2022 Was the Year the COVID Mandates Collapsed. Let 2023 Be the Year of Reckoning.

Looking back over the course of 2022, it’s hard to believe just how rapidly the world has changed. At the start of year, most liberal cities and countries were still enforcing draconian vaccine pass systems. Some of the most fanatical governments, such as those in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, were still imposing strict lockdowns and movement restrictions. Mask mandates were ubiquitous. Countless thousands of protesters were pouring out into the streets on an almost daily basis in cities across Europe, Australia, Canada, and elsewhere to demand an end to the ceaseless insanity.

Michael P Senger @MichaelPSenger

The people of Amsterdam begin the new year in defiance of their government’s ban on protests, with tens of thousands taking to the streets in a massive protest against ongoing lockdowns, vaccine passes and COVID tyranny despite a vaccination rate over 75%.

Michael P Senger @MichaelPSenger

Incredible demonstration in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, as the French take to the streets for a 30th consecutive week of protests against vaccine passes and COVID tyranny.

Michael P Senger @MichaelPSenger

Hundreds of thousands came out to protest in the capital of Canberra today for an end to Australia’s COVID police state.

Michael P Senger @MichaelPSenger

Incredible speech from Brian Peckford, last living signer of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, at the Freedom Convoy protest in Victoria, British Columbia.

Michael P Senger @MichaelPSenger

Canadians set off fireworks last night as the truck convoy passed in protest against vaccine mandates and COVID restrictions. At over 70km long, Canada’s convoy shatters the prior world record for longest truck convoy ever recorded.

Michael P Senger @MichaelPSenger

In Naples, Italy, the mayor cited COVID to announce a ban on fireworks for a second straight New Year’s Eve. This was the response from citizens.

Then, just like that, around February and March, the mandates collapsed. One by one, governments began copying each other, rolling back their public health orders almost as quickly as they’d first implemented lockdowns back in spring 2020.

The Omicron variant gave them a cop-out, but with “cases” at all-time highs, governments had no real scientific reason to roll back the mandates when they did. At some level, the decision was simply made that popular resentment toward these policies could no longer be contained. They decided the best strategy, politically, was to essentially “split” from the crime scene—roll back the mandates in the blink of an eye, pretend nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened, and let the public gradually forget and move on.

Part of that gaslighting campaign meant ramping up censorship across media platforms even as the restrictions and mandates were being rolled back. I, personally, became a target of that censorship campaign, and was banned for most of the year from Twitter—by far my largest platform—with the COVID cabal apparently hoping that by silencing the most knowledgeable anti-lockdown voices, the debate surrounding the provenance of these policies would gradually be drowned out and die off.

That strategy was somewhat effective. With the end of the restrictions, the debate surrounding COVID policies received less attention. Many have, quite sensibly, moved on and tried to reclaim normal lives. The COVID debate did, to some degree, get drowned out.

But interest in the subject hasn’t waned. The response to COVID was no ordinary policy failure. An entire generation of children and young people was robbed of some of their brightest years. Countless small business owners and those who depended on them lost their livelihoods. Honest citizens were degraded and ostracized by their own governments for refusing an injection they did not want or need. Trillions of dollars were transferred from the world’s poorest to the very richest. The principles of the free world were shredded. And it was all for absolutely nothing.

People know they’ve been taken for a ride, and they’re demanding answers. At some level, citizens seem to intrinsically understand that to let their officials, media enablers, and billionaire financiers implement such catastrophic, illiberal policies with no explanation, accountability, or debate is to simply give up on democratic governance. Anti-lockdown sentiment has gradually moved into the political mainstream. Most people want to see an official inquiry into how these policies came about. And now that the online accounts of many of the original anti-lockdown activists have been restored, they’re more likely to get it.

At the start of the year, few were feeling optimistic. But 2022 turned out to be the year in which most COVID mandates collapsed. Now I believe 2023 may be the year in which we begin to see a real reckoning for some of the unimaginable harm that’s been done. With that in mind, I wish everyone a happy new year.

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Michael P Senger is an attorney and author of Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World. Want to support my work? Get the book. Already got the book? Leave a quick review.