Reset or Renaissance: Life, Liberty, and the Quest for Enlightenment in a Post-Covid World Lest we Forget . . . Reset or Renaissance offers a real-time chronicle of events unfolding during the heated core of the Covid pandemic: the latter half of 2021, shortly after the rollout of the Covid vaccines. The book is no dull factual affair, but an impassioned critical engagement, distinctly literary in style, that offers a broader and deeper understanding of the scientific, sociopolitical, and spiritual dimensions of the Covid moment. Combining documentary poetics with rigorous analysis of the flood of Covid misinformation, this volume records one American citizen’s concerted attempt to make intellectual and moral sense of a tumultuous time that shook the foundations of the world. The historic drama surrounding Covid continues to unfold. Daniel Polikoff aims to translate knowledge of the recent past into a vision of the future guided by truth rather than illusion, perspicacity rather than prejudice, and conscience rather than calumny. C O N T E N T S: Acknowledgments Preface Introduction PART I: THE OPENING SETUP 1. March Snow Storm 2. Setting the Scene for Covid-19: Early (Non-)Treatment 3. Some Pretty Bad Actors: Avenues of Pharmaceutical Influence 4. Deadening Dialogue: Science, Society, and (What?) Freedom of Speech 5. “Safe and Effective”—The Whole Truth, and Nothing But? 6. Newsbreak: A Federal Lawsuit and Data Analyst Jane Doe 7. Dissing Democracy: Power and Misinformation 8. Newsbreak: Holding the Line: Journalists against Covid Censorship 9. Lines of Force: Undermining the Commons 10. Newsbreak: A Journalistic Conflict of Interest? Reuters, Pfizer, and the TNI 11. The Tale of the Untold: Current (Adverse) Events 12. Action Alert: A Letter within a Letter 13. Two Roads PART II: INCREASING F(R)ICTION 14. A Pandemic of the Unvaccinated? 15. A Colossal Blunder 16. The Ivermectin Angle 17. Newsbreak: “You Are Not a Horse” 18. The Emperor’s (Not-So-) New Clothes 19. The Right Way to Fight Viruses 20. ICU Interlude: In-hospital Mistreatment 21. Newsbreak: A Window on Pandemic Politics 22. Closing Argument: McCullough et al. versus the ACLU PART III: INFLECTION POINT 23. The President versus We, the People 24. More Scary: In the Belly of the Healthcare Beast 25. The People’s Eyewitness: Deb Conrad and the VAERS Scandal 26. A Dirty, Not-So-Little Secret: America’s Impending Healthcare Crisis 27. Joining the Ranks PART IV: ENDGAMES 28. Mountains of Power: From Rome to Slab City 29. Abbot of Unreason, Lord of Misrule 30. Losing Strategy 31. Biodynamics versus Vaccine-Distance PART V: POST-MORTEM 32. Who Will Help Us? Who Will Help Us? 33. The Matrix 34. Fantasy Football: Pitching the New Normal 35. The Crumbling Wall 36. The Real Anthony Fauci PART VI : POSTSCRIPT I Covid World, August 2023 PART VI I : POSTSCRIPT II The Kennedy Candidacy and the Anatomy of Pro-Vax Prejudice PART VI I I : CODA “Prague” (A Poem) Notes Index About the Author Daniel Joseph Polikoff, PhD, is a poet, translator, and independent scholar. He received his PhD in Comparative Literature from Cornell University and his Diploma in Waldorf Education from Rudolf Steiner College. In addition to work in numerous literary journals and anthologies, he has published two collections of poetry (Dragon Ship and The Hands of Stars) as well as Parzival/Gawain: Two Plays, his edited translation of a dramatic version of the Grail legend. Dr. Polikoff has taught literature in Waldorf schools and shared his passion for Rilke in a wide variety of venues, including the Festival of Archetypal Psychology at Notre Dame (where the idea was born for his book In the Image of Orpheus); the San Francisco Jung Society; and seminars in literary circles. He has also taught at Sonoma State University, California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), and Pacifica Graduate Institute.