FIVE YEARS OF COVID - The Lies That Stuck, The Profits That Soared, and The Bill You're Still Paying

Five years. Over 7 million dead. €16 trillion in economic damage. 400 million with long COVID. And what did we learn? That fear is profitable, lies become policy, Big Pharma makes $90 billion while the poorest die unvaccinated, and "temporary" emergency powers never fucking end. This is COVID's real legacy—not the virus, but what they built on top of your terror.

December 2025. Five years since COVID-19 spread across every continent. Five years since they locked you down, masked you up, mandated injections, and promised it was all temporary.

How temporary?

The WHO's global digital health certificate system, built on EU's "temporary" COVID pass—is now permanent infrastructure. Emergency powers that suspended democracy? Still active in multiple countries. Pfizer and Moderna? Made $90 billion in profits and quadrupled vaccine prices the moment demand dropped.

And you? You're still paying. In taxes for vaccines bought at inflated prices. In shredded civil liberties that never came back. In long COVID disability affecting 20 million Americans alone. In permanent surveillance systems justified by a pandemic that's supposedly over.

Five years later, let's count the fucking lies.

WHO Data - "Death toll statistics"

The Lie: "Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve"

Remember March 2020? "Just two weeks. Stay home. Flatten the curve. Protect the hospitals."

Two weeks became two months. Two months became a year. Lockdowns that were "temporary" became rolling restrictions that lasted until governments decided, arbitrarily, that they were done.

And the curve? It didn't flatten. It just kept rolling. Wave after wave. Omicron alone proved the "flatten the curve" narrative was bullshit, highly transmissible, relatively mild, but it still triggered panic, restrictions, and mandates.

What we learned: "Temporary" is a lie. Once governments seize emergency powers, they don't let go easily. Lockdowns became the new normal, justified by constantly shifting goalposts. Hospitals overwhelmed? Lockdown. Variant detected? Lockdown. Cases rising? Lockdown. Until they weren't, not because the science changed, but because the politics did.

The Lie: "The Vaccines Stop Transmission"

"Get vaccinated to protect others." "Vaccination stops the spread." "If you're vaccinated, you won't get COVID."

All lies. Sold as fact. Repeated by every public health official, every politician, every media outlet.

Then Omicron hit. Vaccinated people got COVID. Spread it. The narrative collapsed. Suddenly it became "vaccines reduce severe disease", true, but not what they fucking told you when they mandated shots.

mRNA vaccines work. They reduce severe illness and death. That's real. But the promise that vaccination = no infection = no transmission? Bullshit from the start.

Pfizer's own trial data showed breakthrough infections. Natural immunity was ignored despite evidence it provided robust protection. People who recovered from COVID were still forced to vaccinate or lose their jobs.

What we learned: Public health messaging was propaganda, not science. The goal wasn't accuracy, it was compliance. And when the lie became obvious, they just moved the goalposts and pretended they never said what everyone heard them say.

The Lie: "The Vaccine is Free"

"Free vaccines for everyone!" they said. "No cost at the point of care!"

Free? Governments bought those doses with your money. Billions in public funds. Advanced Purchase Agreements committing to buy vaccines before they were even approved.

Pfizer/BioNTech: $80 billion in total COVID vaccine sales. Moderna: $19.3 billion in 2022 alone. Those companies made $1,000 in profit per second at the height of the pandemic.

And here's the kicker: After governments paid for development through grants (over $8 billion in public funding), paid for production through contracts, and bought billions of doses upfront, Pfizer and Moderna quadrupled their prices when demand dropped.

Pfizer's Comirnaty now costs $120 per dose (was ~$30). Moderna's Spikevax: $129 per dose (was ~$37). The vaccines got more expensive as they became less necessary.

What we learned: "Free" means "funded by your taxes at inflated prices negotiated in secret." And when Big Pharma's profits started dropping, they just raised prices. Because they could.

The Lie: "We're All In This Together"

The rich quarantined in vacation homes. The poor kept working. Essential workers risked infection daily while the laptop class Zoomed from home.

Low-income countries got 1-2% of their populations vaccinated while rich nations hoarded doses and bought boosters. Pfizer delivered less than 1% of doses to low-income countries. Moderna: 0.2%.

This was always the playbook. As we documented in The Fear Machine, every crisis becomes an opportunity to expand control. COVID proved it works. Scare people enough, they'll surrender rights gladly.

Meanwhile, 98% of people in low-income countries remained unvaccinated, creating perfect conditions for new variants to emerge, which then threatened the vaccinated rich nations who refused to share vaccine technology.

"We're all in this together" was the biggest lie of all. We were never together. Class determined who stayed home safe and who risked death for minimum wage. Nationality determined who got vaccines and who died waiting.

What we learned: Pandemics don't create equality. They amplify existing inequality. And the people preaching solidarity from their second homes were full of shit.

The Truth They Admitted (Eventually): Masks Work, But They Lied About It

Early pandemic: "Don't wear masks. They don't work. Save them for healthcare workers."

Mid-pandemic: "Everyone must wear masks. It's essential."

The flip? Necessary, because initial guidance was a deliberate lie. Officials knew masks worked but feared shortages for medical staff, so they lied to the public, telling people masks were ineffective.

Then, when the truth came out, anti-maskers seized on the "flip-flop" as proof of incompetence. Which it was, not because the science changed, but because they lied, then admitted it, then expected trust.

What we learned: N95 masks work. Cloth masks help somewhat. But public health officials who lie "for the greater good" destroy trust that takes decades to rebuild. The mask debacle created millions of skeptics who now question everything.

The Truth: Long COVID Is Real, Devastating, and Nobody Wants to Talk About It

20 million Americans living with long COVID. 400 million worldwide. Brain fog, breathing difficulties, chronic fatigue, heart problems, cognitive impairment.

Five years later, we're only beginning to understand it. Viral persistence. Immune dysregulation. Microclots. Reactivation of latent viruses like Epstein-Barr. Multiple mechanisms, no definitive treatment, and research drastically underfunded relative to the scale of the problem.

"We're building the boat while we're at sea," said one long COVID clinic director. Five years in, that's pathetic.

Why the silence? Because acknowledging long COVID means acknowledging the pandemic isn't over. Means continued public health investment. Means admitting that "let it rip" policies created a wave of chronic disease and disability.

Governments don't want that conversation. So long COVID patients are left to suffer while the world pretends everything's back to normal.

What we learned: Society will abandon the chronically ill to preserve the illusion of recovery. Long COVID is politically inconvenient, so it gets ignored.

The Truth: Pharma Made Record Profits, Then Raised Prices

Let's be specific about the money:

Pfizer: $35 billion net profit from COVID products in 2021-2022. Revenue peaked at $100.3 billion in 2022, double pre-pandemic levels.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla's texts with Ursula von der Leyen disappeared, ruled illegal by courts, yet no consequences followed. €71 billion in vaccine contracts negotiated in secret, accountability zero.

BioNTech: $20 billion profit, 77% profit margin.

Moderna: $20 billion profit, 70% profit margin. Revenue jumped from $803 million (2020) to $19.3 billion (2022).

Sinovac: $15 billion profit.

Combined: $90 billion in profits. $1,000 profit per second at peak. Five new billionaires created.

This on top of over $8 billion in public funding for development and production. Governments paid to develop the vaccines, paid to produce them, paid to buy them. Then Pfizer and Moderna raised prices 56% and 73% respectively between 2020 and 2022. Then quadrupled them again.

Pharma doesn't care about saving lives. They care about maximizing profit. The same pattern we exposed in Ukraine's war economy—crisis becomes opportunity for profiteering while accountability disappears.

Meanwhile, they refused to share vaccine technology with WHO or low-income country manufacturers. Refused to waive patents. Prioritized profitable contracts with rich governments. Left poor countries to die.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla called sharing vaccine recipes "dangerous nonsense." He made this statement while his company raked in billions from public-funded research and government contracts.

What we learned: Pharma doesn't care about saving lives. They care about maximizing profit. And governments let them because... well, that's the system.

"Pfizer financial reports" - Profit Figures

The Truth: Lab Leak Hypothesis Went From "Conspiracy Theory" to "Plausible"

January 2020: Virus emerges in Wuhan, home of a lab studying bat coronaviruses.

Early response: "Lab leak is conspiracy theory. Racist. Debunked."

2023-2025: U.S. intelligence agencies say lab leak is plausible. Chinese scientists who studied bat coronaviruses at Wuhan Institute of Virology won't attend international conferences. The Chinese government won't allow key researchers to speak freely.

We still don't know for certain. Market origin is possible. Lab leak is possible. The evidence is ambiguous, and China's lack of transparency makes definitive answers impossible.

But here's what matters: The people who called lab leak a conspiracy theory in 2020 weren't following the science. They were following politics. Dismissing it as racist rather than investigating it as a hypothesis was ideological, not scientific.

And now? The "conspiracy theorists" have been partially vindicated. The scientific establishment looks like it was more concerned with protecting China and virology research funding than with finding truth.

What we learned: "Trust the science" often means "trust the people with funding and reputations to protect." Real science questions everything. What we got was dogma masquerading as expertise.

The Truth: Emergency Powers Never Ended

"Temporary" surveillance. "Temporary" restrictions. "Temporary" emergency authorities.

Except they're not temporary.

The EU's COVID digital certificate, launched July 2021 as "temporary travel document," became the foundation for WHO's global digital health certification network in June 2023. Now it's permanent infrastructure for verifying vaccination status, prescriptions, patient records, globally.

Countries that suspended civil liberties, expanded surveillance, and centralized power during COVID? Many haven't fully rolled those powers back.

Constitutional rights suspended during emergency? Check if they all came back. Spoiler: they didn't.

This was always the playbook. As we documented in The Fear Machine, every crisis becomes an opportunity to expand control. COVID proved it works. Scare people enough, they'll surrender rights gladly.

What we learned: "Temporary" emergency measures are permanent unless citizens force them to end. And most citizens are too exhausted, distracted, or compliant to fight back.

The Truth: The Next Pandemic Will Be Worse

Not the virus, the response.

"If a pandemic breaks out in March 2025," one expert predicted, "I predict that vaccine uptake would be way less than it was for COVID-19, and there would be less enthusiasm for masking and a lot of the public health measures that protected millions."

Why? Trust is destroyed. Lies, flip-flops, corporate profiteering, political polarization, censorship of dissent, demonization of questioners, all eroded the foundation of public health.

Anti-vax sentiment has gone mainstream. Not because vaccines don't work, but because the people administering them lied repeatedly, prioritized profit over people, and used coercion instead of persuasion.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure to respond effectively is being dismantled. U.S. withdrawal from WHO limits global coordination. Reporting requirements dropped. Free vaccines, tests, treatments, gone or reduced.

We learned how to develop mRNA vaccines in record time. Learned that masks work. Learned that ventilation matters. Learned the genetic sequencing. All real scientific progress.

But we also learned that governments will lie, corporations will profiteer, rights will be suspended, and the powerful will use crisis to entrench power. And half the population learned to distrust everything public health officials say.

What we learned: The technical capacity to fight pandemics improved. The social and political capacity collapsed. Next time, millions more will die, not from the virus, but from the distrust we've earned.

The Truth: We Wasted the Crisis

"Never waste a good crisis," they say. In public health, learning from disasters is critical.

What did we learn?

Technically: mRNA vaccines work. At-home tests are viable. Ventilation matters. Viral evolution is unpredictable. Airborne transmission is real.

Politically: Nothing. Or worse than nothing, we learned the wrong lessons.

Instead of "share vaccine technology globally," we learned "let corporations profit."

Instead of "trust is essential," we learned "coercion works short-term."

Instead of "prepare for the next one," we learned "pretend it didn't happen and hope it doesn't return."

COVID cost $16 trillion, killed 7+ million, disabled 400 million with long COVID, and fundamentally disrupted society for years. The lessons should have reshaped how we approach public health, global cooperation, pharmaceutical policy, and emergency governance.

Instead? We're worse off. More divided. Less trusted. More surveilled. More cynical. And no better prepared for the next pandemic, arguably less prepared, because trust is gone.

What we learned: Crises create opportunities for change. But entrenched power structures will always use those opportunities to entrench further rather than reform. The people who benefited from COVID's chaos have no incentive to fix the system.

What COVID Really Taught Us

Five years. Millions dead. Trillions spent. And here's the real lesson:

Fear is profitable. Pharma made $90 billion. Governments expanded power. Surveillance infrastructure became permanent.

Lies become policy. "Temporary" lasts forever. "Safe and effective" ignores nuance. "Trust the science" means "obey authority."

Rights are conditional. Your bodily autonomy, freedom of movement, and ability to work became conditional on compliance with mandates that changed weekly.

The rich got richer. Billionaires added $5 trillion to their wealth during COVID. The poor got poorer. "We're all in this together" was a sick joke.

Big Pharma doesn't save you, it profits from you. Public funding developed the vaccines. Governments bought them. Then corporations raised prices and refused to share technology while the poorest nations died.

Democracy is fragile. Suspend it once "for emergency," and it's easier to suspend it again. COVID normalized executive overreach, rule by decree, and governance without parliamentary oversight.

Long-term thinking died. Long COVID affects 400 million. We've barely started research. Mental health crisis among children. Education losses. Economic scarring. Nobody wants to talk about any of it because addressing it costs money and political capital.

Trust, once broken, doesn't come back. Public health's credibility is shattered. Probably for a generation. And that's on them, they lied, flip-flopped, censored, coerced, and profited while preaching sacrifice.

Five Years Later: What Are You Still Paying For?

Let's be specific.

Your taxes: Still funding vaccine stockpiles bought at inflated prices. Still funding long COVID research that should have been prioritized years ago. Still funding the permanent surveillance systems built on pandemic infrastructure.

Your rights: Still haven't all come back. Check which emergency powers your government kept. Check what surveillance became "standard." Check what requires digital verification now that didn't before.

Your health: If you got COVID, there's a chance you have long-term effects you don't even realize yet. Brain fog. Fatigue. Cognitive decline. Cardiovascular risk. 400 million people worldwide are finding out COVID's legacy isn't just acute illness.

Your trust: Gone. And justified. They lied about masks. Lied about transmission. Lied about "free" vaccines. Let corporations profiteer. Prioritized compliance over truth. Suspended rights and called it protection.

Your future: The next pandemic will be worse because trust is destroyed. The infrastructure to fight it is weaker. Political division is deeper. Corporate capture is complete. And the people in charge learned that fear works, profits matter, and truth is optional.

The Question Nobody Wants to Answer

Was it worth it?

Not "was fighting COVID necessary", of course it was. Not "do vaccines work", they do.

But was this response worth it?

The lies, the profiteering, the rights suspended, the trust destroyed, the permanent surveillance, the €16 trillion spent largely enriching corporations and expanding state power while the poorest died and long COVID patients suffer in silence?

Was creating a generation of vaccine skeptics worth the short-term compliance gains?

Was letting Pfizer and Moderna make $90 billion worth leaving poor countries unvaccinated?

Was building permanent digital health surveillance worth the "convenience" of vaccine passes?

Was suspending democracy worth "controlling the spread"?

The architects of COVID policy will never answer these questions honestly. Because the honest answer exposes that COVID wasn't just a health crisis, it was an opportunity.

An opportunity to expand pharmaceutical profits. An opportunity to centralize government power. An opportunity to normalize surveillance. An opportunity to test how much fear-driven compliance populations would accept.

And it worked. Beautifully.

Five Years Later: The Pandemic Isn't Over

They want you to think it is. "Endemic now," they say. "Like the flu." "Time to move on."

But 1,000 people still died of COVID per week as of late 2024, 75% of them in the United States. Long COVID affects 20 million Americans with no cure in sight. The economic damage hasn't healed. The psychological trauma hasn't processed. The political division hasn't eased.

And most importantly: The systems built during COVID are still operating.

Digital health certificates: permanent.

Emergency powers: many still active.

Surveillance infrastructure: expanded and normalized.

Corporate profiteering: ongoing (Pfizer just raised prices again).

Public health distrust: deepening.

The pandemic as an acute crisis may be over. But COVID's legacy, the fear, the lies, the profits, the control, is permanent.

That's what five years taught us. Not how to fight a virus. How to exploit one.

And when the next crisis comes, and it will, they'll reach for the same playbook. Because it worked.

The only question is whether you'll comply again.

A. Kade

"COVID didn't teach us to trust science. It taught us that 'trust the science' means 'obey the powerful.' And the powerful learned that fear is the most profitable product they've ever sold."

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Related Articles You Must Read:

Crisis & Control:

• The Fear Machine: How Brussels Uses Crisis to Control - Every emergency expands power, COVID proved the formula works
• Who Is Running Europe? The Unelected Empress and 25,000 Lobbyists - The system that let Pfizer contracts happen in secret
• Ursula von der Leyen: The Empress of Clean Hands - Deleted Pfizer texts, no accountability, just more power

Profiteering & Corruption:

• The War That Feeds Itself: Europe 2025 - How crisis becomes business model
• The War Laundry: Ukraine's Aid Feeding Frenzy - Crisis profiteering patterns

Democracy & Rights:

• Brussels vs Democracy: The €140 Billion Russian Money Heist - How emergency justifies permanent power grabs