COVID-19 may be a novel virus, but it is proving itself a virus nonetheless by doing what viruses are wont to do — surviving. And in order to survive, a virus can’t afford to keep killing its hosts. It adapts. It weakens in ferocity as it increases in transmissibility. Mankind’s curious nature has produced many a vaccine to help halt a viral event. Smallpox comes to mind. The COVID vaccine hasn’t produced that success yet, although as this particular vaccine technology advances, it will surely get there in the future. That being said, it has been a substantial blessing that this virus is now rapidly evolving into something that is on a trajectory to become no worse than the common cold or a seasonal flu. Plenty of people are still falling ill, but the pandemic has one foot solidly in the endemic camp. We should be grateful.

Unfortunately, even as places like the United Kingdom and Denmark are moving forward with lifting all restrictions, governments in the U.S. and Canada are doubling down on authoritarianism. The Omicron variant has moved a lot of people out of the “state of emergency” camp.– even many Branch COVIDians — and into the “Let’s just get on with it” camp. Even still, we continue to see absurd COVID punishments being handed out across North America.

And that’s what it really is at this point…punishment. For as much as the Grand Priests of Science™ in our governments keep invoking “the data,” they seem incapable of admitting that the data is pushing us all towards just getting the hell on with life. They made promises. They swore they would eradicate COVID. They would do what that Big Bad Orange Man could never do. They would save us all.

They failed, of course. Their plans were always doomed to fail, because you can’t hide from a virus and you can’t make hundreds of millions of people do the exact same thing at the exact same time for the exact same period. You couldn’t even get all those people to take a breath at the same time, let alone cease all movement and activity for two weeks fifteen days thirty days two years to slow the spread. It was never possible, but they convinced themselves and their fearful constituents that it was; perhaps for power alone, but perhaps in the hopes that if they could actually pull it off, they’d never lose another election again.

So when it didn’t work, they couldn’t blame themselves. You can’t run on failure. So they have to blame you…and me…and all of us who wouldn’t get with the plan from the beginning. And those of you who did get with the plan, did your thirty days, and then demanded your right to get on with your life. And those of you who sucked it up for two years and realize the futility in letting this madness go on indefinitely. Our governments have declared an ultimatum. If you are not with them, you are against them.

You’re guilty for not being a good little robot and the guilty must be punished.

That’s how we get stories like this one, where a New York father was forced to confront the principal of his daughter’s school. The principal had forced the student to wait alone in a cold lobby area without access to food or water because she refused to wear a mask. The state mask mandate had been just been struck down, but the principal feigns confusion and indicates that until he can confirm human rights have been restored to his students, he will continue to deny them their human rights.

Notice that he’s not helpful, or empathetic. He’s angry. This is a man who likes his masks (just like the union tells him to) and thinks people who don’t like masks are guilty of murder. He’s meting out a punishment, not a safety measure.

Here the dad confronts them: pic.twitter.com/rhzT83tyls

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) January 27, 2022

Then there is the story of a Los Angeles student who is unvaccinated for COVID for religious reasons and was subjected to being “cordoned off” from other students with other unvaccinated teenagers in the name of COVID safety. When she complained and tried to join the other students, the school called the police.

Again, there’s no empathy here. Only punishment. LAUSD’s and their corresponding teacher’s union have the same stance on COVID protocols — zero COVID or bust. The guilty must be punished.

In the Canadian province of Quebec, the government has banned the COVID unvaxxed from nearly every corner of free society. They recently announced they would be requiring government health officers to accompany the COVID unvaxxed when they have to leave home for essential activities like grocery shopping or medical appointments.

Our northern neighbors, despite being a trade-dependent nation, have blocked COVID-unvaxxed truck drivers from crossing the border, greatly reducing the availability of goods and fresh produce to a nation already stretched thin by a supply chain crisis. Last weekend, tens of thousands of Canadians descended upon their nation’s capital to protest those transportation bans and continuing mandates and curfews. The Canadian state-run media has described those protesters as nothing short of Baby Hitlers, doing everything within their power to paint those taxpaying citizens as traitors and white supremacists and probably Trump voters disguised as Canadians. Their government can’t arrest them all. The only punishment they have to mete out at the moment is character assassination. Nonetheless, punish, they will.

In California, Governor Newsom is still grasping onto the only statewide school vaccine mandate for K-12 in the nation, but did leave a lot of latitude in the mandate for religious and personal belief exemptions. The assembly has since introduced a bill to close the exemption loopholes and force vaccines on every public student. Over 70 percent of the state is vaccinated, and in some districts, their rates are near or above 90 percent, so why get even harsher? When you realize it’s a punishment and not a safety measure, it all becomes clearer. This is what you get for pretending the choice was ever yours. Maybe you’ll finally learn your lesson and give up your rights altogether next time.

The FDA has removed their approval of monoclonal treatments, forcing Florida to roll back a highly successful therapeutic option for COVID treatment. Why? The science was there to support it, the data was there. People who could afford it were flocking to the treatment and it works. The only answer is that Florida has been in direct disobedience to the Empire from the beginning, and has come out looking better for it. Such rebelliousness must be punished. Joe Biden doesn’t have a giant Death Star to point at Florida, but he does have the FDA.

The list goes on and on. It seems like every day we read another absurd story about someone being arrested for not wearing a mask or not being vaccinated for COVID, even as the likes of Gavin Newsom party maskless in a huge crowd of football fans.

There is no more logic being applied here, whatever shred of it may have remained from its two-year beating. There are no explanations left for this type of applied tyranny when it is painfully clear the virus is evolving and so should we.

They hate you. They hate us. They hate that we won’t do what we’re told when we’re told to do it. It makes them seethe. It makes them rage, and when the powerful rage, they punish.