spread.
Feb 28: Fauci says this is more akin to flu than something more deadly.
Mar: 81% of Chinese Covid cases are mild.
Mar 1: Sweden: No effective measure to let healthy school children stay at home.
Mar 2: Discussion on how Covid IFR was likely much lower than predicted.
Mar 2: 800 public health scientists warn against lockdowns, quarantines, restrictions.
Mar 3: Article on why masks are impractical.
Mar 3: Berkeley doctor indicates masks are not helpful in preventing Covid.
Mar 4: Doctor says Covid not nearly as deadly as feared.
Mar 4: Your doctor is not panicking and neither should you.
Mar 6: Doctor talking about unnecessary panic over Covid.
Mar 9: Article on how Covid is only really dangerous to the elderly.
Mar 12: Chief medical officer saying people shouldn’t wear masks.
Mar 13: Review found severe mental health problems from prolonged quarantine.
Mar 15: Medical organisation says stopping elective surgeries is unnecessary and dangerous.
Mar 17: Warning of financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric.
Mar 19: Article about Covid overaction and its issues.
Mar 25: Data about the health impacts of crushing the economy.
Mar 26: Early evidence of hospitals inaccurately listing Covid as cause of death.
Mar 26: Early data show we’re overreacting to Covid.
Mar 28: Predictions about the harms of lockdowns: Drugs, Suicide, and Crime.
Mar 28: Guardian outlines rise in domestic abuse throughout the world.
Mar 30: Study showing children are not the primary spreader of Covid.
Apr 1: Article saying masks offer little to no advantage outside of hospital settings.
There are many more items in this list, and each one is hyperlinked to the original source. Please check it out for yourself.
With all this available knowledge, the idea of granting the powers that be some sort of amnesty is ludicrous. Many are now waking up to this. For example, Camilla Tominey has just recently written about how “Pro-lockdown fanatics don’t deserve an amnesty”. She concludes her piece this way:
What we’re talking about here is making a decision that ruined lives. This is not the same as a lack of understanding of how Covid is spread. While we may, at certain times, be in the dark about the variables and the transmission and efficacy of testing, anyone with a balanced view of lockdown doubts that the economic, social, educational, and physiological aftershocks will prove more harmful to society in the long run. Those righteous fanatics who used the “NHS bailout” as a taxpayer-funded shield for their one-dimensional thinking only need to look at ambulance response times and queues to learn the folly of their moral superiority.
This video of a staff member preventing a son from comforting his widowed mother at their father’s funeral is once again making the rounds. We do not realize the immorality of this position once re-examination. Most of us knew she was unjustifiably cruel at the time. Forgiving those who seek to rewrite history will only see us repeat the mistakes of the past. Those who have sinned must not only own it, they must own it.
On forgiveness, again:
In my previous piece I looked at the matter of forgiveness, and how the Christian should think about it in relation to rona amnesty. Some folks also were not able to follow what I said there. So, let me repeat my main point. Anyone who actually carefully read my article will know that I said three things quite clearly in my ‘forgiveness’ section:
(1) If an individual believer wants to forgive another person who sinned against him over the past few covid years, that is up to them; (2) the sin we are here talking about is of a different magnitude, however: it is about systemic government sin, corruption and evil which should not just be swept under the carpet; (3) it was Jesus (not Bill) who said forgiveness depends on the other person repenting. It does not mean beans what Bill believes in this regard, but what Jesus clearly said.
In sum, when folks are allowed to get away with murder – often quite literally – they will simply keep doing more of the same. Justice demands that we deal with this high-level corruption, malfeasance, ineptitude and despotism. Indeed, often these were nothing more than deliberate and wilful crimes against humanity.
They must be dealt with, and not ignored.
