The Plandemic Wasn’t a One-Off—It Was a Prototype
COVID was the trial run for a new kind of power: unaccountable, moralized, and crisis-driven. Now the model is being reloaded.
You can almost hear the planners sharpening their pencils.
Because if there’s one thing the COVID era taught the managerial class, it’s this: you don’t need a constitution when you have a crisis. You don’t need consensus when you have fear. And you don’t need force when people will beg you to save them.
That’s the dirty secret of the pandemic—it wasn’t just a public health response gone awry. It was a prototype for a new method of governing.
No war. No tanks. No formal votes. Just a “public emergency,” a media megaphone, and a rotating cast of unelected experts.
And it worked.
Schools closed. Churches closed. Courts suspended. Jobs lost. People arrested. Dissent censored. Families torn apart.
All in the name of safety.
The New Template: Crisis + Morality = Control
Once you see the formula, you can’t unsee it:
Declare an emergency.
Centralize authority.
Flood the public with moral messaging.
Shame and isolate dissenters.
Extend the emergency as long as possible.
Reward the obedient. Punish the non-compliant.
When it all collapses—blame the people who questioned it.
That was COVID. And that’s the playbook going forward.
It could be “climate lockdowns.” It could be “racial equity emergencies.” It could be digital currency rollouts or new variants with Greek letters. Whatever the trigger, the mechanics remain the same.
This isn’t speculation—it’s already in motion.
They learned during COVID that they could:
Destroy livelihoods with impunity.
Rewrite social norms overnight.
Erect digital ghettos for dissent.
Demonize and deplatform the non-compliant.
Call it all “science.”
What begins as “two weeks to slow the spread” ends in a QR code to enter your local grocery store.
And the real kicker? A good portion of the public loved it. They felt safe. They felt moral. They got to feel superior without having to do much more than obey.
Institutional Power Found Its Groove
This is why the pandemic can’t be seen as a historical hiccup—it was a paradigm shift. Government, media, tech, and pharma discovered just how well they operate when fused together under the pretext of moral emergency.
And now that this machine exists, they’re not about to shut it down. They're just waiting for the next excuse to boot it up.
Already, we see the same coded language creeping into unrelated spheres:
“Disinformation is a public health threat.”
“Gun violence is a public health crisis.”
“Climate denialism kills.”
“Misgendering is violence.”
See the pattern? It’s all being rebranded through the lens of safety and harm—because that’s the one trigger that short-circuits rational resistance. If they can convince you that your neighbor is a biohazard or a bigot or a threat to “our democracy,” the rest takes care of itself.
Fear creates obedience.
Morality justifies cruelty.
Technology enforces the rules.
That’s the prototype. And we already bought into it once.
The Soft Boot Stomping Forever
George Orwell envisioned the boot stomping on a human face forever. But in the 21st century, it won’t be a boot—it’ll be a digital dashboard. It’ll be a patch on your jacket. A pop-up notification. A Terms of Service violation.
The tyranny will be touchless.
But it will still be tyranny.
COVID was the beta test for that system. Not an accident. Not an overreaction. A demonstration of power—and the beginning of a new operating manual for managing public life.
We were told the pandemic changed everything. And in a way, it did. But not biologically. Psychologically. Politically. Culturally.
It proved that mass compliance could be engineered.
It proved that rights could be suspended indefinitely.
And it proved that questioning any of it made you the enemy.
They’re not done.
They’re just reloading the prototype.
Thanks for this insightful commentary, which is manifestly true.
All people need to do toward freeing themselves of this tyranny founded on falsehood, is question and think. Be rational in other words.
That is one reason I often wonder about so-called health freedom advocates and lockdown-masking-vaccine critics who evidently cannot understand that viruses have no support in scientific evidence.
For instance, if I were to write on substack, as a full or part time pursuit, why would I restrict my commentary to repeated criticism of one policy issue for years on end? Why would I confine my writing to that One Issue, rehashing the same points over and over in varied ways, never attaining a breakthrough in new knowledge, and accompanied by many other writers repeating the same warmed over hash that half of Americans already get?
Why would I name my blog after That Single Issue, thereby limiting its appeal and reach? Hot Tea and Minimum Wage Laws. It is odd.
I listened to Pollyana Summer this morning and it threw me back in 2020. Yes, the groove has been cut. Now with AI at their beck and call it is just a matter of time when the algorithm says fire for effect.