The Walking Dead and Freedom

For the past two years, I was dismayed at how many of my friends were watching and discussing on social media the series, The Walking Dead, and its companion, Fear the Walking Dead, two related shows about an apocalyptic world when Earth is struck by a mysterious virus originating from space.

Humans turn into the walking dead (zombies) when they die from natural death or from this virus. Everyone is infected, the CDC can do nothing about it, and it is actually blown up to prevent the escape of other variants of the virus. Nobody can evade the “turning” into flesh-eating zombies when they die of natural death, viral disease, accident, or are bitten by “walkers.”

The Bible says that the dead shall rise again but Christians had imagined that the risen dead would be normal humans again, not slow moving and guttural zombies who must feast on fresh blood and live tissue in order to survive.

Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead. (Isaiah 26:19)

In the Walking Dead, the action takes place on the southeastern area of the United States. In the companion series, Fear the Walking Dead, which intersects at some point with some of the Walking Dead characters, the story is told how the virus occurred on the west coast, the trials and tribulations of characters in Los Angeles area, San Diego, Mexicali, Tijuana, and  other compounds on farms in Mexico.

Life transforms from the mundane to a survival of the fittest, kill or be killed, kill or be bitten, a constant battle that takes the main characters from town to town, along familiar roads now strewn with abandoned bloody cars, and an ever increasing army of walking zombies in search of a living, breathing victim.

A group of survivors, led by officer Rick, eventually finds a prison with tall fences, barbed wire and cells that can be cleaned of corpses and the walking dead. This prison becomes their freedom, their home for the foreseeable future. They feel safe inside, they can grow food in the courtyard, they have some medical supplies scavenged along the way or during their daily incursions “outside.”

Outside is a world of danger, gloom and doom, so frightening that the alternative of living inside a prison for the rest of their lives seems like safety from harm, a bleak world, but secure. The world is far from secure, as various living, breathing groups survive by praying on the weak and the defenseless.

The virus cannot get to Sheriff Deputy Rick Grimes' group and the dreaded walkers, the feared zombies with sharp teeth, are neutralized by the existence of the prison fence. The prison, with its enforced fences and gates, becomes the symbol of freedom. Designed to keep people in, the prison becomes safe heaven and keeps undesirables out. However, in greater numbers, they can still break down barriers and the chicken wire fence.

The viral pandemic destroyed the world as they knew it and there was no going back. They were driven into abject fear by their own friends and relatives, infected by a virus and now dead. Fear and the instinct for survival at all costs had become the epicenter of their lives.

I could not help but recognize the same real or imagined fear, in our world, a panic bordering at time on mass-driven hysteria, that is still driving our population in the United States and around the globe, two years after the World Health Organization’s (WHO) declaration of a pandemic.

President Trump brought into the White House and on the world stage two specialists, Drs. Fauci and Brix, who proceeded to scare the American population with death and dying on a daily basis. Dr. Fauci never left the White House, coloring the proverbial “sky is falling” with various colors of fright.

The abject fear drummed up and identical narratives repeated on every venue of mass communication by eager to please journos, drove the population at first forcibly into lockdowns and then by personal choice behind a mask and self-exile behind closed doors. People’s homes were no longer their castles, they became their voluntary prisons from which they communicated with the outside world by virtual Zoom calls and smart phones.

People gave up their freedoms immediately because they were driven into mass hysteria by globalists with a plan to fundamentally change their lives into the Marxist Shangri La they envisioned as a way to control everything from the Build Back Better platform of the Great Reset agenda of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The Great Reset | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)

Build back what? Voluntary prisons? Better jails and isolation? By rules devised by a few psychotic billionaires and U.N.? Build better fairy dust solar and wind energy so we can stop using fossil fuels like the United Nations has been advocating for seven decades but nobody listened? Plunging us into medieval darkness and despair? Funny how suddenly prominent world leaders  inserted the same rhetorical phrase, Build Back Better, into their speeches. And they were all doing it for the World Economic Forum’s The Great Reset agenda, ‘never let a crisis go to waste, global communism/fascism.

An engineered for gain-of-function virus provided an amazing excuse to do all the things psychotic globalists at U.N. couldn’t – engage planet lockdown, destroy fossil fuels, destroy medicine, get rid of a lot of old people, reduce consumption drastically, reduce the food supply, reduce water usage, reduce land use by a whopping percentage, and force humanity back into the dark ages.

You are not just hiding behind a prison barbed wired fence to find freedom, you are hiding behind a soulless mask, where your social cues are hidden, your empathy and compassion are diminished, and you experience constant fear. Behind a mask, people tend to become more prone to outbursts of violence, less empathetic, and they tend to dehumanize their peers.

Your life is not much better than officer Rick’s group in the Walking Dead, or those in Fear the Walking Dead, hiding in your home prison as a safer alternative to the dangerous outside world governed by a virus created as a bio weapon in Wuhan, you struggle to escape the Corona-19 Virus, and in the process you have lost your freedom and your humanity in one fell swoop.

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                            

Pro Medica's Perennial Lockdowns

I got a phone call this morning from a young lady named Martina, reading a canned corporate script which made her sound like a recording, apologizing, and blaming a computer glitch for not contacting families whose loved ones are residents in the Pro Medica-owned nursing homes.

I picked up the phone and she was none too pleased when I interrupted her prepared and written speech with annoying but logical questions. This was the second call on behalf of the corporate office in Colorado since the lockdowns started on March 14, 2020.

She informed me that last week there were zero positive Covid tests among staff and residents, yet they must wait another week of zero [a worthless test deemed so by the CDC] before they may hear from the health department to release them from lockdown.

They are the only nursing home chain in Fairfax County that is keeping their residents prisoners under a false pretense when nobody has been sick with Covid-19 lately at this facility, only one or two staff and a resident were positive but asymptomatic, according to various staff members.

The staff is being forced to wear masks and shields and the residents wear masks, even those who live alone in their rooms and do not leave their rooms.

I explained to the young woman that I have just returned from Florida and few people were masked there, mostly tourists from New York and other liberal states. The locals were getting sunshine, vitamin D, and fresh salty air. Florida flu cases had dropped to one of the lowest levels in the country.

I asked Martina, since the flu season is starting as the cold fall and winter seasons are moving in, prime time for any type of flu, are they going to keep everyone locked down in perpetuity as it is impossible to keep the population at zero flu cases? Her answer was, of course not. However, she could not tell me what the company’s plans were. I asked her about the facility’s death statistics, and she told me that she did not have those numbers, only corporate does. Who exactly does have those numbers at corporate? Not surprisingly, she did not know.

Martina did say that they must wait on the health department of Virginia and the CDC guidelines before they can allow patients to be free again. All the other nursing homes have been allowing visitations for weeks now while Pro Medica is keeping their nursing home patients under draconian lockdown.

Criminals in prison are treated better and have more freedoms than these patients have. As I tried to argue my point, it was ignored, Martina was only interested in reading the prepared script to me in its totality and did not like to be interrupted.

The insanity of these controlling people with their manufactured pandemic is appalling. Zoo people in Tampa, Florida, are giving Covid-vaccine to skunks because this gain-of-function flu virus is found both in animals and humans.

Covid-19 will never be eradicated among humans like the polio was. The polio virus hosted only in humans, never in animals, it was therefore possible to eradicate it in most western countries.

Are cases of previously eradicated viruses like polio coming back? Perhaps from third world nations, whose citizens are now pouring through our non-existent southern border, individuals who are neither tested nor forced to be vaccinated against their will like American citizens are.

Flu viruses mutate constantly. That is why each year people get a flu shot with a concoction of what pharma thinks may or may not be effective this year, with a success rate of below 50 percent. Are people in nursing homes in the U.S. and elsewhere in places like Australia going to be locked down for the rest of their remaining lives?

Something does not compute when the same people who told us that the earth is overpopulated and we must be culled down to less than a billion, are now trying to save our lives with a vaccine.

 

Financial Outcomes of Lockdowns

Our fifty states are interconnected through trade and travel and states that did not enforce lockdowns are still affected by states that chose to shut down completely. Blue states, poorly managed to begin with and tightly locked down, are clamoring for a piece of the huge financial rescue coming from Washington.

This welfare is enabled by the Treasury’s money printing without any backing of goods and services faster than paper can be supplied thus contributing to the rising inflation, inflation partially hidden by the elimination of fuel and food from the proverbial basket of goods that determines each month the rise and fall of prices.

In addition, the disastrous executive orders passed in the first 100 days of the new presidency have affected our economy quite negatively, coupled with the out-of-control spending, much of it totally unrelated to the pandemic effects. Temporary and permanent effects of the lockdown have disrupted the economy and bankrupted many small businesses and larger ones that were already struggling before the “pandemic” hit.

If data is compiled and reported correctly, it is obvious how GDP has been affected by lockdowns in terms of loss of consumption, investment, government spending, and trade with other countries.

We had a relatively large working population “pre-pandemic,” now Americans are being paid more to stay home while employers are struggling to find people willing to work in service sectors.

We had, at one time, the most productive workers in the world. The U.S. economy used to make at least $40,000 worth of goods and services for every living American and over $80,000 for every working American. (William J. Baumol and Alan S. Blinder, Economics, 2007)

To find out what the total output of the economy is, you must look at the gross domestic product (GDP) which is comprised of consumption (the largest component), investment (I), government spending (G) and next exports (X-IM, exports minus imports). Government buys goods and services from private businesses amounting to about 18 percent of GDP, it does not produce goods, but it provides services. Two-thirds of GDP is consumption.

When you look at the GDP number for 2020, you can measure the size of the economy, what it produced in final goods and services that year. The real GDP shows adjustment to the economy in the purchasing power of money by correcting for inflation (increase in prices of goods and services every American buys). As you can plainly see in grocery stores and at the gas pumps, these two important elements for every household have skyrocketed in prices. Yet they are no longer included in the basket of goods used to measures inflation.

Economic data hides the human factors that cause immense suffering in a terrible economy marked by a terrible GDP.

Take the world-wide Great Depression of the 1930s. The U.S. GDP dropped 30 percent, business investment was almost non-existent, and the unemployment rate grew from 3 percent in 1929 to 25 percent in 1933. In the labor force, one person in four was jobless. And the government was not handing out unemployment and stimulus checks. Soup lines, closed factories, people begging, and homeless were at an all-time high.

NPR reported that GDP shrank at the annual rate of 32.9% in the second quarter of 2020, “the sharpest economic contraction in modern American history,” as reported by the Commerce Department. GDP Drops At 32.9% Rate, The Worst U.S. Contraction Ever : Coronavirus Updates : NPR

The estimated real GDP for the first quarter in 2021 by the Bureau of Economic Analysis is an increase of 6.4 percent. This figure reflects some economic recovery, reopening “establishments,” and government assistance payments, such as direct economic impact payments, expanded unemployment benefits, and Paycheck Protection Program loans, distributed to households and businesses through the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act and the American Rescue Plan Act.

“The full economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be quantified in the GDP estimate for the first quarter of 2021 because the impacts are generally embedded in source data and cannot be separately identified.”  Gross Domestic Product, First Quarter 2021 (Advance Estimate) | U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)

But how does one correctly estimate and quantify the loss of economic welfare on a societal level which impacts the economy?

-          Suspended or permanently lost freedoms for almost 15 months now

-          Permanent or temporary effects on mental health

-          Loss of economic opportunities due to the lockdowns

-          Loss of investment in human capital due to closed schools (students learned precious little in public schools or in college for over a year now)

-          Personal and professional loss resulting from inability to travel for business or leisure

-          Educational, friendship, and family losses due to lockdowns

-          Children being out of school and not in contact with outside humans

-          Adults being out of the labor force and not in contact with colleagues

-          Mental and physical uncertainty

-          Loss from proper medical care when care was virtual and inadequate

-          Loss from ability to go to hospitals due to fear of contagion

-          Loss from death because of other neglected serious medical problems

-          Severe loss from lack of socialization of people of all ages

-          Loss of our humanity and identity due to masking everywhere

-          Social distancing caused more than just reduced economic activity, it profoundly affected many individuals

-          Loss of entrepreneurship (some was replaced by a robust mushrooming of production of personalized masks and shields)

-          Loss of innovation

-          Small business formation collapsed except those supporting the lockdowns and mask wearing (door delivery, curb delivery, contactless credit card use, fashionable masking accessories and gloves)

-          The disappearance of buffets; new and permanent sanitation rules in retail and food processing and serving

-          Losses from wedding venues, birthday, and other parties

-          Banned activities such as going to church and everything related to it are not counted in GDP as a loss

-          Playing sports and attending professional and amateur games damaged economic activity in concessions and booster club activities/fund raising

-          The huge cost resulting from the lost value of living due to lockdowns, of seeing and associating with family

-          The loss of leisure time, i.e., traveling abroad, going on a cruise, on vacation, to a wedding, to a graduation, birthday, etc.

-          Loss of mental health, disability, suicides from lockdowns, drug overdoses, increased drug use and dependency, child abuse, elder abuse, and spousal abuse.

In his book, Economics in One Virus, Ryan A. Bourne wrote that “a third to a half of even the near-term decline in early phases of the pandemic was purely due to the lockdowns, as opposed to panicked changes in behavior from risk-averse consumers and workers.” (Cato Institute, 2021, p. 79)

Bourne wrote that there was a decline in vaccines for other child diseases, cancellation of elective surgeries by hospitals that potentially made a person’s health worse and increase in nursing home deaths that were not related to Covid.

The Covid-19 lockdowns in various states have had and are still having an economic impact that may or may not be correctly and fully quantifiable.  Bourne wrote, “Mercatus Center economists James Broughel and Michael Kotrous conclude that the initial lockdown measures probably cost somewhere between $255 and $464 billion in lost output (1.2 to 2.2 percent of 2019 GDP).”

Economic activity is much easier to calculate but how do you quantify the loss from schooling alone, what economists call “human capital accumulation?” And how does one quantify all the other intangible losses? What kind of subjective yard stick can one possibly use?

A lot of money has been created and a small part was distributed to the population in the form of various payments, stimulus checks, unemployment, and extended unemployment checks, etc. The money created did not go to economic growth or investment as people either were not allowed to work, their employers went bankrupt, the jobs went away, few new jobs and businesses were created, and many chose to stay home as the government’s weekly welfare checks was more than they were making while working. So, the increase in the money supply then caused inflation.

Investments were made heavily in the real estate market and construction market as people were fleeing mismanaged and locked down blue states. Housing prices and construction materials, especially lumber, have skyrocketed.

Consumption goods prices increased as well as retailers were unable to get enough merchandise stock in the brick-and-mortar stores and consumers turned to Amazon online and to other giant retailers that could remain open to the detriment of mom-and-pop stores that were not allowed to stay open.

The excessive money creation means that we have too much money chasing too few goods, inflation is high, and people want to invest in tangible goods such as real estate and precious metals, hence their prices are going up.

The lockdowns were exaggerated responses to a mismanaged health crisis and a rush to vaccines, but it was mostly a money supply-created crisis in order to generate the precise outcome we are facing today – high unemployment, high inflation, more government dependency, huge government spending (on political pet projects domestically and internationally), high gas prices and less mobility, high energy, less access to proper medical care, forcing solar and wind generated energy to fully replace fossil fuels, some of the many items on the agenda of the Great Reset/Build Back Better. The long-term global effects of the “new normal,” caused by the flu virus and by the subsequent opportunistic response to it, are not going to be pretty.

 

 

 

 

The Corona-19 Virus is Cunning and Discriminating

 

As a logical person, I am in awe that this Corona-19 virus is so brilliant – it knows exactly when to strike the unexpected. No worries though, the governors of some states are even smarter, they have curfews in place to prevent their citizens from being unnecessarily attacked by this cunning virus. Apparently, citizens are no longer capable of taking care of themselves and must let daddy-government tell them exactly what to do to protect themselves from this viral menace.

To avoid wearing your own bacteria-infested mask to the grocery store, I suggest an uncomplicated move – claim gubernatorial exemption for CS or CSL. I have not used it myself, but I was told by some who tried CS that it worked. What is CS and CSL, you ask? CS is a condition that many no longer harbor, Common Sense, and CSL is even rarer still, Common Sense and Logic.

The Corona-19 virus is also very discriminating, it knows not to attack humans whose fingers touch the payment keypads covered in plastic, they only contaminate fingers that touch the keypad directly. Amazing!

The governors whose jobs are to protect the people at all costs, know to close bars at exactly 9 p.m. or else the clever Corona-19 virus, which becomes viciously contagious a minute past that time, would kill us all.

And the grocery store cashiers no longer pack our groceries for fear of spreading the Corona-19 virus through contact. But the packers took the food out of a box to place it on a shelf, the baker mixed the dough that made the bread, customers come and go touching the merchandise, putting it back when they change their minds, the food gets placed by customers on the conveyor belt, and the cashier picks it up and scans it. How many hands have touched the precious food we bought? It is impossible to count or estimate, yet they refuse to pack our groceries in a paper or plastic bag. Order groceries online and they pack them neatly, going through several hands before being dropped on your doorstep.

A young man at the park reaches from his booth to the car window with a fishing net, collecting the money that has been already handled by the driver and possibly thousands of other hands if it is cash, and then touches it when he brings the net into his booth. Does it make any sense? Of course not, but he suffers from the same extreme condition of Irrational Panic and Fear Syndrome (IPFS).

At the McDonald’s drive-thru, my bag of food is presented on a tray and a hand also extends a scanner so I can scan the credit card myself, without the cashier touching it. He does not want to touch my food because of Covid-19, he says, we must be safe and stay healthy. I hear this phrase every time I encounter another human being. But the cook has already grilled my food and touched it numerous times, someone wrapped it, and touched it again when it was placed in a bag. The virus is so clever that it knows not to attack in those intermediate handling steps.

People meet and greet by bumping or tapping elbows. Seems like ages ago, we were told to cough and sneeze in our sleeves, it is much more sanitary. So, the virus discriminates and does not attach to a sleeve or an elbow and never transmits during tapping of elbows. Viruses must know that hand shaking, and hugs are the way to jump from person to person.

The most interesting environment for viruses must be restaurants. The person must wear a mask from the door to the table, which can be as close as 6 feet away because the virus knows you are all exposed during that space and it will float directly to you and infect you. Once you sit down, your air space is safe, and the mother ship will not get sick. The virus does not dare invade the space around and above your table. Never mind that the air conditioning ducts are circulating and blowing air and so are the fans above.

Benches have been removed from all department stores and even chairs are roped off. The blue benches around Walmart are taped with signs stating that, because of Covid-19, nobody can sit down. This smart virus knows when a person is resting for a few minutes and will jump at the opportunity to infect him/her. But at a pub, you are not allowed to stand and drink. The virus then knows you are drinking alcohol and thus a prime target for infection. Park benches are also taped and off limits to strollers.

Protesting and rioting shoulder to shoulder of thousands of people is a scary environment to a virus. Corona-19 does not dare show its face. But in churches and meetings of more than 10 people, the virus can be quite deadly.

The Corona-19 virus does not seem to mind or care about the crowds shopping at Walmart. A mass of humanity bumps into each other all the time, wearing a flimsy mask that the virus flies through any time it wants but it chooses instead to leave people alone. It might be a good idea to hold family reunions and church services on isle 28 at Walmart.

Life is upside down and bizarre right now, made so by people who suffer of an acute case of Irrational Panic and Fear Syndrome (IPFS) and by “important” people and power-mad politicians who get up every morning thinking of more novel and draconian ways to control and manipulate the masses because they can. For logical and rational people life is insufferable right now.

 

You Can’t Miss What You Don’t Have in the First Place

Growing up in the proletariat class of communism, we never had much time to ponder over our perennial hunger or our miserable state in life, we were too busy trying to find something to eat, most of the time standing in lines daily to fight over the supply of food allotted that day by the benevolent socialist government run by the Communist Party.

Most of us were quite thin, malnourished, lacking vitamins and proper nutrition, but we were all in the same boat and we could do nothing about it as we had no arms to mount a rebellion to overthrow the Communist Party.

The communists and their sycophants ate well, lived well, and enjoyed all the luxuries they accumulated by stealing everything of value that the proletariat at large had owned prior to the Bolshevik revolution. Their bank accounts were full, they took nice vacations and often, and we watched with resentment from afar.

We did not have the opportunity to better ourselves, or to develop the inner talents we were born with. We were too busy following the Communist Party rules and absurd regulations, to make sure we did not violate any of them or else we were imprisoned or re-educated in Siberia.

Creativity and allowed speech had to follow strict Party guidelines or else be censored for violating communist community standards, not unlike the social media moguls’ dictates today. But instead of being in Facebook jail for 30 days, you would find yourself in real prisons and the jailers threw away the key until they saw fit to let you go. Nobody followed the law, the law was what various Communist Party apparatchiks decided on a whim.

Individuality was verboten and nobody developed new ideas, projects, research, and other technical gadgetry. Worthless group-think with strict guidelines that augmented the collective was allowed.

I saw through the windows of nice restaurants an abundance of food that was sorely missing in our government-run empty stores. These restaurants were off-limits for us as only the communist movers and shakers could afford such luxury. Mom was making 800 lei per month which, divided by the artificially pegged exchange rate of 12 lei to the dollar in 1980, it was about $67 a month from which we had to buy food, pay for water, electricity, rent, bus fares, and medicine. Dad was making slightly more, about 1,200 lei per month, a whopping sum of $100.

A fresh college graduate with an Economics degree earned the huge sum of 1880 lei per month, about $157 per month which allowed such a graduate to live a much better life if they could find food and lived together with their parents in a small 600 square feet concrete block apartment, standard government issue subsidized housing for all.

The proletariat knew they were missing a lot – they saw how rich Texans lived on the television series “Dallas” and their make-believe oil tycoon family. For some reason, the decadent capitalist show passed the censors. Perhaps they allowed the series on TV in order to show how evil capitalists were and that is why we lived so poorly, they were stealing it from us. At least that was the daily propaganda we heard on the two black and white television channels.

We were riveted weekly to another episode so that we could live vicariously and imagine what it would be like if we had their food, clothing, and the comforts of a real home instead of the drab match boxes we were stacked on 5-9 stories high after the wise Communist Party stole our private properties, homes, and land.

Before the show ended, I moved to the U.S. in 1978 and, as the next season of Dallas played on American television, my family back home was flooding me with questions about the show such as “who killed J.R. Ewing,” but most of all, did Americans live so well and did they have so much food?

I never thought personally that food would become an issue 42 years later in America due to a tyrannical government lockdown of the population under the guise of protecting them from a flu virus. The lockdown caught many people unaware who were buying food in smaller quantities and less frequently because many Americans ate in restaurants several times a week.

As an escapee from communism, the lockdown affected me much worse than it did many Americans around me. They were happy to hide behind masks, stay home, watch TV, get paid weekly for doing nothing, let government tell them what to do, where to go, how, and when. They were happy to comply. But to me, removing the choice of staying home or going out felt like the former communist life.

I went to restaurants just like my American brethren and now, the government closed them down and locked us in our homes with only permission to go to the grocery store and pharmacies. Suddenly, once the state government removed any opportunity to go to a restaurant, it felt much worse than when, under communism, we could not afford to go. I felt the tyranny on a much deeper level.

The entire communist country where I grew up was one big lockdown prison, with borders guarded with machine guns, heavily armed soldiers, and razor sharp barbed wire. But in the U.S., where radicals want to erase borders, we were bombarded by PSA propaganda, i.e., “we are in this together,” “alone together,” “you are not alone,” etc., all meant to increase and maintain population compliance. The country became one big masquerade ball with masks made of all sorts of materials including, as my friend Alexis joked, “Dr. Fauci’s underwear.”

I thought that this was a much more insidious form of tyranny. When it became evident that it was just a flu, the state and local government bureaucrats did not relent their socialist control of the populace and people continued to remain cowardly subdued, afraid of dying of the Covid-19 flu virus, while losing constitutional freedoms each day without as much as a whimper.

The moral of both experiences compared is that you can’t miss what you don’t have in the first place, but it sure feels much worse when you do have something and that something is taken away permanently.

The Modern Scarlet Letter "M" for Mask by Mimi Johnson

Wikipedia Photo

I am privileged, as liberals like to tout, that I live in a state, that for all intents and purposes, has remained somewhat sensible during this insane and what I consider, unnecessary lockdown.  In the beginning of this fiasco, my company was deemed “essential” and therefore have stayed open through all the insipid social changes.  Initially, we were not allowed to wear masks or gloves in the workplace, which was fine by me, as I found them cumbersome and infringing on my ability to breathe, however, about 4 weeks in, all of a sudden, they were mandatory.  I found this quite odd and in my rational mind, I had to ask questions and cause a “disturbance in the force.”

This new policy caused me more duress than the virus itself.  It became evident that the company was not interested in our safety by any means, but more so for their financial safety.  If anyone were to contract the virus, they would be open to various lawsuits. Since I often question everything, I asked if it were possible to avoid wearing a mask due to personal reasons, especially since in 4 weeks’ time, no one in my location had shown symptoms or been diagnosed with the virus.  The response was swift and unapologetically “no.” In fact, I was asked why I was being so “defensive” about wearing the masks. I felt judged because I questioned this decision, when two days prior, the items were vehemently not allowed.  Needless to say, I now don a mask that is ironically manufactured in China, have no choice over my own personal health, and in order to stay gainfully employed, must comply and not question it. 

So, I begrudgingly began wearing this ill-fitting, strange smelling mask, not for my protection but for “others.” Not only is it physically uncomfortable, but for someone who works in customer service, it does not allow you to communicate effectively with people in person and definitely not over the phone.  Day after day, customers come in and self-righteously comment on how we choose to wear the mask, mainly below the nose so we can breathe effectively, continually treated like a diseased pariah that is committing horrible crimes against humanity. Customers have even gone as far as complaining on surveys that my associates removed their mask momentarily to answer the phone.  Oh, the horror of attempting to communicate effectively with customers on the phone!  The injustice!

I think the pinnacle of my COVID-19 experience happened recently at Trader Joe’s.  Although NC does not require wearing masks in public, Durham County Mayor has put orders in place that you may not enter an establishment without a mask.  For this reason, I generally travel to the neighboring town of Chapel Hill, to do my shopping.  I always keep a spare mask in the car just in case the establishment requires one, but on this day, it was 85 degrees, and I was not interested in wearing a mask to buy vegetables.  I made my way to the door, which now has a stanchion maze in front of it, effectively putting each customer on parade in front of others.  As I walked past each of the masked faces, I felt the red-hot flush of judgment sweep across my body. It was a clothed Cersei Lannister moment, walking to my shame.  I immediately began checking myself for garment malfunctions, but deep down knew why I was getting the stares, I had committed social justice suicide and now might as well pin a scarlet M for mask on my shirt. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, “The Scarlet Letter” seems like such an apropos metaphor in this instance.  We currently follow and worship the CDC like they’ve been bestowed the divine right of Kings by the Catholic church, much like we revere Priests and Reverends, insert Reverend Dimmesdale, society is Hester Prynne, in a secret romance with liberal ideology and the guilt placed upon anyone disagreeing with their sentiments, and society’s chaos is the evil offspring of that dalliance.  As I continued my “walk of social shame,” I held my head high, and continued to the back of the line.  I was not going to bow to the ridiculous constructs of liberal puppets and be shamed into drone thinking.  As I am standing there in the brilliant and abundant sunlight, relishing in my freedom, I could not help but notice the social distancing stickers on the sidewalk.  Ironically, they were not even 6 feet apart.  I began laughing uncontrollably to myself thinking how ridiculous and asinine this entire debacle had become and how these managers either were not able to measure 6 feet accordingly or were just lazy, either way, the hypocrisy was on full display, but no one was paying attention. 

This seems to be the constant theme of our entire society: never paying close attention to details.  Social isolation has not only affected immunology and mental health, but has also seemed to digress our Evolution; everyone acting like savage Neanderthals, hoarding supplies and food, as if they’re in constant threat of a neighboring tribe coming to raid their findings. Our modern society took thousands of years to cultivate and develop, yet in a span of two months, we have managed to ruin infrastructures, like an episode of “Life without people.” I do not know whether to be impressed or frightened. 

I, for one, am ready to change the narrative, are you?

The Fabric of Society is Badly Frayed

“An evildoer listens to wicked lips, and a liar gives ear to a mischievous tongue.” Proverbs 17:4.

The Corona virus which has originated in Wuhan, China, has fundamentally transformed the globe, and facilitated the last nails in the economic coffin of the West, particularly in the United States.

Whether it was a planned lockdown or one of opportunity to destroy a booming economy for the sake of political destruction of an opponent the Socialist left and its media lackeys hate so much that it has morphed into a Trump Derangement Syndrome, remains to be seen in the outcome when the volcanic ash settles on what is left of the economy. One thing is certain, if the lockdown continues, the middle class will be wiped out financially and so will small businesses.

Sadly, thousands of lives have been lost due to the “pandemic’ predicted by faulty computer modeling. The losses occurred because medical systems were inadequate in their response, overwhelmed because they did not know how to treat patients properly and lacked the resources.

The lock-step media fearmongering, panic, and hype which had reached global proportions, suffocated earnest attempts to deal with the novel corona virus. In addition to the innocents who have died from a virus that does not exist in nature, the global economy crashed, and it will take a long time to recover. In some states in the U.S., for every person who has died with the COVID-19 flu, 3,000 or more people have lost their jobs permanently. Unlike the U.S., most countries do not have the “luxury” of printing endless trillions, creating runaway or galloping inflation.

The dilemma remains, do we protect the medically weak and allow the healthy to become weak themselves in a prolonged and forced quarantine at state and local levels, or do we let “herd immunity” take over as it happened in Sweden?  

People are emerging scared of their shadow, hateful of others even more so than they were before, and living a virtual existence locked in their own homes and minds, fearful and resentful of their neighbors, snitching on them in case they are seen as a threat to their existence and survival, encouraged by their governments to turn in potential offenders to the Orwellian lockdown for the healthy masses. It would certainly make the Stasi quite proud. Nobody must pay them to become a Snitches-R-Us tyrannical society.

Unfortunately, the wealth that we once had, when ordinary people had access to culture, restaurants, entertainment, is gone. Many had already lost patriotic conscience to the indoctrination in schools and by the media. They’ve lost values and lived in total confusion, have lost the zest to live in harmony and peace, they’ve lost respect for humans with whom they disagreed, for moral values, for religion, and for the desire to respect their wiser elders, men of worth, and the history of their country. The moral role models were replaced by the scum of society with money and a nefarious agenda.

Who would have thought possible that the only Americans courageous enough to protest the infringement on our Constitutional rights to freedoms of assembly, religion, speech, and the right to make a living, would be cosmetologists and barbers?

The “never let a crisis go to waste” millionaire crowd in Hollywood is urging the government to end capitalism as they lecture us from their state-of-the art mansions built on the foundation of capitalism and free markets and telling us hypocritically that “we are in this together.”  When the masses are losing their jobs permanently and small businesses are devastated, the lefties could not care less, they’ve already made their millions and wealthy lives in Hollywood, let the rest suffer in their penury, waiting on government to give them $600 a week to survive on with printed inflationary money.

“CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza.” https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html

Last year more than 34,200 people died of the flu but nobody was scared because the media and constant public service announcements (PSAs) did not tell us to panic, be scared, hide behind a mask, and wash our hands. We were not placed under quarantine, stores were not forced to close, the economy did not shut down, and the quarantine “breakers’ were not put in jail or on ankle monitors. Criminals were not let out of jail for fear that they might develop the corona flu and die in prison. They are now walking among us, waiting to pounce and commit new crimes.

We will eventually find out if this World Health Organization (WHO) declared “pandemic” was a Plan-demic, Panic-demic, Progressive-demic, Politic-demic, Pander-demic, Poverty-demic, a Psycho-demic, or a huge mistake. One thing is certain, as George Orwell said, “The people that elect corrupt politicians, impostors, thieves, and traitors, are not victims… but accomplices.”

Until then, stay in your homes, wear masks everywhere, even in the woods, and social distance from other humans. The lockdown will last until most small businesses will be unable to recover and the vultures will step in to pick the carrion.  Sick, broke, and dependent will be the easiest way to control the masses.

It is sad that the strong fabric of society is so badly frayed and tattered and in dire need of mending.

Shelter in Place, The True Non-Essential By Mimi E. Johnson

Narren Schiff, woodcut

In our society, irrational behavior and thought seems to plague us more than any virus ever could. Each day, I read more and more histrionic articles surrounding COVID-19 written by, what I consider, non-essential journalists with no understanding, at even a basic level, of immunology and virology.  Yet, each day, people continually share these musings as concrete science.  I do not post much on social media, there is enough absurd matter being doled up for several lifetimes, but I do, however, scroll through these incredulous posts, read them, and then use rationality and medical journals/textbooks to get accurate information. 

I am what you call a young Gen-xer or Xilennial, if you will, and was always taught that knowledge was acquired by being curious, reading books, being open-minded, and gaining a true understanding of the subject matter.  I dare say that even a fraction of the global population, probably statistically the same as the mortality rate of COVID-19 (hint: it’s well under 1%), understands what a virus actually does in the human body, how many bacteria and viruses’ dwell on our body’s, shedding microscopically all day every day, and how the immune system plays into it all. Although college educated,  I do not have a medical degree, don’t claim to be an expert, and my knowledge of medicine only scratches the surface, but what is evident, is that of all things that have been deemed “non-essential,” quarantining the healthy is the biggest medical mistake of all.

I work for a business that is deemed “essential” by the federal government and have been in the midst of this chaos since day 1. In the very beginning of this nightmare, I had a bit of trepidation about continuing to work with the public, fueled by a voracious media telling me that I was going to die if I come in contact with another human, but nonetheless, decided to keep my wits and take a rational approach.  At first, my company wouldn’t allow us to wear masks.  I was a tad put off by this policy, but I have always practiced good hygiene, wash my hands frequently, and don’t touch my face incessantly like a toddler, so I wasn’t excessively panicked.  Many of my employees refused to work unless they were allowed to don full hazmat gear, so of course, as weeks have progressed, over 60% of my staff has self-quarantined. 

Since patrons are still allowed to come into our business and purchase products, it has become very tense and awkward reminding people to keep their distance and not shoving their cell phones in our faces wanting to know where this product is located.  See, we sell essential products for those working from home, so many have to ask a multitude of questions; sometimes we can help them, but often times, the answers involve contact, and that is not allowed. 

If there ever was a time in human history to invoke the term “privilege,” it is now.  People are actually more harmful than the virus.  The entitlement and disregard for other’s personal space and safety is absolutely baffling.  The fear mongering and misinformation have caused people to treat one another like human garbage.  Not only is our business following sanitation standards per CDC, but we are now guarded with mandatory masks and gloves.  Patrons will throw money at us, refuse to let us touch their products, but then expect us to take their dirty money.  I pointed that out to a patron one day, and her response was “well, you’re wearing gloves, so you won’t catch anything.” Her ignorance actually made my stomach turn.  Her feeble mind actually thought that gloves, would save the world from illness. 

Humans need interaction.  We are designed to be social creatures who gather our immunity from the world around us.  Sure, when we are born, we have to be isolated and introduced into society slowly to garner immunity, but playing in dirt, touching things, touching others, all builds our body’s immunities.  Self-isolation, does quite the opposite, it weakens us not only physically, but mentally as well.  If you think of any other global pandemic such as Ebola, SARS, MERS, etc., you never hear of the healthy, non-symptomatic people being quarantined, only the sick, so why are we isolating the entire globe?  It makes absolutely no medical and scientific sense. 

The other ridiculous, irrational misnomer posted by all self-righteous COVID-ites is “staying at home saves lives, help us flatten the curve.” Flattening a curve seems like it would do some good, but when it comes to something as volatile as a virus, its M.O. is to survive, not infect less.  This actually prolongs the virus, thus allowing it to mutate. Sure, sometimes the mutations are less caustic than the original, but again, to some, this virus is ineffective, thus perpetuating the cycle.  If the “shelter in place” edict isn’t all businesses, it’s ineffective. Couple this bad advice with immuno-suppressed and depressed quarantined humans, and the minute we re-open civilization we have a true pandemic of many physically ill people.  I always challenge my friends or even random strangers that quote the same bile infested words to me and ask if they’ve stayed at home or gone to get take out or entered an essential business?  If so, then they’re definitely hypocrites and not flattening the curve, but they’re also not getting infected with the virus.  You go out in public at least 2-3 times a week, go to multiple places, parks, and touch all sorts of inanimate objects that could also harbor the virus, yet I don’t hear of the virus spiking, or of anyone I know having become infected.  Why you ask? Because your body is developing immunity each and every time you leave your home.  It is that simple. I am sure others will argue, oh, it is BECAUSE of the quarantine that the virus is lessening, but in truth it is human interaction.

Statistically speaking, according to Dr. Fauci, 3-4 members of my staff or myself should have become infected with the virus over the last 8 weeks, yet we have not.  For 5 weeks, we were not wearing masks while meeting all sorts of people and making deliveries to their vehicles. This shows that the virus isn’t as nefarious as reported.  It is also important to point out that people don’t die of COVID-19, just like people don’t die of AIDS, they die of complications that were exacerbated by having the illness.  If hospitals were reporting accurate statistics, I guarantee you there wouldn’t be a global panic. My favorite articles are the ones citing “30-year-old healthy male marathon runner dies of COVID-19,” but upon reading the article, one discovers some underlying cause of death such as cancer, diabetes, and other co-morbidities. These people could easily succumb to another popular virus, the rhinovirus, also known as the common cold.

Lysol is the pied piper in all of this, luring unsuspecting human rats to stores to buy up all the available stock of their products, creating what they think is a “virus safe zone” in their homes. Unbeknownst to them, their overly sterile environment is creating the perfect storm for yet another virus. Ignorance is the true pandemic, plaguing every facet of our lives from economics to medicine.

The planet is engineered to survive, and will, at any cost.  We humans are but a mere guest on borrowed time and a blip in Earth’s history. Continually destroying ecosystems and coming in contact with areas that humans were never intended to explore, cause a larger opening on pandora’s box.  Not only do we lack personal hygiene, we also lack it globally as well.   

In our society, irrational behavior and thought seems to plague us more than any virus ever could. Each day, I read more and more histrionic articles surrounding COVID-19 written by, what I consider, non-essential journalists with no understanding, at even a basic level, of immunology and virology.  Yet, each day, people continually share these musings as concrete science.  I do not post much on social media, there is enough absurd matter being doled up for several lifetimes, but I do, however, scroll through these incredulous posts, read them, and then use rationality and medical journals/textbooks to get accurate information. 

I am what you call a young Gen-xer or Xilennial, if you will, and was always taught that knowledge was acquired by being curious, reading books, being open-minded, and gaining a true understanding of the subject matter.  I dare say that even a fraction of the global population, probably statistically the same as the mortality rate of COVID-19 (hint: it’s well under 1%), understands what a virus actually does in the human body, how many bacteria and viruses’ dwell on our body’s, shedding microscopically all day every day, and how the immune system plays into it all. Although college educated,  I do not have a medical degree, don’t claim to be an expert, and my knowledge of medicine only scratches the surface, but what is evident, is that of all things that have been deemed “non-essential,” quarantining the healthy is the biggest medical mistake of all.

I work for a business that is deemed “essential” by the federal government and have been in the midst of this chaos since day 1. In the very beginning of this nightmare, I had a bit of trepidation about continuing to work with the public, fueled by a voracious media telling me that I was going to die if I come in contact with another human, but nonetheless, decided to keep my wits and take a rational approach.  At first, my company wouldn’t allow us to wear masks.  I was a tad put off by this policy, but I have always practiced good hygiene, wash my hands frequently, and don’t touch my face incessantly like a toddler, so I wasn’t excessively panicked.  Many of my employees refused to work unless they were allowed to don full hazmat gear, so of course, as weeks have progressed, over 60% of my staff has self-quarantined. 

Since patrons are still allowed to come into our business and purchase products, it has become very tense and awkward reminding people to keep their distance and not shoving their cell phones in our faces wanting to know where this product is located.  See, we sell essential products for those working from home, so many have to ask a multitude of questions; sometimes we can help them, but often times, the answers involve contact, and that is not allowed. 

If there ever was a time in human history to invoke the term “privilege,” it is now.  People are actually more harmful than the virus.  The entitlement and disregard for other’s personal space and safety is absolutely baffling.  The fear mongering and misinformation has caused people to treat one another like human garbage.  Not only is our business following sanitation standards per CDC, but we are now guarded with mandatory masks and gloves.  Patrons will throw money at us, refuse to let us touch their products, but then expect us to take their dirty money.  I pointed that out to a patron one day, and her response was “well, you’re wearing gloves, so you won’t catch anything.” Her ignorance actually made my stomach turn.  Her feeble mind actually thought that gloves, would save the world from illness. 

Humans need interaction.  We are designed to be social creatures who gather our immunity from the world around us.  Sure, when we are born, we have to be isolated and introduced into society slowly to garner immunity, but playing in dirt, touching things, touching others, all builds our body’s immunities.  Self-isolation, does quite the opposite, it weakens us not only physically, but mentally as well.  If you think of any other global pandemic such as Ebola, SARS, MERS, etc., you never hear of the healthy, non-symptomatic people being quarantined, only the sick, so why are we isolating the entire globe?  It makes absolutely no medical and scientific sense. 

The other ridiculous, irrational misnomer posted by all self-righteous COVID-ites is “staying at home saves lives, help us flatten the curve.” Flattening a curve seems like it would do some good, but when it comes to something as volatile as a virus, its M.O. is to survive, not infect less.  This actually prolongs the virus, thus allowing it to mutate. Sure, sometimes the mutations are less caustic than the original, but again, to some, this virus is ineffective, thus perpetuating the cycle.  If the “shelter in place” edict isn’t all businesses, it’s ineffective. Couple this bad advice with immuno-suppressed and depressed quarantined humans, and the minute we re-open civilization we have a true pandemic of many physically ill people.  I always challenge my friends or even random strangers that quote the same bile infested words to me and ask if they’ve stayed at home or gone to get take out or entered an essential business?  If so, then they’re definitely hypocrites and not flattening the curve, but they’re also not getting infected with the virus.  You go out in public at least 2-3 times a week, go to multiple places, parks, and touch all sorts of inanimate objects that could also harbor the virus, yet I don’t hear of the virus spiking, or of anyone I know having become infected.  Why you ask? Because your body is developing immunity each and every time you leave your home.  It is that simple. I am sure others will argue, oh, it is BECAUSE of the quarantine that the virus is lessening, but in truth it is human interaction.

Statistically speaking, according to Dr. Fauci, 3-4 members of my staff or myself should have become infected with the virus over the last 8 weeks, yet we have not.  For 5 weeks, we were not wearing masks while meeting all sorts of people and making deliveries to their vehicles. This shows that the virus isn’t as nefarious as reported.  It is also important to point out that people don’t die of COVID-19, just like people don’t die of AIDS, they die of complications that were exacerbated by having the illness.  If hospitals were reporting accurate statistics, I guarantee you there wouldn’t be a global panic. My favorite articles are the ones citing “30-year-old healthy male marathon runner dies of COVID-19,” but upon reading the article, one discovers some underlying cause of death such as cancer, diabetes, and other co-morbidities. These individuals could’ve easily succumbed to another popular coronavirus, the common cold.

Lysol is the pied piper in all of this, luring unsuspecting human rats to stores to buy up all the available stock of their products, creating what they think is a “virus safe zone” in their homes. Unbeknownst to them, their overly sterile environment is creating the perfect storm for yet another virus. Ignorance is the true pandemic, plaguing every facet of our lives from economics to medicine.

The planet is engineered to survive, and will, at any cost.  We humans are but a mere guest on borrowed time and a blip in Earth’s history. Continually destroying ecosystems and coming in contact with areas that humans were never intended to explore, cause a larger opening on pandora’s box.  Not only do we lack personal hygiene, we also lack it globally as well.