No Covid amnesty for bishops, theologians, et al., either

In her infuriating and ignobly equivocal article in The Atlantic, Let's Declare a Pandemic Amnesty, Emily Oster hides her own culpability* in lockdown matters by begging for universal amnesty, so that we can "try to work together to build back and move forward." 

"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."

We knew, Emily. And we tried to tell you. Ask yourself what happened to our voices.

"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." 

With this anodyne statement, hopefully trying to cast the "sides" as equally culpable, as if one side were not in power, silencing and harming the other, Oster fails to mention further developments warned against by honest questioners, at great cost to themselves and their reputations, that the lockdowns and shots would prove to be devastating (the real, if soft-pedaled, meaning of the quote above).

For many reasons, not least having to do with how much we let ourselves know in the future, we should not move on, despite this transparent effort from a now-spooked ruling class to impute bad motives to those they attacked and harmed, hoping to evade a reckoning.

But there's another class of experts who also must not be allowed to fade into the background. 

And that is Catholic authorities and experts who followed those in the government and the media who now say "we didn't know" -- but who at the time were obviously silencing discussion (let alone criticism).

These Catholics insisted on following calls to mask and vaccinate, using religious authority, theological arguments, and the virtue of obedience to harm persons, families, and consciences. 

This group includes various bishops' conferences, bishops, vicar generals, pastors, parish administrators, theologians, and ethicists, not to mention random pundits, columnists, and podcasters. Many are left-leaning, politically, but some are conservative and even quite traditional. 

All abdicated their duty to defend personal autonomy and bodily integrity, as well as justice and right reason. 

Astoundingly, this cohort, this unholy cabal, ratcheted up fear and shut down our churches. Oh, some of them may have not wished to go that far, but their complicity in one or more aspects of the regime undermined their discomfort.

On a matter of utter prudential judgement on medical and social matters -- the Covid response -- that required information and only then, consent, by the persons in question, these religious experts and authorities abused their position and the respect accorded to them by the helpless faithful, and presumed to make judgements about matters outside their proper sphere of providing teaching of objective principle. 

They pompously rejected or provided the pretext for rejecting religious (really, conscience) exemptions from tormented people, their brothers and sisters in Christ. (My husband Phil Lawler wrote a book about all this: Contagious Faith - affiliate link.) 

Never will I forget images of children sitting at desks, once school did reopen, swathed in plastic, masked, behind plexiglass -- for the cowardice of our moral leaders. 

Many young people missed meeting their best friend or spouse; are now drug-addicted; many committed suicide. Many families lost a loved one and did not have the opportunity to say goodbye or comfort them in their last hours. 

For these Covid fellow-travelers, too, who enabled all this, there ought to be a tribunal and a requirement for apology and reparation. I don't know what that tribunal would be. Let their consciences accuse them.

The important point I want to emphasize in this matter of "moving on" is that the harm is not all in the past. The economy is in tatters (with the fallout being borne by the truly poor, near and far away). So is the Church (ditto). 

Fathers of families still are without jobs and pay, anguished and burdened by their means of provision and protection being taken away. Mothers are still traumatized by not being heard, by giving birth wearing a mask and alone, by being kept inside with young children who needed to go outside. Children have been subjected to loss of education, friendship, and well being (including physical well being, as immune systems are weakened by lockdown). Children in some places still wear a mask. Many of us can't go to the doctor without one (though I won't wear it).

Even today, the fearful wear masks outside or while driving alone, their psyches permanently scarred. 

I can't even go through the whole list of wrongs and evils -- it's too long. And it's not over.

But anyone in the Catholic Church who went along with lockdowns, vaccine mandates, masking, and/or social (and religious!) pressure ought to be ashamed. All along, we told them how it would end. Now even the ones who tried to suppress the truth see that it's coming out. Will they too ask for amnesty without any sign of repentance? For shame.

Why doctors are afraid to write medical exemptions

 ... even in life or death cases, for masks and vaccines.

They could lose their license to practice medicine -- not lose their job, lose their license.

Watch: 

So if you were allergic to ingredients in the vaccine or had a breathing issue that prevented you from functioning with a mask, a doctor in certain states will not write you the exemption you need. 

We have to understand that mandates are a public measure that takes no account of individual needs, much less the right of each person to determine the measures he is willing to take, especially to prevent an illness he doesn't have. (For more on bodily autonomy and how vaccine mandates have worked in the past, go here.)

University of Chicago students push back

It's very heartening to read this strong statement from students at the University of Chicago: Editorial: UChicago Must End Its Booster Mandate—We Are Not Lab Rats.

Sound logic, airing of facts, and exposé of hypocrisy (doctors and scientists at UC are exempt from the mandates imposed on the students!) characterize this editorial. I urge you to read the whole thing.

I hope students everywhere use it as a template for their own resistance. 

Fr. Michael Copenhagen: "Things will get worse before they get better"

I encourage you to listen in on a conversation between Patrick Coffin and Fr. Michael Copenhagen. I have admired Father ever since I heard his address at a rally in DC. You can read a transcript here of his straightforward, compelling remarks. 

We are moral actors, as he says -- our morality springs from within, from our union with God. We are not robots who download the latest version of theologians' attempts to rationalize current medical practices. Somehow we've been maneuvered into having the notion that when "the Vatican says" such-and-such, we are off the hook for moral reasoning, that our sense of right and wrong can be outsourced. But conscience has never before been treated this way in the Church -- we have to act out of complete conformity to God's Law, having clean consciences.

In his long talk with Coffin, Fr. Copenhagen explains how cooperation, on such flimsy terms, with immorally derived medical products harms our humanity and our relationship with God -- and will lead and has already led to serious injustice that will be decried in the future. 

I particularly urge you to watch between the 37 and 42 minute marks. The need for repentance is real and his way of expressing it is so helpful for those who are wondering how this all can be happening. Until we reach the point he speaks of, through suffering -- until we are convinced that God alone is God -- we will continue in this purgative way. But if you have time for the whole discussion, I think you will find it helpful.

You can watch here on You Tube or on Facebook where the livestream first occurred.

Have vaccines always been mandated?

Just a note about this truism going around, that there is nothing unusual in mandating vaccines for 100% of the population -- in part because I think a lot of men have seized on it, and men aren't the ones to take the kids to the doctor to get their shots. Most men leave those things to their wives, and everyone is very busy and forgets how things actually were. Or perhaps we are getting used to being told what the past was like, instead of consulting our own memories and experience.

I am here to tell you that it is not true. Not everyone got all the shots -- and brace yourself: the doctor did recommend shots but also answered questions, and the assumption was that informed consent was the basis for proceeding. If mom said no, it was no.

The situation with vaccines changed quite a bit -- and not without some careful orchestration that in hindsight looks rather fishy -- around ten years ago. I don't have the time to pull out all the threads, but I will say that as the nomination process for both parties' presidential races got going, in that 2015-16 season, suddenly ridicule for "anti-vaxxers" which had been simmering came to a boil on social media (especially on Twitter); those who questioned the rising insistence on children getting every shot on the prescribed schedule were called out for being nutty leftists (which some of them undoubtedly were, far out of proportion to their numbers). 

It was odd, because most parents just went along getting most vaccines. But not all parents were getting all vaccines; many who were not at all liberal but more conservative were simply making quiet observations and deciding they didn't trust the government with their children's health (see this post -- the 60 Minutes segment from 1972 is of particular interest). And this new awareness made statists on both sides of the political spectrum go insane with the desire to impose their will in this matter, which surely they knew very little about. Most of the talking points and online rants seemed to be written by young staffers wet behind the collar and without much in the way of epidemiology credentials or for that matter, experience in taking children to the pediatrician.

That was when, as I say, things flared up (but not in a random, disorganized way) with some provocateurs on the Right calling for parents who refused to vaccinate their children to have them taken away (as one Op-Ed in USA Today screeched) and tweeting "Vaccinate your damn kids." The word had gone out and the talking-point (really, just talking-slogan) push was on. There seemed to be a larger agenda, but it was hard to pinpoint what it could be. 

All this coincided with a steep increase in something that had been going on for some time: insurance companies demanding that doctors treat patients according to their, the companies', actuarial policies rather than how we usually assume it happens, on a one-on-one medical basis. Schedules set by the manufacturers had become the norm, and people probably mostly don't realize that their physicians' medical practices had begun to take incentives from the insurance companies to vaccinate children fully and on their schedules. They were -- and are -- getting money for shots.

The first step in this effort was to say that doctors, as medical experts, not parents, knew what was best for the child. This reversed the practice in place, for the physician to inform the parent, who made the decision. It bears repeating that what was unsaid was that the doctors were being leaned on by the insurance companies, who got their information from the vaccine manufacturers as to when the shots were to be given and how often.

The next step is important for you to understand. It was for the state to begin taking the decision-making process away from doctors; the next few years saw an increase in initiatives to move the whole vaccination program over to the states' boards of health; to put bureaucrats, not doctors, and certainly not parents, in charge. Here in Massachusetts, citizens have had to beat back on a regular basis a bill to give these board of health bureaucrats the power to vaccinate minors (not defined) without parental consent or even knowledge.

But back when mom took baby into the pediatrician's office, there was a discussion between them about many factors regarding the little one's care. And this is what I really hope sticks in your mind, although I suppose it's quixotic of me to think that a little post here would have any effect on the banding-about of these talking points: it really did happen. The doctor really did explain what the shot was, although in my memory there was never a discussion about possible side effects, apart from being told to expect a fever and a sore arm. And there was never any inquiry into harm that came afterwards, but observation is what started to make some more wary.

Take it from me, though. It's hard to believe, but there was a time when informed consent really was a thing. Remember too that there were far fewer vaccines. This chart leaves out the main years that my children were going to the doctor's office under my supervision, but you get the idea.

Even though, as I look back, I see that the drug companies were covering up harms they were causing, the alert parent had a choice. And the vaccines that were mandated were still few. The others were recommended. (By the way, as far as I know, although each individual vaccine has been tested extensively, they have never been tested all together -- but that is how they are given, with the prospect of a massive "one dose" shot containing all the vaccines the child supposedly needs at a given point.)

I personally had discussions with my children's pediatrician over which ones to take and which ones to leave. I had a say about the schedule. I wasn't berated if I chose to wait or to leave one or more off. It was a decision that I made and he respected.

He then filled out a card saying which ones my child had received. And that was that. Although we did homeschool, we didn't start out doing so. Some of our kids went to public school and some to private school. The respective school accepted the record provided. Had there been any sort of dispute, I could have invoked a religious exemption, which probably should have been called a medical freedom exemption, but who was to know that the state would become wedded in this way to the giant corporations that now run our medical institutions. Well, I suppose we should have known...

It's just not honest to compare Covid vaccine mandates with those of the past (and for that matter, to compare previous vaccines to the substance given for Covid, which is only called a vaccine because the definition has been changed to suit it -- changed within the past few months). For starters, consider that the vast majority of adults do not receive any boosters for their childhood vaccines (barring an injury that might lead to a tetanus shot). So the truth is that most adults walk around lacking immunization, natural or otherwise, for all these supposedly dire diseases. Even tuberculosis, a highly contagious and deadly disease, is not normally vaccinated for. If you go to the ER, no one is going to require that you have a TB vaccination. I cannot recall anyone ever asking me about my vaccination status (other than that tetanus shot).

Until very recently, the state acknowledged the ultimate right of the parent to decide. That's what religious exemptions are all about, but it usually didn't get to that point. The doctor might have imperiously indicated what was going to happen (or the system might just have rolled along), but if the parent (usually the mother) said something or asked a question, he knew that informed consent required that he give way. Don't get me wrong: I don't think many did resist the system. But those who did (and I was one in a moderate, and then more strict, way) really didn't come up against a lot of opposition. 

I just don't want anyone to think that "we've always had these mandates" -- i.e. losing our jobs and even care at a hospital over vaccine status -- because that is just not true.

Resist the Covid Pass

"What's the big deal? Yes, there's Covid panic -- don't respond with vaccine panic!"

This is what I have seen some say. But is it panic to see the Covid vaccines as different and representing a qualitative change in how the state uses its power over citizens?

Please read this article: Covid Pass in Lithuania and throughout Europe: How recent vaccine mandate laws have upended my family's life

We live in the small European country of Lithuania. In the last few months, strict Covid Pass restrictions have been introduced which represent a fundamental transformation in society.

... But as I'll explain, it's not just Lithuania. Covid Pass restrictions are being imposed throughout Europe. By my count, at least 14 European countries now have different types of domestic restrictions based on the Covid Pass. And every country has travel restrictions within Europe based on the Covid Pass.

Please click and read -- there are many pictures of life there. Everyone masked. Police at the entrances to malls. People needing to scan their pass in for the least activity. Just a dystopian, ugly, anomic world for no reason. Don't believe me? Search your own state's health dashboard and see for yourself: what the ICU numbers are, how many beds are available (keeping in mind that hospitals aim to make money and want to be at near-capacity at all times, and lack the flexibility to add more beds when needed, due to government regulations), what the "cases" (by which they mean positive tests) are. News media don't even mention Covid death numbers anymore, except the random one for the sake of ratcheting up the fear. However, hospitalizations and deaths from the vaccines themselves are kept quiet.

Why doesn't the author just get the vaccine already? 

My wife and I are not opposed to Covid vaccinations. Vaccination can be beneficial for many people. It's a personal medical decision which should be made by each individual in consultation with their doctor.

What we strongly oppose are vaccine mandates. The government should not force us to undergo a medical treatment against our will. Our rights as citizens should not be restricted because we do not undergo this medical treatment.

Medical exemptions: only allergies

We oppose the Opportunity Pass out of principle. We believe that Covid-vaccine mandates are wrong in all circumstances.

But in our own case, we have a further issue.

My wife has a long-term progressive disease. Based on data from both the vaccine trials and countries which publish real-world side-effect statistics, we are worried that the vaccine could trigger serious side effects in the short-term, or worsen her condition in the long-term.

No one should be required to be injected with a substance to participate in society. People can evaluate relative risk for themselves. Never in the history of the world have healthy people been restricted this way, indefinitely.

The author of the article, Gluboco Lietuva, tweeted: 

Government approval to exist in society. Banishment based on arbitrary rules. Recording of all people's movements. 

That’s not health; it’s control and power.

This new authoritarian control will only grow to ban ever more behavior as bureaucrats push to expand their power. It's not panic to want to resist our country becoming Lithuania. It's not panic to resist the US becoming Australia -- to acquiesce to the bureaucratic state irrationally insisting that there never be another Covid case again, or else we lose our freedom. 

The mandates are wrong and must be opposed.