By JOHN NOLTE – 1 Nov 2022 – for Breitbart.news

My cmnt: Please see the Atlantic article below this one and the John Lewis funeral hypocrisy below that one.

Our COVID oppressors at the far-left Atlantic are now begging for a COVID amnesty in the wake of all their anti-science COVID oppression.

That’s not going to happen.

Ever.

First, never forget the Atlantic is owned by this fascist who did this while you and I weren’t allowed to visit our relatives in hospitals or nursing homes or attend funerals.

Because I’ve needed both, I’m a big fan of forgiveness and second chances. Before that can happen, however, there must first be an admission of wrongdoing, an apology, accountability, and repentance.

We’re seeing nothing even close to that from our COVID oppressors. Instead, all we see is lying and gaslighting. The best example is Dr. Anthony Fauci — the COVID opressor’s tin idol — running around saying, Who me? I didn’t call for lockdowns. I didn’t call for school closures.

The thrust of the dishonest Atlantic piece is pure lies: “We didn’t know” what we didn’t know at the time.

In April 2020, with nothing else to do, my family took an enormous number of hikes. We all wore cloth masks that I had made myself. We had a family hand signal, which the person in the front would use if someone was approaching on the trail and we needed to put on our masks.  Once, when another child got too close to my then-4-year-old son on a bridge, he yelled at her “SOCIAL DISTANCING!”

These precautions were totally misguided. In April 2020, no one got the coronavirus from passing someone else hiking. Outdoor transmission was vanishingly rare. Our cloth masks made out of old bandanas wouldn’t have done anything, anyway. But the thing is: We didn’t know.

Okay, but here is what you did know on day one…

You did know… The elderly were most at risk, and yet you still flooded nursing homes with infected COVID patients and then aided and abetted the cover up.

You did know… The risk of catching the China Flu was the same in a big box store or a small business. You still closed and bankrupted small businesses.

You did know… Everyday American had to watch their loved ones buried via Zoom, and then you attended the funeral for John Lewis.

You did know… The risk to children was minimal, and you still closed schools and practiced the cruelty of forcing crying and confused toddlers into masks.

You did know… People legally traveling to America were as capable of spreading infection as those illegally entering America. Yet, you still refused to stop illegal immigration.

You did know… That while we were shamed, ridiculed, fined, punished, and bankrupted for not following your fascist rules, that one left-wing COVID oppressor after another — including Fauci, Nancy Pelosi, Chris Cuomo, Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Muriel Bowser, the United Nations  — proved they knew those rules were unnecessary by personally violating them.

You did know… Every gathering came with the same risk of infection. Yet, you cheered and joined Black Lives Matter and Antifa “gatherings,” while condemning any gathering of Trump supporters or the Faithful.

You did know… You declared liquor stores “necessary” while locking Churches and Synagogues.

You did know… It was as safe to buy vegetables as vegetable seeds. Yet you made seeds off limits.

You did know… It was unconstitutional for anyone outside of state legislatures to alter voting rules. Yet you did so anyway.

You did know… There was zero proof the vaccine stopped the spread of infection or prevented anyone from becoming infected. Yet you lied and said it did to justify firing, fining, ridiculing, harassing, dehumanizing, bullying, and discriminating.

You did know… Every human life is worthy. Yet you still laughed at those of us who died, wished us dead, and threatened violence against us.

No.

There will be no amnesty before there is accountability for the savages who forced our loved ones to die alone.

David Perruzza, owner of Pitchers bar, stands for a portrait behind signs requiring proof of Covid-19 vaccination in Washington, DC, on January 23, 2022. (STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty)

There will be no forgiveness before there’s a reckoning for the mercenary liars who abused our elderly and children.

There will be no moving on before there’s justice for those who were bankrupted, fined, jailed, mourned alone, forced into lonely despair, and stripped of youth’s magic and irreplaceable moments.

Most of all, there will be no reprieve because you are not sorry; because given the opportunity, you will do it all over again; because you are vicious, heartless, mercenary, politically-driven bullies only asking for amnesty so you can catch us off guard the next time. 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here

Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty

We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.

By Emily Oster – for The Atlantic – Oct 31, 2022

In April 2020, with nothing else to do, my family took an enormous number of hikes. We all wore cloth masks that I had made myself. We had a family hand signal, which the person in the front would use if someone was approaching on the trail and we needed to put on our masks.  Once, when another child got too close to my then-4-year-old son on a bridge, he yelled at her “SOCIAL DISTANCING!”

These precautions were totally misguided. In April 2020, no one got the coronavirus from passing someone else hiking. Outdoor transmission was vanishingly rare. Our cloth masks made out of old bandanas wouldn’t have done anything, anyway. But the thing is: We didn’t know.

I have been reflecting on this lack of knowledge thanks to a class I’m co-teaching at Brown University on COVID. We’ve spent several lectures reliving the first year of the pandemic, discussing the many important choices we had to make under conditions of tremendous uncertainty.

Some of these choices turned out better than others. To take an example close to my own work, there is an emerging (if not universal) consensus that schools in the U.S. were closed for too long: The health risks of in-school spread were relatively low, whereas the costs to students’ well-being and educational progress were high. The latest figures on learning loss are alarming.  But in spring and summer 2020, we had only glimmers of information. Reasonable people—people who cared about children and teachers—advocated on both sides of the reopening debate.

Derek Thompson: School closures were a failed policy

Another example: When the vaccines came out, we lacked definitive data on the relative efficacies of the Johnson & Johnson shot versus the mRNA options from Pfizer and Moderna. The mRNA vaccines have won out. But at the time, many people in public health were either neutral or expressed a J&J preference. This misstep wasn’t nefarious. It was the result of uncertainty.

Obviously some people intended to mislead and made wildly irresponsible claims. Remember when the public-health community had to spend a lot of time and resources urging Americans not to inject themselves with bleach? That was bad. Misinformation was, and remains, a huge problem. But most errors were made by people who were working in earnest for the good of society.

Given the amount of uncertainty, almost every position was taken on every topic. And on every topic, someone was eventually proved right, and someone else was proved wrong. In some instances, the right people were right for the wrong reasons. In other instances, they had a prescient understanding of the available information.

The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat. Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts. All of this gloating and defensiveness continues to gobble up a lot of social energy and to drive the culture wars, especially on the internet. These discussions are heated, unpleasant and, ultimately, unproductive. In the face of so much uncertainty, getting something right had a hefty element of luck. And, similarly, getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing. Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward.

Read: You were right about COVID, and then you weren’t

We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation while forgiving the hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge. Los Angeles County closed its beaches in summer 2020. Ex post facto, this makes no more sense than my family’s masked hiking trips. But we need to learn from our mistakes and then let them go. We need to forgive the attacks, too. Because I thought schools should reopen and argued that kids as a group were not at high risk, I was called a “teacher killer” and a “génocidaire.” It wasn’t pleasant, but feelings were high. And I certainly don’t need to dissect and rehash that time for the rest of my days.

Moving on is crucial now, because the pandemic created many problems that we still need to solve.

Student test scores have shown historic declines, more so in math than in reading, and more so for students who were disadvantaged at the start. We need to collect data, experiment, and invest. Is high-dosage tutoring more or less cost-effective than extended school years? Why have some states recovered faster than others? We should focus on questions like these, because answering them is how we will help our children recover.

Many people have neglected their health care over the past several years. Notably, routine vaccination rates for children (for measles, pertussis, etc.) are way down. Rather than debating the role that messaging about COVID vaccines had in this decline, we need to put all our energy into bringing these rates back up. Pediatricians and public-health officials will need to work together on community outreach, and politicians will need to consider school mandates.

The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward.

Social Distancing at Funerals Is for Little People Not Named John Lewis

John Nolte – 31 Jul 2020 – for Breitbart.news

The funeral for civil rights icon John Lewis is yet another example of how our hideous elites have turned the rest of us into second class citizens.

It is also an example of what they truly believe about the risks associated with the coronavirus.

Over the past few months, we have read heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story about how the fascist, left-wing government has cruelly, and unnecessarily, either restricted the number of mourners at the funeral of a loved one or denied the right for anyone to attend funerals – including funerals for parents and spouses.

Meanwhile, many of these very same left-wing government officials are not only encouraging, championing, and even joining countless of massive Black Lives Matter and Antifa protests, look at the attendance of left-wing elites at the funeral for Lewis:

I get it. My dad wasn’t important. So it’s ok to limit his funeral to 10 people tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/9MCAlNrRK4

— brink (@brinkofill) July 30, 2020

Does that tweet not say it all?

Me, I separate John Lewis the Civil Rights Hero from John Lewis the rabidly partisan and destructive U.S. congressman. His life is a perfect example of how if the hero lives long enough, he becomes the villain.

John Lewis the Civil Rights Hero, however, is an undeniable hero. His passing is, of course, something worthy of accolades and attention. That John Lewis changed America for the better. However…

The story of John Lewis is cold comfort to those who have lost not a John Lewis they admired and respected, not a John Lewis they worked with, but a member of their family, someone who was part of their life, maybe even their whole life.

John Lewis the Civil Rights Hero fought for equal rights, for equal protection under the law, for the rule of law… How would John Lewis the Civil Rights Hero feel about everyday Americans being denied the basic human right to attend the funeral of a loved one, while the very same elites in favor of denying those human rights strut their exemption from their own rule on national television?

And like Global Warming, does this not expose what these people know to be the truth?

What I mean is, over and over and over again, we see those who claim to believe in Global Warming — or Climate Change or whatever they are calling it this week — defiantly behave as though they know the whole thing is a hoax. First off, countless millions of leftists choose to live on the same coasts they assure us will soon be flooded, including the island of Manhattan.

What’s more, Global Warmer-in-Chief Barack Obama just dropped millions on a Matha Vineyard estate just a stone’s throw from the same ocean he tells us is going to rise any day now.

And now, here are America’s left-wing elites, many of them in the age group most vulnerable to the coronavirus, gathering en masse.

Not only is the hypocrisy and elitism galling, but does this not prove they know there’s no real risk?

Would these awful people really risk their lives and gather this way (indoors!) if they believed they were risking their own lives?

Of course not.

If they truly believed there was a serious risk, could they have not found a way to honor Lewis without taking the risk?

Of course, they would.

Judge what these people believe by their actions, not words; it is there you will discover the truth of what they truly believe.

And what they truly believe is that they are America’s royalty and that their violent shock troops in Black Lives Matter and Antifa are exempt from the rule of law and that you and I are second class citizens who deserve their persecution because we dare to cling bitterly to our Bible and guns.