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Transmissions From The Lost Covid Generation

Lost youth.

Sars-Cov-2 lockdown
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ASTORIA, NYC- A little while back I served as a judge in a global student film competition. The theme of the competition was the students’ experiences during quarantine. I expected funny videos about video games and arts and crafts and boredom. Nothing prepared me for what I got:

The results are in: we’ve thoroughly fucked up our kids. I hope our government officials are proud of themselves: they ignored science, listened to what the for-profit, pharma-financed media told them to do, and really, really liked the feel of their fists in the iron mitts of absolute power.

For a virus that doesn’t even really impact young people, they were forced to sacrifice more than any of us. They gave up sports, they gave up music, they gave up their friends and social relationships, they gave up their futures. How many athletes missed out on scholarships? How many musicians won’t get into college? How many kids watched their GPAs drop because their schooling was disrupted.

And what’s the point of going to college now anyway? Sorry, but online university doesn’t provide the lessons that are actually important to learn. Then there’s the question about what opportunities there will be out there for them anyway when they finish: Starbucks?

So now we have this generation of kids who were born with a smartphone in their hands being forced to go to high school and university online … just to go to work online — isolated, alone, socially stunted and physically and emotionally under-developed. There will always be a life out there outside the screen, away from the keyboard, and it’s a life that many of them won’t get to live for a long time yet.

Now let’s mix in the trauma of being conditioned to accept an unprecedented level of government control, where on a whim those in power can imprison you in your home, strip away your civil liberties, and tell you that the lives of hypothetical “at risk” people that you will probably never even meet are more important than your own.

They will watch how their peers fall into lockstep, wearing masks when we’ve known for years that they do nothing against viruses*, stay six feet apart from everyone even though there’s no science to back this up, and are prohibited from going to school even though there isn’t one single documented case on the entire planet of a student infecting a teacher with Sars-Cov-2. We’ve conditioned these kids to be good little gears in a social machine rather than individuals with self-determination and autonomy. Collectivism is the worst form of tyranny.

We’re now looking at a new generation of agoraphobic germ-a-phobes, whose FOGO has usurped their FOMO.

Fear of going out.

They are now afraid to get close to other people at a time when their generation was already being torn farther and farther apart, covering up with masks when their expression was already blocked by the screen, being taught to follow in line and inform on their neighbors like good little Maoists.

The human spirit needs to prevail here. And fast.

*N99 and N100 masks are effective against viruses, but I haven’t found someone wearing one of these yet. N95 masks are, according to one doctor, like “throwing sand through a chain link fence,” and cloth masks are completely ineffective.

Filed under: Epidemics, USA

About the Author:

I am the founder and editor of Vagabond Journey. I’ve been traveling the world since 1999, through 91 countries. I am the author of the book, Ghost Cities of China and have written for The Guardian, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Diplomat, the South China Morning Post, and other publications. has written 3694 posts on Vagabond Journey. Contact the author.

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8 comments… add one

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  • Rusty Amoroso August 1, 2020, 8:02 pm

    Yes, Wade, it’s all about the “control”.
    Reminds me of a great movie along those vary lines.

    The trailer ;
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfksZSOhYco

    The full movie ;
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfksZSOhYco

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    • Vagabond Journey August 3, 2020, 3:31 pm

      Haha exactly!

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  • Rob August 1, 2020, 10:51 pm

    Both the 1957 & 1968 pandemics had a larger death rate than we have right now, this one will probably pass the 1968 pandemic but it’s still just a normal pandemic.
    No one mentions this.

    Number lost/total population gives you a number to compare the pandemics

    172 million people in the US in 1957, 116,000 dead. 0.00067
    200 million people in 1968 and 100,000 dead. 0.0005
    331 million today, 154,000 dead. 0.00046

    I was born in 1953, that makes this my 3rd pandemic and the first one I’m aware of.
    And the lock down continues…

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    • Vagabond Journey August 3, 2020, 3:37 pm

      Exactly. Didn’t 90,000 Americans die of “flu-like illnesses” a couple of years ago? It’s wild what the decided to do with this one. The only justification, in my opinion, is that they have reasons to doubt its natural origin (lot’s about this but a little beyond the scope of this blog). Other than that, they are destroying us for no good reason.

      Meanwhile, there isn’t a shred of real data that shows that social distancing had any positive impact on places like NYC. You can’t see any indication of the policies in both the case and death counts. You’d think that for how extreme they went with their policies you’d see some kind of knee-jerk impact on the numbers but you don’t. The curve isn’t any flatter than Sweden’s.

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  • Jeffrey August 4, 2020, 4:38 am

    Germans love going to demonstrations. On August 1, Germans gathered in the center of Berlin near the Brandenburg Gate to protest against the coronavirus restrictions.

    August 1 Demo in Berlin.

    It’s all in German, but I think you’ll get a feel for the types of people joining the demonstration.

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    • Vagabond Journey August 4, 2020, 8:55 am

      haha normal people!

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      • Jeffrey August 4, 2020, 9:06 am

        Yep, normal people, young and old and in between.

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        • Vagabond Journey August 4, 2020, 11:06 pm

          Good to see something normal these days …

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