In the mid 1800s, philosopher Arthur Shopenhauer wrote of collectivized thought: "There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted."
A century and a half later, novelist Martin Cruz Smith observed of the political exploitation of collectivized thought: "A lifetime of bowing to authority shapes people."
Fast forward several decades—approximately to the day after tomorrow since we live in a time when history is revised daily—and contemplate a retrospective.
When communist China's viral gift to the world first began infecting Americans, mainstream media bannered a running COVID-19 death count. The narrative was deployed by control-hungry governors to expand their authoritarian reach under the premise that destroying jobs, freedom, and lives would somehow prevent a virus from doing what viruses always do: spread throughout a population until herd immunity is achieved.
Then, as if by editorial-political consensus, the "deaths" headline was replaced with "cases." Increased testing resulted unsurprisingly in increased cases, and cases suddenly exponentially outpaced deaths—suggesting that the virus was running its inevitable course toward weakening and expiring. This news, however, insufficiently terrifying to warrant prolonged control, was buried beneath frenzied reports of cases and second waves, giving leave to the likes of Cuomo, Newsom, Whitmer, and Luhan to redouble their crisis-as-opportunity mission. On cue, under the guise of "for your own good" closures, cancellations, lockdowns, shelter-in-place orders, and mask mandates, these mini-potentates prescribed a liberty-to-serfdom transfusion.
Fueling the frenzy were deliberately misleading death-and-case reports. Patients who died with COVID were reported as dying from COVID—including victims of mortal gunshot wounds and motor-vehicle accidents. The politically subservient Centers for Disease Control (CDC) stated in August that 94 percent of COVID-attributed deaths were accompanied by an average of 2.6 "conditions or causes." Patients hospitalized for non-COVID illnesses and procedures were counted as "COVID hospitalizations." Thousands of false COVID-positive diagnoses were produced by faulty test kits. Potential cases—as many as 15 assumed per positive test—were counted under official guidelines as cases. Collin County commissioners, doubting the veracity of the 4600 active cases claimed by the State of Texas, conducted an independent audit and found the correct number to be 81. A Tennessee woman who died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in February was sent a "You have been diagnosed with Covid-19" letter by the Shelby County Health Department in August. Ridiculously, people scheduled for testing who missed their appointments were counted as COVID positive—and then had to prove they were COVID negative to avoid forced quarantine.
The obvious question was seldom asked: Why would medical centers misrepresent diagnoses? One answer was equally obvious to those who cared to investigate: Because more cases equaled more COVID-assistance money.
Where were comparative stories about the flu pandemic of 1969? Why was the American Institute for Economic Research's May 2020 report not at least floated in the mainstream as a good-news parallel?
"In my lifetime," author Jeffrey A. Tucker began, "there was another deadly flu epidemic in the United States. The flu spread from Hong Kong to the United States, arriving December 1968 and peaking a year later. It ultimately killed 100,000 people in the U.S., mostly over the age of 65, and one million worldwide. Lifespan in the U.S. in those days was 70 whereas it is 78 today. Population was 200 million, compared with 328 million today. It was also a healthier population with low obesity. If it would be possible to extrapolate the death data based on population and demographics, we might be looking at a quarter million deaths today from this virus. So in terms of lethality, it was as deadly and scary as COVID-19 if not more so . . ."
Tucker noted that businesses, including bars, restaurants, movie theaters, and day-care centers, remained open. Schools that closed did so primarily because of absenteeism. There was no market crash. No new legislation. No governor-decreed maskings or antisocial distancing or curve flattening or crowd banning. There were no enforcement patrols issuing $100 permits for the privilege of unimpaired breathing. There were no pandemic-attributable suicides, drug overdoses, or lost jobs. Woodstock happened.
"The contrast between 1968 and 2020 couldn't be more striking," Tucker concluded. "What happened between then and now? Why, in the 21st century, has the world responded to COVID-19 by reverting to medieval-style understandings and policies?"
Because COVID-19 in 2020 was intended to clinch what government response to previous crises had telegraphed: a scared population obediently welcoming the descending boot of permanent nanny-state authority. A goal that would have flatly failed fifty years earlier.
Stay home. Avoid your neighbors. Accept ruined livelihoods. Learn at arm's length. Be afraid. Be a ward of the State. Beg for mandatory rushed vaccinations. Cover your face and blend with the masses. Report non-compliance. Prepare for a cowering "new normal." Accept. Give up. Give in.
Self-righteous "I care so I wear a face mask" radio announcements attempted to shame those who judged masking to be medically ineffectual, falsely reassuring, or part of an agenda-driven fallacy—as if refusal to abide by Schopenhaeur's maxim was proof of "not caring."
The New England Journal of Medicine (21 May 2020), Britain's Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (2015), and the CDC (Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol.26, No. 5, May 2020) all stated that there was little evidence masks protect from virus transmission. At least one manufacturer disclaimed on its packaging: "Wearing an ear-loop mask does not reduce the risk of contracting any disease or infection." On the contrary, it was reasonably argued that cloth face coverings, with penetration rates as high as 97%, were incubation chambers for viruses and germs of every kind, providing heat and moisture to sustain infectious agents that would otherwise have perished in cooler, drier, UV-exposed air. Extended face-mask use demonstrably posed a host of other health risks, both medical and psychological, that only individuals had the right to assume or avoid.
While five years earlier Anthony Fauci's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) was granting $3.7 million to the Wuhan Virology Lab for gain-of-function coronavirus experimentation on bats—while in the early weeks of the COVID outbreak China was restricting domestic travel and urging international travel—while the World Health Organization was covering for that country's negligent or criminal policies—while almost a billion taxpayer dollars were being awarded to a pharmaceutical company that had never produced a viable vaccine—while empty talking heads were asserting that reference to the virus by its geopolitical origin was racist—while an existing virus-mitigating drug was being politicized and negatively embroidered—while trillions of COVID-relief dollars were being conjured out of thin air—while self-proclaimed fact checkers were negating every view that clashed with the views of their benefactors— while politicians and bureaucrats were insultingly violating the very prohibitions they imposed upon their subjects—most of America was marching in lockstep to Shopenhauer's opus.
2020 demonstrated that viruses and power-lusting politicians were alike. Both were opportunists, advancing whenever possible on weakness. Both were oblivious to morality while exploiting opportunity. Both did what their nature required until diminished by superior resistance. Both shared a common enemy: biological antibodies for one, moral-intellectual antibodies for the other.
Although the virus' death toll was demographically delimited and, when adjusted for population and honest reporting, lower in America than the flu pandemics of 1918 and '69, the economic death toll ravaged every demographic. Politician-ordained "nonessential" businesses and the workers they employed had their futures arbitrarily annihilated—while the "essential" industry of power-lusting politics crushed American life to a degree that ultimately proved COVID-19 kind by comparison.
Encouraged by the descendants-in-spirit of the 1700s monarchists they sought to escape, Americans had been—from the moment their Constitution was drafted—incrementally trading liberty and self-reliance for "safety" and free stuff. Whether by conspiratorial intent or by ignorance and indolence, the outcome was the same, validating the discernment of both Shopenhaeur and Smith and elevating to proverb the words of John Milton centuries earlier.
"For indeed none can love freedom heartily but good men. The rest love not freedom, but license: which never hath more scope or more indulgence than under tyrants."
Michael Russell
Grant County