On April 10th, 2023, Joe Biden declared unconditional surrender in the face of the COVID pandemic. He has decreed the end of the public health emergency and declared defeat. No terms were negotiated, no concessions extracted from our invisible invader, no constraints placed on its bloodlust. The virus now has free reign to slaughter and disable the residents of its officially-recognized territory. We have, at the state’s acquiescence, been conquered.
In truth, this defeat has been years in the making. When SARS-CoV-2 first emerged, it shook the world’s public health systems from their slumber. Scrambling to adjust to the calamity of a novel virus that is capable of spreading through the air, transmitting in disguise, and wreaking havoc on its victims, these institutions quickly settled on a policy of collaboration with the invader. They offered us only half-truths and false hope, smothered all talk of its true capabilities, ignored the pleading of experts, and began working on a campaign to pacify, rather than protect the masses.
Under the reign of the first President-Collaborator, we saw the excess deaths of over 500,000 Americans. Seeing the political opportunity presented by Donald Trump’s dismissal of the carnage, Biden’s team began hammering home the message that these deaths were on Trump’s head — a completely true assessment. He pledged to “follow the science” and end the pandemic, not by wishing it away, but through a coordinated plan of attack. Yet, from the moment Biden assumed office, he immediately began reproducing Trump’s exact failed strategy. What “science” would ever recommend a policy of mass infection? The only difference between the two administrations was the presence of vaccines — vaccines which, far from ending the pandemic, only ameliorated some of the harshest outcomes of acute infection. This was the only weapon employed by the Biden administration, which began openly telegraphing its intent to draw down all other half-baked pandemic protections instituted by the prior administration.
Biden and his political allies trumpeted every failure as a new “victory”: “We have gotten America back to work! Classrooms are full once more! Fresh air smells sweeter without a mask!” Every policy of forced infection met with adulation, relief, and death. Since the beginning of the “Great Unmasking,” the U.S. has racked up a further 750,000 excess deaths. Millions more have contracted Long COVID. Society has become utterly inhospitable for those with weakened immune systems, with many more joining their ranks every day. Medical leave and early retirement has skyrocketed, with an estimated billion days of lost labor since the start of the viral assault. Every day, that number only grows. Workers in the most tenuous economic positions teeter over the edge every day. How many more lives will be lost, how many more will be disabled, how many more communities will be ravaged, now that the virus has been declared the victor?
With the end of the public health emergency comes the end of any state-coordinated resistance. Uninsured testing is over. Surveillance of new cases, variants, and deaths is over. Economic safety nets are over. Public awareness and caution is over. Those few who refuse to lay down and accept this mass death are labeled scurrilous, melodramatic, mentally unwell fearmongers. Those who seek treatment or accommodation for their chronic conditions are gaslit and abandoned by the healthcare system. It is far from a new story, but it is now a common one.
As the state now lays down its arms and attempts to hail the bloodthirsty conqueror as “the new normal,” the duty now falls to us to defend ourselves. It is incumbent on all who stand opposed to injustice and pointless death to regiment our defiance. Like the resistance movements in Nazi-occupied territories, we cannot allow ourselves to submit to despondence in the face of a vicious juggernaut aided by a collaborationist government. If we cannot drive the virus into extinction ourselves, we can at least keep it out of our communities and organizations. Our weapons in this fight are as follows:
- Virtual meetings at every available opportunity (an obvious measure for inclusivity, regardless of the ongoing pandemic)
- Tightly-sealed respirators (cloth and surgical masks provide less protection, but are preferable to nothing) at all times in public spaces
- Ventilated and HEPA-filtered indoor air
- Frequent PCR testing, even when asymptomatic
- Immediate reporting of suspected or confirmed cases
- Isolation and rest when infected until you are fully recovered (this may take much longer than the CDC’s pathetic recommendation of 5 days)
- Abstention from gatherings which require attendees to be unmasked (restaurants, bars, events lasting long enough to require food and water breaks).
Organizations might find it useful to integrate the language in this document into their bylaws. COVID protection guidelines should be the explicit, enforced policy of our organizations. Do not succumb to the lure of “convenience”; it is far more inconvenient to contract a disease that can — vaccinated or not — leave you bedridden for weeks, give you a chronic, debilitating condition, leave you vulnerable to future infections, or kill you. We know that this won’t be easy. Jobs won’t give us the time off. The constant stream of fear being pumped into the atmosphere about masks means that you may very well be accosted by angry, confused people in the street. The government does not have our backs. The government has left us to die. That’s why we need, more than ever, to look out for each other, to organize and demand that our places of employment take proper precautions, that we are given time off when we need to isolate, and that guidelines be followed.
The state was never with us. We survive by our own hands.
