NYC: The Ides of March
What Happened in New York? - Part 5
This is the 5th post on the March 25, 2024 session of the IPAK-EDU Director’s Science Webinar featuring the work of Jessica Hockett and Jonathan Engler.
You can find Part 1 here. Part 2 is here, Part 3 is here, and Part 4 is here.
Check the Short Cuts section on the home page for the full clip archive.
March 16, 2020, the day after the Ides of March, was marked by several important events, and remarkably, this date correlates with key inflection points in the data as presented by Jessica Hockett.
Most know the Ides of March in connection with the infamous assassination of Julius Caesar. The warning of Shakespeare’s soothsayer, “Beware the Ides of March,” has embedded the Ides of March in the popular consciousness. Historically, the ides or idus roughly marked the middle of the month in the old Roman calendar. This is believed to be handed down from even older prehistoric lunar calendars; specifically, months began on a new moon (the kalends from which we get calendar), and the full moon, half way through the month, would be the ides. March was the first month of the pre-Gregorian calendar, even as late as the 2nd century, BCE. Thus, the Ides of March in ancient times would effectively be the first full moon of the new year. The Ides of March marked the turning of the year and the purging of the old, a dying/rising cycle of change and renewal. The days surrounding the ides were believed to be particularly unlucky, but it was also, notably, a time for rites of purification and sacrifice.1
In the modern context, this turnover at the Ides of March might be called a ‘Great Reset’.
Whether or not one perceives this to be resonant, or a mere coincidence, is left to the judgement of the individual. Neverthelesss, the Ides of March of 2020 may prove to be more infamous and impactful than the assassination of a Caesar.
In the last post from this series (Part 4, the third video) Jessica Hockett shared a slide which deserves particular emphasis.
Hockett’s graph shows all places of death rising—in sync—immediately following the date of March 16, 2020, the date of the Federal proclamation of “15 Days to Slow the Spread”.
Across the Atlantic, March 16th also records the issuance date of the infamous Report-9 from now-disgraced physicist Neil Ferguson at London Imperial College, which (based on a buggy and highly flawed computer model) predicted some 510,000 deaths in the UK and over 2 million deaths in the US.
This was the primary model used to justify lockdown and was instrumental in fomenting panic. Ferguson would later admit that his model for COVID-19 was cobbled together based on 13-year-old code intended to model pandemic influenza.
The synchronicity in the death data revealed by Hockett is remarkable and should raise eyebrows.
Why didn’t emergency department or hospital deaths rise before nursing home deaths?
Why didn’t deaths in long-term care facilities rise before home deaths?
Why do all these spikes coincide in such a tight time window?
Why don’t other major US cities show this kind of signal?
The messaging at the time, from media and government, is worth recalling for context. Certain phrases were emblazoned in the public mind as slogans. As in wartime, slogans serve as shorthand mental junk-food, reinforcing the mythos, employed to make thought reflexive rather than reflective.
Some of the most prominent themes of the official narrative were:
‘15 Days to Slow the Spread’
‘Stay at Home, Save Lives’
‘Hospitals and Emergency Departments are Overrun’
‘If it happened in New York City, it could happen in Your Town’
Here are three more shorts from the Hockett-Engler talk.
Emergency Department Visits + Emergency Response Data
In the next short, a key question is posed:
Does the death curve really represent a real-time event?
Where is the proof?
Unfortunately, death record data out of NYC also appears to be missing, or perhaps in a sort of administrative lockdown.
Carl Sagan’s quote is flashing somewhere, in neon letters:
“Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.”
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Irrefutably, the New York City event was an outlier, unmatched anywhere.
There are shared characteristics with a very few select locations (Lombardy, Italy), but the event in New York was unique in speed and scale; and further, uniquely influential, not only in the shaping of the policy response, but also in the framing and funneling of the public imagination, not just in the US, but globally.
New York City was the lens and frame for public perception and foundational for the debacle that followed.
Here’s the clip from the close of the presentation.
Recall the original questions:
What actually happened in New York City in the Spring of 2020?
Does the available data support or contradict the narrative?
How do we know (or think we know) what we know?
What kind of evidence is available and what still remains elusive and undisclosed?
What do you think happened?
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The middle of March was also the time of the feast of Anna Perenna, the old deity of the circle of the year, from which we get ‘per annum’. It would have been a kind of ‘New Year’ festival, marking the expulsion of the old year and the turning of the new.
Fascinatingly, John the Lydian, writing in the 6th century observed:
On the Ides of March, there is a festival of Zeus, on account of the mid-month, and public prayers that the year will be healthful. And they would also sacrifice a 6-year-old bull on behalf of the mountain country, under the leadership of the high priest and the "reed-bearers" of the Mother. And a man clothed with a goat-skin would be led in, and they would strike him with long, slender rods, calling him "Mamurius." Hence most people say proverbially, when they are mocking those who are being beaten, that those who are doing the beating are "playing Mamurius on him." For according to the story, Mamurius himself was beaten with rods and driven out of the city when, because of the removal of the original ancilia, difficulties had befallen the Romans.
John the Lydian describes the Mamuarlia, a Roman observance that likely has roots in the ancient Greek ritual known as pharmakos. Pharmakos is believed to be a purification ritual, enacting a kind societal catharisis; notably, the rite used a slave, cripple, the poor, a criminal, or other outgroup regarded as ‘ugly’, as a kind of scapegoat—the pharmakoi. Some accounts hold that the scapegoat was beaten or stoned, while others tell that sacrifices were burned or thrown from cliffs.
Pharmakos, pharmakoi, pharmakeia, and pharmakeus are all etymologically related. Pharmacy, pharmacist, and pharmaceutical are more recent words, but share the same root. The old Greek pharmakeus meant "a preparer of drugs, a poisoner, a sorcerer" which comes from pharmakon "a drug, a poison, philter, charm, spell, enchantment."
The oldest notions do not appear to discriminate between drug, poison, potion, or enchantment.
Note that this would seem to be distinct from the notion of ‘cure’, as exhibited in the word panacea. Panacea, literally ‘cure-all’, from the roots pan- ‘all’ + akos ‘cure’.
I am biased, but these posts on our webinar are so beautifully framed.
As a former English teacher and lover of literature, I am very grateful.
Thank you.
What do I think happened? If these huge numbers appeared in the early morning hours (think: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in the 2020 election) in NYC, anything's possible. lol