In the early days of the pandemic, when we didn’t have much information, partisan differences in concern about Covid were relatively small. A Gallup poll from February of 2020 found that precisely 35% of U.S. conservatives and 35% of liberals were worried about the pandemic.
Since then, a massive partisan gap has opened up, with Democrats being far more concerned than Republicans. This gap persists to the present day.
While being greatly concerned about the disease was not unreasonable in the spring of 2020, when few people had immunity and excess mortality was high, the situation we face now is dramatically different. All adults have been offered a vaccine, and a significant fraction of the population has natural immunity.
More and more people can see it’s past time we got back to normal. Even one-time ‘Zero Covid’ advocates like Devi Sridhar admit the virus has been “defanged”. But in the U.S., Democrats can’t seem to let Covid go.
Their refusal to face reality is laid bare in two recent surveys: one by Morning Consult, which is summarised in the New York Times; one a join venture of Rasmussen Reports and the Heartland Institute.
Let’s take each one in turn. Here are two headline results from the first survey. Remember, the data were collected in January of this year – mere weeks ago.
83% of Democrats are still concerned about their children getting sick from Covid at school. 83%! This is despite the fact that Covid poses almost no risk to children; indeed, those aged 5–14 are more likely to die in a car accident on their way to school.
As a result of these ungrounded fears, a shocking 65% of Democrats want to go back to remote learning – something that has demonstrably harmed kids’ education, while yielding almost no benefit in terms of reduced transmission.
What about the second survey? Respondents were asked a series of questions about measures that could be taken against the unvaccinated. The results make for alarming reading indeed.
59% of Democrats would support a policy of confining unvaccinated people in their homes “at all times, except for emergencies”. 48% would support a policy to “fine or imprison” those who publicly question the vaccines’ efficacy. And 45% would support a policy of requiring unvaccinated people to live in “designated facilities or locations”.
Of course, polls can’t always be trusted. Yet as Philippe Lemoine observed, “even if we divide each number by 2, this is still completely insane…” Not least because the vaccines, as we’ve known for some time now, don’t stop transmission.
Note: I’m not claiming that Democrats are uniquely irrational; Republicans have plenty of biases and misconceptions of their own. But if after two years, you still don’t get that Covid isn’t a threat to children, I don’t really know what to say.
And make no mistake: what Democrats believe matters. They currently control the White House (in the world’s ‘most powerful country’), and remain disproportionately represented in U.S media and academia, including public health. Once Democrats let Covid go, the rest of us can too.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
I am from neither the left or the right.
I am from the bottom and seeking revenge on those at the top.
You’ll like this. https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/horseshoe-theory-and-the-politics
interesting, not read that before but it makes perfect sense. Hitler would love AOC?!!
I am from the left and I want revenge on the liars, incompetents and idiots who bought this madness upon us, it doesn’t matter from which part of the political spectrum they come from.
That is true – but equally it is the case that Covidian bedwetting is more prevalent on the left in most countries.
Agreed.
They can’t let go of Trump or climate change either. So no real surprise here.
The small minded left.
‘Lockdowns are so good for people, lets them know who’s boss. Serves people right. They don’t know what’s good for them, need to be told. They’d be fine if only they just FOLLOWED THE RULES’
Interesting and ironic. The possibilities for “online learning” to be used as an uncontrollable source of propaganda and influence, for both Left and Right, are enormous. In-person teaching at least implies a degree of personal responsibility, accountability and control, however small.
As educational material becomes more and more a commodity, produced at expense to the end-user, by Big Tech, and reflecting the narrow ideas and objectives of the few, it seems that pupils will become ever more indoctrinated and unable to think for themselves.
There’s lots of leeway for more Scopes Monkey Trials to follow, as well as other shenanigans and racial issues.
Agreed. But education has always been (and should always be) a commodity (common to all, but not free). Education is a privilege, not a right.
And a person is always free to teach themselves. Like wot I done. “Just get the book,” my dad always told me.
Downvoters care to elaborate?
A teacher, I would bet.
In using the term “commodity”, I was seeking to describe the actual materials, once printed textbooks etc., but now digital stuff, put together by companies both large and small, and which is far more readily “adapted” to rewriting and change to suit a particular line. These materials are then sold on to schools etc. for considerable profit.
An analogy is this. My printed History textbook says, for example, that Cromwell was bad because he “cancelled” Christmas and other things considered frivolities. If I wanted to subvert that analysis, because I’m in favour of Christmas lockdowns and against Demon Drink, it would be a considerable and expensive job to reprint and distribute the paper book, for which I would need payment. However, to rewrite the digital History textbook to reflect my new-found Puritanism is short work, easily disseminated, and more or less cost-free to me and the intended readership, if I wanted it so.
This digital “twisting” is the meat and gravy of the “social” and other media, including print publications produced from computer texts and typesetting.
On your final paragraph, I agree entirely. My principal source of General Knowledge was my grandfather’s tenth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, a century old this year, but it’s not too useful for more contemporary subjects.
Interestingly, though, much of the pushback against CRT in the states started during the lockdown when parents were able to actually observe what nonsense their children were being fed at school.
Don’t believe in any polls. They are there to lead public opinion, NOT reflect it.
Too true, too true.
The premise of this article matches all my experience, however. People calling themselves left/socialist/whatever are always goin on bout how caring they are but when it comes down to it they’re often just rather vindictive and authoritarian.
And risk averse, which is what this covid response has really reflected. The belief a government can protect from hardship and even death. Infantilism, in other words.
People were warned for decades that a paternalistic government would eventually create a large number of people who think like adolescents and would look to authority figures to provide support. Well, here we are.
Worth looking at the Portuguese election results too. Fearmongering lefties won handsomely. We need to keep in mind that people on the left are not only very stupid, they are also very gullible, and they have a profound learning disability. They cannot learn. if they could learn they obviously wouldn’t be left wingers, but the problem manifests itself daily in many small ways – they do not know from day to day what they believe, because they simply wait to be told by their betters, the mass media and the autocue readers what is true on any particular day. The media tells them their children will die and these empty-headed squawkers simply accept it. Science and facts and what they see with their own eyes doesn’t matter.
Fear is the mind killer, in other words.
Where Covid is concerned, the modern left will be like those Japanese soldiers still hiding out in the jungle ‘fighting’ WW2 30 years after it had ended.
Or the Jews in the camps who became capos. Much more sadistic than the German guards, even the Gestapo.
The Democrats are insane, but it’s also pretty damn frightening that 49% of Republicans are still worried about their children getting the lurgy in school. What part of “zero risk to children” do people not understand?
Swimming against the current is uncomfortable. The attraction of the left is the endless litany of easy causes with built-in social credit.
It’s almost as though the entire Democrat/progressive/left/woke crowd have lost their freaking minds. No matter what the issue, they get it wrong, and then have a massive freakout out about it. You know how they go on about there is no Planet B? What a pity, we could shove all the woke onto that planet and cast them adrift, where they can set about creating their woke utopia and the rest of us can get on with life.
Mars is being readied for them.
Brilliant, on the first rocket can be Elon, Greta, Harry and Meghan. Just for laughs I’d put Adele on it too. Bye now!
I think Elon seems to have gone to the ‘red’ side.
..and Harry and Meghan don’t need to be sent into the vacuum of space, they already live in California
The way I see it, they don’t subscribe so much to that actual policies as to the authoritarian approach.
In their minds they know what is best and want it done, by force if necessary. Be it covid, climate, Trump, their ideas about sexes, their ideas about race. Whatever it is.
The point is they are right, it has to be their way and they will get their way by force if necessary.
Authoritarians.
Just another useful tool of Communism in action.
48% would support a policy to “fine or imprison” those who publicly question the vaccines’ efficacy.
Such people have learned nothing from history. Such views are the complete antithesis of a free society.
Just substitute publicly questioning the vaccines’ efficacy with the following: we should fine or imprison those who publicly question:
The superiority of the Aryan race.
Phrenology.
Lysenkoist genetics.
Manifest destiny.
The miasma theory of disease.
Transhumanism.
The divine right of kings.
The infallibility of the Pope.
Free market economics.
Socialism.
Capitalism.
Etc, etc. If Democrats espouse the criminalization of those who don’t agree with their policies, or their reading of the data, they could very well end up on the receiving end of such totalitarianism when there is a change of government and narrative.
These people seem to believe pretty strongly in miasmas as far as I can make out, what else is the idea of “structural racism” but a miasma belief dressed up in jargon? Their attitude to the rona isn’t much different.
Good point. They can’t get into specifics because the moment they do their ideas start crumbling. They operate at the highest level, in the realm of feelings and good intentions, high above the point where one has to start defining things precisely and consider trade offs.
Not only are we constantly being bombarded by this madness – like being pelted by an out of control manure-spreading machine – but we must keep a civil tongue in our heads at the same time
I say madness, and I now fully think that it is actual madness.
In a Pharmocracy questioning the efficacy of any drug is treason.
If you dispute phrenology you need your head examined,
Wha wha wha whaaa ….
Encore, encore!
I had water on the brain, but a tap on the head cured it.
But they clearly don’t want a free society. They want a Statist collective where everybody is taken care of – by which I mean ordered around – from cradle to grave.
Political “Liberals” are practical despots now.
The two minute hate has been running relentlessly for nearly a year now. It’s not that surprising that they morons are frothing at the mouth and baying for blood. The best thing that we can hope for is that their hatred gets pivoted towards their masters. It could only take the flap of a butterfly’s wing to cause a long overdue storm.
My favourite saying someone put on this site a few weeks ago was, ‘funny how obedient people consider themselves virtuous, rather than cowardly’. So true in this context. The government says put on a mask and keep your kid away from school, middle class busy-bodies not only go for it but show off about it and shame anyone else who questions such nonsense. It’s nothing to do with politics but personality types, 90% are green i.e. sheep. Thank god for us red and yellow’s!
The authoritarian mindset. I’m right and whoever disagrees with me is evil, must be shamed and if necessary eliminated.
Actually, it is closer to this: I’m doing as I’m told, which makes me feel good, but I have doubts. Your disobedience triggers my doubts. This makes me uncomfortable. By condemning you I stave off the discomfort while winning social points from my betters.
This is an excellent read. It should be a primer for our so-called medical experts.
Worth your time.
https://bakerstreetrising.home.blog/2021/02/15/covax-through-the-looking-glass-part-4/
What has clearly bubbled up to the surface over the last 2 years is the number of authoritarians that live among us.
They must have been keeping quiet all the time that authoritarianism was frowned upon. But now that authoritarian conduct has become socially acceptable – censorship, mandates, shaming and so on – it’s stunning how many people actually love it.
It speaks volumes about the importance of dynamics within society. Those of us who value freedom really need to speak up, start making ourselves heard and fight for free values or the authoritarians are going to complete their takeover of society.
There are lots of anti-authoritarians on the left too, it’s just that 30 years of Kinnock/Blair/Starmer sucking up to global capital has forced such people out of the Labour party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism
They need to unite with the ‘right’ in the battle against dictatorship, sorry’ authoritarianism.
Ken Livingstone has applied to join the Green Party, I see.
I am sure you’re right. The old left – right dichotomy has lost much of its meaning.
Correct, the real dividing line now is individuality versus collectivism. Sweet, mindless collectivism.
Exactly. Left or Right is meaningless. Freedom or slavery is where it’s at.
The die was cast early on when Trump was luke warm on the severity of Covid.
The liberal/left have a knee jerk reaction against anything Trump says and supported the opposite view regardless of the “real” science.
I think the problem isn’t as simple as left versus right, as many of the comments below show.
I think it is all about Prof Desmet’s theory about the lack of social bonds. People who want the pandemic to continue are I think by and large the “citizens of nowhere”. People who don’t really like the country they live in, feel alienated from people like themselves, don’t have a belief system like religion to support them, perhaps have very loose family relationships, and generally aren’t very grounded.
COVID gave these people a group identity, a purpose, social contact, a feeling of belonging, something to believe in. And seeing it all disappear would be a kind of psychological death for them.
There may be a tendency for people on the left to be more like this than people on the right (the left being more collectivist and authoritarian in general and the right being more individualist and freedom loving) but it’s more complicated than that I think.
Let me tell you, I think you are way off the mark with this.
As a citizen of nowhere who mixes a lot with other citizens of nowhere, my personal experience is that they are people who above all are pretty independent, have a very ‘live and let live’ mentality and almost without exception think masks, mandates, jabs and the whole thing is a load of balls.
The citizens of nowhere label is a monstrosity which that pillar of mediocrity Theresa May came up with for mendacious, political purposes. It means nothing and says nothing about people who don’t feel a strong attachment to the nation state.
Citizens of nowhere don’t need covid to give them a group identity. They are almost by definition people that feel quite comfortable not being part of a group.
I would say stronger things, but I suspect your comments come from not knowing any better rather than a bad place.
What it gives them is permission to hate a minirity.
Well being a Democratic these days is just a cover for their real political leanings i.e. Socialist / Communist. Or the latest Marxist incarnation ‘Woke’.
“While being greatly concerned about the disease was not unreasonable in the spring of 2020, when few people had immunity and excess mortality was high“
This is the position that people who caved in to panic initially but later recovered want to have recorded as the Official Truth history.
But it’s nonsense. There was never a credible suggestion of a “high” mortality rate from covid. Lots of panicky speculation and “modelling” nonsense, but ot was clear from the early numbers that it was basically a jumped up flu. The best that could be said was that it might have resulted in health services being very busy for a while.
So true.
It’s become almost impossible not to encounter a statement about the covid crisis that doesn’t have several misconceptions baked in. And it’s exhausting having to push back on every single one every single time.
“Once Democrats let Covid go, the rest of us can too.”
Or lose power. Either or.
These days, the anxious are predominantly on the left. It’s interesting because it hasn’t always been the case. The left used to champion freedom of speech and civil liberties in general. If Mary Whitehouse were active today, she’d be on the left advocating for their brand of censorship rather than being on the right.
Dependent collectivist followers like to be taken care of, grouped together, and told what to do? Gasps of surprise.
If you want to learn about US Democrats, take a look at their news outlets and journalists. This link brings you to a video which at the 1:02:55 mark shows a clip from the All In with Chris Hayes news show on MSNBC.
Brandy Zadrozny, an NBC News “journalist” that specialises in political radicalization, extremism and disinformation on the Internet, speaks with Chris Hayes in this clip. As does Kara Voght, a politics reporter at Rolling Stone.
If you wanted to resurrect a modern-day version of The Three Stooges, these three cretins would be the perfect template.
It’s actually worth spending a few minutes listening to these three imbeciles. Chris Hayes has nauseating twat written all over him. Brandy Zadrozny, though, really takes the biscuit. You should hear the way she describes a podcaster she’s unhappy with.
When this NBC News “journalist” talks about this podcaster, the spiteful jealousy actually drips off her. Her envy is so palpable that you could almost reach out and grab it. I’d bet my right arm if Zadrozny took an IQ test she’d score under 90.
If you were making a satire on news shows, actors and actresses that could mimic Chris Hayes, Brandy Zadrozny and Kara Voght would fit the bill perfectly, without any need for rehearsals.
Nutcase news shows like this have a big audience among Democrats in the US. Anyone that can take this type of tripe seriously has serious cognitive problems.
I believe the US will be engulfed in civil war before the end of this decade. The rot there is way too deep and ingrained for there to be any other outcome.
Thankfully none of the MSNBC or CNN shows have a ‘big’ audience any more, even amongst Dems. In fact most of them barely register above 1m viewers in a country of 330m.
Ha ha, great link. It is infantile to say the least. Selling their souls. I’m with Bigtree.
The last sentence is the key. The world will not return to anything like normality until this happens and the EU will have to be taken along as well.
Unfortunately the whole debacle was politically inspired from the beginning, partly as a anti-Trump measure. The more it looks like he might run again ( and win) in 2024, the less likely the Dems and therefore the Feds and media will let go. Irrespective of the evidence.
The half-terms may well mean the Reds regaining the Senate. If that happens Biden is even more of a dead duck than now. However Presidents who cannot get legislation through the Senate tend to take out their frustration on the rest of the world. It may mean even more draconian ‘travel restrictions’ imposed and the odd war or two ( but only with nations the US thinks it can beat, which increasingly is not many).
Anyone got any info on Trudeau’s whereabouts? Has he fled Canada yet?
This is how the Ministry of Truth cover the truckers-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60202050
Freedom Convoy: Ottawa residents ‘prisoners in own homes’
Mr Trudeau left his Ottawa home with his family over the weekend and has been staying at an undisclosed location amid security concerns.
On Monday morning, he tweeted that he had tested positive for Covid-19 but “feeling fine” and would “continue to work remotely this week while following public health guidelines”.
Jagmeet Singh, leader of the progressive New Democrats, on Monday slammed the protests as “completely wrong”, noting reports of a desecrated war memorial and harassed volunteers at a soup kitchen.
“I stand with the vast majority of Canadians who have done everything they can to stay healthy,” he said. “That’s who I’m fighting for.”
On Sunday, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson said residents “feel they’re prisoners in their own homes”.
There is no left and right anymore, just globalists (mainly lefties) and nationalists (mostly righties). Globalists. like Blair, are, IMO, the ones who seek to destroy everything that nation states have built up – their culture/history/knowledge etc – as, for some unknown reason, these things are bad. Globalists love anything that undermines the nation state – so they flood us with third world immigrants, encourage divorce, are pro-abortion. Hate the family and so push for everyone to question their gender. Globalists are shite.
On trial: Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, BlackRock… The Corona Committee proceedings open on February 5th
https://www.francesoir.fr/videos-videos-english/corona-committees-trial-soon-reiner-fuellmich
Dr. Fuellmich is now persuaded that the “false pandemic” was launched by the financial industry, to mask thirty years’ criminal activities, now looming into full public scrutiny. He stresses that in 2009, just after the sub-prime crisis, broke the financial oligarchy launched a similar diversion, namely the H1N1 affair.
Rescued by the taxpayer, these repeat-offender bankers should have been ousted at the time. But they clung on to power in 2009, says Fuellmich, because so many put their faith in their governments’ lip-service to anti-finance mafia measures. Those governments, he says are too corrupt to govern, just as the mainstream media is too corrupt to inform. The time is over-ripe for the people to take the bull by the horns.
The Democrats have been in the pocket of big finance and pharma for a long time now – it’s these industries that are driving their politics, including the wokeism, not true leftist ideals. Left/right is becoming an increasingly meaningless and outdated distinction.
The Left tend to be employed within the publc sector because in the mostly Conservative private sector you have to produce results, LOL.
Not to mention the public sector beneffited the most from lockdowns, they mostly all worked from home, apart from the Coppers who got to bash up old age pensioners in the street, sonething they seemed to excel at, it released the inner thug out of them.