What If We All Said “No”?

The times we’re in are dark at best, and demoralizing at worst. It’s been just under two years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and in such a short amount of time so many of our liberties have been taken away. Unless you’re lucky to live in particular parts of the world where control over people isn’t being seized at every opportunity, life as we knew it no longer exists. But what would happen if we all said: “No, I won’t do what you tell me”?

Maybe some would scoff at the idea, maybe they’d call it a pipe dream: ‘It only works if truly, each and every person does it.’ But if the government, the media, and the machine want you to believe that, and you do in turn, doesn’t that effectively make them the winners? As long as there’s people willing to dissent, and willing to be part of a force that fights against the machine, it won’t have won. In times when it’s increasingly easier to think about giving in, you have to remind yourself of the situation, of what they’ve taken from you, and what they will only continue to take.

What’s going on in the world isn’t unlike an abusive relationship. You begin by putting up with small things, for some reason or another, and increasingly, the abuser progresses to doing more, worse things to you.

In the case of mask mandates, lockdowns, and the cancellation of ‘nonessential’ services, states’ actions were all in the name of public health and safety. Such actions all could have been justified, arguably, at least in the beginning of the pandemic (and preferably at an individual level); there was, after all, little to no information being shared about the virus or anything about it, such as its effects, mortality rate, or transmissibility.

In the US, the word of Dr. Anthony Fauci was hailed as irrefutable, and his idolisation continued even after the countless flip-flops of opinion that came in irrelevance to new discoveries and changing scientific conclusions. Indeed, we were told at the beginning of the pandemic that masks would not be mandated on the account of scientific opinion, though it was later revealed that this narrative continued to be perpetuated in order to save masks for doctors. Even US Surgeon General Jerome Adams adamantly told people to “stop buying masks,” arguing that they were ineffective in their protection of the general public. Surely he could have been honest, or at least refrained from speaking so definitively on an issue with which he had such little

From there came “15 days to slow the spread.” Then that became “600-ish days to slow the spread,” with no end in sight. Joe Biden said it wouldn’t be necessary to make the vaccine mandatory. Yet, not even a year later, he changed his tune, stating that 97% - 98% of Americans would need to be vaccinated “before returning to normal,” in spite of the sentiments issued by medical experts including Fauci who argued that only 70% - 85% of Americans needed to be vaccinated for the country to reach herd immunity. The goalposts are always shifting back, until there’s no semblance of independence or freedom left. They’ve told us this is all for the safety of others, though, so damn you if you can’t, or are unable to, comply.

How can you believe someone cares about you and has your best interests in mind, if they’re not honest with you? Remind yourself that the higher ups - the people in power - would love to pit you against everyone else. Biden has continually vilified those who choose not to get the vaccine - he doesn’t care if your doctor recommends against it because of a medical condition you have, or if you’re trying to get pregnant. To him, if for whatever personal reason you decide it’s in your own best interest to not get vaccinated, you’re part of the problem.

“This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and it's caused by the fact that despite Americans having an unprecedented and successful vaccination program, despite the fact that for almost five months, free vaccines have been available in 80,000 locations, we still have over 70 million Americans who have failed to get a single shot.”

It is the fault of the unvaccinated. Blame them, no one else. Biden continued:

“In a country as large as ours, that 25% minority can cause an awful lot of damage. They are causing a lot of damage.”

But what if we said no? What if we called for an end to all of this? Should we really let an individual with noticeably diminishing mental faculties divide the nation further?

Biden already appears to exclusively address just the Democrat-run regions of the country. In many Republican states, things are back to normal (though the mainstream media is aiming to depict that as somehow a bad thing). Florida to the mainstream media is now a place of the ‘Florever Purge’, just because Governor Ron DeSantis dares to allow people to exercise agency over themselves and their own choices.

Meanwhile, entire countries have ceased to impose restrictions on their people as well. In the case of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, the latter has lifted all COVID-19 restrictions, including the requirement to show a digital pass to enter nightclubs. 561 days after the start of the pandemic, Norway’s prime minister followed Denmark when then-Prime Minister Erna Solberg announced that “the time ha[d] come to return to a normal daily life,” with the country allowing entry to “full capacity at sports, culture venues, and restaurants, and the reopening of nightclubs.” The government went even further on Friday, stating that it would “withdraw at the end of the month its global advisory against nonessential travel abroad.”

In other countries, people continue to fight and protest against the types of restrictions so widely accepted in the United States. In Rome, protests became heated as Italians gathered against Italy’s strict restrictions as imposed by the government’s green pass vaccine requirement. Without it, Italians would be unable to enter private and public sector workplaces, and those without the green pass were reportedly left unable to enter restaurants, gyms, theaters, or travel domestically via flights, bus, or train. Even vaccinated Italians protested the green pass, burning theirs in solidarity with the unvaccinated.

Provinces in Canada also eased COVID-19 restrictions over the summer, despite the rhetoric espoused by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Alberta lifted all COVID-19 health orders, and reopened for the summer. There were no longer capacity limits on indoor gatherings, and restaurants, bars, gyms, and retail stores were permitted to resume normal operation with full occupancy loads. Mask mandates were removed for indoor public spaces, except for a few settings such as on public transport. Unfortunately, since then, restrictions have returned. 

So, if we all said no to Covid restrictions, what would happen? Currently, many workers in the US have been removed from their jobs because they dared to defy the vaccine mandates, which perhaps is adding to the worst job numbers of the year. Many airline employees are also protesting against the mandates after Southwest and American airlines announced that they would require workers to be vaccinated by November 24th. Southwest airlines recently saw just under 2,000 flight cancellations over the past weekend, though, at the time of writing, this is unconfirmed to be related to their vaccine policy. While Southwest claims these were due to the weather, it’s interesting to note that other airlines didn’t see such cancellations.

Nevertheless, if airline employees are removed en masse, and better yet if no one takes their place as a  show of solidarity with the unvaccinated, then how long can these businesses endure? How many places which rely on tourist commerce will be hurt from this, and how much will those local economies suffer?

Truck drivers have the power to shut down entire supply chains, and some in Australia have vowed to shut down all major highways as a massive protest against the vaccine mandates. If we all said no in protest against the mandates, how long would urban societies be able to survive before collapsing? Remember it took just days for people to clean the shelves of toilet paper (as if they could eat the toilet paper, or use it to survive the pandemic) before resorting to fighting each other over it. Imagine if there was no food for days. In major cities with populations of food store reliant people in the millions, how long would it take before they’re fighting each other over food? Would they resort to eating each other? Would politicians care enough, should such a scenario come to fruition, and remove the mandates?

Maybe this is what they hope for, though there’s no guarantee of this happening after all. Maybe truckers are replaced with those who comply and support the mandates. Maybe airline employees, doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers are all able to be replaced.

But if it’s a quarter of the population being ‘othered’, that’s still a substantial number of people. Perhaps the biggest ‘f*** you’ to the tyrants in power is to say: “I will not comply, and I will not be a part of this.” If within the US there are already people who live in remote areas with little interaction with other people regularly in their day-to-day life, who are able to survive on their own or in small communities, then saying ‘no’ is certainly not an impossible thing to achieve.

To be responsible for yourself, truly free, it may get to a point where we need to become truly independent and self-reliant, rejecting any and all assistance from the government. And in the end, should that have to come to be, the fight may carry on. But at the very least, you’d make it harder for them to force things onto you. We aren’t at that point yet, though. There is still room to fight back and protest peacefully, so where you can, it’s still worth doing.