With the “Great Barrington Declaration” revisionist history being released by the “MAHA Books” imprint of Skyhorse Publishing next month, it’s worth interrogating their original promise of achieving “herd immunity” in a mere “three to six months” via the mass infection of hundreds of millions of unvaccinated Americans.
To better understand this radically new concept that contradicts the entire history of pandemics never ending via mass infection, only vaccination, let’s take a short romp through the history of the Mass Effect franchise and what would become Bioware’s dramatic fall from grace.
A Condensed History of Bioware & Mass Effect
Nearly twenty years ago, famed RPG videogame developer Bioware, hot off the heels of success from the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic series, will go on to release the first of a new franchise titled Mass Effect: A spacefaring action-adventure set in an original universe. Check out this trailer from 2007, and imagine how this would blow the mind of a 17 year old:
It’s like 24 meets Star Trek! You can play as either a noble Captain Kirk paragon, or a nasty Jack Bauer rogue! There’s even a sexy blue alien lady you can recruit to your crew and seduce! This has to be the future of videogames!
A few years later, after releasing an original fantasy RPG titled Dragon Age, Bioware will release the second installment of Mass Effect, which is even more bombastic than its predecessor. Even better, major decisions from your experience with the first game will carry over into this one. Here is Emmy award-winning actor Martin Sheen narrating the launch trailer for Mass Effect 2:
Bioware has been bought by Electronic Arts in this time, (which is now owned by the Saudis and Jared Kushner) and their management style already begins to impact the quality of Bioware’s games. For many, Dragon Age 2 is a massive disappointment. Here is an audio clip from a 2011 episode of the Giant Bombcast remarking over their disappointing experiences with the game:
However, expectations are still high for Bioware, and millions are eagerly awaiting the final installment in the Mass Effect trilogy. Prior to release, the ending leaks and public sentiment quickly turns harshly against Mass Effect 3. However, much of Mass Effect 3’s more serious problems come from more deep-seated issues, such as the central “Galactic Readiness” mechanic.
The Agony of Filling an Arbitrary Meter
Mass Effect 3 opens with the invasion of Earth by a horde of Eldritch-inspired “Reaper” aliens. Fleeing Earth, we find that many of the crucial decisions made across the previous two games have been undone. Our crew’s central mission is to flee Earth (whilst a planetwide genocide is unfolding) and dart across the galaxy, gathering allies to form an armada to rescue Earth from the Reapers. With all the complexity, all the different characters and cultures, and all we’ve seen in the previous two installments, Mass Effect 3 gates the “Bad” and “Good” endings behind filling a singular “Galactic Readiness” meter that grows by collecting “War Assets:”
Needless to say, many players were underwhelmed. It was clear that publisher Electronic Arts had meddled in the development of what should have been Bioware’s magnum opus, and concepts such as liberating Earth from an alien invasion failed to be fully realized. Reducing such a climatic finale of a beloved trilogy to filling an abstract meter was nonsensical and deflating.
The parallel between “Galactic Readiness” and the central promise of the useless online petition produced by a conservative think-tank and signed by mercenary contrarian academics, including the author of erotic fiction such as The Glassblower’s Breath, is apparent. Insisting that you can magically end a pandemic in a mere three-to-six months by filling an arbitrary “Herd Immunity” meter via throwing hundreds of millions of unvaccinated bodies at a new SARS virus, is a radically absurd (and wildly unscientific) concept.
While the “Galactic Readiness” meter sits opaquely atop the map screen of Mass Effect 3, slowly filling it’s progress bar by engaging in various activities (including the now defunct multiplayer mode & using the now delisted smartphone app), there is no magical “Herd Immunity” bar that hovers in America’s sky. Upon Month 04 in this magical “three-to-six months” timeline of drowning the nation in pestilence, how would we know this approach is succeeding?
The GBD includes no contingency plan should it fail. It makes no mention that, as we learned from SARS-CoV-1 in the early 2000s, that a significant percentage of infected would become disabled and lose their careers as a result, with no treatment or cure. No relief or aid is proposed by the GBD to support the millions currently suffering from Long COVID to this day. The Great Barrington Declaration was just as thoughtless as the petition from Postal 2 “to make whiney congressmen play violent videogames:”
The Mass Effect series is an incredible achievement in its own right, with hundreds of incredibly talented people coming together to make something truly special, which doesn’t quite stick the landing. To be one of the three initial signees of the Great Barrington Declaration, on the other hand, required absolutely zero effort to sign your name to a worthless petition championing a new SARS virus and clink champagne glasses. Yet, there are those in America who insist that this was a much braver and more heroic act than actually treating COVID-19 patients, developing a lifesaving vaccine, or simply participating in a vaccine clinical trial.
The Dark Secret of the GBD
The forbidden truth that Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Sunetra Gupta don’t want you to know is that the genesis of the GBD isn’t all that complicated. Wealthy oil interests were pissing their pants in 2020 over the fact that people weren’t driving to the office and back, and more importantly, not driving to the gas station and filling up their tank. Americans discovering the wonders of working from home was their version of Nazi Germany finding out that Hitler just killed himself. Obviously, the only solution was to produce an elaborate advertising campaign to sell a new SARS virus to the public, all so billionaire oil barons’ profits weren’t impeded. The larger consequences, harming millions of Americans, be damned.
The Great Barrington Declaration is just as poorly thought out as Mass Effect 3’s central “Galactic Readiness” mechanic, because the true purpose of the GBD is that it was designed to fail: It is simply the wealthy interests who fund the American Institute for Enterprise Research demanding that the American public must accept a higher threshold of disease, disability, and death as a human sacrifice for the economy. Even after centuries of examples of wealthy industrialists making this same demand, time and time again, and being dead wrong every time, far too many supposedly smart and credentialed people were more than willing to go along with such obscene demands.
Now we are all paying an awful price for such thoughtlessness, as America sinks further and further into a reactionary anti-intellectual spiral of self-destruction.
