December 6, 2021

It’s not about the variant — it’s about the fear. Like a magician who gains his reputation for sleight-of-hand — getting the audience to concentrate on one aspect of a trick while manipulating another — so government authorities around the world are using the unknown aspects of a new COVID-19 variant to keep the public in fear about their future well-being.

This chronic fear under the guise of an “emergency” has granted unbelievable amounts of power to those who the media anoint as “experts” and “scientists.” They are milking their new-found fame and perceived wisdom to make pronouncements and exercise control without discussion, debate, or appeal.  

The South African medical association chairwoman, Angelique Coetzee, has told us that the Omicron variant has minor effects: “It presents mild disease with symptoms being sore muscles and tiredness for a day or two… those infected do not suffer loss of taste or smell. Those infected are being treated at home.” Sounds pretty terrifying, doesn’t it? 

Closing down travel and creating fear in our daily lives is unnecessary, harmful, and counterproductive.

On a broader plain, Nobel economist F. A. Hayek and author of The Road to Serfdom got it exactly right when he wrote some years ago:

Emergencies have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded — and once they are suspended it is not difficult for anyone who has assumed such emergency powers to see to it that the emergency will persist. [Emphasis added.] 

One of the big lies of recent days has eroded our freedoms and put us on a collision course with totalitarianism. That lie, of course, involves COVID-19.