I remember 9/11 well. People were shocked and angry, but also brave and compassionate. Police and firefighters ran into the burning World Trade Towers to save office workers. Many of those police and firefighters were still there trying to save lives when the buildings collapsed over and under them.
On a hijacked flight over Pennsylvania, passengers heard by telephone of the collapse of the Trade Towers and surmised that their hijackers planned a similar strike. Some of the passengers huddled, plotted and made a pact to overcome the terrorists.
The terrorists had already murdered the pilots, and so the passengers knew their actions would crash the plane and end their own lives. But they figured that by crashing the plane before reaching the building that the terrorists had targeted (we now know it was the Capitol Building) they could save people.
A passenger pictured above named Todd Beamer said the Lord’s Prayer. Others joined in. At the conclusion he said, “Let’s roll.” And they did. All aboard died, but thousands on the ground were saved.
But then there’s COVID. I see very little courage, compassion or heroism here. OK, there’s some by medical workers. But I see none by politicians who want to game the pandemic for political advantage. I see none by school teachers who want to “work” from home forever at the expense of taxpayers’ money – and children’s learning and mental health – even though there’s virtually no increased contagion in the schools. I see none from workers who saw the pandemic as a gravy train of free money as the politicians catered to them with payments for non-work.
What I do see is that people have become mean. I use the term in the dictionary sense: small, stingy, unkind.
You see it on the highways. Cloaked in semi-anonymity, drivers are rude and aggressive. Traffic deaths are way up in 2021 – not just compared to 2020 when there were fewer people on the highway because the pandemic was keeping them home, but also compared to prior years. People have become mean and unsafe drivers.
You also see it in the crime statistics. Murder and other violent crimes are way up. People have become mean criminals.
It’s in politics. Gotcha tribalism rules the day. Wild name-calling abounds, with allegations of racism, Nazism, communism, fascism and corruption, hurled by anyone against anyone who dares disagree with whatever. Politics has gotten very mean.
It’s in the public square. People get cancelled and ruined for things they said in a different context and century. The public square is a mean place.
In part, I blame this on simple human nature. It’s a common myth that people are basically good. They’re not. As humans go, the police, firefighters and airplane passengers mentioned above who are rightly and forever honored for their selfless actions on 9/11 were extraordinary, not ordinary.
Ordinary humans are less admirable. They’re the narcissistic rioters, the looters, the angry political partisans, the violent criminals, the greedy teachers’ unions, and the predatory automobile drivers. They’re the couch potatoes collecting COVID payments because, well, why work?
But another part of it is COVID itself. It’s the daily grind of an uncertain disease that is asymptomatic or mild in most cases but can also kill – and has killed nearly a million so far in this country alone. Travel and routines are disrupted. People are stressed, not so much by the disease which we seldom see in-person, but by the environment we’ve created in our inept management of it.
We demand that people wear masks, the efficacy of which is less proven than the medicines that so-called journalists told us were hoaxes because that’s what fit their narrative. What could be more de-humanizing in a society than masking our smiles and scowls? If the Nazis had thought of it, they’d have put masks on death camp inmates and guards.
That’s what I’ll remember about COVID.
I’m done with it. I’m done hunkering down in a small, stingy and unkind world that is weirdly obsessed with the fantasy of eradicating COVID or, worse, pretends to be obsessed as justification for a sick agenda. I’m thrice vaccinated. I choose to live free – to live free! – in the imperfect world we’ve been given.
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Not vaccinated, but continuing to live a normally as possible and only wearing a mask where required–like the doctor’s office. The freedom of being able to speak and smile is not something I care to give up.
Agreed. We are a meaner culture currently, probably for many reasons, Covid being at the very least a catalytic agent revealing just how “mean” we have become.
As for ordinary people, we are what we are, by definition people “conformed to a regulated sequence or arrangement.” We are “orderly” and, as Stanley Milgram demonstrated so convincingly, we tend to follow orders. In other words, we are sheep. And sheep are generally only as sensibly and nobly behaved as their shepherds.
Our shepherds are currently vile — self-interested, self-righteous, and contemptuous of the sheep, who smell up Walmart. The government-run public health sector, and the medical community that conforms to its dictates, are illustrative of one of the sorriest periods in the history of medicine, which is pretty dismal as it is — so dismal, in fact, that few medical schools even offer a course in the history of medicine.
There are Todd Beamers among these wolves — signers of The Great Barrington Declaration, for example, but few are listening because few are even hearing their message. Flight 93 is going down, with them or without them.
Anyway, like you I’m done with this. Booster shot, hell, no — fool me twice, shame on me, as the saying goes. Standing in line in the cold to get baffling test kits, so I can conform to arbitrary protocols, forget it. As you wrote in a former piece, if I die, I’ll deal with it.
Whoa, wait a sec. I kinda like Walmart. Where else can you get a t-shirt for $2.70 and jeans for $9?
Oh, the one other place is Costco, where I do most of my wine shopping these days. Don’t tell.
Your secret is safe with me. I don’t want others scarfing up all the Kirkland Cabernet Sauvignon, at less than $8 for a 3-liter box. In vino veritas — you’re a proper sheep.
Oops, it’s $13 a box. Still a great deal compared to “free” vaccines that don’t immunize us. And Costco doesn’t mandate that I drink the stuff.
Glen: Hope you are aware that Walmart demands manufacturers price their jeans so low that they are NOT made the same as jeans sold elsewhere. Yes, you will get the low-priced jeans, but nowhere near the same quality as from a retail store that sells far better quality.
Small, stingy, unkind … i.e., that Dickensian name that has become both a noun with an accompanying verb form, Scrooge.
It’s commonly said that liberals, progressives, Leftists, et al, believe at their core philosophy that all humans are basically good. This tends to explain why leftists and progressives downplay crime and violence in general because of their political Romanticism with statist and collectivist ideologies that believe in the ability to remake humanity into a perfect ideal, a social utopian paradise on Earth. Just keep building more re-education camps … and if and when those fail, then there are always the back-up concentration camps and mass graves.
I recently saw a meme that really brings this home; it went something like … Socialism: Always just a few more executions away from Utopia. Also keep in mind that the USSR stood for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and that the NSDAP (Nazi) stood for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
It’s also commonly said that Conservatives, Judeo-Christians, Constitutionalists, et al, believe that humans are easily corruptible as we are all born into sin and exist in a sinful and fallen world. This explains the Founding Fathers’ views that government must be divided by Federalism and the separation of powers because no one individual can be trusted to have control over all of society.
Folks of these stripes might lack the Romanticism of Rousseau, the Jacobins and the Bolsheviks, but they have the real world sense that governments do not exist to create the perfect man or perfect society, but rather to allow individuals to exert and practices their liberties and free agency to the maximum ability without encroaching upon others’ freedoms and free agency.
It’s time to put to rest the small, stingy and unkind … wishing all a Blessed and Prosperous 2022.
After all … Ebenezer Scrooge had his Epiphany and Redemption.
You know how it pains me to say this, Dog Byte, but that’s pretty good stuff. G
Thanks for the kind words … I respond to your opinion columns as if they were like Rorschach tests. I’m just putting down my first and immediate thoughts and impressions when I finish your column.
You write very well and your essays are quite intriguing and thought provoking.
I penned opinion columns myself as a regular columnist at one time. The newspaper was bought out but I think there are still some in the archives of The San Diego Union-Tribune.
G’nite …
What Glenn said.
Is it actually the case that the $%#@&^!!#! virus has killed nearly a million Americans? Or is the virus also taking the rap for hundreds of thousands of co-morbidities, so that its actual lethality is much lower?
As Twain observed, statistics are the damnedest lies of all.
Time and again we read that cases of
” died with Covid “, ( people who died of other causes), are being counted as ” died OF Covid”.
That many people admitted to the ER for other causes, who then test positive, are listed as Covid patients.
Numerous states have and are readjusting numbers, others arent.
In the literal tens of thousands, that we know of since the start of this. I’m betting the true number of people who died solely of Covid is half of the posted number, at most.
In Larimer County the mask farce continues… you can sit for hours in a restaurant, bar , theater, bowling lane, without one, but must play the part of the robot going in or out, at grocery stores, hardware stores,where I haven’t worn one in months,, and have never been approached over it,, and there is a growing number who arent .
Many people simply absorb the government spiel on the whole thing, dont bother to read the reams of material available which rips apart Fauci , the CDC, WHO, and. NIH, and those who buy thier directives hook, line, and sinker.
I’ve occasionally tried to share such info with a few acquaintances, and they react as if I am a Neanderthal or should be tied to a stake.
Usually they are the ” liberals”, who at one time questioned authority.
It will probably be 25 to 50 years before society finally accepts that this wasn’t the Black Death., and the government overeacted.
Apparently, our 46th U.S. president may have cured the flu. For week ending 12/25/21, the U.S. had 6 recorded deaths from influenza. This number (6) is compared to the Wuhan China plague which reportedly killed 1,058 Americans during the same week. Don’t believe me without verifying these easily found statistics (The CDC.gov website is my source.). So, according to the CDC, the U.S. averaged 33,400 influenza deaths per year from 2010-2019. Deaths attributed to influenza in 2020 and 2021 averaged 4,792 deaths/year. The Whitehouse should declare victory over influenza and see how CNN greets this wonderful news.
God’s truth Glenn. I too have noticed the absolutely insane drivers, racing around, cutting in, having impromptu street races on busy highways. Portland for all its weirdness had the most polite drivers. Signal and the driver behind you would drop back and let you in. Tail gating was rare and people went the speed limit. The meanness manifests itself in other ways, as you said violence, riots, arson, and on the Left Coast homeless vagrants literally taking over cities. The bloom is off the Portland Rose. Our murder rate is up 800%. Its it all about COVID? Maybe not but a lot of it is the result of the failed policies. We (and many other businesses) can’t hire enough workers. Fast food and the local car wash is offering $20 per hour. If you’re willing to cook at a restaurant you can get a $3000 bonus by staying 90 days. The National Guard was called out to help in hospitals because they couldn’t hire support staff. The docs and nurses showed up but the admin, housekeeping, and food service can make more sitting on their bums at home and so they did. What a complete fustercluck. The response to this virus is bringing out the worst in us.
By ‘People’ got mean, I hope you are including Glenn Beaton. August 2020 – identifies people who distrust the Covid vax as ‘Anti-Vaxxer’. (Nope, we generally believe in some vax’s, but definitely not the CVax.) Also says that people who do not believe in the CVax do not have ‘science’ to back them up. (Yes we do, even if the media and Silicon Valley blocks the science.) August 2020: Calls the Vaxxed brave and the ones who distrust the CVax as cowering in fear. (Nope. It is far braver to stand against a wave of tyranny than it is to join in and start throwing rocks.) January 2021, mocks parents concerned about their children and the ill effects of the CVax and calls them autistic.
I could go on, but hopefully Glenn, you’ve seen the light and wish to apologize for your hatefulness. (Now the question is, ‘Will you?’
You’re putting words in my mouth that I didn’t say.
It’s true that I’m vaccinated and have encouraged others to get vaccinated. In that, I’m in the company of Donald Trump, among others. In fact, I was a volunteer in the Pfizer clinical trials. But I’ve always said that it’s an individual decision. I don’t support vax mandates, for example.
What I decry is the ignorant politicization of the decision. In your own comment, you assert that you have “science” on your side but you fail to identify any. Instead, you characterize what should be an individual cost/benefit medical decision as some sort of heroic “standing up to tyranny.”
From your comment, it looks like the reason you don’t want to be vaccinated is because people have asked you to be. That’s not the behavior of a patriot seeking to protect his country. It’s the behavior of an adolescent seeking to exhibit meaningless rebellion. It’s about as brave and considered as burning your draft card.
I love the draft card comment. Priceless.
“Please let me know how many articles I need to cite for you to accept that my concerns surrounding Covid and the CVax are founded on science?”
One (1) would be a start.
Just one? Why do I have my doubts? Give me a few minutes, I’ll get back to you.
Covid Vaccines are associated with blood clotting.
http://www.ukri.org/our-work/tackling-the-impact-of-covid-19/vaccines-and-treatments/studying-the-link-between-covid-19-vaccines-and-rare-blood-clots/
Countries banning vaccines due to harmful side effects. https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-03-15/italy-france-germany-join-countries-suspending-astrazeneca-coronavirus-vaccine
Sweden bans CVax for young people.
http://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/sweden-pauses-use-moderna-covid-vaccine-cites-rare-side-effects-2021-10-06/
CVax is neither safe, necessary or effective. http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/160-experts-slam-covid-vaccines-as-unnecessary-ineffective-and-unsafe-in-powerful-letter/
Or just do a search on Dr. Peter McCullough.
I could keep going, but it won’t matter. You will cite studies or health agencies you prefer, as if that erases my concerns. (It doesn’t. It just means we need a discussion and an exploration.)
I haven’t even touched on the dangers of masking (reducing oxygen flow) for young people (who need oxygen for optimal growth) and for old people (who need oxygen to slow neurological deterioration). Nor have I included the psychological and emotional damage of social isolation. Nor have I resorted to invective.
Best regards, TM
Thanks, we actually agree about a lot.
But re the first link, it states (and I quote) “Although blood clots linked to the COVID vaccine remain extremely rare there appears to be a higher risk in people shortly after the first dose of the AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccine. Risk rate: So far, we know that around 10 people develop this condition for every million doses of AZ vaccine doses given. That’s 0.000001%.”
Re the second link, it concerns only the Astra Zeneca vaccine. Moreover, the “ban” by several European countries was later reversed, and the Astra Zeneca vaccinations resumed. https://www.wsj.com/articles/astrazeneca-eu-end-legal-fight-over-covid-19-vaccine-11630667485
Re your third link, the article states, “”These are typically mild cases and individuals tend to recover within a short time following standard treatment and rest. The risk of myocarditis is substantially increased for those who contract COVID-19, and vaccination is the best way to protect against this.” Moreover, the ban was only in Sweden and applied only to children.
Re your fourth link, LifeSiteNews is not a credible source.
As for vaccinating young people, we agree. That’s not necessary. I think we agree on masks as well. They’re all about theater and political posturing, not medicine.
One other thing which you didn’t explicitly mention but I’m guessing we agree on. The political/medical establishment has forfeited its credibility. Dr. Fauci in particular is now in the way of his message (to the extent his message is even decipherable now). He was always well-intentioned, but now he’s ineffective and should retire.
As I said, thanks for your input, we agree about a lot. G
Not my best work. Drinking whiskey and watching football leads to sloppy posting. On the inside looking in, I see university medical / health care programs (I am affiliated with two) neither looking at the risks of covid nor the risks of masking and social isolation. A Pub Med search on these dangers is revealing in that few are studying this. (Why?) And, FWIW, studies on safety and effectiveness take years, not months, so what what know with surety about anything related to Covid is pretty close to zero. Worse than zero if we are not looking at the problems, only the benefits. (Much like looking at a beautiful woman who is interested in you, and ignoring that her 3 previous husbands died by suicide. Or, perhaps in Colorado, looking to buy a gorgeous mansion built on the edge of an eroding cliff.)
In the end, there is absolutely no reason to be mean or disrespectful of those who disagree (neither slut shaming, nor virtue signaling) because right now nobody knows, so everyone – on both sides – is doing what they think is right.
“LifeSiteNews is not a credible source.” Why is that, Glenn?
Because it has a religious, specifically Catholic, perspective? That’s not apparent to me in its reporting in the article cited by “truckinmack.” And if it were, is religious sentiment inferior to the evidence of science, when the “science” surrounding Covid is pretty much a public “religion” these days, replete with rituals of purification and dogmatic assertions of what constitutes socially responsible behavior? Like climate science, Covid science is fake religion in so many ways; I’ll take real religion, thanks.
Because it has been permanently banned from YouTube? If anything, that testifies to its credibility. YouTube doesn’t ban stuff that toes the party line.
As for Life Site News, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LifeSiteNews
I know, I know, Wikipedia is part of the conspiracy. Maybe, but I don’t see them saying such things about PJ Media or Instapundit or Fox. The fact remains that Life Site News is gnerally considered very, very partisan and unreliable.
Glenn, I think you’re impugning one source with an even more questionable source. What Wikipedia calls “far-right” used to be centrist and mainstream.(Abortion is bad, says LifeSite — Gee, who knew?) As for spreading “Covid-19 misinformation,” that’s a pernicious phrase meaning, “We like our information better than yours, so shut up and go away.” And as for what LifeSite is “generally considered,” I think you’ll agree that the “general” population is pretty messed up these days.
Glenn, I was 100% with you until the last paragraph. You are a very intelligent guy. It’s not a vaccine.
Talk about mean: my son who drives up from LA to visit family and friends over Christmas got blamed for spreading covid to his best friend’s unvaccinated family. He was not sick but since he was the odd man out he was forced to get tested. Turns out he didn’t carry it but got accused. Same with my brother who came down with a cold after Christmas. Got blamed by my sister for bringing covid into their lives even though no one caught it. Brother also forced to get tested my mean relative.
What is this world coming to? Where have out manners gone? The point is, no one is responsible for spreading covid at a family party if they don’t know they will come down with a cold later on or just because they drove from out of town. These accusatory people get on my nerves. Just like store clerks who shout, “Where’s your mask?” the second you enter the door. Annoying. When will this nightmare end?
People are gifted with varying degrees of Emotional Intelligence — I think that quickly divided us into camps. To a large degree it’s accurately called “street smarts”. It’s part of an innate survival instinct, but not all have it.
Only one camp is the aggressor.
Capitalism is what makes us nice. We need cooperation to fulfill each others’ needs, on a focused, individual level. It feeds the meritocracy. Socialism and tribalism destroy these mechanisms, rreplacing then with entitlement and envy.
I think you’re onto something. Just read this. My sister has never had coping skills and covid brought out the worst in her. She’s still over testing her family every time they have the sniffles. And her husband said he will never stop wearing the mask in crowds. Fauci is their god.
Excellent commentary — we fully agree! Kent and Mary Margaret Stockton, Riverton, WY
OTOH, Small, Stingy and Unkind would be an excellent name for a law firm
– as would, “Solitary, Nasty, Brutish, and Short
– as would “Hooten and O’Holleran”
Science? Denmark, Canada, Oxford (UK) Take your pick. ‘Vaxxed’ doesn’t prevent infection OR transmission. ‘Vaccines’ demonstrably doing more harm than good. Massive numbers of miscarriages and stillbirths. 300 European professional athletes disabled or dead. Four soccer players in their 20s last week alone.
Women rendered infertile. Children with no hope of normal heart function following bouts of myocarditis. (Heart damage doesn’t repair itself). Permanently damage immune systems.
Children dead within 24 hours of their first injection. 1200 deaths in the first 90 days of Pfizer trials.
Dr. Robert Malone, who developed the mRNA mechanism three decades ago pointing out the resulting permanently altered human DNA and permanently degraded immune system.
And a government actively lying about the problem, fabricating the ‘benefits’ of their ‘solution’, actively suppressing available therapeutics (threatens the EUA) and distributing things like monoclonal antibody therapies based on the color of the patient’s skin. What’s that called?
(Don’t bother to ask your doctor. You’re not the right color…)
Its all there to see, if you’re willing to see it. You’ll have to work at it though. Google and Twitter won’t even admit the information exists.
(“But where’s your citations…” If you really want the truth, do your own work. I’m not your research assistant.)
People are either genuinely sheep or willfully blind. And If they saw and acknowledged what’s actually occurring, what would that make them? So they choose not to see it.
And those proudly ‘thrice vaccinated’ – how proud will they be when they realize they’ve been thoroughly “had”? It might take their fourth or fifth ‘vaccination’. (Sixth in the Netherlands.)
I’m told you had a pretty good understanding of the world at large. Over the last two years it appears you’ve completely missed this boat.
As an excuse not to support your assertions, you cry, “If you really want the truth, do your own work. I’m not your research assistant.”
Huh. I should have told judges that when I practiced law. It would have saved me a lot of research, thought, time, work, effort and sweat. But I don’t think I would have won as many cases.
“My opponent’s assertions are incorrect your Honor. I rest
”
Ips resa loquitor.
Mnot–
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as astronomer Carl Sagan once put it and, before him in different words, the French mathematician Laplace.
A lawyer would put it something like this: The burden of proof is on the one making the claim.
You’re the one making the claims here — extraordinary ones. And so the burden of proof is on you. Let’s see your evidence. Save the insults — they don’t persuade anyone — and just give us your proof. It’s put-up or shut-up time.
The writer of this piece already sold out by getting this poison put in his veins 3 times. He is the problem!
Well, Meanie, if he had it “put in his veins” — instead of muscle tissue — he probably wouldn’t be much of “a problem” at this point. Which, in any event, he is not.
When he was getting his jabs, who among us imagined the enormity of the evil now so evident to you and “Mnot”? Most of us are currently struggling to stay afloat in a sea of cognitive dissonance filled with the jetsam and flotsam of conflicting “truths.” We need your charity, not your condemnation. Save it for Dr. Fausti et al.
Happy New Year!
Would it help if I said Please?
The media’s agenda hasn’t changed since the advent of “media”, particularly demonstrated during the early stages of the growth of the United States. This was something I noted while reading the July-August 2016 book on the history book club list of the Milton Library:
“Like other newspapers of the 1790s, Freneau’s National Gazette did not feign neutrality…newspapers were unabashedly partisan organs that supplied much of the adhesive power binding the incipient parties together.…The fashion of allowing anonymous attacks permitted extraordinary bile to seep into political discourse, and savage remarks that might not otherwise have surfaced appeared regularly in the press. The brutal tone of these papers made politics a wounding ordeal. One contemporary critic said of newspaper publishers, “Like birds of game…they make sport to the public as their party prompts or supplies them with materials. By this practice our elective privileges are converted into a curse.”
(Page 399; Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow)
Translation: We must try to practice critical thinking at all times.
The meanness is a sore point with me. I had an outburst about it myself on 12/31. It’s time for people demonizing the “unvaccinated” to find a new hobby horse. Everyone who wants the vaccine has had it, and if the vaccines are effective, the unvaccinated aren’t the menace to society people pretend them to be. The whole point of the vaccine promotion was so we could open back up and be a civil society again. Of course, they aren’t as effective as hoped–maybe at reducing severity. All that means is that *anybody* in your vicinity, vaxxed or un-, could be unknowingly pre-symptomatic for this or for anything. I know the fastidious germophobes don’t want to accept this reality, but *many* viruses are contagious before symptoms appear, not just the big C. So blame away, but you swim in a sea of microbes; you’re full of microbes yourself. As always, the best advice is: wash your hands well before touching your face.
I just want to hear the mean scolds confess to the reality that there’s a certain inevitability to a submicroscopic thing that mutates to evade immune responses. The idea that waving a medical record at the door of an establishment; or putting a cloth “facial decoration” on a young child (who repeatedly takes it off anyway); or mask-on/mask-off protocols in restaurants would ever “stop the spread” is laughably unrealistic. They don’t want to admit that the VIRUS is to blame; they need scapegoats on whom to unload their anxiety.
The current drumbeat narrative amongst the mean is that the “unvaccinated” are driving mutations. Well, if they are, they’re driving them in the right direction. The disease is very likely going endemic. At some point, we will have to drop back into thinking about it as often as we think about the flu…maybe once a year, if you get the flu shot (which I don’t, most years, and have never had the flu).
In a way, I pity the anxious. They have been manipulated, and that is a whole other rant. No one wants to wind up on a vent, alone and isolated in a hospital. It’s a horrible way to die. But the likelihood, while real, is low for the majority of people. Nobody wants to be maimed or die in an auto accident, but we get in our cars every day despite statistics.
Finally, and a bit of indigestible irony for me, the demonizers also don’t stop to consider that their “thought leader” is complicit in sparking the whole conflagration. I am still floored that Fauci is allowed to remain in his position, much less given airtime.
The meanness is a sore point with me. I had an outburst about it myself on 12/31. It’s time for people demonizing the “unvaccinated” to find a new hobby horse. The whole promise of the vaccine promotion was so we could open back up and be a civil society again. Everyone who wants the vaccine has had it. If the vaccines are effective, the unvaccinated aren’t the menace to society people pretend them to be. Insofar as they are ineffective, they are not a medal of virtue to polish proudly.
Of course, they aren’t as effective as hoped–maybe at reducing severity, better than nothing. All that means is that *anybody* in your vicinity, vaxxed or un-, could be unknowingly pre-symptomatic for this or for anything. This latest variant spread amongst the vaccinated first. I know the fastidious germophobes among us don’t want to accept this reality, but *many* viruses are contagious before symptoms appear, not just the big C. So blame away, but you swim in a sea of microbes; you’re full of microbes yourself, benign and not. As of old, the best advice is: wash your hands well and try not to touch your face.
The mean people need to face it: there’s a certain inevitability to a submicroscopic thing that mutates to evade immune responses. The idea that waving a medical record at the door of an establishment; or putting a cloth “facial decoration” on a young child (who repeatedly takes it off); or mask-on/mask-off protocols in restaurants would ever “stop the spread” is laughably unrealistic. They don’t want to admit that the VIRUS is to blame; they need scapegoats on whom to unload their anxiety.
The current drumbeat narrative amongst the mean is that the “unvaccinated” are driving mutations. Well, if they are, they’re driving them in the right direction. I just very probably had O (double-vaxxed, a family member tested positive) and it’s essentially a head cold. The disease is very likely going endemic. At some point, we will have to drop back into thinking about it as often as we think about the flu…maybe once a year, if you get the flu shot (which I don’t, most years, and have never had the flu).
In a way, I pity the anxiety-prone. They have been manipulated, and that is a whole other rant. No one wants to wind up on a vent, alone and isolated in a hospital. It’s a horrible way to die. But the likelihood, while real, is low for the majority of people. Nobody wants to be maimed or die in an auto accident, but we get in our cars every day despite statistics. And it’s no reason to “cut people out of your life” or refuse to show up to your own daughter’s door with a nice pot of chicken soup.
Finally, and a bit of indigestible irony for me, the demonizers also don’t stop to consider the strong evidence that their “thought leader” is complicit in sparking the whole conflagration. I am still floored that Fauci is allowed to remain in his position, much less given airtime.
So dead on, and so well said. As for Fauci being “allowed” to remain, heck, he’s the most “essential worker” of all — the Face of Big Brother.
Like Glenn, I also “choose to live free.” Which is why I’m not “vaccinated” against SARS Covi 2 (or any of its nasty little offshoots) nor do I intend to be. As my favorite character, Hancock said, “You do you and I’ll do me.” My immune system is fortified by copious mounts of Vitamins D, K-2, B, C and zinc, plus a monthly cocktail of Durvet Ivermectin (which is exactly the same as the human variety, only less expensive, readily available and not requiring a prescription). I’m not carrying, harboring, shedding or expectorating any of the aforementioned viral particles, although I do confess to exhaling a garden variety of other “bugs,” as we all do and have done since our first breaths out of the womb. If the people freaking out about the WuFlu could see the absolute menagerie of viruses and bacteria on their epidermis, inside their nasal passages, mouth, throat and gut lining, they would undoubtedly shit their pants. And then they could see all the other bacteria in their turds! Meanwhile, my advice is to laugh as often and enthusiastically as possible when confronted by the Karens, male and female in our midst.
I’ve been done with it for a long time. I started thinking about the “mean” aspect during the summer of 2021. The biggest tell was how people’s language degraded. People from whom I’d never heard an expletive in their lives were suddenly dropping f-bombs in regular conversation with abandon. I found myself doing it. Upon the realization, I made a conscious effort to stop that. I can’t stop other people’s coarseness, but I can refuse to contribute more to it with mine.
As for the disease itself, I refuse to be any more afraid of it than our elites that have had no problem with travelling, gathering and partying seemingly are. I believe that the Omicron variant is in fact a Christmas miracle; it rarely if ever kills, has mild to no symptoms for most people, and likely gifts you with a natural immunity that is superior to the shots. It’s time for life to resume like it was 2019.
I’ve been done with it for a long time. I started thinking about the “mean” aspect during the summer of 2021. The biggest tell was how people’s language degraded. People from whom I’d never heard an expletive in their lives were suddenly dropping f-bombs in regular conversation with abandon. I found myself doing it. Upon the realization, I made a conscious effort to stop that. I can’t stop other people’s coarseness, but I can refuse to contribute more to it with mine.
As for the disease itself, I refuse to be any more afraid of it than our elites that have had no problem with travelling, gathering and partying seemingly are. I believe that the Omicron variant is in fact a Christmas miracle; it rarely if ever kills, has mild to no symptoms for most people, and likely gifts you with a natural immunity that is superior to the shots. It’s time for life to resume like it was 2019.
As much as I agree that we’ve slid further down the uncivilized path during this dilemma, we Boomers flushed Societal Manners and Courtesy down the toilet in the 70s and never sought to restore it. Call your teachers by their first name, it’s cool. There’s much to be restored if we are to return to a civil society.