The 5 year anniversary of lockdowns is here and I'm angry

Despite being right about everything, those of us who pushed back against lockdowns from the outset are not redeemed. Many of us remained "cancelled."

I've been a bit grumpy and on edge this week. It's the 5 year anniversary of lockdowns. I’m still mourning the loss of my life as it was. I love my new life. But it’s harder. And I’m 56 and I guess I was hoping for easier at this point.

You see, I loved my old life and I’d spent more than 3 decades building it and it was taken from me because I dared say “open the public schools.” Yes, it was taken from me by a bunch of psychotic covid alarmists and authoritarian censors. Which was almost everyone. I’ll never forgive them. I don’t care what they say about letting go of anger and how it poisons you to hold it. Those who targeted and cancelled dissenters deserve for our rage to be trained on them. They deserve it and I hold it in a place, I make room for it to exist, while building joy around it with my family, my new city, my new start up, my new friends. But it’s there, make no mistake.

I don't really know what to say about it all. I've written extensively on the subject, even a book — about what it was like to dissent from the outset. I feel tinges of rage at prominent “heterodox-ers” who now, or perhaps 2-3 years into it all, pretend at dissent. We needed you then.

There is broad recognition that school closures went on too long, and even some acknowledgement that lockdowns were ineffective and terrible human rights violations.

The Boston Globe published a review of the book “In Covid’s Wake” about a week ago. The book, while being praised as redemptive for those of us who pushed back early and often, provides no such redemption. While I’ll admit I haven’t read it, I’ve read the review several times now. It allows for “it was early we didn’t know” and seems to scapegoat Fauci and even other public health officials without excoriating EVERYONE who went along with the hysteria, turning in neighbors to police and targeting colleagues for firing.

As philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke famously said in 1795: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

All those who did nothing are also responsible for the global human rights violations of the covid era. And of course the covid enthusiasts who acted as snitches, and joyfully targeted friends and neighbors for punishment deserve our ire. Beyond that you have those directly responsible, the media which utterly failed in their duty as the 4th estate resorting instead to publishing Big Pharma and government issued talking points as “news”; the medical community, with few exceptions; the academics; the teachers; I could go on.

The vaccine (and of course mandates — which people lost jobs over) have disappeared from public consciousness. I mean does anyone actually get that thing anymore?

We are still reminded of masks, as any good leftist protesting about anything — from Teslas and DOGE to "freeing Palestine" to protesting in favor of kids taking mutilating, life-altering hormones to “become” the opposite sex — dons one, still. It is the uniform of "good lefties" or what I would call the "unhinged." Which it always was really.

There has been no denunciation of those who drove lockdowns and distancing and toddler masking. These public health bureaucrats should be run out of their jobs and never be allowed to set any policy (or "make recommendations") again. Randi Weingarten should not have any job that has any bearing on children's lives.

Sure Fauci has retired. But people like Barbara Ferrer (LA) and Sara Cody (Santa Clara county) still hold their positions after destroying small businesses and locking kids out of school for a year and a half and putting disrupted schooling in place for another year after that. And, of course, they force masked 2 year olds as well as speech delayed toddlers and hearing impaired adolescents. This was state sanctioned child abuse from the outset. So forgive me, but the modest acknowledgement that maybe we went too far, brings cold comfort.

I do not feel redeemed. I just feel angry, still, when I think about it. I mostly try not to.

So many kids' lives were altered and harmed forever. So many milestones they can never get back. And if these concerns were raised at the time (remember drive through graduations?) parents were mocked for saying those things mattered. They were Karens and racists and murderers and selfish for thinking any of that mattered and every stupid vilifying name the idiotic covid hysterics could think of was trained on us.

And then you have people like me & my husband — of which there aren't too many — who publicly dissented from the outset of lockdowns. You won't find anything from me in March 2020 on Twitter because I didn't use Twitter much then. Instead I was arguing with friends on Facebook which went about as well as you might imagine.

Here’s a post of mine from March 25, 2020.

I stand by all that. But as you can imagine, that didn’t go over well in March of 2020 at the outset of lockdowns and “2 weeks to slow the spread.” I departed from Facebook not long after that to avoid arguing with family and friends.

I went to Twitter thinking that when not just ranting to people I knew — a closed loop circle on Facebook — I might find some like-minded compatriots. I did and I love my OG covid mommas to this day. But I also found more haters and the dragging began.

I talked mostly about kids. And had almost no followers and usually got like 1 or 2 likes. I was nobody with no reach. But it grew with time.

I spoke about other issues beyond children, as well. The falsely inflated mortality rate, the job losses, the folly of staying locked down until a vaccine. I’m struck by my calmness and diplomacy as I look back on these posts. I thought if I was diplomatic I might be able to engage with people calmly, influence, have a conversation. Boy was I wrong.

I’m also struck by the fact that many of the responses, I assume angry ones calling me terrible names, are now deleted. I’ll let you make of that what you will.

As I started this whole affair, pictures of my apartment and my address were posted on line, presumably so that I could be found and targeted.

Organizations that I worked for and with were tagged, to inform them that I was an unrepentant racist and murderer who had no place in public society. No place being employed let alone respected or listened to. The 49ers organization was a frequent target as I worked closely with them in my professional capacity. There were Reddit threads started by ex-gymnasts — who had hated me since my first book in 2008 about abuse in gymnastics — with petitions agitating for my ouster from respectability. For the removal of my ability to earn an income to support my family. I was an unsafe and very dangerous person. Because I thought public schools should be open.

That made me a racist (I wanted black children to die, you see) in the summer of 2020 amidst George Floyd protests. I was also anti-union, anti-teacher, a eugenicist who didn’t care if old people perished, a Nazi (not sure about that one, still), a fascist and a Christo-fascist (had to look that one up). I was an astro-turfer (also had to look that up) being paid by whom I’m still not sure. I was a covid grifter (what did I gain from this grift, someone please tell me) and a fame whore.

There would have been easier ways to gain notoriety. Being at the top of my field and staying there would have been one. Keeping my mouth shut would have been much easier, in fact. If I’d taken the opposite approach than the one I chose, becoming a c-suite covid alarmist, I’d have catapulted my corporate standing and career. I chose the opposite path and tanked my career instead.

I built a following of dissenters. But my posts announcing rallies to open schools in San Francisco were disappeared perpetually. I went on Laura Ingraham after moving my family to Colorado so that my son, a kindergartner at the time, could go to school. My following got larger, my voice got louder, and the haters grew more hateful.

When I came to Twitter/X to push back on lockdowns in April 2020, it changed the course of my life forever. My life is unrecognizable vs 2019. Heck vs February 2020.

February 2020 with my family

I lost lifelong friends of over 30 years. I, to this day, have fractured family relationships. I lost my professional reputation which had been replete with awards and top whatever lists in places like Forbes. I live in a new place that feels quite foreign to me still, after several years. I’m trying to make new friends but it’s not all that appealing in your mid-50s to do so. As a selfish greedy covid grifter, my income is about 1/10th of what it was. I’m not so good at this grifting thing, I guess.

On the flip side I have my fantastic fighter husband who always encourages me to be louder not quieter. I have 4 amazing children who all talk to me even if they disagree with me. And I’ve got a platform and a voice which gets louder every day and most definitely is influencing the cultural conversation on gender ideology, or more accurately described: gender woo woo.

But even still, with acknowledgement that people like me were right, we are not un-cancelled. I am not un-cancelled.

I’m not welcomed by the “mainstream” media though arguably Fox is truly the mainstream because more people watch it than any other news network.

I am invited to speak at mainstream conferences by people trying to seem like rebels and defenders of free speech. But then, at the first sign of pushback, they un-invite me. I warn them that they will be pressured to un-invite me. I tell them that they will change their minds. They say: oh, not me. I support you! But then they don’t. And it does sting a little every time. Because at the outset of these conversations, I have hope that maybe I’ll be un-cancelled. And at the close, I am reminded I never will be.

I make my own way. I am fine. Happy, really. Lucky to have withstood the dragging with such resilience. Because of my both my savings account and my don’t give a fuck attitude. And I can say what I believe without fear.

But no one has said: you were right, we were wrong, and we are sorry to have put you through hell. You can come back now, into the fold.

So forgive me, I'm pissed off still.

No amnesty for those who put these egregiously, horrific, anti-human policies in place. And no it was not “just in the beginning” — it all lasted well over two years. And even after schools opened and lockdowns ended, the most anti-human policies persisted with the distancing and masking and dirty pen jars and denial of lifesaving surgeries for the unvaccinated and eating in your dorm room for college students and the punishment of anyone who argued against these policies which dragged on and on and on.

And no amnesty for the everyday folks who cheered the policies and snitched on their neighbors. Or just stayed silent as they watched their friends and neighbors who dared resist get dragged through the mud.

I'll never look at people the same way again. I will forever be distrustful. I won't forgive or forget, certainly not without a heartfelt apology, and maybe not even then. An apology to the kids who were harmed, the families who couldn’t say goodbye to loved ones, and hold their hands as they suffered then passed, to those who lost jobs, to those who suffered mental health breakdowns or relapsed into addiction because they were denied their meetings. For all of them, I remain angry. And they deserve an apology. Because they were harmed.

And I’m angry for myself. I deserve an apology too. But I’m not holding my breath.

I just keep fighting.