Now "they" are calling for an amnesty on all said and done during Covid times…

Are you also still waiting for an apology?

If you’re not following the American press closely, you might have missed Emily Oster’s infamous piece in which she calls for an amnesty for all said and done during Covid times (lockdowns, vaccine mandates/pressure, exclusion from society, mandatory masking… you know the whole thing). Because apparently there was “uncertainty” and we did not know better.

So better for you if you haven’t come across that piece, because it just hurts your eyes to read it, especially because it is written in such general terms that it even is not clear what exactly she asks an “amnesty” for.

This is a good summary of her piece...

It is much more fun (although in even measure heartbreaking) to read the replicas, or even the precedents about how we will not be able to forget, much less forgive (at least for the time being).

Naomi Wolf breaks my heart through her piece how her idyllic little town will never be the same to her. And I recognize this. There are still moments in my daily life like when I enter a German train and someone barks at me how dare I be unmasked (yes, I am talking autumn 2022). Or when I enter my workplace and there, before the automatic doors, used to be that table where they wanted to see my QR code. Or the place between the two buildings where the container for the PCR tests used to be. Or the quick sting of panic like when I booked my Eurostar ticket today and they said “check to make sure that you are in line with all the Covid-19 requirements” and I had to tick the box “unvaccinated”.

Charles Eisenstein, one of my all-time favourite philosophers/writers, hits the nail on the head in his piece for what would be needed for an “amnesty” (hint: it is the same as after the holocaust: make sure it never happens again - every one of the perpetrators, personally, find out how it could go so horribly wrong).

And if you prefer more or less the same content in an awesome Scottish accent, head here for Neil’s rant.

After reading these pieces, I turned inwards to feel how I stand on this issue.

It is a divided picture.

On the one hand, friendships broke completely (facebook and real ones). So that is past time now (although now and then, I still feel a surge of hot anger bubbling up and I would love to scream to these people “do you see now? All your blind obedience? Where that led us? And you were so fucking wrong (on everything, from masks to transmission to vaccination), and it hurt so much that you looked down on me and considered me a lunatic. Do you see now how FUCKING wrong you were and how many people have lost their lives because you fucking sheep were not able to use the head god has given you???”).

Some friendships are “wobbly” now – we argued (politely) and disagreed on content. So the little voice in my head is telling me “come on, you agreed to disagree, they just made another choice than you, that is their right”. And still, I do not feel safe with these people anymore. Because the next time around, they will cower again to irrational demands of government without using their own head. Like sheep wanting to belong to the herd no matter what and by that endangering all of our freedoms. And it feels not safe as I was not seen or heard with my concerns. I was told “this newspaper (publishing the statistics I refered to) is not a mainstream paper and you should better not read it”. No approaching my main concern (the data, in that case about vaccine side effects and the very serious underreporting in the pharmacovigilance systems).

And there are parts of it I cannot forget or forgive to these kind of friends. Like those friends who injected their 5 year old child (my goddaughter, of all children) the first day the vaccine was made available for children in Belgium, one month after she had a Covid infection, and there was no way I could even talk with my friend about it because I thought nobody in their right mind (least of all a biologist by training!) would get their child injected a (fucking) month after she had the infection! And to be honest, I would probably also not have dared talk with her about it because our previous exchanges on the subject were “I trust in science and will therefore take the vaccine” and me “ummmmmhhh”. So all I can do is pray that these three kids do not retain long-term effects of their parents’ choices. So mostly I keep light touch with these people, but they are not on my priority list anymore.

And then there are the friendships (only three, to be precise), where my friends made the opposite choices than me, but they saw where I stood and totally accepted that I made this choice, and I could totally understand why they made their choice (and we agreed that the whole management of the “pandemic” was a complete, utter disaster and could rant about it together). These friendships are still going strong.

And then there are quite a lot of friendships where I was too scared to broach the subject (and them possibly as well) and we skirted around it and did not mention it to avoid “the elephant in the room”. Also these friendships seem wobbly to me now, because apparently there was not enough trust between me and them to be honest to tell them what deeply upset me at these points in time and trust that they will listen to me with an open heart. Out of fear to be hurt (once more), it felt safer not to bring up anything about “the Covid issue”. And the backlash is now that also these friendships seem tainted. Partly I am making little steps to see them again and I vow if “the subject” comes up, to be honest about my stance on it, and then see what happens.

And then, last but not least, the people you cannot just drop, like family. And where it hurt like hell when they dropped me or treated perfectly-healthy me like a disease carrier just because I chose not get vaccinated.

I cannot forget and not forgive that my mother told us we were not welcome for Christmas last year because we were not vaccinated (but willing to do a test before hopping on the train). While my vaccinated sister was welcome. And where I could not reach her when I told her that all the data indicated that vaccination does not prevent infection or transmission. She would just not listen. Not to these arguments, nor could she see my pain. Until today she does not know that I cried every day during that Christmas holiday. She acts as if all is normal and nothing happened. And that as well hurts, still.

So this is a relationship which still needs an enormous amount of mending. And right now I’m not ready for it yet. But one day, I will tell her how much pain her unilateral decision has caused for me, so at least she knows about the real, ugly, desperate part of me in December 2021.

But let me finish on a happier note!

Yesterday I came across this poster which apparently stems from a café in Melbourne:

I dearly hope that such signs will pop up all over the place now since Pfizer has officially declared in the European Parliament that their vaccine was never tested on stopping transmission, and from autumn 2021 the data also clearly showed this (thereby completely taking away any justification for Covid passports or vaccination mandates).

And I had two personal healing moments regarding this utterly horrible two years in my life.

One happened in October 2021 during a bodywork-weekend where I took the space and went batshit crazy and shouted and screamed and kicked all the pain and fury and rage and sadness out against a big foam cube while all the group was witnessing. And I could feel that they saw me completely. Afterwards they shared what they saw in me, and what has stayed with me was what the man I had least connection with during that weekend, who said “I see see a woman who is utterly truthful to herself”.

And the second one happened this summer during a tantra retreat.

The first evening (when we just got to know each other), dinner table conversation turned to Covid and one woman (a doctor) at my table made some remarks which completely made me shut down (“I wish people would stop just talking about their freedom of choice but take more into account the other” etc.). At that moment I would have wanted to leave the table but did not dare, and so I stayed, shrunk and did not say much anymore.

The days after in my head, I had many conversations with her, where I wanted to make her see how her remarks where just so wrong when looking at the data, until I realized that I was – once more – caught in the place of “wanting to be right in order not to feel the pain”. And oooowwww, that hurt, that realization. To see so clearly how her remarks had catapulted my back in time in one of the innumerable encounters where I shrank away, tried to get invisible and just froze when people judged me for my choices, did not see me, called me words. And I had exactly the same bodily reaction with her as I had previously, my nervous system catapulting me into a freeze because it hurt so much and I could not get away.

The next day – remember, there are no coincidences in life – one of the exercises at the retreat was a “clearing”, meant to clear up the air between two people if one of them is feeling something is standing between them.

So I took my courage with two hands and went up to her to tell her that her remarks at the first dinner table had been very painful for me, catapulting me back into the past, and how I am sick and tired of people, without knowing me, judging me for my choice of not getting vaccinated, thereby reducing my whole personhood to this one decision. And how I regretted that I now was not able to encounter her with an open heart, but unconsciously tried to avoid her, although I would like to be able to encounter everybody freely in this retreat, and thus also her.

She thanked me for sharing this with her and told me how sorry she was that she had uttered these remarks so carelessly, without realizing that this could hurt other people at the table.

Just being able to tell her my pain, that she listened, and that she apologized, was so huge for me – never happened before. It healed so much already.

But it got better!

The following day she came to me and said if there was anything she could do that would make it easier for me to just be with her like with everybody else, she would be grateful to hear it, and that she found me a wonderfully alive person and it was her biggest hope that I would not be avoiding her.

My heart just broke open even more and tears flowed freely…

And it got even more awesome (you will not believe me, promised!):

On the third day of the retreat, some people caught a cold and some fever, and it quickly spread around like wildfire (yes, indeed, at the end half of the participants had Covid). She was the one who did not step back from me, who came up to my room to bring me tea, offered paracetamol, and on the last two days of the retreat, when I was back into participating in the more quiet exercises, sat beside me and hugged me (although she, as a doctor, would have been aware that I was still infectious at that point), danced with me.

She saw the whole of me and loved me and was there for me and the connection between both of us was so infinitely more important than the fact that I still carried a virus.

I cannot tell you how much this encounter has restored my faith in people.

So far, she is the only one. But my whole being lights up, every time, when I think about this encounter.