Why “Energy Lockdown” Grifters & Conspiracy Theorists are Full of it

To little surprise, the first month of this deteriorating Strait of Hormuz crisis has seen social media and the like inundated with claims that the "power elite" are back at it, as following the SARS-CoV-2-induced lockdowns of 2020 (and 2021, depending on where you were) "they" are supposedly now imposing "energy lockdowns" in order to usher in the next round of freedom restrictions and removal of liberties. Because after anti-lockdown protesters, anti-vax protesters, sovereign citizens, and all the rest of them repeatedly screamed during their SARS-CoV-2 protests that "history shows us that whenever they take away our freedoms they never give them back!", these same characters are unsurprisingly back at it again.

Emerging from long-since re-opened bars and restaurants (where we're all completely free to infect ourselves with the latest variant of the brain-wasting bat virus) are largely the same individuals, claiming that previous restrictions (read: safety precautions), which in due time were quite obviously annulled, are going to be placed on us once again, but this time – this time! – they'll actually be placed on us forever. This is, unfortunately, no joke, because although with hindsight these rehashed claims may come off as even more nonsensical and ridiculous than those from the previous round, the harsher societal conditions that are all but surely coming our way will quite possibly lead to greater extremism of those spreading these lies and conspiracy theories, quite possibly leading to even greater repercussions for society at large.

Grifters, propagandists and useful idiots

It can't be said that there's any singular point from where this latest round of conspiracy theorizing emanated from, as thanks to such things as Elon Musk's further trashing of what was already a trashy platform, a quite profitable cottage industry of BS-spewing has emerged in recent years. Thanks to the new opportunities, any enterprising individual is now incentivized to buy themselves a blue check-mark and monetize whatever stream of BS they can squeeze out of their tortured and at times maniacal craniums, and monetized many-a-grifter has.

One of the more notable grifter-extraordinaires of the past few years is the failed comedian Jimmy Dore, the faux-lefty turned MAGA-sycophant that comes replete with the phrase "COVID lies are funny" superimposed on his Twitter avatar. Having been an ardent supporter of safety precautions at the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, Dore soon realized that the big money wasn't in health and safety bur rather was in the anti-vax and anti-lockdown grift. A few years later, and with another lucrative round of grifting now emerging, Dore is not only tying COVID lockdowns to "Energy Lockdowns", but is slyly trying to associate the very likely long-term energy disruptions brought about by US president Donald Trump's Straight of Hormuz blunder with European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde (who recently stated in an interview with The Economist that the notion of a quick return to normal after this Strait of Hormuz crisis is likely "overly optimistic", and that "We are facing a real shock… probably beyond what we can imagine at the moment").

While we'll get to some of the arguments made by other smaller grifters who may or may not take their cues from the likes of the Jimmy Dores of the internet, it's not just "energy lockdown" grifting that gets pushed around but also outright propagandizing. The most notable of these purveyors would be Kirill Dmitriev, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's financier and close ally, well known for his many associations with Donald Trump's bagman Steve Witkoff.

Dmitriev has written several tweets about supposed "energy lockdowns", connecting them not to Lagarde but rather to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen (and then with European Commission vice-president Kaja Kallis).

With both Dmitriev's boss and his compatriot Witkoff's boss being in one way or another in opposition to so-called "Russophobic EU/UK bureaucrats", Dmitriev's "energy lockdown" propagandizing is used to take advantage of what is an increasingly deteriorating situation by fomenting as much unrest in Europe as he can by laying the blame for emerging outcomes on von der Leyen, Kallas, and others allied with them, effectively weakening European cohesion and thus threatening ongoing support for Ukraine's resistance to Russia's invasion. Meanwhile, although China has so far been the largest beneficiary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine (read: a weakened Europe, USA, and even Russia), it's quickly emerging that Russia has so far been the largest beneficiary of the Strait of Hormuz crisis, what with its faltering finances having so far been been buoyed – if not rescued – by the ensuing rise in oil prices (although Ukraine's ongoing attacks on the Ust-Luga and Primorsk oil export terminals on the Baltic Sea are having a say about that). Moreover, as shortages and higher prices for energy and generally all goods across the board will seed further European unrest, exacerbation of the confusion Europeans will experience from all this has been, is, and will continue to be, manipulated by Russians to their advantage, be it with "energy lockdown" conspiracy theories or otherwise.

Failed comedians and Russian propagandists are, however, far from the only individuals looking to take advantage of the situation. Because similarly not being the type to let a good grifting opportunity to go to waste, Jeffrey Tucker, the libertarian activist, Bitcoin-evangelist, supporter of underage smoking and child labour, promoter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Health Again (MAHA) movement, and founder of the Brownstone Institute (known as the "spiritual child of the Great Barrington Declaration", which promoted anti-vaccine misinformation throughout the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic) has also been tweeting about supposed "energy lockdowns".

Tucker is a bit infamous when it comes to lockdowns, having penned a retrospective article about lockdowns for the Brownstone Institute in 2024 in which he argued that lockdowns were no less than an "insidious" plan by big pharma – with the complicity of the US government, the medical profession, and the public health apparatus – to confer hero status upon new mRNA vaccine technology of which massive profits could be made off of.

That's where the lockdowns come in. Here is where the plan gets truly insidious. The idea was to come up with some way in which the antidote would gain the credit for having solved the pandemic that supposedly emerged from a wet market. The new technology would get the credit and then obtain generalized approval for a new form of health care that could be applied to myriad maladies in the future. Everyone would get rich. And Big Pharma and Fauci would be the heroes.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus and Anthony Fauci (former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease) have of course fallen off the charts in the past few years following the cessation of the emergency phase of the pandemic, but with Tucker apparently needing a new whipping boy that many-a-conspiracy-theorist can earn their grift off of, Tucker has wasted no time in anointing International Energy Agency (IEA) head Fatih Birol as that guy.

Say what you will about Birol's thoughts about energy, but what Birol has most certainly not been doing is pushing for lockdowns.

What Tucker is drawing his deceptive comments from is the recently-released IEA report entitled "Sheltering from Oil Shocks", a response to the Strait of Hormuz-induced energy crisis that details "10 demand-side options open to households, businesses and governments to shelter themselves from today's oil shock and relieve the strains on affordability". The first seven options apply to road transport, the remaining three to air transport fuels, cooking fuels, and industry:

• Work from home where possible
• Reduce speed limits on highways by at least 10 km/h
• Encourage public transport
• Alternate private car access to roads in large cities on different days
• Increase car sharing and adopt efficient driving practices
• Efficient driving for road commercial vehicles and delivery of goods
• Divert LPG use from transport
• Avoid air travel where alternative options exist
• Where possible, switch to other modern cooking solutions
• Leverage flexibility with petrochemical feedstocks and implement short-
  term efficiency and maintenance measures

Absolutely nothing on that list implies being locked down to one's home, instead listing options to reduce fuel usage while going about one's regular daily life, the kinds of things any rational person would at least want to think about when faced with supply shortages. To draw "energy lockdowns" from that list, and that Birol is somehow "pushing lockdowns", is no less than the work of a highly deceitful character with a disinformation-saturated agenda to push and/or a grift to establish and promulgate.

While Tucker is only one of the more prominent characters as such out there, he's nonetheless kept himself busy by promoting various other aligned grifters, including the "freedom movement architect" and Brownstone Institute fellow Aaron Day, someone who's also been pushing the "energy lockdown" disinformation grift while simultaneously suggesting that the IEA report tells governments to ground flights, force remote work, and ban gas cooking.

Regardless of whether or not they've taken their cues from the likes of Tucker and Day, the internet is now littered with an array of large and small voices, some of them useful idiots, that have similarly started up their own (blue-check) monetized grifts. Not to use the word "grift" flippantly, as evidenced by the array of claims made in just the first few weeks of the crisis.

• "The IEA has released a 10 point plan to address the current energy crisis, and it spells worldwide lockdown measures"
• "We're sleepwalking into Energy Lockdowns and most people have no idea it's all staged"
• "This is ALL part of the coming "energy lockdowns" Great Reset agenda"
• "Energy lockdowns are coming for the peasants"
• "The Iran War is Covid 2.0 and we are all at the receiving end of the Grand Theft Reset"
• "it almost seems like the war was PLANNED as a way to take away your liberty"
• "The Australian Prime Minister is begging citizens to take the bus. This is the beginning of energy lockdowns for the left."
• "Scarcity is being deliberately created to control you. Say No to energy lockdowns. Stand up for your freedoms or they will become a distant memory for both you and future generations."
• ⁠"Sounds like agenda 2030"

Some individuals aren't even subtle with their grifts but rather are completely forthright with them, proclaiming throughout 20+ minute "energy lockdown" videos that viewers can save themselves from coming energy lockdowns and "achieve financial freedom" by signing up to their "digital income mastery system" program, replete with offers of 90% discounts, if you act now. In some cases uber-astute and -enterprising grifters have even been so far ahead of the curve that they beat Tucker to the punch by at least two weeks, albeit with predictions that failed to foresee the IEA's supposed lockdown measures.

The "save oil to win the war" comment has some historical context that some may not be aware of, but before elaborating on that it'd be worthwhile to first examine if the notion of an "energy lockdown" even makes sense. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the two relevant definitions of "lockdown" are (1) "the confinement of prisoners to their cells for an extended period of time, usually as a security measure following a disturbance", and (2) "a state of isolation, containment, or restricted access, usually instituted for security purposes or as a public health measure". The first definition obviously isn't applicable, what with it pertaining to a response to prisoners after some sort of violent event. The second definition, at its core being "a public health measure", is quite obviously the more relevant definition to the early years of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic as many people were in fact isolated and had their access restricted in order to protect their health and the health of others.

That all being so, combining the two words "energy" and "lockdown" together doesn't work. The current Strait of Hormuz crisis and its energetic knock-on effects have nothing to do with prisoners, and nor do either of them have anything to do with public health. Moreover, there is no such thing as an "energy public health measure". The closest thing would be something like the access restrictions implemented following the Chernobyl nuclear power plant meltdown, but those restrictions were health-based restrictions due to radiation exposure, not because of any kind of energy issue.

In effect, the "10 demand-side options" suggested by the IEA have nothing to do with any kind of lockdown as they are not a public health measure but rather are a conservation measure. And conservation has nothing to do with lockdowns. In fact, conservation measures are nothing new to the United States (where Tucker, Day, and the Brownstone Institute think-tank are all from), even ones related to energy. During World War II the American government undertook such conservation measures as rationing petrol/gasoline, setting the country's maximum speed limit to 35 miles per hour, and the banning of automobile racing. Various campaigns were undertaken to inform the public about the measures, which is effectively what Robin Monotti was ridiculing in the lattermost tweet when he stated "save oil to win the war".

I must admit that one of the very first things that went through my head in the first days of this nascent Strait of Hormuz crisis was that, with the SARS-CoV-2 situation often on my mind, and with the topic of energy virtually always on my mind, the upcoming shortages would imply what could be referred to as "energy lockdowns". That is, we wouldn't be ordered to drive less or what have you, but inevitable shortages and price spikes would mean there would be less fuel, and more expensive fuel, to go around. Although I'd yet to see the "energy lockdowns" phrase used by anybody, the fact that the phrase seemed rather click-baity made me hold off on writing about it or even using it in a tweet, my hesitation inevitably doing me good when I started seeing a multitude of well-known SARS-CoV-2 grifters and conspiracy theorists using it, after which my dissection of its meaning proved to myself that it was nothing but nonsensical click-bait.

Unfortunately not everybody has been so careful with the usage of the term "energy lockdowns", what with what are otherwise good SARS-CoV-2 commentators using the phrase ("here come the energy lockdowns") as well as what are otherwise good energy commentators using the phrase ("Australia is about to face an energy lockdown"). Because the more the phrase gets used in such unintentionally distorting ways, the more it'll enter the popular lexicon. And as the phrase can't be appropriated by grifters and conspiracy theorists seeing how it was always theirs to begin with by definition, the more that well-meaning people use the phrase the more that grifters and conspiracy theorists will be able to point at their usage of the phrase as "proof" that even the COVID-cautious and energy-aware people agree with the conspiratorial "energy lockdown" claim.

Anyhow, talk of "energy lockdowns" and the like is only at its early stages on the internet, considering that the enormity of what's about to hit the world has barely made a ripple yet, and more pressingly is all but surely going to be far more consequential than what emerged out of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Because while the pandemic did kill tens of millions of people and maimed hundreds of millions more, other than a few logjams in supply chains the system kept on chugging along as normal. The only significant shortages that occurred resulted not because of actual supply constraints but because of panic buying, and the most concerning issue (in places like Australia) was the lack of people to plant and harvest food due to backpackers and migrant workers that had largely fled back home.

But this time around... this time the very heart of the system is being threatened due to the flow and supply of the hemoglobin that allows the system to operate being curtailed. The little that's been experienced so far are just the foreshocks, what with significant fuel, fertilizer, helium and sulphur shortages yet to hit, to go along with disrupted air travel as well as high food prices in the richer parts of the world and hunger and famine in the poorer parts. The strikes and protests (and even murders of service station attendants over denied fuel), comprised mostly of ordinary workers, haven't even had a chance to get off to much of a start yet. When they do, and seeing how the grifters, conspiracy theorists, sovereign citizens, and all the other agitators of the SARS-CoV-2 era haven't mended their ways but have simply slipped back into the shadows to lick their wounds, it's only a question of to what degree they'll ramp up their protests and desire for disruption, and what percentage of striking and protesting ordinary workers they'll be able to peel off for their cause(s).

That all being so, and supposing there's a silver-lining to all this, it turns out that barely a week after Tucker, his colleagues, and what are effectively his protégés began spouting their "energy lockdown" nonsense across the internet, the one city in the world that the unhinged have long imagined as being ground zero for a Lockdown 2.0 rollout turns out to have done the unthinkable – proven that "energy lockdowns" and everybody pushing the phrase are actually full of shit.

Melbourne goes from the capital of lockdowns to the capital of free(dom) transit

While you certainly can't be blamed if you've been getting some early-2020 vibes the past few weeks (what with the burgeoning energy shortages and talk about food shortages), there's no doubting that some people were more traumatized than others due to what happened during the early stages of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. One group of people deservedly more traumatized than others – and so more wary of what might transpire this time around – would undoubtedly be Australians living in and around the city of Melbourne. (With just one degree of separation I actually know of two separate cases in the Melbourne area in which individuals took their lives during lockdowns, to go along with an acquaintance who had to commit herself to the hospital.)

Although the Australian federal government implemented nationwide closures of various venues in late-March of that first pandemic year, the length of ensuing lockdowns varied state by state, Victoria's (and thus Melbourne's) initial lockdown ending on May 12^th and so lasting about six weeks. But for Melburnians, that was just the beginning. Because while a smattering of contained cases continued popping up in Victoria and other states courtesy of repatriated Australians in quarantine, starting in mid-June an uncomfortable emergence of new community-transmitted cases in Melbourne and environs eventually turned into dozens of new daily cases and soon thereafter hundreds of new daily cases.

For the record, and having spent the entire pandemic in Melbourne, I was not only a supporter of lockdowns but was an outlier amongst my fellow co-workers regarding lockdowns, what with I vociferously telling peers in early-June that another lockdown should be initiated promptly, lest we be in for some harrowingly excruciating times. Because with Victoria being the only Australian state with cases, with Victoria being quarantined from the rest of the country, and with no idea of how long the global pandemic would last, it should have been plainly obvious to all Melburnians that either (a) Victoria would be quarantined from the rest of the country for months if not years, or (b) Victoria would somehow have to get back down to zero cases. And due to exponential growth and the long tail of re-reaching zero-COVID, the longer the initiation of a second lockdown was delayed the much longer the inevitable lockdown would drag on for. Having delayed for far, far too long, Victoria's second lockdown was finally enacted on July 8^th, Melbourne ultimately being subjected to lockdown conditions for an excruciating 111 straight days (which included stage 4 restrictions from August 2^nd, entailing curfew between 8pm and 5am as well as a range restriction of 5km from one's home). Suffice to say, it was bad.

To make matters worse, that was only the second of six lockdowns that Melbourne experienced across 2020 and 2021, the city going through a total of 262 days of lockdown over the two years, the longest in the world.

• March 26 to May 12, 2020 – 43 days
• July 8 to October 27, 2020 – 111 days
• February 12 to February 17, 2021 – 5 days
• May 27 to June 10, 2021 – 14 days
• July 15 to July 27, 2021 – 12 days
• August 5 to October 21, 2021 – 77 days

To say that things got a bit rough at times in Melbourne is an understatement, what with all the anti-lockdown and anti-vax conspiracies that grifters like Tucker were proliferating on the internet eventually bubbling out over onto the streets.

Even the Queen Victoria Market got paid a rather photogenic visit by the riot police during one of the many anti-lockdown/anti-vax protests.

All in all, Melbourne's lockdowns caused about $100m in lost economic activity per day, caused countless numbers of businesses to permanently shutter, and caused rampant mental health issues amongst the populace (all of which, however, would have been considerably worse had of the lockdowns not been enacted – of which would have been much shorter if they had of just locked down a month earlier). Although some Melburnians were able to adapt to lockdowns and work from home via Zoom calls and the like, others, as more than alluded to earlier, quite obviously fared much worse.

Read around on specific subreddits and other parts of the internet populated by Australia's conspiracy theorists, grifters, sovereign citizens, and all the rest of them, and you'll read about how Melbourne was supposedly the "testing ground" for a variety of hackneyed Great Reset-type New World Order agendas (led by the Bill Gates' and George Soros' of the world). And although all the pandemic measures have obviously since been rescinded (contrary to all the "when they take away your freedoms, they never give them back!" exhortations during protests), said restrictions – and more – are stated on these websites to undoubtedly return at a later date when "they" are ready to undertake stage two of their Great Reset / New World Order agendas.

But for reasons obvious to everybody except all those conspiracy theorists, grifters, sovereign citizens, etc., seeing how the vast majority of politicians are subservient to their local Chambers of Commerce as well as the notion of perpetual economic growth, every single (Melburnian) politician out there would undoubtedly do everything in their power to avoid imposing $100m in lost daily economic activity upon their city. Conspiracy theorists and sovereign citizens, unfortunately, lack the common sense to understand any of this, their self-important understanding of themselves instead leading to their descent into quackery.

With that short history of Melburnian SARS-CoV-2 lockdowns described, and with the world now in the early throes of its next significant crisis, lo and behold Victorian politicians have done exactly the opposite of what Jeffrey Tucker and all the other grifters and conspiracy theorists have predicted as, rather than impose "energy lockdowns" (aka COVID 2.0), Victorian premier Jacinta Allan became Australia's first premier to announce free transport for all its citizens in order to mitigate the deleterious effects of the unfolding crisis.

For those needing help adding two and two together, granting free transport to all citizens of a state is the exact opposite thing you'd want to do if your goal is to keep people locked away in their homes, and is exactly opposite to what Australia's grifters and conspiracy theorists have been predicting – for years on end now – would soon return to Melbourne.

While Victoria's announcement to temporarily provide free transit for all its citizens coincided with Tasmania's similar announcement (just the month of April for Victoria, April, May and June for Tasmania), none of the other Australian states or territories fell in line alongside them. Although the cost to Victoria's coffers will be about $70m for the month (Tasmania's taking a $2.5m hit), as petrol/gasoline and diesel prices in Victoria have risen from an average of $1.76 and $1.50 a week just prior to the crisis to as high as $2.75 and $3.20 respectively upon the initiative's announcement, and with 99 Victorian service stations being empty of diesel and another 42 without petrol/gasoline (due to panic buying, not supply shortages, as the disruption to tanker arrivals has yet to occur), the free transit measure was deemed to be worthwhile by the premier as it would "help with the cost of living – it will take pressure off the pump and help you save" (between $200 and $250 for full-fare, five-day-a-week commuters). Whether or not it gets extended beyond its one-month timeframe (as the crisis will only be getting worse, and will last for much longer than a month) remains to be seen.

While New South Wales (in which Sydney resides) balked at joining up with the initiative (which would have incurred an estimated $140m cost) as its transport minister stated that "this situation will last for more than a month" and so "[we] need to keep our powder dry to be able to assist the broader economy", Queensland also demurred since it had already introduced 50¢ fares a year and a half ago.

Regardless of who did and didn't join up, the timing of Victoria's announcement turned out to be rather odd considering that the Australian federal government announced the very next day that it was cutting the fuel excise tax from 52.6¢ to 26.3¢ per litre for three months, akin to hitting both the brake and acceleration pedals at the same time. Because while the move will save some Australians some money on their petrol/gasoline bills, it will also work at cross purposes by effectively enticing Australians to continue driving as normal, in effect frivolously depleting Australia's precious fuel supplies which aren't too far away from starting to diminish (once the flow of deliveries starts to significantly decrease come late-April).

But while it's "commendable" that Melbourne and the rest of Victoria didn't fulfill the fever dreams of Tucker and his band of grifters and conspiracy theorists by absurdly imposing supposed "energy lockdowns", considering the magnitude of what's about to hit Melbourne, the rest of Australia, and the rest of the world, it's questionable whether free transit will actually accomplish the desired effect.

For starters, seeing how public transport doesn't exist in the fringes of cities, let alone in regional towns and bush areas, the benefits of the free transit initiative will only be accessible to households in the inner city, which invariably means higher-income households (which do of course also pay higher rents).

Secondly, and having studied the effects of the aforementioned 50¢ fares in Queensland, Mark Hickman, a professor of transport engineering at the University of Queensland, came to a rather unfortunate conclusion about the initiative which he shared with The Guardian.

What we have seen is that it does get people to take more travel with public transport but the number of people who are switching from motor vehicles to public transport is actually a very small percentage of it.

And who exactly is doing the switching over to public transit then?

The increase has been from people who used to bicycle or walk, or [who used] to not travel at all.

So although Melbourne has fortunately not (re)entered (energy) lockdowns for what would be incomprehensible reasons, its seemingly altruistic approach may turn out to be one of those "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" kinda things.

Whoever said that collapse wouldn't be rife with its fair share of false hopes, right?

In conclusion (before the bonus section), while it's unclear how measures undertaken by various Australian states, Australia itself, and other countries will pan out, what we can be sure of is that even if people like Jeffrey Tucker, Aaron Day, or any other individuals mixed up with the grifters and/or conspiracy theorists somehow managed to get wind of Melbourne's non-return to lockdowns, it's all but certain that they wouldn't care one iota and would instead persist with their hole-ridden arguments. Regardless of whether they'd ignore the facts or twist the facts in order to suit their agendas and beliefs, they'd just keep on keeping on. And two days after Victorian premier Jacinta Allan made her announcement, that's exactly what Day did.

Yes, once you see the pattern you can't unsee it: grifters gonna grift, disinformation peddlers gonna peddle.

BONUS: The little-known chain of events that led to Melbourne's 111-day lockdown

Count this, dear reader, as your lucky day. Because while not one of the dozens and dozens of Melburnians I've spoken to (including many people on a private Melbourne-centric COVID-cautious Discord I'm a member of) have any idea what the chain of events were that led to the 111-day lockdown, you're about to find out.

First off, while it's an unarguable fact that the SARS-CoV-2 cases that caused Melbourne's second lockdown emanated from Australia's slipshod (hotel) quarantine system (a system which according to section 51 of the Australian constitution is the responsibility of the federal government, but which prime minister Scott Morrison abrogated his responsibility for by offloading it onto the states at the last minute), the rumour that the SARS-CoV-2 leak came via a hotel security guard that had sex with an infected guest was nothing but that, a rumour, one which can be traced back to Rupert Murdoch's Herald Sun.

Otherwise, what is generally known (while actually being true) is that there were two hotel sources of the outbreak that led to Melbourne's 111-day second lockdown – 90% of which can be epidemiologically traced back to Rydges on Swanston and the other 10% to the Stamford Plaza. But what's not generally known is what exactly were the chain of events that led to SARS-CoV-2 leaking out from Rydges.

So what exactly did happen? Well, it turns out that a family of four returned from an undisclosed country on May 9^th, individual members of the family subsequently becoming symptomatic on the 9^th, 10^th, 11^th and then 12^th. Two of them tested positive on the 14^th, followed by the other two on the 17^th and 18^th. Also on the 18^th, the family was given permission to walk through the corridors of the hotel under supervision after – drum roll please – one of the two children (or so it goes), said to be in a distressed state, literally spread shit all over the walls of their room. Although there of course can't be any certainty of when exactly transmission occurred, it was just after this incident that a Rydges hotel employee as well as two security guards not only became ill with the virus (genomically linked to the shit-disturbing family of four) but then unwittingly spread it to others, the virus then unleashing itself upon Melbourne and then the rest of the state (and even other parts of the country).

All in all, Melbourne's second lockdown – again, 90% of whose cases were epidemiologically linked back to the shit spreaders – caused its citizens to be homebound for 111 straight days, caused $100m in lost economic activity per day, caused countless numbers of businesses to permanently shutter, caused rampant mental health issues amongst the populace, and led to the deaths of many people who likely wouldn't have died from the virus otherwise.

If you want to get a bit conspiratorial, repatriated Australians confined to quarantined hotel rooms for two weeks not only joined various Facebook Groups set up specifically by and for quarantined individuals, but were known to share tips amongst themselves about how to game the system in order to periodically get let out of their rooms: if they claimed they were experiencing a mental health breakdown, they'd be let out for periods of time. Many, apparently, did this. That being so, is it possible that the shit-spreading family in Melbourne got the idea that if they spread shit on the walls they'd be let out of their room and perhaps moved into a room with a better view or something? We'll obviously never know.

What we'll also obviously never know is if the shit-Gods unleashed their wrath upon Melbourne. Because far better known than the fact that shit-covered walls led to Melbourne's 111-day lockdown is the fact that Melbourne is headquarters to the rather tony toilet paper company Who Gives a Crap. Although Who Gives a Crap and its dolled up packaging is lauded by many of its obsessive adherents as being a sign of the second coming or something, in truth it's arguably the most prominent grift ever to be exported from Melbourne to the rest of the world. Explaining the various facets of what makes Who Gives a Crap such a monumental grift would, unfortunately, be far much to add to what is already a very lengthy post, so will have to wait for a later time.

Nonetheless, with Melbourne being the headquarters and spiritual home to the shit-based Who Gives a Crap grift, is it possible that the aforementioned shit-Gods, displeased with the city's shit-based grift, unleashed their wrath upon the city by somehow inspiring the shit-spreading family quarantined in Melbourne to spread their feces all over the walls in order to send the city into a nearly four-month lockdown? Again, we'll never know.

Regardless of whether or not the shit-Gods took out their vengeance upon Melbourne for its unholy shit-grift, the next time you speak with a Melburnian, just remember: you may very well be speaking to a member of the family that spread shit all over the walls of their "quarantined" hotel room and in effect led the city to go into lockdown for 111 straight days.

Happy Strait of Hormuz crisis.

Sounds of the Pandemicene, with Fanfare Ciocărlia

While this piece inadvertently managed to qualify for inclusion into the Dr. Pooper Papers series, all the talk about SARS-CoV-2 also inadvertently managed to qualify it for inclusion into the "Sounds of the Pandemicene, with Fanfare Ciocărlia" section. That being so, and seeing how "energy lockdowns" spelled the return of Jeffrey Tucker and his merry band of grifters, what better song to mark the occasion than the title song to Fanfare Ciocărlia's (and Canadian guitarist Adrian Raso's) latest album, "The Devil Rides Again"?

The world going to shit really shouldn't be this upbeat and fun, but hey, what can you do?

Fanfare Ciocărlia – The Devil Rides Again

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"The Devil Rides Again" can be found on the album "The Devil Rides Again", available on Bandcamp or wherever else you purchase and/or stream music from.