Mark Oshinskie: Fear of Covid Is the Opiate of the People

After all of the criticism I’ve directed toward Coronamaniacs and the Vaxxmongers over the past three years—in-person and online—I know that many of them have wished that I’d get very sick and die “from Covid.” If I had, they would have gleefully jeered me, as many did when lockdown critic Herman Cain died. Bear in mind that Mr. Cain was 74 and had Stage IV cancer.

But I haven’t died “from Covid.” Like the super-vast majority of people, I was never at any risk of doing so. 

While I’d prefer to never get sick, I always knew it was possible that I might “get Covid,” just as I had gotten some other, prior, unnamed coronavirus-driven colds or flus. It’s how life is, has been and will always be. Many people seem to be sick lately. It doesn’t help immune function to be in the low light/low Vitamin D state of winter. And during the past three years of disrupted social life, our immune systems haven’t been properly tested.

Many have said that, by Spring, 2022, everyone had been exposed to Covid-causing coronaviruses. Maybe it’s true, though it sounds like hyperbole; I’m not sure how this could be known. Regardless, except for one February, 2020 day of malaise, and then a week-long dry cough with no apparent cause—perhaps a quick, nearly asymptomatic, pre-Lockdown brush with Covid, or perhaps nothing at all—I’ve felt fine for the past three years. 

Last week, on the day after Christmas, that changed. My muscles started to ache. These aches spread and lasted for three days, accompanied by a tight chest and a banging headache. On Day 2, I also got a high fever. I let the fever crest until I took some Tylenol to moderate my temperature. Serial doses over the next two days quelled the headaches. My wife got sick the day after I did and exhibited the same symptoms. By our respective Day 4s, we each felt much better. 

Aside from the fever, we didn’t have the publicized, original Covid symptoms: shortness of breath, dry cough and fatigue. Plus, for what it’s worth, we each tested negative on home antigen tests that my wife had gotten in the mail. Thus, we mutually guessed that we probably had some form of flu. I didn’t care whether or not I had “had Covid.” That diagnosis never scared me. I only cared that we felt sick for three days. 

A day later, by coincidence—or perhaps because my computer was, in our surveillance society, eavesdropping on my wife and my conversations about how we were feeling, physically—this clickbait headline appeared on my screen: “The New Symptoms of Covid.” 

I took the bait. The article set forth a revised list of symptoms closely resembling those that my wife and I had just endured. 

Hmm. Maybe we did “have Covid.” The new kind. Because heaven forbid that anyone might think that they just got some unspecified sort of cold or flu, as they might have thought three-plus years ago. 

To the extent I might believe the article, it said that the virus had mutated into yet another variant, this one with the parodic name, “XBB-1.5.” I’ve known for decades that viruses mutate. This adaptability was another reason that I declined to begin to take an endless series of shots said to protect against viruses that would continually go out of fashion, only to be replaced by others. 

Throughout, my understanding has been that viruses typically weaken—not strengthen—following such mutations. Thus, I might expect that a coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which was unscary to begin with, would cause the same symptoms—only weaker—as it evolved into some different variant under the “Covid” umbrella.

But as a virus weakens, I didn’t assume—as the clickbait article suggested—that the types of symptoms would change. I’ve wondered why an illness caused by an ever-evolving virus, that is supposedly genetically distinct from its viral predecessors and said to cause different symptoms than other viruses or variants have caused, is still widely presented to the public as “Covid.” 

Like other marketing campaigns—only more so—countless money and boundless effort went into building the “Covid” brand. In order to incite fear, Government/Media/Pharma had to set “Covid” apart from centuries of respiratory illnesses experienced by those infected by other coronaviruses. Given the name recognition that Government/Media have developed for “Covid” since March, 2020, they’re motivated to stick with this well-known brand name to describe a viral disease that wasn’t much different from centuries of pre-March, 2020 Coronavirus infections; which, in turn, won’t be much different from infections that follow it, ad infinitum.

Christian Scientists say that to name a disease is to empower it. But while the Chistian Scientists think it’s bad to empower an illness, Government/Media/Pharma have taken the opposite approach: for three years, they’ve relentlessly strived to empower, and thus, exploit “Covid.”

Politically and economically, it’s been extremely useful to perpetuate the Covid franchise. Keeping some people scared of Covid helps to sustain the perpetual State of Emergency—oxymoron intended—and all of the Covid-linked government oppression and subsidy schemes that depend upon the myth of crisis. If, instead of referring to “Covid,” Government/Media used all of the various variant names, the public might eventually figure out what they should have known in March, 2020: we’ve always lived among evolving respiratory viruses that briefly sicken many people but don’t seriously threaten anyone who’s healthy. 

Though to those with the attention span to accommodate all of the shifting variant names, these names might have a certain spooky sci-fi cachet of their own: so many viruses keep emerging that some people feel they’re under siege. 

But overall, from a fear-marketing standpoint, it’s best to stick with the simpler, original brand name:

“Covid.” 

“Covid.” 

“Covid.”

Did I mention “Covid?”

Government/Media/Pharma have seared “Covid” into the American consciousness and terrorized people by grossly exaggerating Covid’s lethality. They aggressively suppressed criticisms of the attendant scam. By repeatedly saying “Covid” and “Pandemic,” they weaponized these words in order to pacify and control the masses, to effect the biggest wealth transfer in history to the already rich—including but not limited to, Pharma—to further impoverish the working class that they now disdain, and to strategically change election laws. 

Aside from sustaining the perception of a public health Crisis, and to justify imposing a wide array of deprivation restrictions on basic liberties, sustaining Covid brand loyalty also provides at least three other important, continuing benefits. 

Firstly, by keeping at least some segment of the population afraid of the Covid bogeyman, politicians can use it as an excuse to print ever more “Covid Emergency” relief and research money, ostensibly, but not actually, to control what Biden strategically labeled “this God-awful disease;” even though everyone I know who has had it experienced it as a cold or flu. This massive, annually supplemented slush fund will be used for a vast array of chicanery, including widespread political patronage, with tentacles reaching through politically-aligned state and municipal governments, political donors, the Medical Industrial Complex and the Defense/Biosecurity apparatus. Covid is worth far more alive than it is dead.

Secondly, sustaining Covidism protects politicians and public health bureaucrats. By continuing to invoke “Covid” to spook a gullible public, the scaremongers can use this word to defuse public anger regarding the overreaction of the past three years and all of the lasting damage which people are belatedly seeing. People who are constantly reminded of the Covid Scare of the past three years or who remain naively scared of the Covid Monster will continue to think that all measures to crush it were worth the suffering that the Government/Media/Pharma opportunistically caused with their orchestrated overreaction. Thus, most people won’t demand accountability for the scam of the past three years. They’ll allow the Government/Media/Pharma to continue to hide behind the foundational lie that “We did all of that to save you from death!” 

Fear of Covid is the opiate of the people. 

Lest we forget how essential it was—not—to wreck American society and economy over a virus that threatened almost no one under 75, politicians will order and fund the construction of public monuments where people can go and wring their hands over, and speak in hushed tones about, the deaths of unhealthy septugenarians, octogenarians and nonagenarians “from Covid.” 

Thirdly, preserving the Covid Scare also enables Government/Media/Pharma to unilaterally, arbitrarily declare victory over Covid whenever it wants. If Covid ever becomes a political liability, it can be decreed to have been conquered. The self-proclaimed Covid-slaying politicians can portray themselves, and the public health bureaucrats, as saviors of humanity. The Media can hail, and gullible people will venerate, those who may claim to have liberated our nation from the long-lasting grip of, as Trump so inaptly called it, “The Plague.” 

Fundamentally, whether my wife or I had some weird, sore-throat-free cold, some nausea-less flu or just the latest style of “Covid,” neither of us enjoyed our three-day viral experience. Like any old school respiratory virus, this one made us feel lousy, albeit with a different constellation of symptoms. We handled it the same way as other viral illnesses: we drank extra water, took some home remedies, and tried to get some extra sleep. A few years ago, no one made a big deal about, or needed to categorize, being sick like this. People rode it out. No one cared what you had. Or didn’t have.

During the three days that my wife and I felt the effects of some sort of virus, I never regretfully thought that I would’ve been fine if I had only worn a mask. Nor, while reclining on the sofa sipping hot tea, did I think to blame anyone for passing a virus to me; I understood that an occasional respiratory infection is an unavoidable cost of social life. And I definitely didn’t think that any coronavirus justified shutting down a society or mass-injecting some experimental substance. These measures have failed miserably and caused tremendous, lasting and expanding harm.

This article has been republished from the Brownstone Institute and can be viewed HERE.

Mark Oshinskie is an attorney, athlete, artist, agricultor, and advocate.