Thread by @brucefenton

I was terrified in February 2020. I saw the viral videos of people dropping dead in the streets, the massive China quarantines, I tracked the cases: Italy, the cruise ship, the plane, the Seattle nursing home. We faced an unknown risk with massive potential downside. 👇👇👇

By March 17, 2020 it seemed possible this virus would ravage our world. I thought people who went out on St. Patrick’s Day were insane: risking their lives and others. We saw the dire warning of Italy.
We were always “2 weeks” away from disaster.

I sounded the alarm like a fool:

https://twitter.com/brucefenton/status/1236089608464732160

I listened to @nntaleb & @yaneerbaryam who said we just needed “two weeks to flatten the curve”.

If we could just shut down fro only two weeks, the reasoning went, the virus would die out.

If not, then we faced massive death in the streets & would see morgues in Central Park.

I read up on the science, I tuned in to the WHO daily briefings, I followed dozens of epidemiologists, I became a prepper and moved to the country.

When I heard that people would be dying because of a lack of ventilators I made this my mission

https://twitter.com/brucefenton/status/1238966762290515969

I made calls, wrote articles & recruited people - I joined Yaneer & Taleb’s group the New England Complex Systems Institute & it’s Stop Covid initiative.

I decided I would do everything I could to get ventilators

The New Yorker even picked up my efforts newyorker.com/magazine/2020/…

But as I was interviewed for the New Yorker in March, I was already becoming concerned with what I saw.

By the time the article was published, I was skeptical of the need for ventilators at all. I had heard this from Cuomo’s briefings & my research didn’t jive with what he said.

In a complex series of business deals with insiders, Cuomo had NY paying $20,000 for ventilators worth $500.

Try as I might with calls & volunteers reaching out to hospitals, we couldn’t actually find any real shortage of these machines.

Meanwhile authoritarianism increased.

The world shared videos of the tough Italian mayors passionately yelling at people to stay indoors.

Then I saw restrictions on going outside.

“Whoa whoa restrictions on being...outside?! That’s not in any of the recommendations I’ve seen.” That’s not science.” was my reaction.

Then we saw that all those ‘absolute idiots’ who partied on St Patrick’s Day or who went to church in Florida against the government order did NOT suddenly drop dead.

The USS Mercy & USS Comfort had sailed into LA & NYC with patriotic fanfare...but the ships were empty.

🤔

We were told to stay home because of the overload on the hospital system. But that never came.

Hospitals were empty. Surgeries and other important visits were all delayed due to fears of overload which never happened.

This is one of the many 2nd order effects we saw.

While I had called for panic in January & February based on the unknown, even in my greatest hysteria I never called for lockdowns or limits in personal freedom.

Meanwhile places without the lockdowns seemed to not have the mass death predicted.

We also saw that people could get this illness and never even know it without a test. With weak evidence we accepted “asymptomatic spread” as a thing.

This was also when we changed the hundreds year old definition of what “sick” means.

Not only did we change the definition of what sick means, we decided to treat everyone as “sick until proven innocent”.

In April 2020 I saw a mom arrested at a playground for letting her kids play on a swing set. Surely the public would see this & end the insanity I hoped.

The virus turned out to be far less deadly than feared. As with all flus it is dangerous and deadly to some.

Yet the tyranny increased. Previously unimaginable restrictions on basic human rights became common. Meanwhile places without the restrictions had no worse results.

The bad data around ventilators was just just the beginning. By May we saw Covid become even more political. Death counts were changed to include anyone who ever had a positive test or who had symptoms

Even shooting victims were counted as Covid deaths

freedomfoundation.com/washington/was…

We all know the rest:
- Politicization of science
- Mass censorship of opinions, data or even medical or scientific opinions that differed from the official line
- whimsical shifting of opinions & policies

A year more of lockdowns - with exceptions for left allied protestors

Finally Florida said “no more”. Gov DeSantis said he would never do a lockdown again. The lockdowners and the media said this would cause mass death and just like the previous predictions of doom it turned out not to be the case. Texas followed Florida & also reopened.

The lockdowners were losing their grip. People weren’t going to stay in any longer.

Then, almost instantly the narrative shifted: it wasn’t that Covid wasn’t as deadly as we had feared - it was the vaccine that saved the day...so go get one right now.

Total gaslighting.

We’ve been lied to consistently & seen more of our freedoms & human rights destroyed than perhaps any generation in history.

We lost when we got into debates over “science”. The reality is that government should NEVER have such powers, no matter how serious a virus.

The idea that some people in fancy government offices know better than the citizens & this gives them moral authority to use violence on peaceful people is barbaric and evil.

Every person should be able to take the risks they choose based on their evaluation of the risk.

/

Some folks mentioned hospitals- we had an anecdotal experience here:

We were able to move ACs key doctor visit up to January

Our son was 2 weeks into being 13 years old & 6 months along in recovering from his 2nd brain surgery

I had been following the virus news very early on

https://twitter.com/brucefenton/status/1216808145730842625

The previous couple months had been a key time with many hospital visits

https://twitter.com/brucefenton/status/1181190819375509504

For many people, visits were delayed because the hospitals were closed

Here in NH we averaged 0-2 deaths per week during the March-April 2020 period - yet here & all around America hospitals shut their doors & visits were delayed due to fear of an ICU overload that never came

For serious visits like ours, my wife bundled up in PPE gear & ventured out - we had seen the horrifying images of the people dying on ventilators in Italy — going to the hospital was a production of fear

…But they were empty

Many other doctors visits by citizens were deemed not important enough

Instead of getting much needed diagnostics & elective surgeries people stayed home eating delivery food & watching local businesses die while the TikTok nurses danced in empty hospitals

Dystopian

So you can present any science you want & you can tell us it’s for our own good—

But science is never agreed on or final and *even if it was*, it does NOT justify policies that remove our agency

There is NEVER justification for state use of force against peaceful people

In the US we are guaranteed basic human rights to freedom of movement and speech — the Bill of Rights does not come with an asterisk— such a system would be far too easy to abuse - just look at what has happened already

We the people should decide the risks we want to take

We need to reject the entire idea that government should rule our bodies

I think I was wrong to be so fearful last February but maybe I’m wrong again now — that’s my business - please don’t threaten people with violence for not wearing a mask or taking a vax

Live & let live

As I said to the Surgeon General in February

“You do you, we’ll do us buddy”

(They’ve now deleted this tweet)

what a twist - a redneck stockbroker being more panicked about masks than Surgeon General @JeromeAdamsMD

Where we both wrong?

The world is nuanced — be peaceful.