The ZeroCovid Movement: Cult Dressed as Science

"They are maniacally focused upon theories and models, and uninterested in what works in practice. They have no conception of human liberty or dignity"

This past year has given rise to some strange and novel methods of disease containment, including lockdowns and mask mandates. It is unsurprising that the natural next step in this progression has been the development of a movement known as “ZeroCovid.” Its growing influence is, perhaps, predictable given that for nearly a year we have been inundated by the views of so-called experts seeking to legitimize their myopic worldview that public health is determined solely by prevention of Covid-19.

Rather than acknowledge to a weary public that their approach has been a failure, they are doubling down and attempting to save their reputations by claiming that the problem is not that lockdowns do not work, but that they have not gone far enough.

There is, apparently, some diversity of opinion among the ZeroCovid crowd as to whether the term is to be interpreted literally, as some of its most impassioned and vocal proponents argue, or whether it simply means a more extreme version of the ideology that has dominated societies around the globe for the past year: the belief that suppressing the coronavirus is a singularly important goal, to replace all others and to be pursued with no or only minimal consideration of the effects of doing so.

ZeroCovid promoters appear to agree that much stricter border controls, lockdowns, and mask mandates are needed than exist in most nations today. Sam Bowman, one of the most prominent ZeroCoviders, claims for instance that the only way to address the coronavirus problem is with “lockdowns, school closures, travel bans, mass testing, contact tracing, and masks.” Likewise, former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair’s think-tank has stated that the only way to avoid another lockdown is to bring coronavirus cases to zero. China, Australia and New Zealand are portrayed as successes by ZeroCovid proponents, and prove that suffering now brings with it the promise of eventual freedom.

While marketing themselves as theoretically opposed to lockdowns, ZeroCovid adherents actually aspire to implement a totalitarian-style state, which we are supposed to believe will exist only temporarily. For example, Devi Sridhar, one of the movement’s most public faces in the United Kingdom, has claimed that the only way out of endless lockdown is a “crude, harsh, catastrophic lockdown” now, the first phase. Given that the third phase of Sridhar’s plan entails an “East Asian and Pacific model of elimination” that prohibits travel abroad, I can only imagine precisely what sort of totalitarian nightmare Sridhar envisions during phase one.

Those who follow this philosophy fail to recognize the glaringly obvious truth that suppression tactics have not succeeded because they run contrary to human nature (as well as basic cell biology) and entail severe deprivations of human rights and liberties. They also do not acknowledge the fact that if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) managed to eliminate the coronavirus (a questionable assumption given the CCP’s tenuous relationship with the truth), it did so using tactics that prima facie constitute human rights violations.

Even Australia and New Zealand, which before 2020 were considered beacons of liberal democracy, have recently been the subject of investigations or inquiries by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The ZeroCovid proponents do not address the reality that China, Australia, and New Zealand have continually had to implement lockdown policies in response to new cases arising even after declaring victory over the virus, and that the latter two are island nations able to effectuate border control in a way that cannot possibly be applied to nations that are geographically proximate to others and in which the virus has already become endemic.

The “Covid Community Action Summit,” a conference held at the end of January, and led and attended by many of ZeroCovid’s main players – needless to say, over Zoom – offers a glimpse into the warped worldview that pervades the ideology.

The architect of ZeroCovid, and the first speaker at the Summit, was Yaneer Bar-Yam, an American scientist who specializes in complex systems and quantitative analysis of pandemics and founded the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI). The participants came from a variety of backgrounds: in addition to doctors and scientists, political consultants and communications specialists were in attendance. Many presenters had business interests in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics, and those from the United States tended to be affiliated with Democratic Party politics and campaigns.

One of the most disturbing presentations was delivered by Blake Elias, a researcher at the NECSI who works directly under Bar-Yam. Given Elias’s position, it is fair to assume that his views, as articulated at the Summit, reflected those held by its organizer.

Elias, like numerous other “ZeroCovid” advocates, believes that the “lives versus economy” framing of the problem is incorrect (notably, many lockdown opponents also consider this the wrong lens through which to view the issue, but for different reasons; namely that the economy and people’s lives are inextricably intertwined and lockdown policies do not take into account crucial considerations such as mental health and civil liberties).

Valuing each life–somewhat arbitrarily and without regards to life expectancy–at $10 million, Elias plugged a bunch of numbers into a machine and voila! came up with irrefutable proof that locking down hard and fast is less costly than failing to do so. Elias earnestly stated that his airtight equation demonstrates that if you are against elimination (ZeroCovid) the only conceivable reason could be that you dispute one of his premises, so you therefore believe one of the following: the cost of infections is lower than it is; the cost of lockdowns is more; hospital capacity is greater; the importation rate is higher; or complete vaccination is achievable in a shorter time frame.

At no time did he mention psychology, human rights, or civil liberties. If Elias had the slightest understanding of these concepts, he did an exceptional job of hiding it.

Michelle Lukezic and Eric Nixon, like Elias, gave a presentation akin to what I imagine it would be like to watch aliens discuss human psychology and behavior. Presumably a couple, Lukezic and Nixon founded a company called MakeGoodTogether, and believe that the coronavirus problem boils down to a lack of individual discipline and accountability. They acknowledged that the extreme social distancing they touted as the answer to the world’s woes is contrary to our nature, but insisted that we simply must try harder.

We could eradicate coronavirus, they solemnly instructed us, if only we would insist upon declining social invitations, and suggested that people post pledges on social media to that effect. They apparently spent little time considering the plight of essential workers whose employment does not allow them the luxury of distancing, apart from a comedic description of the psychic discomfort they experienced when the mask of a workman in their home slipped down his face. Lukezic was very proud of Nixon for refusing to shake the man’s hand upon his departure. I had to double-check the link a couple of times to make sure I had not inadvertently stumbled upon a Saturday Night Live episode.

Another noteworthy contributor to the ZeroCovid Summit was Michael Baker, the architect of New Zealand’s coronavirus strategy. Baker insisted that “following the science” indisputably leads to the ZeroCovid strategy, as though science alone informs policy. He made several stunning admissions, among which are that containment should also be the strategy for influenza, and that the coronavirus pandemic has given us the opportunity to reset in order to address inequities in society and threats posed by climate change. In other words, Baker does not foresee a return to normal life.

As demonstrated by its presenters at the Summit, ZeroCovid is the unfortunate end result of the inexplicable belief held by too many people that it makes sense to fixate upon one problem to the exclusion of all others. No one at the Summit, or in any other context for that matter, has ever made a convincing case for elevating the coronavirus pandemic above all other considerations. There is a reason for this: the facts and logic all point in the opposite direction.

An argument could certainly be made that a virus or other threat calculated to wipe out humanity or a significant portion of it, across age ranges, warrants exclusive focus on that threat for its duration. As I and others have written before, the coronavirus simply does not constitute such a danger. We now have a year of data from which to conclude beyond all doubt that exposure to the virus only poses a significant risk, beyond those we are accustomed to taking in everyday life, to the very old. The overwhelming majority of those infected with the virus suffer not at all, or minimally, and recover within days or weeks. This does not mean that the problem should be ignored, but rather that it should be addressed utilizing the same methodology with which we approach all public health matters: by taking into account the effects of the policies enacted in response to them.

ZeroCovid adherents are not qualitatively different from the epidemiologists and politicians who have advocated for and imposed lockdowns and mask mandates across the globe. They all believe that they can force billions of people to behave, for an indefinite time period, in ways that are contrary to our nature and deleterious to our well-being. They see nothing wrong with assuming control over every facet of our lives.

They are maniacally focused upon theories and models, and uninterested in what works in practice. They have no conception of human liberty or dignity. Rather than recognize that lockdowns, forced human separation, and masks are ineffective at quelling the spread of the coronavirus, while carrying enormous costs, not least among them the erasure of liberal democracy, the most fervent adherents to this ideology believe that the answer is more, and harder. That means deprivation of our rights and liberties, and denial of our basic human needs, until the coronavirus is eradicated from the globe. If they get their way, that may well be until the end of time.

Source: American Institute for Economic Research

5 Comments
  1. Séamus Ó Néill says

    Why is Anti-Empire promoting the daft and Cabal-related theories of The Adam Smith institute through Sam Bowman and the rantings of the Butcher of Baghdad, the infamous Tony Blair…..has he not been responsible for enough death on this planet.

  2. ken says

    There already is Zero-Covid since its never been proven to exist by isolation or any other method. Therefore none of its supposed mutations can exist either.

    All we hear is “the science,,, the science”!!!!

    But no one seems the least bit concerned that the “science” is nonexistent where confirming the actual existence of this plague.

    Picture a solar system without a sun. Unpossible! Yet that is what most are doing. All the planets representing all the symptoms of this supposed plague. Yet those planets could not exist without a star in the center. Yet here it is! CDC admits they have no isolated virus. When asked for a live virus sample they reply they have none,,, yet they continue.

    We are up to two masks that don’t work now. How many masks will be required for the cult to consider they are being conned big time?

    How many will still take a poisonous injection that the CDC and Pope Fauci outright state they do not prevent the plague nor stop the spread and that masks and distancing will still be required

    What is needed to convince these cultists,,, me thinks, a slap in the face is better than death.

  3. Mark says

    All the measures proposed to ‘stop the spread’ are merely guarantees that it will pick up again as soon as denial of hosts is relaxed. We all have to stay completely away from each other for a hell of a long time – viruses can remain dormant for surprising periods – until it dies out, and that is unsustainable. So it follows that the more we struggle to forestall it, the more we push herd immunity to the right, further away. The WHO has redefined herd immunity to reflect that it is only achievable through vaccination, because that suits its agenda, but the formation of antibodies in those recovered from it suggest it is pretty much like every other respiratory virus we have ever seen, and with a significantly lower case fatality rate (CFR) than many others that we have already beaten.

    The current efforts are lunacy. If it were theoretically possible to make, say, the United States COVID-free, then its borders would have to remain closed to all travelers, including commercial drivers and aircraft crews, until the world was COVID-free.

    It would make much more sense to return to our normal lives and observe the sensible precautions we take to avoid catching a cold, such as washing your hands and sneezing into your elbow, or staying home if you are sick. It would spread like crazy, but that’s what it exists to do, and we would quickly reach herd immunity.

  4. Jim Yost says

    Coronamania Quotes – Regarding mentally and morally deranged hypocrites like Dr. Falsie and Bill Gates and people in power who they control (or who control them), their cockamamie face diaper mandates, ‘Lockdowns,’ vaccines, social distancing, etc. and the ever growing public outcry against them and their worthless agendas:

    “Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed.” Isaiah 10:1 in the King James Version
    “Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.” Thomas Carlyle
    “The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.” Frederick Douglass
    “Any general loathing of a gang or sect usually has some sound basis in instinct.” Ezra Pound
    “Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.” Henry David Thoreau
    “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” Henry David Thoreau
    “It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.” Alexander Lukashenko
    “They will create the virus themselves and will sell you the antidote.” Muammar al Gaddafi
    “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic.” John F. Kennedy.
    “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.” Joseph Goebbels (Director of Hitler’s ministry of propaganda)
    “It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.” Eric Hoffer
    “Those who fervently seek the annihilation of others are really driven by the longing for self-annihilation.” Emile Durkheim
    “All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries and credulities of mankind.” Henry Ward Beecher 
    “If all else fails, immorality can always be assured by spectacular error.” John Kenneth Galbraith
    “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.” Frederick Douglass
    “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” Frederick Douglass
    “The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a worldwide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the decade.” Hannah Arendt, 1969 
    “The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is by human beings who refuse to be persons.” Hannah Arendt
    “Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is rotten to the core.” Hannah Arendt
    “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity are still the last guarantee of their loyalty.” Hannah Arendt
    “Before man’s leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of men who can fabricate it.” Hannah Arendt
    “Love by its very nature is unworldly, and it is for this reason, rather than its rarity, that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical forces.” Hannah Arendt 
    “Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.” Arthur Schopenhauer
    “If you give someone power, they’re going to use it.” Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
    “Force does not constitute right… obedience is due only to legitimate powers.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    “Dressed in the lion’s skin the ass spread terror far and wide.” Jean de La Fontaine
    “Force may make hypocrites, but it can never make converts.” William Penn
    “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” William Penn
    “Let the people think they govern, and they will be governed.” William Penn
    “Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.” Murphy (from Murphy’s Laws)
    “It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.” Murphy.
    “If you build a system that a fool can use, only a fool will use it.” Murphy
    “The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.” Nikola Tesla
    “The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment. The Law of God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide. The wicked watcheth the righteous and seeketh to slay him. The Lord will not leave him in his hand, nor condemn him when he is judged. Wait on the Lord and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land. I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and lo, he was not: Yea, I sought him but he could not be found.” Psalm 37:30-36 in the King James Version.

  5. BADGER BADGERISM says

    the NARRATIVE | Zer0 points

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