Think back to where you were two years ago today. For me, I was in Trakai, Lithuania. It was Day 4 of our 10th annual Sovereign Academy entrepreneurship camp. My dear friends Bill and Marco were giving a joint lecture to the students on hiring, firing, and building culture within a business. Craig Ballantyne was up next with a talk about Instagram marketing. And I was going to finish up the afternoon with a presentation on sales and negotiation. Maybe you were on holiday. Or, since August 4, 2019 was a Sunday, perhaps you were spending a relaxing weekend with family and friends. Now imagine if someone had come up to you two years ago and said-- A few months from now, a novel Coronavirus will spread around the world. The virus will definitely be a problem, and a LOT of people will needlessly die. Yet government data will eventually show the virus to have a 98.3% survival rate… and a survival rate of more than 99.8% for people under the age of 75 who aren’t morbidly obese. Despite this data, however, the virus will be treated as the worst thing in the history of the world by politicians, the media, and unelected public health officials. They will wage a crusade to eradicate the world of this virus, no matter the cost. They will systematically dismantle the core pillars of modern society, from private property rights to individual liberty. Some of the most advanced representative democracies in the world, like Australia, will literally deploy the military to the streets in order to keep people locked in their homes… essentially at gunpoint. And governments will indebt themselves by tens of trillions of dollars, going so far as to pay people to stay at home and NOT work. Politicians will assume unlimited spending authority and use the pandemic as an excuse for every entitlement pet project they’ve ever conceived. Inflation around the world will surge as a result of this orgy of debt and money printing, but central bankers will dismiss the data and pretend that everything is fine. Meanwhile, the scientific community will lose all objectivity. They’ll claim, for example, that protesters against racial injustice are exempt from following public health lockdowns because of their moral righteousness. Yet simultaneously they’ll say that people protesting against public health lockdowns are a danger to society. Pharmaceuticals companies will be given total immunity from prosecution and liability to develop a host of vaccines to combat the spread of the virus. The initial clinical trial data will show significant promise in keeping people safe from severe infection. However long-term studies, by definition, will not exist for a number of years. Despite these limitations, world governments will push these vaccines on the global population. Some will make vaccination mandatory; others will subjugate the unvaccinated population and take away their most basic freedoms until they submit. Personal choice will no longer be an option. Anyone who hesitates or dares ask a question will be ridiculed as a selfish murder by social media. And the Big Tech companies will squash intellectual dissent. Even prize-winning, highly respected scientists will be censored for expressing views that don’t conform to the official narrative. And then, after nearly 18 months, just when you think the pandemic is over, a new variant will emerge… and public health officials will go right back to the same policies all over again. If someone had said this to you two years ago, you might have thought they were completely delusional. And yet, all of it has happened. It’s been a long time since I’ve written about this topic.