My Twitter Suspension

...and why maybe it's a good thing

First, the context:

My Tweet, which reads “October, 2019” was in response to someone else’s Tweet asking (essentially) “at what point did you realize Covid was a scam?”

My response is obviously a little tongue-in-cheek - but there is reason behind it. Here’s the background: In October of 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law AB 262, which (among other things) gave local health officers sweeping powers to do whatever they want, in the event of an outbreak of a communicable disease:

From the bill: “…the local health officer may issue orders to other governmental entities within the local health officer’s jurisdiction to take any action the local health officer deems necessary to control the spread of the communicable disease.”

Here is a good summary of AB 262, written soon after it had been signed into law. I’ve chosen this summary because it is written by attorney Rick Jaffe, who is very knowledgable in this area, who takes what I think is the most generous and conservative (in the bill’s favor) interpretation possible.

I have a lot of respect for Rick Jaffe. He is a fantastic lawyer, has done a lot for medical freedom in California, and the guy is no fool. But I do think that he tends to bend over backwards to minimize the degree of danger, nastiness and just plain evil that is involved in the push for mandatory vaccination. I also think he gives too much credit to the rationale for these kinds of “public health” measures, and that’s probably because his area of expertise is the law and not medicine. With all of that said, he is one of the good guys, but sometimes he gets it wrong and I think this is one of those times. He wrote, in November of 2019:

Isn’t the language that the local health official can “take any action” *** [he/she] deems necessary to control the spread of the communicable disease” horrible?

I don’t think so. I read this in the context of the public health laws which set out the responses and powers of the public health departments during public health crises. So again, I do not see this bill as expanding the powers of the public health department over the public. Rather, it sets out the chain of command, and puts the public health official as the decision maker over all other local officials.

Without going too far into the weeds here, I think it’s safe to say that Jaffe’s assessment of the danger of “public health” overreach at that time was way, way off. Whether the overreach (and I hate that word - we’re really just talking about straight-up violations of fundamental rights) was enabled, specifically, by AB 262 or not is up for debate. But what is clear is that those of us who were worried about this coming power grab were right to be.

I was so worried about it in fact, that I talked with my husband about moving out of state. I even took a trip to Idaho to explore the possibility of moving there. The provisions of AB 262 were due to come into force in January of 2020, and I felt strongly that there was going to be some kind of “epidemic” early in 2020 that would be blown out of proportion in order to use this new power, and specifically, to force everyone, including adults, to be vaccinated.

I wasn’t wrong.

Of course, what I didn’t know, or foresee (although I could have, had I been looking a little deeper), was that this “epidemic” would have to do with a coronavirus. So technically, the Twitter censors are correct that I did not know that “Covid” was a scam in October of 2019, and therefore my Tweet is not accurate. (Would that those Tweet-police applied the same rigor to Tweets from the CDC, Fauci and the WHO - but that’s another issue.) I was right that a “public-health” scam was coming - but I did not know that it was going to be “Covid”.

So I don’t actually mind deleting my Tweet, on that technicality.

But here’s the thing:

When I first got the notice that my account had been suspended, my internal response was not what I would have expected.

First, I’ve been saying for a while that it is a mark of honor to be banned from Twitter. Many, if not most, of the best reporters on Covid-19 and related issues have been permanently banned from the platform. I used to say this partly in jest, but lately it’s started to seem less and less like a joke. And I’ve been feeling a little inadequate - not in jest, but really - that I’d never been banned.

So my first reaction was something like “Whew! Finally!”

My next reaction was more interesting. It was relief.

I felt a sense of freedom. A feeling that a burden had been lifted from me. That I didn’t “have to” go and check my Twitter feed to see what was going on in the world. And a sense that something else had just opened up to me. That I’d gotten a piece of my life back.

I know that probably sounds weird. Obviously nobody is forcing me to look at my Twitter feed. And I have no commitment to keep up to date on any current events at all. But the truth is that it’s been hard for me to avoid. I post my articles on Twitter, and when I do, I see some of what’s there and then end up scrolling for a bit. Or I’ll have a few minutes in between things, where I feel the need to do “something” and looking at my feed is the easiest thing to do… and I end up wasting a lot of time that way, and yes it is a waste.

I could go on and on about this. The bottom line is that when my Twitter account was taken away from me (temporarily, and I can get it back if I want to), I felt relief. I felt freedom. I like how it feels now, and I like that I don’t even have the option to go and look at what’s happening there. Maybe I just don’t have the self discipline to limit my time there in an effective way, and if that’s the case, then maybe this is a good thing.

I’m going to have to think this through. It definitely costs me something to not be able to post my articles and podcast, etc. on Twitter. To not be able to advertise there. But this feels good, and I may not be going back.