Another post by Dr. Emanuel Garcia, who left the US for greener pastures in New Zealand, only to see totalitarianism arrive there first. Similar petitions are popping up in other countries.

In the early days of the covid propaganda onslaught, I thought often — in fact, I yearned — for the possibility that the New Zealand government would once again establish its bona fides on the world stage by taking a sensible position. I imagined our then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addressing the nation with ardent resolve not to succumb to a campaign of fear and impulse but to protect the citizenry of this small two-island country at the ends of the earth by zealously guarding our unalienable rights. I spun speeches in my own mind that would seek to calm anxieties about an invisible pathogen, rely on the strength and courage of people to follow established medical principles, acknowledge the critical role of natural immunity if and when illness made inroads, and vigorously pursue early treatment so as to avoid the lurid death scenarios depicted abroad, replete as they were with images of ventilators and overcrowded Intensive Care Units.

That, of course, was not to be.