As we approach six months of lockdowns, mandates, and restrictions previously unfathomable in a free society, it is important to ask if what we are being told to do is either necessary or effective in combating this viral pandemic.

Or are these empty gestures, efforts of totalitarian wannabees serving as mayors or governors, trying to control those they are charged with leading and protecting, trying to advance a political agenda rather than preserving and protecting the Constitution?

One can see numerous parallels between COVID and climate policy. Both create fear, to a frenzy level, of the world ending, massive death and destruction, all due to a warming planet or an aggressive flu virus. If we don’t wear a mask, we are murderers and should be imprisoned. If we don’t believe in man-made global warming, we should also be locked away in jail.

Both movements have famous, often media-fabricated, leaders and spokespersons to push the agenda. Aside from politicians, the climate movement uses Al Gore and Greta Thunberg while the COVID evangelists are Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx. At least the latter two, on paper, have expertise in their fields unlike the former two who are self-, or media-created experts.

YouTube screen grabs, left and right

The axiom, “follow the money” applies to both crusades. The climate industry has been a cash cow for those on the politically correct side of the debate. Government subsidies flow freely to green energy companies, often to campaign donors of those doling out the money. Half a billion taxpayer dollars went to corrupt Solyndra as a thank-you to political donors and fundraisers. Gore has amassed hundreds of millions in green investments and carbon credits.

In the virus world, there are vaccines and therapeutics, all with royalties, patents, and potentially billions of dollars in sales. It seems the Chinese virus doomsayers, like Fauci, and Bill Gates, have a stake in whatever treatments or preventatives are pushed to get us out of this supposed public health crisis. And both castigate hydroxychloroquine, a beneficial therapeutic when given at the proper time in the course of Chinese flu infection, as it is generic, pennies per pill, a cash gnat rather than a cash cow.

Academic and social media scorn is heaped on those who dare question the agenda of the elites. On the Wuhan flu side, legitimate board-certified physicians are ridiculed or fired from their jobs for questioning establishment dogma. A recent video from “America’s Frontline Doctors” featured Dr. Stella Immanuel speaking of the benefits of hydroxychloroquine for COVID and she was immediately ridiculed and dismissed. She is also an immigrant woman of color and the same media gushing over Kamala Harris or Stacey Abrams lost their notions of intersectionality when attacking Dr. Immanuel.

Another doctor in that group, Dr. Simone Gold, an emergency medicine physician, was fired over her support of hydroxy. Just as climate change skeptic Nicholas Drapela, a professor at Oregon State University, was fired for his audacity to challenge the left-wing establishment. As was prominent Princeton University physicist Dr. Will Happer for disagreeing with non-scientist Al Gore.

Question the dogma of either the virus or climate movement and prepare to have your life, if not disrupted, then ruined. There is only one politically correct viewpoint on both issues.

Both global warming and the Wuhan flu rely on models. Many climate models predicted rising sea levels and flooded cities, along with catastrophic storms, none of which has materialized. Virus models predicted 2.2 million U.S. deaths, only to be scaled down as reality was nowhere close to the predictions. Both relied on flawed models and failed to adjust their prognostications accordingly.

Climate and COVID share the commonality of government control. From electric car and fuel efficiency mandates to the entire economy busting Green New Deal, the “benevolent” government seeks to control all aspects of our lives. Similarly, government tells us to wear a mask, gather in groups of nine but not 11, stay at home, go marijuana shops but not to school, and close churches but encourage large protests. Do as we say, or we will punish you warns our compassionate and caring government.

Then there is hypocrisy, a feature of the climate and virus movements. Al Gore, telling us to lower our carbon footprints for the sake of the planet, has a 10,000 square foot mansion consuming over 21 times the U.S. household average of electricity. British climatista Prince Charles flew 16,000 miles in just 11 days on three private jets and one helicopter before posing with Greta Thunberg in Davos at a climate conference.

Media cranks, constantly berating President Trump for not wearing a mask, conveniently don’t wear their masks when off camera. The baseball pitcher Dr. Fauci, demonstrating proper social distancing wearing a huge mask standing all alone on the pitcher’s mound while on camera forgot all about his mask and distancing when off camera in the bleachers.

The funeral for your loved one is verboten but hundreds or thousands can gather to mourn George Floyd. Graduations are bad but BLM rallies are just fine. We can’t vote in person but it’s fine to riot and loot in person, with impunity

Last is inevitability. The climate will do what it does. Cooling caused ice ages and warming melted the ice over the past billions of years, all without government intervention. Hurricanes have been a feature on Planet Earth before Al Gore and long before humans even organized governments.

The virus is also inevitable. New Zealand, after being heaped with praise for being virus free for 100 days, despite ultra-strict immigration and quarantine rules, now has a 36-case cluster of new Wuhan virus cases. You can run but you can’t hide from nature taking its course, for both climate and a virus.

Both the climate and COVID movements share these features – hypocrisy and hysteria, models and money, fear and false prophets, and inevitability. This is also how dictatorships begin. As further proof, notice how all the climate hysteria has disappeared, now conveniently replaced by virus fearmongering. From schools to masks to voting.

It was an easy pivot as the playbook was already written, allowing the left to sashay from global warming to the virus, as a means to control the people and an upcoming election. It’s predictable and obvious once you recognize the pattern.

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a Denver-based physician and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in American Thinker, Daily Caller, Rasmussen Reports, and other publications. Follow him on Facebook,  LinkedIn, Twitter, Parler, and QuodVerum.