What’s It All For Anyway?

In this fabulous Medium post by A.J. Kay, the author asks, “if safety requires us to indefinitely forfeit the most valuable parts of our lives, what exactly are we trying to save?”

She then goes on to smartly point out that with a 2.8 million annual  (in America) all cause death toll, this could be the last Thanksgiving for some of our loved ones or perhaps even ourselves.  Do we really want to spend it isolated from the people we care about most because it’s not safe to gather?

Or freezing our butts off outside while keeping our masks on between bites of turkey à la Gavin Newsom and his beyond absurdly comical  coronavirus dictates that HE AND HIS HEALTH ADVISORS DON’T EVEN FOLLOW THEMSELVES?

Oh hell no.  Loneliness and isolation were were big enough problems  before COVID, I can’t imagine how much they’ve grown now that we’ve institutionalized staying home and staying safe and turned avoidance of others in to a collective virtue.

According to this article from Mercolca.com:

• In 2018, 54% of American adults over the age of 18 reported feeling lonely. By January 2020, it was 61% and now, nine months into the pandemic, we’ve reached 66%
• Loneliness isn’t relegated to the elderly. In the 18 to 34 age group, 75% report feeling socially isolated, compared to 61% of those over 50. Among those aged 18 to 34, 19% say they’ve gone as long as two to three months without interacting with another person.
• 10% of 35- to 49-year-olds, 9% of 18- to 34-year-olds and 7% of those over 50 say they’ve not interacted with anyone outside their household or workplace since the pandemic began.

Going several months without interacting with other people is not healthy in any way shape or form, virus or no virus. Human beings were designed to be social and this continued, dystopian world of forced people avoidance, with face masks crippling our ability to effectively communicate with one another, has done much damage to our already fractured and lonely society.

Extended  loneliness changes the brain.  It not only hurts us emotionally, but physically too, both in terms of actual aches and pains and negative health effects like increased blood pressure, obesity and heart problems.

Blue state governors enacting new state shutdowns will only cascade those ill effects and that’s not even factoring in the severe economic hardship of forced shutdowns and sky rocketing addiction and suicide rates which all feed in to the loneliness factor.

Just what are they doing and why, oh why are we putting up with it? As I wrote in a previous post, Pro Lockdown Politicians Remain stuck in March, we know so much more now about the virus, who it effects most seriously and how to effectively treat severe cases.  And thank goodness we now know that for most people the lethality rate is extremely low

Politicians calling for more shutdowns should not get another pass on this. Their fear mongering and incessant focus on “positive cases” is an insult to our intelligence and the damage they are doing is probably beyond repair. From the same post:

“I believe the extended coronavirus lockdowns to be the single biggest public policy mistake made in our lifetime, if not ever, whose negative effects will be with us for years to come and in many ways we haven’t yet realized.”

Lockdown is a term that evolved from the prison industry and is a way of exerting control over an unruly and dangerous population.  That governors like Gavin Newsom continue to impose it on their citizens should tell us all we need to know about how they really feel about us and their intentions moving forward.

It’s not about controlling the virus, it’s about controlling us.

Beauty in Chaos

So, I got married this past weekend. It wasn’t what we originally planned of course, the pandemic having ripped our original blueprint to shreds, but somehow amidst the craziness of two famously unorganized people throwing their own backyard wedding, constantly changing COVID protocols (we broke many I’m sure), an unexpected rainstorm and the never ending worry of creating a super spreader event, it all came together and it was an amazing day. Magical really.

Actually it’s no mystery to me why things worked out so splendidly.  God was working behind the scenes as He always does, showing me once again His incredible love and caring nature.  The personal way in which He showed up was undeniable, leaving me both ashamed of my doubting, worried nature and completely in awe of Him.  Again.

That being said, with “everything wedding” having taken over these past few weeks there was little time to focus on that other big event, the election. I kept up with headlines of course, but couldn’t dwell in the outrage factory like I normally would and what a blessing that turned out to be!

It sure didn’t seem this way at the time however; knee deep in vendor contracts and frantic late night googling (who walks down  the aisle in what order, which ring goes on first, we have to tip HOW much????), but the distraction was a good lesson.  A gentle reminder on what’s truly important in life.

Of course a pivotal presidential election is important, as is the serious blow from which our electoral process may never recover, as is a fractured country seemingly beyond repair, as is the continual COVID fear mongering, outright censorship of  opposing views and rampant destruction of civil liberties.  All these things are worthy of our attention, righteous anger and action if necessary.

Nothing of this world however can ever nor should ever take precedent over our one true calling of knowing and loving God, gladly receiving His gifts and living out His truth.

And so I tell you, keep on asking and you will receive what you ask for.  Keep on seeking and you will find.  Keep on knocking and the door will be opened for you.  For everyone who seeks, finds.  And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.~Luke 11: 9-10

Because Everything is Political

This perfectly sane and inspiring tweet from The Girl Scouts of America congratulating Amy Coney Barrett on being appointed to the Supreme Court was quickly taken down after  hysterical social media screeching from intolerant, shallow minded boobs the progressive left.

So of course the GSA, an organization whose central focus is to empower young girls through learning good character and leadership skills, fell in line and took the tweet down, offering this explanation:

 

Political?  How could anyone but the most obnoxious, blinkered thinking  ideologue think that post was remotely political?

It wasn’t of course, but in today’s Orwellian world, words hold no meaning except to promote the correct political narrative, which in this case is that Amy Coney Barrett is the anthesis of justice a hater of the LGBTQ community and the reason many Girl Scouts won’t have access to healthcare, equal pay or any of the other rights we take for granted.

Sigh, it’s all so exhausting, isn’t it? Not to mention this type of hyperbole is actually the anthesis (to use the word correctly) of women’s empowerment.

Reducing an accomplished mother of 7, a highly credentialed lawyer who has made it to the top justice position in the land down to a negative cartoon character stereotype based on differing political beliefs is ignoring the personhood of Barrett and how she came to those beliefs.  It can’t possibly be from a position of good faith and reasoned philosophy, as that would allow her to be human and imply there is room for debate on issues, something  the left wants no part of.

This type of world is so stifling, where everyone has to think alike and dissent is not tolerated.  I’m not saying we don’t have freedom of expression in America, we most certainly do.  This is instant shaming though of those who fall outside of accepted political orthodoxy is troubling, because then people start self censoring themselves just to avoid the hassle.

How refreshing it would have been if instead of caving to the mob, the GSA kept the congratulatory tweet up, explained it wasn’t meant as any sort of statement and that the organization believes in uplifting all women, not just those on one side of the political aisle.

It would have been a great example of how to live out their mission statement that Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place.

 

The Dehumanizing Nature of Today’s Politics

I liked the meme above when I first saw it on Facebook so I decided to share it on my own page, thinking finally, something we can all agree on!

And like clockwork a few moments later comes this comment:

“Hum. So if we look back in history to Germany and the rise of the the 3rd Reich are you suggesting that Germans should treat those supporting the extermination of Jews with kindness? Or we can come into this country and a time when people believed they should be able to own other people. So if someone voted to keep slavery the response you would respect is how nice, want some tea? I can understand compassion and respect for different opinions until those opinions include the oppression and inequitable access to rights liberty and the pursuit to happiness.”

I don’t shock easily, but the acidity of the comment and speed at which it came stunned me, really drove home how far gone some folks are.  And from a middle aged, normally very sweet school teacher no less!  Thankfully there were several responses to this nonsense pointing out how today’s political platforms don’t equate in any way shape or form to slavery or the 3rd Reich.

It got me thinking more about the demonization of politics virus that’s ripping through our culture.  It’s been around for awhile, but social media and a frenzied, biased press have caused this tactic to explode, where tribes harden and those that think differently aren’t merely wrong, but immoral and evil.

I thought things were bad enough when I wrote about this a few years ago in a post called The Calcified Mind.  Little did I know what 2020 had in store!  At least then there was some natural order to things, a base of knowledge we could all agree on, like that our country’s founding principles are good things, that law and order is important to free societies and that making judgements about people based on skin color is bad.

Today that’s all flipped on its head as truth is now how a person feels about things and so debate is pointless; facts and stats have nothing on emotions.  My former ways of pleading with people to assume others who think differently mean well, but disagree on how to improve things now hits a brick wall of refusal and is naive in hindsight.

The hate out there today is really palpable, fed by fake news stories with cartoon character type villains and encouraged by dim bulb politicians who campaign on fear and exploitation because that’s all they have. As I wrote in my post:

“Some have hearts so hardened that those others can’t merely be human beings who want what’s best for society but have other ideas on how to get there, they must be morally deficient, evil, stupid, etc….”

Once you start dehumanizing people this way boy does it open a door to ugliness that I’m not sure can be shut and we’ve come a long way with it.

Honesty it’s this type of thing that keeps me up at night.

Changing the Narrative on Covid 19

Three distinguished epidemiologists/scientists recently wrote the Great Barrington Declaration , which calls for a more holistic Covid 19 policy approach that recognizes both the devastating economic/health/mental/effects of continued lockdown policies and the disservice we are doing to those most vulnerable to Covid 19, by not throwing the brunt of protection efforts towards them.

Keeping life turned upside down to fight a virus who most people have a better than 99% chance of surviving is just not sustainable, nor compassionate, nor sane. The document (as of today) been signed by 20,000 medical practitioners and scientists and almost 170,000 of the general public. Add your name to it as well if you feel so inclined here and please share their link with your social network.

From the document:

“Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.

Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.

Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.

As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.

The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.”

Yes, yes and yes, I could not agree more.  Watch this 30 minute video below for the nitty gritty on who the GBD authors are and how they’ve come to their conclusions.

Now if only Google, YouTube and Facebook would stop their 22 year old fact checkers from censoring such views, the country would be in a much better place as far as reigning in petty control freak governors on extended coronavirus power trips.

Block Editor-Yes It’s Really That Bad

Dear WordPress,

I’m hoping your management is having serious discussions over the recent decision to completely change the way posts are written via forcing  writers to use the block editor format. I’m sure the mountain of negative customer feedback you’re getting has by now reached the corner offices and perhaps the folks that reside there are wondering if things are as as bad as everyone is saying, or is it just shallow complaints by a few whiny folks who dislike change.

I’m here to tell you it’s that bad, I meant really, really bad. Block editor is completely user unfriendly, terrible with playing with outside fonts, doesn’t space images well and makes cutting and pasting quotes from other sources a difficult and frustrating process. It’s just an overall mess of a program that makes posting exhausting, emotionally draining and just all around no fun. I’ve certainly stopped posting less because of it and I can’t be the only one.

Any chance at all you’ll switch back to classic as the default? Medium is looking better and better every day.

Signed,

Whiny Person Who Dislikes Change

Pro Lockdown Politicians Remain Stuck in March

Photo Credit: Dr. Kelly Victory https://twitter.com/drkellyvictory?lang=en

I believe the extended coronavirus lockdowns to be the single biggest public policy mistake made in our lifetime, if not ever, whose negative effects will be with us for years to come and in many ways we haven’t yet realized. So, yes, bear with me on yet another Covid post and the idiocy of politicians whose pandemic response has been little more than an exercise in raw power grabbing and political expediency.

It’s quite apparent, at least in blue states like mine, that controlling people and not the virus has become the driving force of those in charge and that any hope for responsible leadership has gone the way of the way of the dodo bird. Literally, as a bunch of dodos who you wouldn’t trust to bathe your dog are making enormous public policy decisions that negatively effect nearly every area of our lives.

Take California Governor Gavin Newsom, who likes to fancy himself as a follower of science and who recently moved the goalposts yet again released new county opening up guidelines, complete with pretty, colored coded charts so even us dumb subjects citizens can follow along.

Yes, you are reading the chart correctly. In order for a county to move in to yellow which is the most free stage, there must be less than 1 daily new case per 100k residents. The false positive rate of PCR testing alone will make impossible.

Two observations:

1. The governor is still using meaningless data on positive case counts to determine which stage counties are in 

2. California will not effectively be free until after a working vaccine is produced and distributed throughout the country which could be several years out, IF this even happens and IF our economy has not completely collapsed by then.

What the heck happened to using hospital capacity and deaths as the metric? No, really, I would like to know why the major shift on this? This is not not just moving goalposts, this is getting rid of them all together and replacing them with basketball nets.

And given that the majority of people testing positive will either be asymptomatic or suffer light-moderate flu like symptoms, why on earth is Governor Newsom using positive case counts as a means to drive policy?

On top of that, many PCR tests are just too sensitive and picking up small amounts of viral load that show a “positive” Covid result in people who are neither sick nor contagious. As this New York Times article states:

“In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found.“

It’s clear that policy decisions about shutting down businesses should not be based on positive Covid case counts, yet it’s the central focus of Governor Newsom’s so called science based re-opening plan.

And this continued sledgehammer approach of assuming everyone faces the same dire risk from Covid is absurd. So much needless fear mongering and suffering over a virus whose survival rate for most people is well above 99%.

In fact we know so much more about the virus than we did 5 months ago, such as:

• The bulk of people now testing positive are younger, healthy people who face a very small chance of dying from the virus.
• In fact if you are younger 70 and are not suffering from other underlying diseases, the threat from Covid is still minimal.
• Our T cells may be bringing us much closer to developing herd immunity than originally thought, both via new Covid infections and by past exposure to any coronavirus, including the common cold. Scientists also suspect this may answer why the virus affects some people very differently than others.
• There are good treatments available for severe such as Hydroxychloroquine, steroids, antibody blood plasma and antiviral drugs like Remdesivir.

Knowing all of this why are Governor Newsom and other pro lockdown politicians acting as if it’s still March? And why does the media keep spreading fear and panic?

The catastrophic effect of keeping economies suppressed are so well known that one cannot help but be cynical and assume Governor Newsom and others are purposely looking for ways to keep their states shut down for reasons that have nothing to do with the virus.

Could it be to make their state economies so horrible that federal monetary bailouts become inevitable which they can then use to paper over years of fiscal mismanagement? Or is it to make Trump look bad because the country will never truly recover economically without states like California and New York operating at full steam?

I honestly don’t know, except to say that I agree with Dennis Prager when he says The Lockdown Has Gone From a Mistake to a Crime. As per the article:

“I live in California, a state governed by that most dangerous of leaders: a fool with unlimited power. Despite the fact that California ranks 28th among the 50 states in deaths per million, Gov. Gavin Newsom has destroyed and continues to destroy tens of thousands of small businesses and untold numbers of livelihoods. His continuing to forbid — a half-year after the onset of the pandemic — indoor dining in restaurants is leading to a projected permanent closure of approximately 1 in every 3 restaurants in the state.“

Indeed. Most states are looking for ways to open up their economies while recognizing the delicate balance between public safety and keeping civil liberties intact. Gavin Newsom seems to be doing the opposite; keeping California shut down while tightening the screws of oppression on small business and remaining obtuse to the suffering of citizens.

Our Cultural Marxist Moment

I can think of no better way to set a person up for failure, than to repeatedly tell them that everything wrong in their life is the fault of someone else and that making personal changes is pointless because the “system” is rigged against them.  

Common sense, yes? Honest self evaluation is a requirement for personal growth, but this won’t happen if a person sees no need to do this and in today’s world, why should they?  With the theory of  intersectionality having gone from something your weird aunt used to talk about after drinking too much wine to an accepted doctrine being actively pushed taught on college campuses across America, this is only natural.

Intersectionality is where skin color, gender and sexuality determine the level to which a person is oppressed, not by anything specific done to them and where consequences are divorced from individual actions.  Even worse, these labels also determine whether you yourself are an oppressor, based not on things you actually do, but on which group you belong to.

The saddest part of this is not the class of aggrieved and bitter people this creates,  but that it’s pretty unlikely they will ever grow fully in to the person they were meant to be.

Yet this intersectionality nonsense is precisely at the heart of victimhood our society marinates in and creates the perfect breeding ground for this surreal cultural Marxist moment we find ourselves in.  Pit citizen against citizen, create an “enemy” to blame for all of life’s woes and put an enlightened group in charge to save “you” from “them”.  It’s not surprising then that something like this results:

“Stolen land, stolen people” chants as protesters continue to shine lights into residences here in Portland along the march route #Portland #PortlandProtest pic.twitter.com/W4JlEt6xRY

— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) August 22, 2020

It’s tempting to write this off as just one group of very misunderstood people acting foolish in one small part of the country. This isn’t just a one off however, it’s part of something much bigger more aggressive and hate filled. It’s hard to precisely define, but we all know, most of us anyway, it’s is not good.

According to this article from Commentary Magazine, we are in an active battle for the very survival of the country. Not a physical one with traditional battlefields and uniforms, but via massive psychological operations (PSYOPS), with propaganda, guilt manipulation and victim exploitation as key weapons.

From the article:

“The great unraveling at first consisted of riots and looting under the pretense of seeking justice for the recently killed George Floyd; the anarchist occupation of a section of Seattle; and a rash of accusations, confessions, and dismissals of individuals who showed insufficient fealty to the new anti-racist paradigm. At the time, extreme policy proposals, such as defunding municipal police departments, were subjects for popular discussion and debate. Everyday Americans swapped Black Lives Matter reading lists and strove, however misguidedly, to broaden their conception of racial inequity.

As of this writing, Portland, Oregon, has endured more than two months straight of anarchist violence directed at federal buildings and employees. In other cities—New York, Los Angeles, Richmond, Omaha, and Austin, to name a few—mob violence continues to erupt regularly, always connected to cries for justice and sometimes resulting in death.

Accelerating the general dissolution, police forces have been successfully hobbled in response to the killing of George Floyd, and the resulting spike in murder and violent crime shows no sign of abating. All the while, armchair lynch mobs have continued to claim the scalps of those who veer from or merely stumble on the path to social-justice enlightenment. It is the full-time job of any American with a public presence to bow down before the identity cult. Professional athletes have mutated overnight into a congeries of Kaepernicks. As for the public, 62 percent of all Americans, according to a poll by the CATO Institute, now say they’re afraid to voice their political views lest they be punished professionally.”

I have to admit I am part of that 62% at times, especially on anything race related. Not so much out of fear of being fired, but because I don’t want to be socially ostracized for having an “incorrect” view. I feel stupid for even saying such words as I never would have imagined even thinking this just 10 yeas ago.

So where does this all end? Certainly not well for conservatives if things continue as is, but what about traditional liberals who believe in freedom of expression, capitalism and law and order? What happens when they finally realize that they too are on the chopping block? For the Marxist anyone in power is part of and an enabler of an existing, oppressive system, even though they may not realize it.

In this outstanding article, The Challenge of Marxism, author Yoran Hazony predicts:

“We don’t know what will happen for certain. But based on the experience of recent years, we can venture a pretty good guess. Institutional liberalism lacks the resources to contend with this threat. Liberalism is being expelled from its former strongholds, and the hegemony of liberal ideas, as we have known it since the 1960s, will end. Anti-Marxist liberals are about to find themselves in much the same situation that has characterized conservatives, nationalists, and Christians for some time now: They are about to find themselves in the opposition.

“This means that some brave liberals will soon be waging war on the very institutions they so recently controlled. They will try to build up alternative educational and media platforms in the shadow of the prestigious, wealthy, powerful institutions they have lost. Meanwhile, others will continue to work in the mainstream media, universities, tech companies, philanthropies, and government bureaucracy, learning to keep their liberalism to themselves and to let their colleagues believe that they too are Marxists—just as many conservatives learned long ago how to keep their conservatism to themselves and let their colleagues believe they are liberals.

This is the new reality that is emerging. There is blood in the water and the new Marxists will not rest content with their recent victories. In America, they will press their advantage and try to seize the Democratic Party. They will seek to reduce the Republican Party to a weak imitation of their own new ideology, or to ban it outright as a racist organization. And in other democratic countries, they will attempt to imitate their successes in America. No free nation will be spared this trial. So let us not avert our eyes and tell ourselves that this curse isn’t coming for us. Because it is coming for us.”

Personally I think things are going to get worse, a lot worse before any sense of normalcy returns, if it ever does. This will require liberals and conservatives standing together in opposition to mob rule, cancel culture, statue toppling, lawlessness and all the rest.

A robust defense of America is also needed and of her founding ideals and how things like the Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantee those gathering in the streets the right to peaceful assembly and due process for those inclined to burn buildings and loot stores.

Frankly, seeing as how the left and right in this country not only live in different realities but seem to be habituating on different planets, I’m not optimistic of any type of grand partnership occurring.

Chaos, riots, protests, looting, divisiveness, violence…..who exactly does this empower?

We are a Cancer and There is No Cure

The title of this post comes from the personal blog of former MSNBC producer Ariana Pekary, who quit recently over frustrations with the network’s obsession with ratings over informing the public and the serious negative effects this has had on the national discourse.  She believes this to be a systemic problem across the board with most mainstream news entities.

Shocking, I know!  Not really of course.  I’m sure many of you are fully aware of  the media’s long deathward spiral down the ratings toilet bowl in their never ending quest for eyeballs at the expense (and exhaustion) of the general public.  Take a partially true story, spin, tweak, edit and then spin again until the desired narrative comes about, then push it through the network channels and social media feeds until peak fear/outrage levels are reached.  Voila, instant ratings boost.

This got me thinking. Not so much about the horrid state of the news media, but on the simple fact that each day we have a variety of choices on which narratives to live by and that a thoughtful dissection on what they’re bringing to the table might be in order.

By narrative I mean the reality of what’s going on in the world and who is defining it.  For some it’s cable news, the internet or social media, for others it’s the daily paper or a favorite magazine with a cup of Joe ( my personal favorite, but who has the time!) and then of course there are those who avoid news all together.  For most of us it’s probably some combination of a few, but make no mistake, they all lay down tracks in our brains on what to concern ourselves with and why.

In this video,  a woman named Lorie Ladd goes deeper in to how our predefined labels about things can unconsciously create emotional knee jerk reactions that lead us to places of either fear or freedom.  “Oh that’s coming from FOX, I’m gonna respond this way, or oh that’s coming from CNN, I’m gonna respond this way.”  

While she gets a little too whooey hooey for me at times, she did get me thinking about ways I allow outside forces to mess with my emotions. We all do this and unless you live in a cave it can’t be helped. The important thing to do, according to Lorie, is to continually question what you’re listening/watching/reading and ask yourself, 

“How is this message making me feel and why am I choosing to believe a program, a system or a paradigm that is making me feel fear?”

Good questions!  While it’s important to be informed, it’s even more so to understand that the media is not our friend.   They employ reams of people whose jobs are to position “the news” in scary ways so headlines are clicked, people become fearful after reading the ensuing articles and then come back for more because the anxiety/outrage they now suffer from and the brain chemicals released from this drive a compulsive need to know more.

InsanityBytes 22 explains this well in her excellent post, The 12 Steps and Screaming Panic Porn:

“If you don’t know what Screaming Panic Porn is, it is click bait, it is propaganda designed to manipulate you into taking a peek, triggering an emotional response.  The mainstream media and advertisers are absolute experts at it, professionals. They know how to hook you.  They are wayyyy bigger and badder than you are.”

A reader of that post named HAT referenced an also excellent article called Coronavirus is Serious, but Fear is Optional which gets in to the nitty gritty on how news copy is created (hint, not for our benefit) and why it only matters that you open the article, not that it’s accurate or informative.  It’s a great read all around, but this one line sums up the gist.

“When you read the news, you’re not actually becoming well- informed, you’re being emotionally exploited.”

I can think of no better example of this than the media’s hysterical coronavirus coverage,
with their daily drumbeat of positive case counts and continual showcasing of the saddest of sad outlier stories of  young, seemingly healthy people dying from it. No caveats on how daily stats are meaningless, no corrections made when numbers turn out to be wrong, 0 discussion on who really is dying in large numbers and no focus on recoveries, just one horror story after another. 

Yet this charts paint a very different picture.  Yes, case #’s have exploded (brown line) but daily deaths (black line) have remained relatively flat minus a few upticks in very localized hotspots.   

This second shows Covid death have trended downward dramatically since its April peak with details broken out by age, which tells us who this virus effects most and where  resources should be directed.

Yet color coded graphs and dry virology basics don’t sell very well, so the panic porn will continue until at least November 7th.

What’s to be done?  It’s important to be informed, but this involves work. Consume news but just enough to know what’s happening and question everything, especially if it’s triggering fear/outrage and is too comfortably in line with your thinking.

Just as important is to seek outlets that provide information but with the context needed to get the full picture.  This takes time but brings perspective, which helps to better pinpoint what’s truly  important amidst the daily barrage of garbage headlines thrown our way.

This leads to making rational decisions about how to or even if to respond to current events based on our personal assessment of things, not someone else’s whose agenda goes against our self interest.

Freedom over fear & empowerment over outrage leads to smart personal decisions made based on what works best for our own unique situations.  How quaint.

 

Done With Coronavirus Magical Thinking

The final straw came rather suddenly.

I’d just spent an hour navigating one way grocery aisles, doing my best not to get close to others, the wild eyed ones especially, as they can be unpredictable.  “No ma’am, I’m not trying to give you Covid, I merely want some tomatoes and your cart is in the way.”  Of course I can’t communicate this effectively with my stupid,  muzzle mask garbling the words and hiding my kind expression.

As I move up the now routine mile long checkout line I notice the cashier power washing the conveyer belt as if covered in raw sewage.  Wouldn’t it be ironic if conveyer belts soaked with sanitizer chemicals turned out to be more dangerous for us to put grocery items on than the Covid germs they are deployed to destroy?

So there I stood, rather appropriately on my red social distancing marker, while fiddling with my mask when something inside me broke.  I just can’t do this Coronavirus Kabuki Dance any longer.  The ever growing list of nonsensical mandates is to accomplish what, slowing the spread of infection?  Eliminating infections all together?

Has anyone on the planet ever gotten a virus from a contaminated grocery item?  And do people walking past each other really pose any kind of a threat?  Why would it make a difference if they’re going in the same direction or not? And if masks are so effective why bother with distancing at all?

Questions like that hurt my brain hurt, so I switch it off and put on my happy face for the cashier, hidden of course behind my mask.

On my way out, a nice young employee who surely was sporting a wide toothy grin behind his store branded mask gently informed me I was heading out the wrong exit, as this was for incoming patrons only and I needed to go to the other side of the store where the correct outgoing one was located.

Garnering every ounce of my being to stop myself from slapping the man to the ground, I mumbled an apology through gritted teeth as I turned to walk the other way, eyes spinning wildly above my now grossly wet mask.

Really, how long are we going to keep doing this?  Until a vaccine comes out?  Do people understand this might be never? Or, at the very earliest, perhaps January of 2021, plus the several added months needed to force it upon administer it to 300+million people? Quick, raise your hand if you’d like to be first in line to try an unproven vaccine that was rushed to market?

What’s really going on here? We’ve turned life completely upside down for a virus whose survival rate for most people is over 99%.  For those that do get sick, there are good treatments available and hospitals around the country have been reinforced to handle surges of critical cases.  We also know primarily who this virus effects most seriously, but instead of devoting resources and brain power towards protecting them, we get sledgehammer mandates that treat all of us as if we face the same risk.

At the same time we’ve institutionalized fear and suspicion of others with policies that incentivize being scared of your neighbor for bad coronavirus behavior. Surely you’ve noticed people jostling to cross the street as you walk by, their panic palpable at being near someone outside their “circle”; someone, God forbid, who isn’t wearing a mask!  

A smile used to convey friendliness; now it’s considered a threat because if it can be seen that means that person is not wearing a mask, which is very bad coronavirus behavior.  On the flip side, wearing a mask prevents the internal wiring in others from properly determining  danger as someone approaches. A smile signals good will, but since it’s hidden, the brain defaults to high threat alert.

Facial masks are dehumanizing really and condition people to accept as ok a government mandate to hide a central part of their identity. Makes me wonder what else does this open the door for?

We also continually hear how important it is for people to keep their distance from others, which implies that human closeness is wrong and that participating in things where others will be present like church, going out to dinner and family gatherings is irresponsible.  We’ve basically taken away all the essential ingredients needed for healthy, human relationships to thrive.

I’m sorry but none of this is normal and I’m sick of pretending that it will make a difference in stopping the virus from doing what viruses always do, which is infect people until enough become immune and it runs out of viable hosts. Until this happens, whether through natural herd immunity or vaccine induced, we are going to have to learn how to do life with Covid-19.

And not this zombie like existence either, with many businesses still shut down, no concerts or sporting events, limited travel and a decimated performing arts industry.  It’s time to fully open things up and start living as human beings again.

Would this risk an increase Covid cases and deaths?  Yes, without a doubt, but living life devoid of all the things that make it pleasurable is merely existing, which is seriously damaging in ways we haven’t begun to scratch the surface on. 

We can still have some distancing policies in place and mask wearing where it makes sense, but on the whole people need to make their own decisions on how fully they would want to participate based on own their own personal health situations.  Gobs of stimulus money could also be diverted towards virus protection for those that need it.

We will never be allowed to do this though.  You can be sure that as infections  rise and calls to re-lock down the economy grow louder, government officials already drunk with power will do just that.  The fear of getting Covid and the continual drumbeat of panic by the media has created a learned helplessness in people which practically begs a strong government authority to take over.

How can I look at those driving alone with masks on and think otherwise?

Fear, isolation, suspicion of others, dwindling civil liberties, an increasingly strong and powerful state, high unemployment, sky rocketing suicide and addiction levels, unsustainable government debt; The virus I would argue is the least of our worries.

It’s our response to it that keeps me up at night.