A Covid contrarian speaks out about all she has lost
And the unwillingness of the lockdowners and hysterics to admit the truth even now.
ALEX BERENSON
MAR 17
I do not feel redeemed. I just feel angry, still, when I think about it. I mostly try not to…
Jennifer Sey was a charter member of Team Reality. And she paid the price. When Covid hit in 2020, she had a top job at Levi’s. Sey believed lockdowns and school closures were wrong and spoke against them. Levi’s, among the wokest companies around, was not happy. Her position there became impossible. She quit and moved from California to Colorado, where she now runs her own clothing company.
But she hasn’t forgotten - or forgiven. And last week, as the Covid retrospectives rolled in, she posted on X her own story of the last five years. It hit me, and I think it will hit you too. I asked her if I could repost it, in full and unedited. She kindly agreed.
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I've been a bit grumpy and on edge this week.
It's the five-year anniversary of lockdowns. I don't really know what to say about it all. I've written extensively on the subject, even a book about what it was like to dissent from the outset. I feel tinges of rage at those who now, or perhaps two to three years into it all, pretend at dissent.
We needed you then. There is broad recognition that school closures went on too long, and even some acknowledgement that lockdowns were ineffective and terrible human rights violations.
The vaccine (and of course mandates - which people lost jobs over) have disappeared from public consciousness. I mean, does anyone actually get that thing anymore?
We are still reminded of masks, as any good leftist protesting about anything -- from Teslas and DOGE to "freeing Palestine" to standing up for kids to be able to self ID as the opposite sex and take mutilating hormones -- dons one, still. It is the uniform of "good lefties" or what I would call the "unhinged." Which it always was really.
There has been no denunciation of those that drove lockdowns and distancing and toddler masking. These public health bureaucrats should be run out of their jobs and never be allowed to set any policy (or "make recommendations") again. Randi Weingarten [president of the American Federation of Teachers] should not have any job that has any bearing on children's lives.
Sure Fauci has retired. But people like Barbara Ferrer (Los Angeles) and Sara Cody (Santa Clara County) still hold their positions after destroying small businesses and locking kids out of school for a year and a half. And force masking two-year-olds and speech delayed toddlers and hearing impaired adolescents. This was state-sanctioned child abuse from the outset.
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So, forgive me, but the modest acknowledgement that maybe we went too far brings cold comfort.
I do not feel redeemed. I just feel angry, still, when I think about it. I mostly try not to.
So many kids' lives were altered and harmed forever. So many milestones they can never get back. And if these were raised at the time (remember drive-through graduations?), parents were mocked for saying those things mattered. They were Karens and racist and murderers and selfish for thinking any of that mattered and every stupid vilifying name the idiotic Covid hysterics could think of.
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And then you have people like me and my husband -- of which there aren't too many -- who publicly dissented from the outset of lockdowns.
You won't find anything from me in March 2020 on Twitter, because I didn't use Twitter much then. Instead I was arguing with friends on Facebook which went about as well as you might imagine. I came to X to push back on lockdowns around April 2020. This changed the course of my life forever.
My life is unrecognizable versus 2019. Lost lifelong friends, fractured family relationships, loss of professional reputation that persists, new home, new city and on and on. And even now, with acknowledgement that people like me were right, we are not un-cancelled.
We make our own way. We are doing fine, for the most part. But no one has said: you were right, and we are sorry to have put you through hell. You can come back now, into the fold. So forgive me, I'm pissed off still. No amnesty for those who put these egregiously, horrific, anti-human policies in place.
And no, it was not "just in the beginning" -- it all lasted well over two years. And no amnesty for the everyday folks who cheered the policies and snitched on their neighbors. Or just stayed silent as they watched their friends and neighbors who dared resist get dragged through the mud.
I'll never look at people the same way again. I will forever be distrustful. I won't forgive or forget, certainly not without a heartfelt apology. Mostly to the kids who were harmed. But to me too.
(Follow Jennifer on X.)
