America’s ruling class and the propagandists in the mainstream “media” continue to do as much as possible to stampede the public into mass panic over COVID-19 in order to generate support for, or prevent opposition to, various totalitarian agenda points. The envisioned measures include new and aggressive lockdowns, biometric tracking, digital identity, and other platform proposals for the United Nations/World Economic Forum’s communistic “Great Reset.” (Incredibly, the World Economic Forum, and other institutions and elites it’s in cahoots with, have proclaimed that if their vision comes to pass, you will not only not be able to own property, but you will not own anything, including the clothes on your back. All things will be rented or provided by government. Nervous yet?)

Don’t buy into the elites’ fearmongering — it is unjustified. They want you to believe that a frighteningly large number of people, including children, will die from COVID. The fact is, the vast majority of people will not die from COVID-19 under current circumstances.

A part of the panic propaganda is based on appealing to people’s innate and instinctual fear for the safety of children. “Think of the children” has long been a cherished propaganda ploy used by statists seeking to pass onerous legislation that limits freedom and arrogates additional powers to the state. The classic examples of this phenomenon are child safety seats, bike helmets, and the 55 mile-per-hour speed limit. Each of these policies featured “think of the children” elements of propaganda as part of the effort to “sell” these policies to a resistant public. It is no different today with COVID.

As a recent example, multiple mainstream media sources carried a variation of this headline as it appeared in the New York Daily News on November 16: “More than 1 million kids in U.S. have had coronavirus, pediatricians say.” 

The headline is designed to shock and awe and evoke a fear response. The article itself quotes a doctor who emphasizes the horror of the finding. “‘As a pediatrician who has practiced medicine for over three decades, I find this number staggering and tragic,’ Dr. Sally Goza, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in a statement. ‘We haven’t seen a virus flash through our communities in this way since before we had vaccines for measles and polio.’”

Think of the children: In this country, kids have been either kept out of school or required to mask up to go to school — in an effort to ramp up fear of the COVID virus. Between fears of killing kids and killing old people, Americans have been willing to sacrifice numerous freedoms. (Photo credit: FatCamera/GettyImagesPlus)

Naturally, because of this terrible number of childhood cases, we need more of everything that big government can provide, according to Dr. Goza. “We must work now to restore confidence in our public health and scientific agencies, create fiscal relief for families and pediatricians alike, and support the systems that support children and families such as our schools, mental health care, and nutrition assistance.”

This is propaganda, and we can break it down and reveal it for what it is.

First, the claim that the cited high number of cases among children is indicative of a large-scale threat is simply not true. The U.K.’s Daily Mail reported on the same data as the New York Daily News. The Daily Mail opened with this observation: “Coronavirus infections among American children are rising but the death rate is continuing to fall, a new report finds.” 

That report from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is the basis for both the Daily Mail and New York Daily News articles, reveals the actual number of American children who have died because of COVID. Dating from May 21 to November 12, the report states that 133 children have died. That number is revealed in “Appendix Table 2C: Summary of Child Mortality Data from 5/21 — 11/12. That table also reveals that the percent of child cases resulting in death is 0.01 percent — that is, one out of every 10,000 cases.

In other words, 99.99 percent of children who tested positive for COVID-19 did not die. In fact, COVID-19 is probably even less dangerous than this to children. The CDC’s “current best estimate” of the infection fatality rate (IFR) for children aged 0-19 is 0.00003. In other words, 99.997 percent of all people aged 0-19 will not die of COVID-19 even if they are infected, according to the CDC. 

Even Anthony Fauci admitted in late November that kids weren’t as susceptible to COVID as the fear propaganda has insisted. “If you look at the data, the spread among children and from children is not really very big at all, not like one would have suspected. So let’s try to get the kids back [to school],” Fauci said on the ABC News program This Week, according to the Washington Examiner. 

Kids, in fact, are far more likely to die from the dangers of everyday life than they are from COVID-19. As an example, consider deaths from car crashes. In 2016, over 4,000 children and teens died as a result of automobile accidents. 

This isn’t to say that the death of any child or other person should not be considered a tragedy. But it is necessary to have a clear-eyed view of risk to prevent from being stampeded into unnecessary and counterproductive panic. Riding in or driving a car is simply more dangerous to children than COVID-19, but no one who is not some kind of unhinged psychotic nut would advocate banning children from cars. 

Still, Dr. Goza, without regard to these important facts, calls for statist remedies to solve the problem of what she perceives as the “tragic” childhood COVID situation. Her first demand is that “we must work now to restore confidence in our public health and scientific agencies.”

That is clearly a call for yet more prop-aganda to spread fear. She wishes to do this in order to support her demand for “fiscal relief for families and pediatricians alike, and support the systems that support children and families such as our schools, mental health care, and nutrition assistance.”

This is a demand for additional redistribution of wealth, which can only be and is accomplished through state coercion of taxpayers. This is COVID-19 in a nutshell: incite fear through aggressive propaganda to get people to agree to (or at least not resist) being imprisoned and controlled and then robbed of their financial assets. 

It is a colossal and brazen swindle.

As far as the risk for adults beyond the age of 19, the situation is still not nearly as dire as the statist propaganda insists. 

Nicknamed Fascist Fauci: Supposed COVID guru Anthony Fauci once scolded Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for saying that kids do not seem to be in much danger from COVID, or of spreading it, and should go back to school. Now Fauci is claiming kids are in little danger and should go to school. (Photo credit: AP Images)

The CDC’s “current best estimate” for the infection fatality rate for those age 20-49 is 0.0002. For age 50-69 it is 0.005. For those aged 70 and up: 0.054. As percentage survival rates, then, this means that 99.98 percent of those 20-49 will survive COVID-19 infection. The survival rate for those age 50-69 is 99.5 percent. For those aged 70 and up, it is 94.6 percent. 

In fact, as George Mason University economist Donald Boudreaux asks, “How many of the pro-COVID-19 lockdowners or pro-obstructionists seem to be aware not merely that 95 percent of COVID deaths in the U.S. are people ages 50 and above, but also that fully 41 percent of all COVID deaths in the U.S. are of residents of nursing homes?”

In short, COVID-19 does not warrant a totalitarian, unconstitutional abridgment of freedom — though destroying freedom in general and the Bill of Rights in particular is the ongoing goal of the international progressive cabal.

In light of the facts about the threat of COVID-19, economist Boudreaux asks a number of pertinent questions that deserve repetition:

What reasonable person believes, in light of the above facts about COVID-19’s lethality and overwhelming disregard for the non-aged, that it is reasonable, prudent, and justified to massively upend economic and social intercourse, as has been done and as governments continue to do? What sensible human being, in light of these facts, agrees to have government dictate the number of persons who are allowed to gather in private homes? To grind to a halt a great deal of productive activity? To shutter schools and have five- and six-year-old children “learn” through Zoom? To trust executive government officials with powers never before exercised in the United States on such a scale and with such utter arbitrariness — that is, to trust executive government officials to be dictators, for that’s what they have become and that’s what they remain as I write these words in fear, sorrow, and anger?

Why are so many Americans, the vast majority of whom are at no real risk of suffering from COVID, treating fellow human beings as lethal monsters?

Why have so many of my fellow human beings lost touch with reality and become deranged?

Why, indeed?

Crisis and Opportunity

While COVID-19 is a real viral respiratory disease that presents a danger for some people and can sicken many, the scale of the danger to health falls far short of justifying mass panic. But mass panic is extremely beneficial to those who deeply desire government that controls all aspects of life. This is exactly what the world’s internationalist and “progressive” elite increasingly demand. 

One example of this came from billionaire progressive activist and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. At his Bloomberg New Economy Forum, held in mid-November and co-hosted with the China Center for International Economic Exchanges (CCIEE), the globalist confab featured “leadership” from a trio of internationalist luminaries comprised of former Goldman Sachs banker and Bush-era Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and Zeng Peiyan, former vice premier of Communist China and a member of both the 15th and 16th central committees of the Chinese Communist Party according to “China Vitae,” a project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

It should be noted that the China connection to the Bloomberg Forum runs directly to one of the key planning agencies of the Chinese Communist government. Zeng Peiyan, the former PRC vice premier who serves as co-chair of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, is also the chairman of CCIEE, and that organization operates under the aegis of China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), a Chinese government agency with a mandate not only for socialist economic planning, but for changing economies. The NDRC’s key mandates include:

To direct, promote and coordinate the restructuring of economic systems; to study major issues concerning the restructuring of economic systems and opening up to the outside world; to formulate plans for the comprehensive restructuring of economic systems, [to] coordinate plans for dedicated economic restructuring and coordinate jointly with other agencies important dedicated economic restructuring plans; to guide pilot projects of economic system restructuring and work in the experimental reform zones. 

Additionally, and troublingly, another key mandate directs the NDRC “to coordinate social development policies” and “to organ-ize the formulation of strategies, overall plans and annual plans of social development; to participate in the formulation of development policies with regard to population and family planning, science and technology, education, culture, health and civil administration and promote social undertaking construction,” and to “coordinate the solution of major issues and policies in the development and reform of social undertakings.”  

Note especially here the mandate to manage population and family planning — a chilling element of the NDRC’s role considering the decades during which Communist China brutally enforced its notorious “one-child policy” that prevented families from having children. Even National Public Radio was forced to report that the despotic policy “led to forced abortions and the confiscation of children by the authorities.” 

This would all be unacceptable to the traditional American mind-set of individual liberty and personal responsibility. But this mindset can be overcome with fear, and as several “do-gooder” progressive socialists have openly admitted and welcomed, fear generated during the pandemic has led to opportunity. 

This was the message from Michael Bloomberg when he addressed his New Economy confab in mid-November. “It’s an unprecedented opportunity, not only to repair the damage, but also to address the problems that existed before the pandemic hit,” the former New York Mayor announced. “If we act wisely, we can invest in ways that reduce greenhouse gases and build resilience, that address economic and racial inequality, that reduce poverty and improve public health and that spur growth and job creation.” 

Unless you pay attention to the phrasing used by Bloomberg, this sounds good. Who wouldn’t want the outcomes he describes? But the misdirection comes from the propagandistic formulation of the sentence structure. All of the Utopian goals, which sound so good to earnest Americans who seek a better world, come at the end of Bloomberg’s sentence. This is deliberate — listeners will remember what they hear last. But the important part comes first, and it is the word “we.” 

“If we act wisely” Bloomberg says, “we can invest…” Who are these people, the “we” Bloomberg is speaking of and to? Simply put, Bloomberg’s “we” does not include working-class and middle-class “deplorables” — as such it doesn’t include suburban housewives, residents of the inner cities, farmers, truck drivers, construction workers or factory workers (who mostly will be out of work in the America envisioned by the internationalist socialist progressives). Bloomberg’s “we” includes only those who will do the “acting” and “investing” — those who will be among the planners and controllers of the future. Bloomberg is here speaking to the international socialist oligarchy — the “philosopher kings” who believe they deserve to rule the world and who believe the principles of federalism, of subsidiarity, and of limited and local self-government are outmoded and overdue for the dustbin of history.

These are the people behind the international slogan “build back better” that has been bandied about not just by socialist puppet Joe Biden but by international politicians including Boris Johnson in the U.K.and UN Secretary-General António Guterres, among others.

In his address on the plan to “build back better” in June, U.K. Prime Minister Johnson served up this little bit of progressive rhetoric: “This moment also gives us a much greater chance to be radical and to do things differently. To build back better and to build back bolder. And so we will be doubling down on our strategy, we will double down on leveling up.” 

At the UN, Secretary-General Guterres outlined what “Build Back Better” means in a “Policy Brief on the Impact of Covid-19 on Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Calling for “broad structural changes” to nations, he said, “Building back better requires transforming the development model of Latin America and the Caribbean.” This program, he says, requires “developing comprehensive welfare systems” and “strengthening environmental sustainability” while “reinforcing social protection mechanisms.” This is fine-sounding language meant to obscure the real objective: building a strong socialist state that puts stringent controls on people, transfers wealth, and shackles private enterprise to the demands of the state. And speaking of the state, don’t expect it to be the traditional nation state. To build back better, says Guterres, “means regional economic integration.” That is always the prelude to submerging individual nations that are nominally, if imperfectly, accountable to their citizens under international bureaucracies that have no such accountability. 

This program, Gutterres concluded, is “in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

That UN agenda is essentially the blueprint for the Great Reset. Though the New York Times would have you believe that this is merely “a baseless conspiracy theory about the coronavirus,” their “reportage” is a bald-faced lie. The Great Reset is, in fact, the very public program of the World Economic Forum led by Klaus Schwab. Indeed, it is a simple matter to browse Amazon or Barnes & Noble and find there, and order a copy of, Schwab’s latest book, co-authored with Thierry Malleret and entitled Covid-19: The Great Reset. 

In that book, Schwab emphasizes that the pandemic is not a crisis, but an opportunity to overthrow the old order and replace it with the corporatist, socialist world so desired by the international progressive cabal. “The possibilities for change and the resulting new order are now unlimited and only bound by our imagination, for better or worse,” Schwab and Malleret write, noting the future could lean either “more egalitarian or more authoritarian, or [be] geared toward more solidarity or more individualism, favoring the interest of the few or the many.” 

Don’t believe your lying eyes: Though World Economic Forum leader Klaus Schwab and the UN and the International Monetary Fund are all promoting global socialism controlled by wealthy elites — with Schwab even writing a book about it — much of major media attacks critics as “conspiracy theorists.” (Photo credit: AP Images)

More individualism and more freedom would be the best outcome, but that is not really what they have in mind. The technocratic socialism they offer would be the worst possible outcome — unless you are counted among the ruling oligarchy. In any case, they emphasize that they must now seize the chance at hand.

“You get the point,” they proclaim, “we should take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to reimagine our world.” We dare not miss this “opportunity,” Schwab and Malleret write.

Giving voice to the entirety of the socialist progressive orthodoxy, Schwab and Malleret demand a “radical and major systemic change in how we produce the energy we need” while also demanding “structural changes in our consumption behavior.” If the changes they demand are not made, then the world will have failed.

“If, in the post-pandemic era, we decide to resume our lives just as before (by driving the same cars, by flying to the same destinations, by eating the same things, by heating our house the same way, and so on), the COVID-19 crisis will have gone to waste.”

Note carefully these points: Under this program you will not drive a car and probably not own one either. You will not heat your house with fossil fuels such as natural gas or heating oil — presumably the heat you need to warm your home will come from electricity generated by wind and solar. Since there is zero possibility of generating enough renewable energy to do that, what this means is that people in cold climates can expect much less heat in their homes and businesses, something that will lead to serious health consequences. And, under the Schwab Reset, the do-gooder billionaire socialist oligarchs will make sure you only eat what they think you should eat, and that doesn’t include meat. Indeed, note the onset of food scarcity (and the reduction in food quality) that has occurred in 2020. For the world’s would-be controllers, this is not a bug, but a feature of the very near future. Don’t forget, too, that Michigan dictator Gretchen Whitmer decreed that garden seeds could not be sold during her spring lockdown. Since growing tomatoes, squash, and lettuce at home has zero chance of spreading an infectious disease, it’s hard to ignore the suspicion that this was a trial balloon for something more sinister. 

For most people, the COVID pandemic, regardless of its nature, is a crisis to be overcome so that we can get back to living as we see fit: working to feed and care for families, building a nest-egg, inventing new technologies, and the infinite other interests individuals pursue in America and around the world.

But for socialist oligarchs whose only hobby is dreaming up new schemes of control and tyranny, COVID is no crisis — it is the final and best opportunity to scare the world into accepting social controls, government dependency, and economic regression for most so that the new billionaire socialist aristocracy can live in unprecedented luxury and freedom while they virtue signal and congratulate themselves on “saving the planet.”

We face much more than Joe Biden’s “dark winter” if these people get their way. Indeed, if their plans for a “global reset” are actualized, we face the bleak prospect of a dark and decrepit future of tyranny and poverty — forevermore.