An Open Letter To Covid Deniers, Anti-Maskers, New Agers, And QAnon Fruitcakes

This pandemic has been hell, but you made it all infinitely worse.

Anti mask advocate and far right comedian JP Sears

by Ben Cohen

Dear Covid Deniers, Anti-Maskers, New Agers, and QAnon fruitcakes,

We all know someone like you. I have several former friends who fit into the above categories, most of them in wellness and fitness communities. You know who you are. This is something you need to hear.

Most of us spent the past year in a constant state of anxiety, isolated from our families and friends in a desperate bid to help stop the spread of Covid-19. We were stuck inside with our children, our partners and ourselves, glued to the horrifying images of dead bodies piling up in the streets. We watched as hospitals ran out of oxygen and wards overflowed with thousands of dying people unable to breathe. Some of those people were our family and our friends. We waited anxiously as aunts, uncles, grandparents, brothers, sisters and in some cases children were hooked up to precious ventilators and pumped full of steroids to give them a chance of living.

My uncle would have died from Covid had he not called himself an ambulance to take him to hospital. My brother still suffers the consequences of ‘long Covid’. We lost neighbors, have friends who lost close family members, and know several nurses and doctors who risked their lives daily to treat others. Some of those health care workers are psychologically scarred from the sheer amount of death they have witnessed over the past 12 months. I don’t know anyone, including myself, who hasn’t suffered emotionally from this godawful pandemic that ripped apart our lives. My wife lost four close family members this past year (not from Covid), and we were unable to grieve their deaths with her family. The pain and stress this caused us is incalculable.

We waited patiently for our best and brightest epidemiologists, virologists, pharmacologists, vaccine experts, doctors and public health experts to tell us what the hell was going on and what we could do to help. We donated money to health care workers while we watched our wages and our businesses disintegrate. We wore masks to protect ourselves and protect others after conclusive data showed it was the most effective way of stopping transmission. We made our kids wear masks and made heartbreaking decisions to stop them interacting with their friends and family. My two year-old son did not hug his grandparents for almost a year. We did our best to social distance. I was in a small room with a Covid-positive person for several minutes while both wearing masks and was thankfully spared infection. I spent 7 fraught days waiting for symptoms to show up. Others were not so lucky and spend anxious days monitoring their oxygen levels to assess how badly they were going to suffer. It has been hell.

But you made it all infinitely worse.

Instead of joining the rest of us in fighting this pandemic by staying home, wearing a mask, and listening to public health advice, you did the opposite. You kicked, screamed and whined about the dreadful imposition of having to wear a mask in public. You second guessed medical experts using your bro-knowledge of science and Instagram-influencer inspired wellness advice. You claimed to know more about the virus and vaccines than people who had spent years in medical school and decades studying them. You spread baseless bullshit about Bill Gates, 5g and Big Pharma from your social media accounts, took medical advice from Donald Trump ("Hydroxychloroquine works!”), and mocked the rest of us wearing masks and staying home for being “Sheeple”.

According to you, the virus wasn’t real or wasn’t as deadly as the Big Bad Government was saying it was. Doctors and hospitals were fudging statistics to make money. The CDC was inflating the death toll because they were controlled by the Democrats. Vaccines were a ploy by Bill Gates/George Soros/the Jews to microchip and control the population. Covid-19 and 5g were linked. It was all a huge conspiracy to spread fear and instigate the New World Order by a cabal of globalist communists (Jews).

You went traveling to developing countries where you could frolick on the beach with no mask on, helping spread Covid to desperately poor communities unable to effectively fight the pandemic. You got your panoramic shots of Costa Rican beaches and Mexican bars for Instagram while the locals were being carted off to hospital. You claimed the rest of us didn’t understand that a healthy life style, some vitamin D supplements, and a positive attitude would see us through Covid-19. When the vaccine came out, you assured everyone you didn’t need it because of your superhuman wellness and kale smoothie diet would fight the virus “naturally”. You got your info from Joe Rogan and wellness gurus who knew more than the pharma paid doctors trying to sell you vaccines and fear.

Maskless wellness guru Aubrey Marcus on a retreat during the Covid-19 pandemic

In your mind, you are a hero fighting the nefarious forces of Big Government and Big Pharma.

In reality, you are a selfish, narcissistic asshole.

Your actions, or lack thereof, helped kill more people during this pandemic (and yes, this is a proven fact). When humanity needed you the most, you failed miserably and made the enormous burden of fighting a pandemic that much harder. While the Titanic was sinking, you went up on deck, had a big party, and told the rest of us there was nothing to worry about. There was no iceberg, no water seeping rapidly into the hull, no need to get the lifeboats out.

You were wrong.

Now that we have effective vaccines to help put an end to this pandemic — at least here in America and in the UK — we are slowly coming out of our houses and reconnecting with friends and families. It is a joyous moment and one we should cherish for years to come. If we all get the vaccine, we can return to normal life even sooner. But of course you wont, because you don’t trust something you don’t understand. This is something you still want to debate despite watching the real world effects of the vaccines dramatically bringing down infection and hospitalization rates.

The only recourse decent people have is to take this away from you. Personally, I won’t debate any of you. You do not deserve the attention. There is no argument to be had and no discussion about the data and what it means. If you engaged in any of the behavior above, I no longer consider you a friend and will not give you the attention you seek. You will be (or already have been) blocked on social media. There will be no post-pandemic meet up, no reconciliation, no attempts to bridge the divide.

Perhaps in time this might change. But right now I am too angry, too disappointed, and too disgusted to forgive what you did during these awful times.

Get a two month free trial on a Banter Membership! Members get access to exclusive chat threats, our locked archive, and premium articles. Plus you’ll be supporting truly independent media!:

Read an excerpt from the latest premium article for Banter Members:

Confession: I'm Into Bitcoin...

Don't judge! One Bitcoin is now worth $54,994 and is revolutionizing the way we think about money. Here's why you need to know about it ASAP.

(image: Getty images)

by Ben Cohen

“Blockchain-based market networks will replace existing networks. Slowly, then suddenly. In one thing, then in many things.” - Naval Ravikant

Over the last few years, I have become increasingly interested in crypto currencies. Given the stigma associated with the community surrounding it, I haven’t really been public about this. To the outside world, Bitcoin appears to be dominated by weirdos, computer geeks, and highly aggressive libertarian “cointrepreneurs” trying to sell you their latest crypto scam. This is partly true.

However, behind the scenes there are a lot of incredibly smart people who have been taking crypto currencies and blockchain technology very, very seriously — and for good reason. Crypto is now a trillion dollar market, and Bitcoin bigger than Britain’s Sterling Pound. Whether you like it or not, Bitcoin and crypto is here to stay.

Before we get started, I’d like to make a couple things clear. Firstly, I am not a crypto evangelist. I wouldn’t advise anyone get into crypto without serious research and generally don’t think it is a good idea to invest in something you don’t fully understand.

Secondly, I want to make my interest in it clear: I find the space fascinating because of the ingenuity and the speed with which it is expanding. I have no particular feelings about blockchain technology, or any broader libertarian fantasies about unfettered free markets. I am merely observing a phenomenon — just like the birth of the internet — that I think everyone should be paying attention to.

Thirdly, while I’m fairly savvy about the technology and how it works, I am not an investing/finance/crypto expert. I have a few coins I bought as an experiment, and pay fairly close attention to innovations in the space. I am not here to give you any investing advice.

What I would like to share is why I think this is so serious.

The very basics

The internet has revolutionized business and the way we communicate with each other. It has never had a native currency or financial system, and banks have layered applications on top of it. We can send money to each other and pay for things online using debit cards, credit cards, wire transfers, Paypal, Venmo and so on. The underlying technology that does this has evolved rapidly, but the traditional banks have not. We still need banks to hold our cash, borrow from them to buy property, pay off credit cards and receive our wages etc, etc. As seamless and useful as applications like Paypal and Venmo are, they still require us to link our bank accounts. So while we are still using dollars, pounds, Euros and Pesos, we are tethered to institutions we (broadly) trust that can hold, lend, and send them.

Crypto has the potential to do away with all of this.

The best way I have found to think about crypto is that it is bankless money that is native to the internet. Just as we only need a mobile phone to communicate with anyone, almost anywhere in the world for no cost, now we can send money too — and without banking institutions or fees.

How to become a bank

In the world of crypto, I could potentially have all my assets in an online encrypted wallet that I own completely. If I want to buy something, I can safely send assets from my wallet to someone else’s via the blockchain with no intermediaries. Here’s how this works:…

This is an excerpt of today’s Members Only piece. Continue reading here and get a 2 month free trial on a Banter Membership!: