Covid and GIN
Covid demonstrates the power of the Gated Institutional Narrative
The Covid saga has been an ideal event in at least one aspect: it has shown about as clearly as possible the workings of the Gated Institutional Narrative or GIN for short.
What is the GIN? The GIN is essentially the establishment storyline: the tales that you are told by the government, media, and increasingly by tech companies and academia as well. These entities are the gated institutions we speak of: powerful entities that tend to push out outsiders in order to preserve their power. Whether true or not, the narrative are all the things that you’d label “authoritative”. You naturally have a bias against questioning these stories as you worry that you’ll be viewed negatively for doing so.
If the Gated Institutional Narrative doesn’t make sense yet, let’s examine the Covid story and it will become more clear.
The First Stop: Covid Arrives
If you were paying attention to the right spots on the internet back in January of 2020, it quickly became clear that Covid was contagious enough to pose a threat to the whole world. There was a large corridor of the internet talking about this. There was intel from on-the-ground sources in China, various virologists weighing in, and more.
But let’s consider what was going on within the gated institutions:
The media continually minimized the threat. Even through February, they cheered on Bill deBlasio’s encouragement to attend Chinese New Year celebrations. Vox mocked a VC firm for having a “no handshakes” policy.
Twitter, among others, sequestered the #coronavirus hashtag from its trending list and made it purposely more difficult for people to get information.
The Government continued to bumble around in its standard incompetence, with the CDC and FDA sitting on having faulty tests for over a month.
To give you a sense of what this felt like at the time: I was going around in late January/early February warning people about the coming virus, stocking up on groceries, avoiding shaking people’s hands, and buying volatility proxies on the stock market. Even my family and friends did not believe me at the time. It was isolating and I still self-censored a fair bit even though I knew what was coming. This is the effect of the GIN: most people follow compliantly along while those who don’t are seen as kooks or as part of some unappealing fringe.
Second Stop: Covid Fatality Rates
By early May, we had enough data in the U.S. to see that Covid was deadly for those over 65 and those with several high-risk pre-existing health conditions.
Around the same time, it also became clear that many cases were going undetected: both due to being either asymptomatic or because testing capacity was still limited.
From both these factors, it became clear that Covid was far more contagious and less deadly than initially thought. The 2-3% death rate that had been shared by the WHO was more like 0.3 to 0.6%, and that number was orders of magnitude lower for anyone under 65 or otherwise healthy.
The best available data on this puts the risk of a healthy person under 50 dying from Covid at ~2 in 100,000. To put that in perspective, that is 0.002%, which is roughly the risk you take from driving a car for 2 months of the year.
This has still not been communicated by the GIN, which has pushed lockdown and Covid hysteria for well over a year now. This has succeeded in tricking millions into believing that they are under deathly threat. States that buck this trend, like Texas and Florida, are branded as “Neanderthals” or backwater idiots. The reality is that those are the states that are following the actual science.
Third Stop: Masking
Maybe you are old enough to remember when masks were useless… until they were essential?
While there is at least a reason for the lie that Fauci and the rest of the GIN told here, it still illustrates that it is all about spreading a narrative, not on-the-ground truths. They painted one narrative (masks are useless) to prevent you from hoarding the masks, and then told another narrative (masks can save your life) to help calm your fear.
The reality is more complicated: N95 masks would likely work, but aren’t worn, and the masks that are worn by people (cloth, typically reused, loosely fitting) don’t drive any reduction in Covid cases when you look at real world data. While they maybe make some sense in a crowded indoor space (still debatable), but are completely useless or even counter productive in others (outdoors).
Fourth Stop: Covid’s Origin
Are you old enough to remember when the Washington Post called Tom Cotton’s claim that Covid originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology rather than the wet market a “dangerous debunked conspiracy”? I hope so, because it was only 15 months ago!
For whatever reason, the narrative quickly became that it was a big sin to suggest that, perhaps, a virus displaying gain-of-function characteristics that shows up in the exact city with a level four biolab conducting gain-of-function research on coronaviruses. Go figure… must be a coincidence right?
Yet that incredible coincidence is the narrative that quickly became the only socially acceptable to hold.
Since then though, more and more actual science has snuck through and slowly the much more likely truth is coming out: this virus was being studied in the WIV and escaped the lab environment. The Washington Post has even stealth edited their past op-ed to, uh, lessen the claims against Mr. Cotton.
Other Examples
We could go on. What are some other tales spun by the Gated Institutional Narrative around Covid?
Hospitals are getting overrun!
This has never been true either nationally or locally within the U.S.
Lockdowns save lives!
There is zero evidence to support this, and substantial evidence that lockdowns create substantial harms for society.
We can end Covid for good!
It has been true for over a year that Covid almost certainly cannot be eradicated.
All these though share a commonality which allows us to see the GIN for what it is.
In all cases, the narrative was established seemingly without much concern for the evidence or nuance of the situation.
Once established, it stomped out evidence and viewpoints that challenged it.
There is never a true mea culpa from the organizations that push these false narratives. Even when the evidence comes out, they stealthily edit the headline (see WaPo example) and show you a new sparkly object to grab your attention.
This path is not just exclusive to Covid. Once you see the GIN, you realize that it is in play on most conventional information and societal norms.
For better or for worse though, this is not some giant conspiracy or cabal. We can say with virtual certainty that there is not some underground meeting of “the elites” where they go and decide all this. Rather, the GIN seems to be an emergent phenomena of how systems of humans build and maintain power. It arises not from malice, but from cowardice and a lack of critical thinking.
Next Stops: Treatments, Vaccines, and more!
So with that all said, hopefully you now can see how the GIN has been at play in shaping our understanding of Covid.
But we also need to understand how it will continue to do so. But to do this, we must travel into the world of very GIN unapproved narratives. Thus, I’ll sound like a conspiracy theorist. Go ahead and call me that; life is too short and if that’s your perspective, I frankly don’t give a shit.
Here are several statements that have a sound basis in facts but sound heretical because they go against the GIN. Evidence for each is out there if you care to look, and I will try to share that information here in future posts:
Existing medications, particularly Ivermectin and Fluvoxamine are shown to bring the Covid death rate down close to zero with the appropriate treatment regiment.
The death rate and long-term health effects from the Covid Vaccines are shown to be substantially higher than any previous vaccine and are more risky than the illness itself for certain populations (otherwise healthy people under 30).
Some formerly free nations will keep Covid-based restrictions in place indefinitely: citizens (prisoners) of these nations will no longer have the right to free assembly.
Many people will be angry after reading this, for one of two reasons:
If you are angry because you can’t believe that information this important would be sequestered. Congrats! You are having the appropriate emotional response.
If you are angry because you think I’m spreading baseless lies, then congrats! You are a mindless tool of the GIN.
Of course, it is wise to be skeptical of aberrant views. This protects us from conspiracy theories and keeps our views somewhat grounded. But questioning the narrative we’re being fed has become absolutely essential. Entrenched power tends to corrupt, and when it does things can get ugly in a hurry if those subject to that power don’t wake up.