By Andrea Widburg
In July 2021, we published an essay from an “Anonymous Antarctican” describing the insane restrictions placed on people in the middle of nowhere, all in an effort to avoid COVID. Now, we’re getting a reminder that, in the words of the old margarine commercial, “you can’t fool Mother Nature.” It turns out that all those crazy precautions were for nothing. A similarly situated station hosted a virgin population of people who had never had COVID, and two-thirds of them caught it, just as everyone will eventually.
The July American Thinker article, entitled “Anti-COVID measures in an Antarctic research station,” described how the McMurdo Station, 800 miles north of the South Pole, had instituted incredibly repressive rules, all based on magical, not scientific, thinking:
PAE-ASC (Antarctica Support Contract) along with the NSF (National Science Foundation) then implemented a COVID screening process to anyone going to the ice. This process included flying to San Francisco and staying in a managed hotel from which you could not leave the grounds. During that time, a negative COVID test was required to process further to Christchurch, New Zealand. The program booked a private charter flight to reduce COVID contact. Upon arrival in Christchurch, per N.Z. government regulations, any person arriving from outside the country was required to stay in a government-managed isolation facility for two weeks and required two negative COVID tests, one per week, before being released.
But it was still not over yet; once departing the N.Z. government isolation facility, we take a private van to another managed isolation hotel. During this trip, masking and social distancing are required at all times — as it was throughout the whole process.
Due to unpredictable weather patterns, delays can be anywhere from a few days to several weeks, and — you guessed it — you cannot leave your hotel at all. Mind you, N.Z. has zero COVID cases.
Those attenuated and pointless travel restrictions, which meant a month of isolation and myriad COVID tests (which we now know can’t distinguish COVID from the flu) were just the beginning. Once at the station, the people were under a red-yellow-green-blue alert season, which prescribed various levels of social distancing and masking—in a small working and living area:
If it is green and a plane arrives, we go to level yellow for one week. Mask and social distance at all times during work and personal hours. At the end of a long day, you can’t wait to get back to your room. Oh, wait — you have roommates, too! How can you implement these rules and yet have everyone live together?
Last summer season, everyone had his own room, but this is changing this season as the NSF is ramping up production. But what happens if there are multiple planes in one week, or one arrives on day 7 from the last one? Well, you guessed it: it all starts over again. That means depending on flight schedule, you will be in “level yellow” for months. Sounds like so much fun.
Despite all these extreme precautions, which now include requiring that everyone coming to the station must be vaccinated, COVID came to Antarctica. The COVID-infected station is not the one described above, but the protocols sound much the same:
Two thirds of the staff based at Belgium’s Princess Elisabeth Polar Station have caught the Omicron variant, according to Le Soir newspaper. All staff passed multiple PCR tests, quarantining, and being fully vaccinated with one having received a booster shot.
Before leaving for the station, they had a PCR test two hours prior to a flight to South Africa.
In South Africa they then quarantined for ten days before taking another PCR test.
They were also tested before leaving Cape Town for Antarctica and also a final one five days after arrival.
Significantly, even though people with Omicron were evacuated, others still tested positive. However, because it’s Omicron, “it’s not thought that any of the Belgian’s [sic] have experienced severe symptoms.” And let me just say again that they’re all vaccinated.
The “vaccinations” don’t prevent COVID nor do the boosters. For vulnerable people, shots may make less intense those COVID strains other than Omicron. With Omicron, there is no “intense.” You get it, you’re not very sick, and with luck, you’re truly immune and that’s the end of the Chinese Communist Party’s viral gift to the world.
It’s time for us to end the COVID charade. It’s a nasty flu, with the main problem being that our federal government refuses to allow doctors to treat it at any time before patients are at death’s door. With treatment, I suspect deaths would be uncommon. And as the Antarctica experience shows, with Omicron, we’ll all get it and pass through the fire unscathed.