“No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”
— Edmund Burke
I want to talk with you about fear today–the one we’re being programmed to adopt because of the COVID-19 virus.
I’m not at all in the mood to write my usual encouraging piece, except to encourage you to wake up and realize that our freedom is being taken from us. And if our freedom goes, here in the United States, it goes for everyone, world wide. It’s time to stand up and reclaim our lives and our liberty. It’s time to open our factories and businesses and stores, to resume our social interactions. It’s time to demand our freedom.
This is no longer about a virus, and perhaps it never was. But that’s a topic for another day.
For now, let’s just look at the facts that contradict the narrative we’re being sold.
The virus kills less than 1% of the people who are affected by it, and between 30-50% of those who have died with it are elderly with underlying medical conditions, living in nursing homes.The risk is far less than that posed by the ordinary seasonal flu and yet we’re allowing ourselves to be imprisoned in our homes as if contacting each other poses a life-threatening risk.
In Ventura, California,where a total of 19 people have died, teams of up to 20,000 workers are being assembled that will go home-to-home testing everyone for the virus. If you test positive, and if you live in a home where you share a bathroom or any other room with another family member, you will be forcibly taken away and quarantined “in other kinds of places we have available” under the team’s watchful eye with daily visits. They will question all who test positive to determine the names of anyone they may have contacted in the last two weeks, and those people will be tested and quarantined , too, if they happen to test positive.
And how reliable are these tests? This week, samples of tissues taken from a paw-paw fruit and from a goat were given human names and sent to a lab for testing. Guess what? They tested positive. A fruit, for God’s sake! And on the basis of this test, you, or your wife or husband or child could be forcefully removed from your home.
We are told we must wear masks, in case we might cough and contaminate everything around us. You might think your cough is an allergy or a response to some nearby odor, the argument goes, but many who have the virus are “asymptomatic.” They show no signs yet of being sick and still may have the virus. Or they were previously ill and recovered, but could still be shedding the virus. Maybe. We wouldn’t want to take any chances. So if you do not wear a mask, you could be fined or jailed. Even if you’re in the wide open spaces of a park with no one within 20 feet of you. Even though the masks are easily penetrated by the virus. Even though they cut down on the oxygen available for you to breathe. Even though most people end up touching them frequently and often wear the same mask repeatedly.
It makes absolutely no sense at all. It’s irrational, and nothing more, at this point, than an effort to train you to comply with authority, even though that authority is acting illegally and, as the courts themselves have rules, in violation of your essential constitutional rights.
“But we have to be safe!” you might argue. From what? From the potential of contracting an illness that, while unpleasant, to be sure, is far less threatening to your life than the flu to which you have been exposed every single year of your life. And for this, we will put a third of our work force out of work, forcing people into bread lines, causing them to lose their businesses and life-savings, their retirement accounts, and their homes?
Some will continue to be afraid and will argue that associating with each other as we did mere weeks ago could cause infections to increase. The fear-mongering has been incessant after all. Let’s compromise with them. Let’s put aside arguments in favor of building immunity through exposure. Let’s allow those who believe it wise to wear masks and keep their distance from each other do so. But let’s allow those who choose to mingle freely, turning their bare faces to the sun, breathing in fresh air, to live as they decide as well.
I saw a sign at a protest this week that said, “My freedom doesn’t end where your fear beings.” And I must second that notion. I agree with Ben Franklin: “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety” and are bound to lose both.