Thursday was three years since President Donald Trump announced the “15 days to slow the spread” campaign that played a big role in propelling the use of new expansive government powers to limit the exercise of freedom in the name of countering coronavirus. The campaign both did not slow the spread and did not end after 15 days. What it did do was help grow and maintain tyrannical policies of the United States, state, and local governments that were marketed as based in science and promoting of health but that in reality were grounded in pseudoscience and harmful to health.
While innumerable media pundits and politicians were jumping before any available microphone to expound their commitment to use government to bludgeon the people in the name of countering coronavirus, a smaller group of individuals, ignored by the big money media and censored on social media, was warning of the dire consequences of the plethora of government mandates being put in place across America. Among them was libertarian communicator Ron Paul, founder and chairman of the Ron Paul Institute.
On the day of Trump’s announcement — March 16, 2020, Paul published at his Ron Paul Institute website an editorial titled “The Coronavirus Hoax.” “Government over-hypes a threat as an excuse to grab more of our freedoms,” is how Paul assessed the situation. Further noted Paul, “People should ask themselves whether this coronavirus ‘pandemic’ could be a big hoax, with the actual danger of the disease massively exaggerated by those who seek to profit – financially or politically – from the ensuing panic.” Even the claimed benefit of the coronavirus crackdown of protecting people’s health, Paul warned, was unfounded. In fact, Paul presciently warned that the government restrictions would tend to harm health, noting as an example that the “martial law” coronavirus fearmongers were dreaming about “will leave people hunkered down inside their homes instead of going outdoors or to the beach where the sunshine and fresh air would help boost immunity.” Also that day, Paul further discussed at his Ron Paul Liberty Report show his opposition to the multiplying authoritarian coronavirus measures.
As the government crackdowns in the name of countering coronavirus continued, Paul, in his editorials, interviews, speeches, and Ron Paul Liberty Report episodes, kept challenging the many attacks on both freedom and health from various crackdown measures including mandates that people take experimental coronavirus “vaccine” shots to keep their jobs or attend school, mask mandates, vaccine passport requirements, suppression of medical information and treatments that differed from the government-advanced orthodoxy, and the forced closure of businesses, schools, churches, and other places where people otherwise would routinely interact.
Many more people joined in later to challenge the coronavirus crackdowns, some even just in retrospect. This is a great thing. But, a special respect is owed to individuals such as Paul who from the beginning stood against the coronavirus crackdown.
