Update Apr. 4, 2021: We are following some some updates that claim Finland still intends to propose new measures and go into lockdown. We will likely publish another update when more is known.

You can see it all over social media if you know where to look, but one common theme throughout this pandemic has been the mass protesting all over the the world in every single country that is imposing covid restrictions on their citizens. It’s something that mainstream media continues to avoid, but one thing is for certain, many people disagree with the measures being taken to combat the virus.

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That being said, many people also agree. This is fine, it’s healthy to disagree but what’s not healthy is censoring information, data, published peer-reviewed science, and doctors and scientists who disagree with government measures while only giving a voice to those who agree or are affiliated with government.

In many cases, opposing perspectives have not only been largely unacknowledged, but also completely ridiculed and in some cases labelled as “conspiracy theories.” Why does mainstream culture continue to fail to have discussions and conversations about controversial topics?

What Happened: A Belgian court recently ruled that the current COVID-19 measures being deployed don’t have a sound legal basis. The Belgian State has 30 days to lift restrictions or face fines. After this, the Finnish government withdrew its proposal to impose lockdown measures on their citizens by confining them to their homes unless they need to access essential services. Prime Minister Sanna Marin (pictured above) shared the news on Wednesday after a statement from a constitutional law committee deemed the proposal for lockdown vague and not in compliance with the constitution.

The proposed measures included locking down residents of the capital Helsinki, as well as residents of five other cities in the country, in an attempt to curb rising coronavirus infections and hospitalizations.

According to the Guardian:

“The committee said the wide-ranging proposal should be changed to targeted restrictions for where the risk of contracting the virus was significant, such as private gatherings and crowded places such as shops. The Nordic nation of 5.5 million people has recorded 77,452 coronavirus infections and 844 deaths. It has been praised for its handling of the pandemic and has been among the least-affected countries in Europe. It has 295 people in hospital with COVID-19.”

This type of targeted approach would, in a way, be on par with what the scientists who initiated The Great Barrington Declaration would like to see happen.

The declaration now has more than 14,000 signatures from medical and public health scientists. (Although these identity of all signatories has not been confirmed yet.)

Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician and epidemiologist were the initiators of the declaration.

According to them, lockdown measures do more harm than good and are not an effective way to deal with COVID-19. This echoes the sentiments of many others during this crisis.

According them:

The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.

Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.

The harms of the measures being taken by governments have been pointed out by many, Professor Anna-Mia Ekström and Professor Stefan Swartling Peterson, two very well known scientists in Sweden, have gone through the data from UNICEF and UNAIDS, and came to the conclusion that at least as many people have died as a result of the restrictions to fight COVID as have died from COVID. You can read more about that here.

You can access the some science that has been published sharing the same data and sentiments that lockdowns may not stop the spread of COVID and are only inflicting unnecessary harm, here. There are multiple dozens of them.

Again, there are opposing views, but one side is being heavily censored. Scientists are even being harassed. For example, Jonas F. Ludvigsson, a paediatrician at Örebro University Hospital and professor of clinical epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute is quitting his work on COVID-19 because of harassment from people who dislike what he discovered, that no school children (nearly two million) died from COVID during the first wave despite no lockdowns, no masks, and no closings.

After he published his findings, an article published in the British Medical Journal on the 18th of February by Ingrid Torjesen states the following,

The Swedish government has said that it will strengthen laws on academic freedom after a leading Swedish academic announced that he was quitting his work on covid-19 because of an onslaught of intimidating comments from people who disagreed or disliked his research findings….After the letter’s publication he was bombarded with angry messages through social media and email criticising the study and inferring that it and Ludvigsson were representative of the country’s covid-19 containment strategy.

You can read more about this particular story here.

The Takeaway: It’s great to see citizens around the world mobilize to voice their opinions and concerns, as they have the right to do, with the measures being imposed upon them. There are so many people who are split on these measures which appear to be unconstitutional and go against the will of so many people to the point where they cease to be democratic.

At the end of the day, authoritarian actions and threatening citizens with the loss of freedom, especially when what’s going on isn’t as black and white as mainstream media makes it out to be, along with censoring so many doctors and scientists doesn’t bode well for governments. In a situation like this, I believe recommendations should be made and citizens should be free to choose to do as they please.

Mainstream culture is expecting everyone to side with the idea that fringe ‘conspiracy theories’ are undermining truth in society, yet mainstream culture does not want to take responsibility for its role in this phenomenon via censorship and corporate favoritism. People want to thrive, they are tired of being constantly handed the short end of the stick as the rich get richer. It does not take long to look with open eyes and see that government is not working to serve people as much as we’d like to think. – Joe Martino