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Sweden & America: A Tale of Two Countries

I Looked Up What Happened When Sweden Refused To Shut Down – They Were Right, We Were Wrong

Sweden’s Stunning COVID Numbers Show We Shut Down for No Reason at All
By Josh Manning
Published August 1, 2020 at 3:39pm

Sweden did it.

The Nordic country defeated COVID-19 without seeming to break a sweat — fever-induced or otherwise. They effectively showed that Fauci & Co. were completely wrong about a shutdown being necessary to save civilization as we know it.

While that accomplishment should be lauded and their efforts duplicated around the world, the media has instead chosen to blast the Nordic state and paint a dismal picture that simply doesn’t exist.

A few examples (among many, many others) are below:

CBS News declared: “Sweden becomes an example of how not to handle COVID-19.” Similarly, the University of Virginia Health System issued a news release titled: “Lack of Lockdown Increased COVID-19 Deaths in Sweden.”

Taking a stab at prognostication, Newsweek said: “Sweden COVID-19 Deaths Linked to Failure to Lockdown as Country Prepares for Second Wave.” Always eager to bravely embrace the status quo, The New York Times ran a piece headlined: “Sweden Tries Out a New Status: Pariah State.”

Finally, Business Insider reported: “Sweden’s coronavirus death toll is now approaching zero, but experts are warning others not to hail it as a success.”

It’s all awfully prickly from a leftist media that used to adore Sweden’s welfare state. The reason for the barbed headlines is simple — Sweden dealt with COVID-19 in its own way.

The country didn’t truckle to the tyranny of over-educated, under-experienced experts. It didn’t implement authoritarian policies designed as much to break spirits as to break the pandemic. And it didn’t turn its voters into quasi-prisoners.

In other words, Sweden responded more or less the way the rest of the developed world has responded to contagious diseases until 2020, which just happens to also be President Donald Trump’s re-election year.

What were Sweden’s results?

Well, first let’s consider American results brought to us courtesy of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, the establishment media, government officials around the country and legions of panic-prone and morally superior “Karens.”

All around the country, the U.S. tried just about every imaginable combination of mask, lockdown, quarantine, curfew and closures orders — up to and including literally refusing entry across some state lines to certain fellow Americans.

The results were, well, not what anyone wanted. As of Saturday, the U.S. coronavirus death rate was 3.35 new deaths per million per day (based on a seven-day rolling average), which ranks as the 11th worst rating on the planet, according to Our World in Data.

And remember, thanks in large part to the Andrew Cuomo nursing home/death camp model of virus containment, New York state accounts for more than a fifth of all U.S. COVID-19 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins data. So we’re probably getting dragged down a little in the ratings by the disproportionate number of deaths in that state.

What else has America’s scattershot, but mostly heavy-handed, response yielded? If you read The Wall Street Journal, you will learn it led to anywhere between 30 million and 40 million lost jobs. (Some of those workers have no doubt been rehired as parts of the economy reopen, but millions more haven’t. And economists don’t really know how many of those job losses are permanent.)

So we destroyed constitutional rights, shed a few dozen million jobs and watched tens of thousands of people die. Oh, and we turned Americans against each other, all the way from the state to family levels.

But at least gross domestic product didn’t take it too hard, right? Not exactly. Commerce Department numbers released Thursday revealed that the U.S. economy shrank by a record 32.9 percent last quarter in what Bloomberg called the “sharpest downturn since at least the 1940s.”

So what about those rebellious Swedes? The ones who refused to play ball with all-knowing scientists and a ridiculously tunnel-visioned medical establishment?

While much of the rest of the developed world drowned themselves in hand sanitizer, locked ankle monitors onto their citizens and bought super cute masks on Etsy, the stalwart Swedes pressed on.

They lived their lives.

They didn’t mandate masks. They didn’t turn into NKVD-aspiring Karens, eager to publicly shame or quietly narc on neighbors, friends and family who dared bare an uncovered nostril.

Sweden defied the (dare we say) scientific consensus and has performed exceedingly well compared to the U.S.

As of Saturday, Sweden had registered 0.65 deaths per million per day, based on a seven-day rolling average.

Trading Economics projects a second-quarter GDP change of -4.2 percent (and a third-quarter growth of 2.4 percent). Depending on your preferred method of calculation, we could casually say that’s 7.8 times better than what the U.S. saw last quarter.

As of June 18, Statista forecast a 2.6 percent drop in Sweden’s employment rate for 2020. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, meanwhile, reported unemployment in the U.S. shot up 11.2 percentage points from 3.5 percent in February to 14.7 percent in April, before dropping a bit to 13.3 percent in May and 11.7 percent in June as parts of the economy reopened.

Now we’re not going to be like the dogmatic pro-mask Stasi here. There are lots of factors that impact the difference between U.S. and Swedish outcomes. We can’t say with 100 percent certainty that Sweden’s refusal to lock down saved their economy or is responsible for the miraculously low death rate.

But it would also be foolish to say that the decision didn’t play some role in the different outcome.

We can all learn two significant lessons from how COVID-19 responses have played out in the U.S. versus Sweden.

First, it is clear that the expert class in America whom the left appeals to at every turn (aren’t you sick of hearing “scientists say” or “experts find”?) is worth substantially less than we pay them.

Continue reading…

From The Western Journal, here.

Name Competition Is OVER

Jews who came here to escape Hitler were called “Hitler Zionists“.

We asked our dear readers what the Johnny-Come-Lately Olim, those who only come to escape the downfall of the American Empire, should be called.

Here were some of the responses received:

  • Antifa Zionists
  • Clinton Zionists
  • Democrat Zionists
  • Biden Zionists
  • BLM Zionists
  • White nationalist uprising Zionists
  • (For the UK:) Labour party Zionists
  • Coronavirus Zionists
  • Cuomo Zionists

P.S.,

Avigdor Peretz comments: Back then they were escaping for their lives; today’s Jews may also be leaving because of an assault on their values (the liberal leftist “Jews” have the same “values” being imposed now).

One Nursing Home Flouted the Governor. RESULT: 0 Covid Deaths

42% of All COVID-19 Deaths Occurred in Nursing Homes

By 

Mercola.com

July 11, 2020

Early on in the pandemic it became clear that older individuals were at disproportionate risk of severe COVID-19 infection and death.

According to an analysis1 conducted by the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, which included data reported by May 22, 2020, an average of 42% of all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. had occurred in nursing homes, assisted living and other long-term care facilities. This is beyond extraordinary, considering this group accounts for just 0.62% of the population.

Avik Roy, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, wrote an article2 about their findings in Forbes, pointing out that “42% could be an undercount,” since “states like New York exclude from their nursing home death tallies those who die in a hospital, even if they were originally infected in a long-term care facility.” Roy also testified before Congress June 17, 2020, about racial disparities in COVID-19 and the health care system.3

Why Do Some States Have Exaggerated Nursing Home Death Rates?

Disturbingly, some states have nursing home mortality rates that are significantly higher than the national average of 42%. Minnesota4 tops the list in this regard, with 81.4% of all COVID-19 deaths having occurred in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Ohio comes in second, with a rate of 70%.

As reported by Roy:5

“Another way to cut the data is to look at nursing home and assisted living facility deaths as a share of the population that lives in those facilities. On that basis, three states stand out in the negative direction: New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

In Massachusetts and Connecticut, COVID deaths per 10,000 nursing home and assisted living facility residents were 703 and 827, respectively. In New Jersey, nearly 10 percent of all long-term care facility residents — 954 in 10,000 — have died from the novel coronavirus.”

Thousands Have Died Unnecessarily

By and large, nursing homes are ill equipped to care for COVID-19 infected patients.6 They’re set up to care for elderly patients, whether they are generally healthy or have chronic health problems, but they’re not typically equipped to quarantine and care for people with highly infectious disease.

It’s logical to assume that comingling infected patients with noninfected ones in a nursing home would result in exaggerated death rates, as the elderly are far more prone to die from any infection, including the common cold.

March 17, 2020, Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis wrote an op-ed in STAT news,7 stating that “even some so-called mild or common-cold-type coronaviruses have been known for decades [to] have case fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect people in nursing homes.”

In other words, we should not be surprised that COVID-19 disproportionally affects older people. Most elderly are frail and have underlying health problems that make them more prone to death from any infection whatsoever. Since this is common knowledge, why did some states decide to violate federal guidelines and send COVID-19 patients back into nursing homes?

New York Governor in the Hot Seat

Democratic governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, appears to have been among the most negligent in this regard. March 25, 2020, instructions from the New York Department of Health stated nursing homes were not allowed to deny admission or readmission of a COVID-19-positive patient.

Nursing homes were even “prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.” As reported by Roy:8

“As recently as April 23, Cuomo declared9 that nursing homes ‘don’t have a right to object’ to accepting elderly patients with active COVID infections. ‘That is the rule and that is the regulation and they have to comply with that.’

Only on May 10 — after the deaths of nearly 3,000 New York residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities — did Cuomo stand down and partially rescind his order.”

Cuomo’s order seems particularly dubious considering the Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort was docked in New York City harbor. The ship, which had a 1,000-bed capacity, was barely used.10 It departed NYC on April 30, having treated just 182 patients.11

A temporary hospital facility at the Javits Convention Center was also erected to deal with predicted hospital overflow. It had a capacity of 2,500, and closed May 1, 2020, having treated just over 1,000 patients.12 With all that available surplus space equipped for infectious disease control, why were COVID-19 patients forced back into nursing homes where they would pose a clear infection risk to other high-risk patients?

Several Governors Violated Federal Guidelines

June 22, 2020, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Seema Verma condemned the actions of Cuomo and “other Democrat governors” — including Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and California Gov. Gavin Newsom — who contradicted federal guidelines for nursing homes in their own state guidance.

“Our guidance was absolutely crystal clear,” Verma said in an exclusive interview with Breitbart reporter Matthew Boyle, adding:13

“Any insinuation to the contrary is woefully mistaken at best and dishonest at worst. We put out our guidance on March 13 … It says … ‘When should a nursing home accept a resident who is diagnosed with COVID-19? …

A nursing home can accept a resident diagnosed with COVID-19 and still under transmission-based precautions,’ which means if this person is infectious you have to take precautions.

It says ‘as long as the facility can follow CDC guidance for transmission-based precautions.’ It says: ‘If a nursing home cannot, it must wait until these precautions are discontinued,’ meaning if you are not able to care for this patient — somebody is still positive and you’re not equipped to care for the patient, then you shouldn’t accept the patient into your care.

That’s really important because longstanding discharge — when you’re discharging a patient from the hospital, longstanding guidelines require when you transfer them somewhere you transfer them to a place that can take care of their needs whether they’re going home or they’re going to a nursing home or some other facility …

I just don’t think we should ever put a nursing home in a situation or a patient where we force them to take a patient they are not prepared to care for. That not only jeopardizes the patient but it jeopardizes the health and safety of every single resident in that nursing home.”

Stark Differences Between Nursing Homes

While Cuomo has tried to deflect criticism for his devastating nursing home directive, the facts seem to speak for themselves. ProPublica published an investigation14 June 16, 2020, comparing a New York nursing home that followed Cuomo’s order with one that refused, opting to follow the federal guidelines instead. The difference is stark.

According to ProPublica,15 by June 18, the Diamond Hill nursing home — which followed Cuomo’s directive — had lost 18 residents to COVID-19, thanks to lack of isolation and inadequate infection control. Half of the staff (about 50 people) and 58 patients were also sickened.

In comparison, Van Rensselaer Manor, a 320-bed nursing home located in the same county as Diamond Hill, which refused to follow the state’s directive and did not admit any patient suspected of having COVID-19, did not have a single COVID-19 death. A similar trend has been observed in other areas. As reported by ProPublica:16

“New York was the only state in the nation that barred testing of those being placed or returning to nursing homes. In the weeks that followed the March 25 order, COVID-19 tore through New York state’s nursing facilities, killing more than 6,000 people — about 6% of its more than 100,000 nursing home residents …

In Florida, where such transfers were barred, just 1.6% of 73,000 nursing home residents died of the virus. California, after initially moving toward a policy like New York’s, quickly revised it. So far, it has lost 2% of its 103,000 nursing home residents.”

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis actually took the opposite position with regard to nursing homes. Not only were hospitals not permitted to discharge COVID-19 patients into nursing homes, but all nursing home workers were also required to be screened for symptoms before entering facilities each day, and ensuring availability of personal protective equipment was prioritized.

In California, Los Angeles County nursing homes are such a hotspot, and local leaders describe the situation as a “pandemic within a pandemic.”17 There, the fact that many of the facilities are unusually large appears to be part of the problem.

They also have a higher percentage of people of color — another high-risk group — both working and residing in these facilities. Low pay, poor quality of care and inferior infection control add to the problem.

COVID-19 Primarily Spread in Health Care Settings

Overall, COVID-19 transmission appears to be rampant within our health care system in general, not just in nursing homes. As noted in “20% of COVID Patients Caught Disease at Hospital,” British data suggests 1 in 5 COVID-19 patients actually contracted the disease at the hospital, while being treated for something else.

SARS-CoV-2 is being transmitted not only between patients but also from health care workers to patients. When you add it all together, nursing homes and nosocomial infections (i.e., infections originating in or acquired from a hospital18), plus the spread from workers to family members, likely account for a vast majority of all COVID-19 deaths.

Without doubt, if nursing homes don’t start getting this right, they eventually won’t have enough patients to stay in business. Unfortunately, rather than tackle the problem head-on and implement sensible safety measures across the board, the nursing home industry is instead seeking immunity from COVID-19 related lawsuits. I discussed this in “COVID-19 and Nursing Homes: The No. 1 Place Not to Be.” According to NBC News:19

“So far at least six states have provided explicit immunity from coronavirus lawsuits for nursing homes, and six more have granted some form of immunity to health care providers, which legal experts say could likely be interpreted to include nursing homes …

Of the states that have addressed nursing home liability as a response to the outbreak, two — Massachusetts and New York — have passed laws that explicitly immunize the facilities. Governors in Connecticut, Georgia, Michigan and New Jersey have issued executive orders that immunize facilities.”

In other words, New York not only issued rules requiring COVID-19 infected patients to be admitted into nursing homes, and barred them from testing, it also granted nursing homes immunity against lawsuits.

Talk about triple injury. Clearly, New York nursing home patients have gotten ill and died due to willfully negligent directives. On top of that, families have been deprived of due process and any legal recourse for these beyond-reprehensible criminal actions.

Congressional Members Demand Answers

While several states have failed to protect their most vulnerable, New York’s actions stand out as being particularly egregious and, so far, no sound justifications have been forthcoming.

June 15, 2020, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., and four Republican members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus sent letters20 to the governors of New York, Michigan, California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, demanding answers:21

“Why did they give those orders? Why did they go against the safety guidelines that were issued from CMS? And why won’t they give us all the disclosure of the patient information that they were giving and then all of a sudden when we started discovering this they clammed up and they’re not letting the public see what these numbers really are?” Scalise said.

Curiously, Select Subcommittee Democrats not only declined to join Republicans in the proposed nursing home oversight effort, they also refused Scalise’s call to “get to the bottom of what motivated these decisions” in New York, Michigan, California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and they did not sign the letters to the governors of those states.22

In a press release by Scalise, Select Subcommittee member Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) is quoted saying:23

“Just about the worst possible thing to do is knowingly introduce coronavirus to the most vulnerable populations, yet that’s exactly what several states did by mandating nursing homes accept infected patients.

These misguided policies deserve close scrutiny, and the leaders who put them in place have a lot of tough questions to answer. Now is not the time to look the other way while placing blame for this crisis on states that are taking a measured, responsible approach to reopening our economy and protecting our communities.”

Sources and References

From LRC, here.

Mr. Mayor, Respectfully: How DID You Kill All Those Old Folks in Nursing Homes?

A Killer Encourages Us To Ask How He Did It

Governors are a repulsive breed, for sure, but New York’s Andrew Cuomo may out-repulsive them all. Corruption and arrogance ooze from every pore under his menacing aura.

Some of that was on display at “his daily press briefing” when he opined, “I hope people learn from what we have accomplished here in New York … I hope people around the country look at New York and say, ‘how did they do that? How did they go from the worst situation in terms of transmission to the best? How did they do that?’”

No doubt this megalomaniac wants people asking because he’s sure all credit will redound to him. And I admit it should: Andy’s word has been law, including decisions on who lives and who dies, since March, when the legislature handed him even more immense power than he already wielded.

So I, too, urge Americans to ask how he did it. Perhaps then the thousands of folks in nursing homes who died because of his diktats will at last find some justice.

But I’m not holding my breath. And I bet Felix Bronstein, who sent me the link, isn’t either.

2:56 pm on June 17, 2020

From LRC, here.

The Two-Tiered Corona Laws, One for Each Caste

We’re Not All In This Together

Daniel Greenfield – June 14, 2020
“We’re All In This Together,” the sappy title of one of several bad songs, has become the Ministry of Information slogan of the pandemic. You hear it while shopping for groceries at the supermarket, see it on billboards that tell you to social distance your way off the street, and in every single ad on TV.

And then, after months of being locked indoors and that we were out to kill grandma if we left the house, the same media lauded massive numbers of rioters crowding together to curse the cops.

The political fiction of the pandemic died once its administrators found a shiny new fascist object.

Mayor Bill de Blasio went from threatening the Orthodox Jewish community for holding a funeral to appearing without a mask at an anti-police rally even as much of New York City is still shut down.

“Mr. Mayor, are we in a pandemic or not? And do we have one set of rules for protesters and another for everyone else?” Hamodia, an Orthodox Jewish publication, asked De Blasio.

“When you see a nation… grappling with… 400 years of American racism, I’m sorry, that is not the same question as… the devout religious person who wants to go back to services,” he snapped back.

Governor Murphy described anti-lockdown and anti-police protests as being in “different orbits”.

Just to be clear, we’re not all in this together. And we never were. Social distancing doesn’t apply when you’re burning down cities, you can only get sick when you’re praying to G-d or burying your dead.

The lockdowns existed at the pleasure of the politicians implementing them. And when the politicians found a lefty cause that they really liked, the rioters and looters were exempted from social distancing like kids told that they can leave algebra class early on Tuesday to go protest for the environment.

Lockdowns were always for little people. Not for celebrities, politicians or political radicals.

Martha Stewart is quarantining with her driver, housekeeper, and gardener. Lefty author Neil Gaiman decided that he needed to get away from his wife and flew from New Zealand to Scotland. David Geffen, the Hollywood billionaire tycoon who helped finance Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, tweeted, “Isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus” from his $590 million yacht which boasts a staff of 55.

The riots just applied to the rioters and looters the same privilege that politicians had enjoyed.

Governor J.B. Pritzker’s wife and daughter enjoyed the lockdown far from Illinois on their equestrian estate near Palm Beach, and then headed to the 230-acre horse farm in Wisconsin that the Illinois boss had bought his wife as an anniversary present. After claiming that his family deserved privacy and was being endangered by reports of his hypocrisy, the billionaire contended that their travel was essential.

“We have a working farm. They’re there now. There are animals on that farm, that it’s an essential function to take care of animals at a farm, so that’s what they’re doing,” he argued.

He didn’t explain who was taking care of the horses once his wife and daughter went on to Wisconsin.

Then he banned a reporter who had first tweeted about it from his press conferences.

The same media which had howled in outrage when President Trump had dumped CNN and Playboy correspondents for egregious behavior, including assault, had nothing to say about a free press.

Not only was it essential for Pritzker’s family to vacation on one massive horse ranch and then another, but it was essential for Illinois workers to travel to Wisconsin to help build a huge home on the ranch. Local residents reported 20 to 30 trucks a day coming from Chicago to labor on this essential project.

“They’re operating an essential function. Construction is an essential function,” Pritzker whined.

Around the same time, Pritzker was using the slogan, “We’re all in this together” to promote his, “All in Illinois” initiative to tell everyone to stay home. “‘All in’ is our anthem and point of pride,” Pritzker had falsely claimed. “Illinoisans staying home for the good of each other and the good of our state.”

Unless it’s to work on the billionaire governor’s latest mansion. Or loot some Chicago pharmacies.

The difference between essential and non-essential was always a political fiction. The protesters who were told that their protest was non-essential were just protesting for the wrong cause. Going to church or synagogue, burying your dead, or protesting for your rights was non-essential in the same way that Pritzker’s mansion and family vacations were essential. What was essential was who was in charge.

We’re not all in this together. Ask New York Governor Cuomo’s brother Chris, who casually violated quarantine, and then starred in a fake news CNN video of leaving quarantine for his coronavirus infection. Ask Virginia’s Governor Northam who didn’t wear a mask to the beach before ordering everyone to wear masks. Ask Wisconsin’s Justice Rebecca Dallet who opposed the court decision ending the state lockdown, warning, “Wisconsinites will pay the price”, before allegedly going on a boat trip.

Ask New Mexico’s Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham who told non-essential businesses they had to shut down and then had a non-essential business open up so she could get some expensive jewelry.

Ask Professor Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College Model who was caught sneaking out for an affair or Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot who got a haircut after shutting down salons and barbershops. Or ask Dr. Richard (Rachel) Levine whose policies at the Pennsylvania Department of Health introduced coronavirus patients into nursing homes, but made sure to remove his mother from her nursing home.

Michigan’s Governor Whitmer had issued orders banning just about everything. And then a marina operator got a call from her husband about getting their boat in the water for Memorial Day.

“I am the husband to the governor; will this make a difference?” Whitmer’s husband asked.

Governor Whitmer claimed that her husband was joking and that he only traveled to a second home to rake leaves. That comes from the same tyrannical termagant whose bans had extended to yardwork.

We’re not all in this together. We never were.

The coronavirus touched Manhattan only lightly. That was partly because its residents could afford to get away.

When rentals were shut down, they bought houses elsewhere, sight unseen. About 5% of New Yorkers, over 400,000 people, left the city, abandoning trendy and wealthy neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The pandemic spread along their wake. Those who left included not only the elite, celebrities and billionaires, but the upscale wealthy liberals who keep the Democrats going nationwide.

The abandoned zip codes are also the ones that have been pouring money into left-wing politics.

When you hear another, “We’re All In This Together,” commercial, remember that it’s probably the brainchild of a Bernie Sanders supporter who found a second home in upstate New York or Vermont.

That includes the 10022 zip code, the top money source in the 2018 election cycle, where between 40% to 30% of the population vanished. A quarter of the population of 10075, the tenth biggest money zip code in the cycle, vanished. Ditto for the eleventh, twelfth and fifteenth top election cash zip codes.

The New York City cash that fueled the 2018 Democrat wave was not together in this with us.

The posh parts of Manhattan are being looted because they were abandoned. All the rich toys being stolen by thugs are there because the elites who would normally be buying them are out of town.

Lockdown culture was an elite scam. The politicians, the technocrats, and the ad geniuses who imposed and sold lockdown culture to the country weren’t living it.

The pandemic and lockdowns did not hit us all equally. The division of society into essential and non-essential workers made certain of that by protecting some jobs while eliminating others. This plague year experiment in the New Deal 2.0 replaced any kind of togetherness with a political class system.

The administrators of that system, like Pritzker and Whitmer, were never living under it.

“We’re All In This Together,” does not offer unity or togetherness. It demands compliance from us for our assigned roles. Like 1984’s slogans, it means the opposite of what it actually says. Freedom was slavery, ignorance was knowledge, and being in it together meant that none of us had any say in it.

The lockdowns weren’t driven by science, but by ideology. That’s why the rioters crowding in D.C. and NYC are immune from the coronavirus while the spring breakers in Florida were going to kill everyone.

Underneath the sappy ad-speak was a Maoist Confucianism worthy of the Little Red Book in whose Communist system the coronavirus pandemic had originated. It has largely gone unnoticed that the coronavirus slogans we hear are minor variations of those deployed in China by the Communist Party.

“Better to wear a mask than a ventilator; better to stay at home than in an ICU”, “this year a house visit, next year a grave visit”, or “stay in and don’t wander around, you have AC, television and Wi-Fi as your friends” should sound familiar. It’s not just our electronics that are made in China. So is our propaganda.

And, just as in China, the lockdown is applied unequally by a tyrannical leftist political system.

Togetherness, in our pandemic propaganda, is defined as being isolated members of an unseen collective, reinforced by slogans like #AloneTogether or “Stay Apart, Stay Together”. It means complying with directives, informing on the disobedient, and listening to the experts without asking any questions.

“We’re All In This Together” manufactures mass consent. The “We”, “All”, and “Together” represent a conformist mass in whose ranks the individual is only valued for his or her willingness to obey.

All of it, as Mary McCarthy said of a Communist hack, “is a lie, including ‘And’ and ‘The.’”

When the collective was told to stop watching Netflix and start burning and looting, the “We” went out and did it, while the rest of us who are mere individuals looked on in horror and bewilderment.

No one in the collective can or will note the radical shift from mandatory isolation to mass riots. Collectives don’t recognize that their herd impulse has changed. Life for the brainwashed is unchanging. Once there was always isolation and now there are permanent protests. Tomorrow there will be something else. But that is not a concept that the “We” are capable of embracing as a collective.

“We’re All In This Together” is a state of mindless and unquestioning conformity. And it’s un-American.

Americans are not a Communist collective: we are a nation of individuals. Our togetherness doesn’t come from the illusion of functioning as an undifferentiated mass, but of pursuing our own individual strivings for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Collectivism is a lie that conceals the humbug wizards behind the curtains, and the oligarchies that make the decisions. It tells us to set aside our own interests and needs, to become part of Zamyatin’s “We”, to stop thinking and believe the lies.

The lies keep changing.

Yesterday we were huddling in our homes in our togetherhood of apartness. Now we’re supposed to be rioting together and calling for the abolition of the police. Each false cause is replaced by another big lie. If you can see past the lies, you’re not “Together” with the “We”. You’re one of the last Americans.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center’s Front Page Magazine.