Wait a second, Russell Brand!
Don't YOU change the narrative. The Lockdown was never to protect children.
I was out gardening and I listened to this YouTube bit, below, from Russell Brand, about Marjorie Taylor Greene making Anthony Fauci squirm.
Before you start, I get it, I get it!
Neither Brand nor MTG is what you might call one of our more dignified cultural commentators. Scoff if you like. I sort of appreciate that she really did put Fauci on the spot (“What did you say about social distancing?”). And I often enjoy him for pointing out contradictions and catching people in their compromises and schemes.
I listen to a lot of different commentators, which I hope you appreciate, from the unwashed to the elegant. Sometimes it’s useful to see how certain threads weave their way into others’ fabric, for one thing…
BUT—
Towards the end, Brand, in his new (well, now several years’ duration) self-appointed and no doubt quixotic role as uniter of the clans of freedom, starts to offer a charitable version of why many complied with Covid lockdowns and restrictions. I’m okay with some of that. I am loath lightly to absolve those who abandoned common sense. I refuse to pardon those who perpetrated evils unless they publicly ask forgiveness and make amends.
It’s true that many were, no doubt, duped.
However, Brand sets up what amounts to this narrative: Who among us, being told our children are in danger, would not react according to expert advice? Who would not fearfully go against self-interest to guard children?
Just hold on there, Mr. Brand.
That is the whole dishonorable, shameful, cringing failure to which most of the world’s leaders brought the human race: We all agreed to the exact opposite: that children would have to sacrifice their faces, their interactions, their educations, their freedom, their playing in parks, their swimming in oceans, their gatherings with loved ones, their memories, to protect the elderly.
I for one — and remember, I am 64 years old, so I was 60 in 2020 — did not for one moment countenance such an inversion of the right order of things for my sake. Russell Brand appeals to a basic and inherent impulse in human nature, which is to protect the young and innocent from the old who have presumably already tasted of the joys of life, to beseech some clemency for those who went along.
Listen, we must respect the elderly. I don’t by any means suggest that we practice some pagan casting off of those seemingly past their usefulness!
But the truth is that just as it’s always been, the elderly, past their life expectancy, were the ones slightly more at risk than the rest of the population, and children not at all. Some elderly have always succumbed to “pneumonia” after a flu passes through, as any medical professional involved in pulmonary care will tell you, but no one ever had the insane lack of humanity to say so out loud. Also, I have now watched some elderly people die from different causes; having had double pneumonia myself, I would not deem it a worse way to go.
Why had it never been mentioned before as a risk specifically brought on to the elderly by children (and really, everyone) getting the flu? Because it’s a burden too weighty (and far to frequently encountered) to put on the youth, or so we always thought in our wisdom and maturity, until demographic privilege took over.
This is your early distant warning to resist this re-working of what actually happened, should it by chance begin to enter common usage, that Covid lockdown was about protecting children. It was not. It was about blaming them and their parents. Maybe Russell Brand is a wacky purveyor of spicy takes, sure. But should you begin to hear this in more respectable quarters, please speak up!
People were not misled into doing stupid things like wearing cloth masks and taking untested shots because they were fearful for their children. The exact — but exact — opposite is true.
They did it because they were bullied into thinking they were killing grandma, and because they did, against all reason and observation, they found themselves accepting that grandma would die alone with no one to comfort her, even if what she was dying of was something entirely unrelated to the scare. They also robbed their children of a hefty proportion of their developmentally precious years.
Let’s not forget this, as humiliating as it is. Let’s not forget one bit of it.
Great take spotting this leading indicator of ongoing efforts to rewrite history!
RB may not be objective on this point though; I think it was his interview with Tucker where he talked about how his youngest child was born in 2023 with a heart condition which required surgery at 3 months, so am going with the benefit of doubt here that maybe his hindsight perspective is skewed…maybe… but yes, it was all about “don’t kill grandma!”
But I appreciate that you listen to a variety of perspectives, including RB - this is something I really value in your writing!! Too many catholic writers live in annoying bubbles haha - love that you are real, funny, fresh and grounded in the “real world” where most of us unwashed folk live ;)
Many of us were neither scared nor fooled. We were threatened with termination, fines and public shaming. I managed a cardiac clinic in a large urban hospital during the COVIDIOCY era. I had access to information both statistics and scientific papers. We knew from research and from the actual reports that this was a disease that struck a certain cohort, the frail elderly with multiple co-morbidities. In fact until Governor Kate Brown pulled the data a friend and I compiled information on those who died with or of COVID. 90% were over 70 with an average of FOUR co-morbidities. Most common were obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. Can we say the most common issues of Americans? We also realized from the beginning that COVID deaths were greatly overstated. People died with COVID not of COVID.
Did our great scientific community suggest exercise and dietary changes? No. Lock you in your house and keep the liquor stores open. You can’t see a doctor unless it’s an emergency. Too bad if you need a cancer screening or a change in medication to control hypertension. Lock kids out of school and mask toddlers.
They were wrong and we knew it and they knew it but they couldn’t let the crisis go to waste. I find it a touch ironic that Dr Fauci claims to be Catholic. I hope he realizes that he will face a far harsher judge than the public.
Brand is correct in that some were scared. But they shouldn’t have been. The information on masks and social distancing and closing schools and churches was available. But there wasn’t anything we could do about it. We were not scared. We were powerless.