InfinityCOVID Radicalism: Another Failure of Enlightened Centrism
The Faux-Intellectualism of Vibes-Based Epidemiology
If you've ever advocated for COVID-19 precautions (such as respirators, HEPA, FarUVC, etc.) in the past few years, you've likely been smeared with a specific insult accusing you of being a dangerous "ZeroCOVID" radical. After COVID-19 has killed & crippled so many millions around the globe, the old Conservative playbook of childish name-calling has now been lobbied against basic disease prevention measures. However, precisely what was the opposing position to this allegedly destructive ZeroCOVID authoritarianism of oppressing viruses?
“I admit to being a "less COVID than this" extremist.” -T. Ryan Gregory, Professor of Evolutionary Biology, October 25, 2002 (via Twitter)
Any serious engagement with this allegedly dangerous "ZeroCOVID" radical contingent of public health guerillas would reveal a common view: that we should use every tool in our arsenal, across both engineering and medicine, to prevent further needless death and disability caused by COVID-19. To borrow a slogan from the Japanese: "Shoot for zero." Maybe we can't prevent every infection, but this is a new virus we are still building our understanding of, and we should make a collective effort to reduce the burden of this highly transmissible disease upon society - especially amongst children. Instead, pro-viral contrarians embraced thought-killing smears.
The opposing view of right-wing anti-vaxxers in early 2020 was that we should nothing & drown unvaccinated children with a brand-new pathogen that was rapidly overloading hospitals and filling mass graves. Now in spring 2024, we have thousands of Americans parents that gravely wish that this view didn't win out, embraced by allegedly liberal & centrist public figures, and we can't "undo" the painful, pointless deaths of their children. You can’t “rewind” a pediatric COVID-19 death. This is why we have the Precautionary Principle of Public Health.
The Birth of InfinityCOVID Radicalism
Ever since Spring 2020, the American right has loudly advocated for a do-nothing approach of mass infection - drowning the population in a high level of constant illness, and still killing thousands of Americans a month - and leaving many more disabled. We can label this view "InfinityCOVID:" a completely unchecked population-wide mass infection strategy leaving nothing but dead & disease bodies under a rising tide of pestilence.
In the centuries-long history of epidemiology, mass infection strategies have never ended a pandemic. The Koch billionaire via laptop class academics proposed "InfinityCOVID" approach, titled the “Great Barrington Declaration,” was a radical new idea, that any serious, critical analysis would quickly identify as a sick joke by irresponsible, laptop class academics - and rightfully was by many liberals and centrists when the GBD was first published.
Liberal centrists, including political commentators and public health academics never used the term "InfinityCOVID," or did a "cost-benefit analysis" on what the burden of repeatedly infecting the population - especially children - with COVID-19 would take on our society - but were more than happy to spend their time scolding "ZeroCOVID radicals" across opinion editorials & social media.
Instead, former public health advocates like Leana Wen (profiled here) and Duke’s Gavin Yamey, who both grew popular on social media throughout 2020, blindly trusted the Biden Administration's vaccine-only approach in 2021 and shrugged as over 500 children, largely unvaccinated, died from COVID-19 between August 2021 and Christmas - doubling the pediatric casualty count in just a few short months. Many more children wound up horribly disabled, with Bloomberg reporting in May 2022 that around a million children were afflicted with Long COVID. That number is now many magnitudes higher in 2024.
You would expect some feelings of guilt to set in for playing a part in this pointless suffering, but the publicly masturbatory professional ladder climbers which eventually embraced the virus have never stopped to considered how they might have gotten this crisis wrong. Instead, they doubled down on scolding imaginary “ZeroCOVID zealots.”
Now in Spring 2024, with hundreds upon hundreds of medical studies showing long-term harms from even "mild" (not hospitalized) COVID-19 infections, and over two thousand five hundred recorded pediatric COVID-19 deaths, there is no credible scientific evidence justifying the radical "InfinityCOVID" position, much less the abandonment of the precautionary principle of public health. The current crisis is thus: while weekly COVID-19 deaths are thankfully down from the worst of 2020 & 2021, there is still a significant burden of disability & chronic illness building as a result of endless COVID-19 reinfections, especially in children.
As we mass infect the population repeatedly, there is no “robust hybrid population immunity” being formed. Instead, thousands of Americans are still dying every month as new variants of SARS-CoV-2 are allowed to breed & mutate from the blood of millions of Americans - including that of your children. Between "ZeroCOVID" and "InfinityCOVID," the mountain of scientific research proves that only one of these opposing views is objectively correct: that we must reduce transmission of this virus in our society. If liberalism seeks to claim dominion over intellectualism & scientific rigor, then they should adjust their views accordingly in light of the overwhelming evidence which continues to mount on a weekly basis.
Sadly, feelings have taken priority over facts in the centrist’s mind.
Pestilence Public Relations, LLC.
The InfinityCOVID radical delusion was never based in science or sound epidemiology, but instead a raw emotional appeal: In this population-wide calamity, you have zero obligations to act responsibly. A rising tide of population-wide illness is nothing to be concerned with. It's perfectly acceptable to repeatedly infect unvaccinated children with a brand new, deadly and disabling virus - as long as these kids don't immediately drop dead, they're not at any harm! If kids do die of COVID-19, they had comorbidities, so who cares? Oh, and those LongCOVID cripples are just weird little lying fakers. We’ve got robust hybrid population super-immunity now!
Coming from an advertising background, it was immediately obvious: the public is being sold a fantasy of recklessness, instead of given sound public health guidance. The government has been liberated from its obligations to protect their citizens from deadly disease. The collective, willful ignorance from public health influencers regarding SARS-CoV-2 became evidence of its supposed harmlessness.
The faux-enlightened liberal centrist punditry, such as Brooking Institute’s Leana Wen or Harvard's Joseph Allen, were more than happy to rally in marketing widespread pediatric pestilence to the public, paid handsomely to broadcast completely uninformed opinions. All the while, this virus is causing long-term biological harm. More research keeps coming out detailing damage to the brain, heart, other organs - and showing that human bodies aren't clearing the virus.
We're not "learning to live with COVID-19." COVID-19 has learned to live within us via viral persistence - and our talking heads of public health couldn’t care less.
This possibility, and the consequences of such an outcome was never considered by the InfinityCOVID radicals - because they chose to prioritize the rebranding of acting irresponsibly as some sort of noble crusade for liberty. This framework of binary thinking, that treated a lack of knowledge of potential harms to be evidence that there were no serious COVID-19 harms worth mitigating, became endemic throughout much of the pundit class. Many of the pillars of anti-vax ideology would become mainstream, as Julia Doubleday covers in detail:
Now we have children who have been reinfected with COVID-19 five or six times, we have parents lamenting that their kids are constantly ill, and we have endless stories of people who listened to the Biden Administration's guidance, dropped precautions, and wound up horribly disabled by COVID-19 - ending careers, halting artistic pursuits, and even closing restaurants because the head chef lost their sense of taste as a result of their “mild” COVID-19 infection. Society-wide, we're losing not just lives, but also culture, innovation, and productivity. None of these were factored into the "cost-benefit analysis" liberals used to deride public health measures, or to scold those dastardly "zeroCOVID zealots." Childish screeching overruled scientific rigor.
Will these Enlightened Pandemic Centrists look in the mirror and see how their “center” has been made a fool of by radical InfinityCOVID ideology? Perhaps finally admit that the mounting evidence makes their years of pathogenic recklessness out to be foolish and pitiful, costing the lives and futures of many of America’s children, while they sat at home and profited from the safety of a laptop? That much of this needless death and disability both before, and in our future, is largely preventable?
Instead, the public was sold utterly fictional delusions to justify a rising tide of population-wide pestilence, such as the absurd concept of "Immunity Debt." All to make excuses for the Biden administration's willful mismanagement, wrapped in a veneer of toxic positivity that seeks to erase the millions of Americans disabled by LongCOVID, and the thousands that are still dying monthly. Here in NYC, children are still dying of COVID-19 - one death was even reported the same week Biden declared the pandemic long over during his State of the Union Address. Their young life mattered, and instead we choose to erase them from our minds and drown ourselves in boozy brunches.
There's a very dangerous game being played here. As one of the side-effects of looming climate collapse, the shift of animal populations that would have never interacted before to now share pathogens becomes a potential inflection point for new pandemics. If the enlightened centrist punditry and comfortable academics spent these past few years doing something more productive than crying about "ZeroCOVID" online, and instead dedicated their energy practicing, campaigning, and lobbying for multi-layered mitigations to reduce airborne transmission of viruses, then America might be much better prepared. Instead, grassroots public health guerillas are doing the labor of public health for pennies and scraps, if that.
Instead, we are looking at a potential viral on-ramp to a very grim vision of a pestilence-dominated future with nothing to show for it.
Our behavior is what allows viruses like COVID-19 to transit, evolve, disable, and kill. Many supposedly enlightened liberal centrists chose to ignore a growing mountain of evidence, and instead embrace an emotional appeal of irresponsibility from well-funded InfinityCOVID zealotry; now erasing those vaccinated people who wound up dead or disabled from breakthrough COVID-19 infections. This purely masturbatory toxic positivity cult embraces the prestige and wealth of the comfortable professional class, whilst abandoning their public responsibility to prevent needless suffering.
Since long before 2020, there have been countless warning signs showing the need to prevent the transmission of airborne viruses like COVID-19, but your Enlightened COVID Centrist instead decided to become a propagandist for pestilence: screeching feverously about "ZeroCOVID" radicals, whilst refusing to consider the consequences of embracing such a radically right-wing worldview of embracing mass pestilence.
Instead of science, the comfortable pseudointellectual class has embraced emotional appeals to irresponsibility and lashing out in a masturbatory performance of faux-enlightened, “above it all” delusion. We are now looking at a society that is much weaker, more unscientific, and overall, a much less joyful place to be for the overwhelming majority. All the while being under greater threat of future pandemics. That is a radical step backwards, and proponents of our InfinityCOVID approach should be honest with the public about the tangible costs of such a reckless worldview.
Instead, pseudointellectuals are clinking champagne over a mountain of casualties.
So Just Who Are These “ZeroCOVID Zealots?”
When you imagine a villain in your head to obsessively lash out at, you grow blind to the reality of the people you’re demonizing. These alleged “ZeroCOVID Zealots,” these public health guerillas terrorizing “real scientists,” are quite an impressively wide range of people. From off the top of my head:
Medical professionals that actually treat patients
Evolutionary biologists
Epidemiologists
LGBTQ people
People of color
Working families who can’t afford to be constantly ill
The homeless
People who have been disabled by COVID-19
Grassroots journalists
Union laborers
Public health academics
Pro-vaccine advocates
Musicians & dancers
Schoolteachers
Parents with young children
That’s a very vast spectrum of real people with very serious real-world concerns that public health professionals need to take seriously. We see the stories of people going to the hospital, contracting COVID-19, and dying. We see the people winding up disabled after multiple COVID-19 infections. Your toxic positivity of abrasive bullying, relishing in the glamor of prestige and wealth, is an utter insult to the responsibility you have to the public.
If you won’t do your damn job, then retire in silence. If COVID-19 was truly “over,” when why do you constantly keep having to repeat it?
