Silver Lining Experiences of the Lockdown: June 2020 Replay
Flashback to June 2020 — four long years ago — offering responses from my readers about how they benefited from society shutting down, staying home from work, not commuting, and more.
Dear Friend and Reader:
Note, this letter has not been professionally proofread and Substack does not play nice with spellcheck on Mozilla for Mac. It just does not work. — efc
I’m in an ongoing discussion with some of my fellow Team Missing Virus presenters (those who concern themselves with what I call the missing virus), where I often take the position that we need to consider the spiritual and social angles that drove the 2020 crisis rather than just the political, corporate, medical and scientific.
Those things are figure; I suggest that for more information, we study the ground: the background, the environment, the not-usually-considered, and the invisible. To that end, I just sent out an article from June 2020 called Planet Waves Reader Experiences of the Lockdown.
With this group and others, I encourage a deeper look at the issue of what drives something like a pre-planned, staged pandemic. When I say that I am not talking about any individuals who were sick or who lost their lives, but what actually happened, and the whole movement of society that was based on many preexisting, well-rehearsed scenarios.
Underneath that all were emotional and spiritual factors.
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The Virus Issue Still Drives Massive Engagement
The virus issue still drives massive reader engagement and interest, though I’ve backed away from reporting on it.
I am grateful to my friends and collegues Mark and Sam Bailey, Christine Massey, Mike Stone, Mike Wallach, Mike Donio (there are a lot of Mikes around this scene), Mike Yeadon, Jeff Strahl and others for their competent reporting and for keeping focus on the issue.
These presenters should all be on my “recommended Substacks” list and if not, they are easy to find. If you’re looking for something or someone specific, ask in the comments.
They may not know it, but their ongong work the virus, virology and the medical angle gives me some freedom to consider other issues and to see the world with the wide aperture that I prefer. (As a photographer, most of my photos are created at f2.0, f2.8 or wider, depending on the lens.)
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The Coronavirus Novel; Barefoot in Babylon
If you’re curious about my original reporting from the first days, starting in February 2020, I have that compiled in a page called The Coronavirus Novel.
These articles remain as published; you will see that through much of 2020 I am taking claims of SARS-CoV-2 at face value for the sake of discussion, while leading an investigative team in the background. It took me about 10 months to work out the rudiments of the missing virus problem, and another year to refine my understanding.
My most influential article from that era was They Were Barefoot in Babylon, which studied the response to the claim of “Hong Kong Flu” at the time of the Woodstock festival. The analysis in this article the heart of my idea that what we call “covid” was above all a phenomenon of the digital environment.
Just four months in, I had figured that much out.
With love,
That is one possibility. I would encourage you to look for others.
Factors that are not obviously part of the equation are often influential. The content analysis only gets you so far, then it tends to fall apart.
The content (plague, war, pestilence) answers an issue or need not necessarily related to the surface theme or topic. The need for a virus crisis does not come from the idea of a virus. I think it comes from a deeper place, spiritually; a deeper crisis.
I think in sussing out this kind of issue, it’s good to work with three or four different possibilities.
One of the reasons “covid” sold so big was that Westerners, especially Americans and Brits, just never seem to stop. They go go go go go. Then finally in March 2020, an authority said: OK, you can stay home for a while. Get a break.
Had it not been so creepy, the world taking a deep breath in the spring of 2020 would have been refreshing.
In June 2020, I asked my readers to open up about their “silver lining” experiences of the lockdowns. How did they benefit? Here are the responses, in total:
https://planetwaves.net/covid-silver-lining-experiences/
efc
My typo problem has two parts: I am terrible at proofreading my own work; and spellcheck on Mozilla for Mac does not work with Substack. However, for sending out a short post like this, I am resistant to engaging my professional proofreaders, delaying the mail by hours, etc. So thanks for putting up with the typos. If they annoy you, just wait half an hour and click on the web edition rather than the email. Most of them will be gone from the text.
I was newly divorced and counting on chicks and getting laid- then convid came, and the best laid plans went awry before they hatched...