Look...I hate to sound like the latest right-wing zealot to spout governmental conspiracy theories about COVID-19, but in the past few months, the various governments under which I live seem to be making it easier and easier to conclude that. Still, I cannot lay claim to being a totally original thinker on this stuff; admittedly, a lot of my thinking has been shaped by what is on WBEN-AM and Premiere Networks (in particular, Clay and Buck). I apologize in advance if this seems a bit unorganized, there is just so much to say/write on such a wide variety of subjects that it's difficult to put them in any particularly good order.
Let's just start getting to it by expanding on a comment made by WBEN's Tom Bauerle (paraphrased), and the title of this blog post:
This virus has to be the most intelligent, smartest virus in history.
I live in Cheektowaga, NY, US, which is the suburb to the immediate east of Buffalo, which is in Erie County (or "EC" for short). Near the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, to my recollection, it was EC which imposed a 10 pm curfew. I understand their motivation: they wanted to limit human interaction, they didn't want people hanging out at the bars to the normal 4 am the next day as the legally required closing time, therefore less chance of spreading the virus. But why 10? I guess it's because this virus is so smart, it knows when 10 pm rolls around, and almost instantly becomes more communicable. There were limits on size of gatherings. Again, the virus is so incredibly smart, it knows the difference between 10 people gathering and 11. It also magically knows the difference between 50% occupancy and 51% occupancy.
I mean....I sort of get it. Most times, governement does indeed have really good intentions. But it needs some exposition.
Let's just take the view back a notch or two, and think about what the fundamental purpose of government is supposed to be. First and foremost, it is the embodiment of the behaviors that a majority (plurality?) of its citizenry, or more succinctly put, the law. At the next level, it's what we agree we should not be allowed to do and what we should be obligated to do. For example, we all collectively agree it's quite wrong to take a human life, with the exception of self defense. We therefore have disincentives like taking away your personal freedom (imprisonment) if you somehow convince yourself you need to murder. Notice this doesn't prevent murder, it only heavily disincentivizes it. Similarly, government sets forth certain obligations that the citizenry is somewhat uninclined to do. Those who choose not to fulfill their lawful obligations are similarly punished for not meeting those obligations. An example might be paying taxes. If paying taxes were totally voluntary, the vast majority of people would likely not pay, but the thought of reprisals such as fines and jail compels most people to do it.
To bring this back around to an attempt at reducing COVID-19 spread, it seemed like good ideas at the time. Let's not fill public places to capacity, that will put more bodies in one place, therefore reduce the barriers for transmission from person to person. Let's not hang around each other for longer, because the longer we congregate, the more of a chance the virus has to hop from person to person. We do it this way because people, as individuals, are presumed not smart enough or motivated enough to do it on their own, that they need to be governed by the representatives of society, the constabulary, to do or not do things like congregate for the greater good of the society as a whole. And to that end, sometimes arbitrary limits have to be chosen, like 50% capacity, 10 or fewer people at once, or 10 pm curfew, to act as an easily understood and enforced limit.
The whole idea behind making these restrictions mandatory was in part in the interest of the government itself, to "flatten the curve" as the saying is. Erie County Medical Center for example did not want so many people to get so infected that they would be overrun by people all requiring a ventilator to survive. And then they would have to make some extremely unpleasant decisions, literally who would live and who would die due to lack of treatment resources. This is also by extension to limit the expenditure of finite resources such as Medicaid and Medicare. Again, the presumption is made that we are too dumb or too reckless if these decisions are left up to the individual, that in essence we can't be trusted to do the right things.
But along the way, we see government taking greater and greater liberties with our liberty. Take for example former Governor Cuomo. He wrote many executive orders under the emergency powers granted to him under the law. Several months later, many NY citizens expressed to their representatives that enough was enough, power/authority needed to be returned to the legislative branch, Uncle Andy can't go on pontificating like a monarch forever. Being a Democrat governor and having a basically Democrat legislature, nothing substantive was done, power was not returned. Oh, there was political theatre kind of like, "we told him he'd better back down!" But no, power was not really taken back, he still basically got to rule by fiat. Auntie Kathy is really not that different. And seemingly not that particularly smart either.
Take for example the edict that all medical personnel will be vaccinated, or they're out of a job. Wait...so, the very medical people who are trying to help reduce the suffering of people, and presumably have FAR greater medical knowledege than any governor or legislator, are not capable of making an informed decision as to whether they should be vaccinated or not? Are they actually somehow motivated to do evil to our society? They wish for our citizens to suffer? I find that extraordinarily tough to believe. NY is awfully big, and you're telling these people that in order to work at their chosen profession, they can't work in all of NYS? Look, not at all to belittle people who work at so-called unskilled jobs, but the somewhat harsh fact is that darned near anyone can do what you do with little training, you're interchangable. Not so much for the medical profession, it is not at all easy to become a licensed physican, nurse, or what have you. (And again, we have a goverment in place so that not anyone can claim to be a physician, we make sure you're qualified before you're allowed to work on people. We as a society have agreed that checking the qualifications of a physician before allowing them to do anything to us is just too burdensome and complex to do alone, so we have society do it for us and have licensures.)
At the same time, those in power have to realize the waning confidence we have in you.
You imposed restrictions on congregation and travel. Hello? I didn't think the US Constitution Amendment I was allowed to be suspended just because of viruses. Doesn't it apply at all times? I used to be rather annoyed at these proclamations for that reason. But then...well...let's just say, it came to light that certain cases of COVID-19 can be asymptomatic, that the person carrying it would have no idea they're infecting others. That tempered my anger quite a bit, and thought, yes, it was reasonable for society to impose this restriction because I was genuinely too dumb to decide for myself. Yes, I could be a dummy, not so smart. I can admit it.
Ah, but later on, along came vaccines. The promise was that if you got vaccinated, you wouldn't have to wear a mask anymore, you could congregate to your heart's content, travel wherever you like, life would pretty much begin returning to normal. It seemed like we were starting to get it under control. Yay! In fact, government was stepping in and acting as our agent to make sure the developers of these vaccines were compensated out of public funds, to take away the objection that it was too expensive to get vaccinated. And I can somewhat support that, it's one of the very few things I think government can do to really, really help us. Again, we're mostly too self interested to willingly spend on vaccination help, a hypothetical "help the unvaccinated get vaccinated" charity of sorts. The caveat to that support, and the danger, is when the pharmaceutical companies have the economic incentive to push their wares as it were. (I know, that sounds like a typical "Big Pharma" opposition. It's not really intended as such.) I have heard of cases of death where the cause was listed as COVID-19, even though it was fairly obvious it was something more like heart failure or blunt trauma, simply because reimbursements would be different.
But now, it seems as if the goalposts are being moved on us. We now have booster shots. For now they're optional, but Auntie Kathy has put forth the idea, get ready for "fully vaccinated" to mean "boosted." Again, the implications run deep as this might mean even MORE medical professionals will be told to take a hike. Sadly, the US Supreme Court has ruled that these NY vaccination mandates are not unconstitutional, as in not against Amendment I's protections of religious freedom. I refer to the well reasoned, well written dissent by Justice Neil Gorsuch. It's these very acts of making a continuously changing legal landscape and be willing to throw fundamental freedoms out the window in the name of the pandemic that is really eroding our trust in you.
Now, I do find it necessary here to explain that not keeping up with developments and relying STRICTLY on the past is somewhat dangerous. While I generally like and agree with much of what Clay and Buck talk about, c'mon, guys, this needs to be tempered with a willingness to be flexible about recent revelations. But I do get ya. It seems like government will take any opportunity to usurp just a little more control, whenever they can, in the name of pandemic control. You do make a compelling argument though that it will be decreed that booster after booster will be necessary, and possibly at some point be legally required for certain circumstances (e.g., NY medical profession). There HAS to be a better defined end. We can't really go on like this indefinitely.
I'm also quite miffed at how these fiefdoms of government are trying to exert influence whenever and wherever they think they can. I cite as an example that you cannot go to Highmark Stadium or KeyBank Center, which are EC owned properties, unless you're vaccinated, because EC's Uncle Mark said so. I was offered the chance to go to a Sabres game, but due to that edict, at the time I could not.
What really bugs me the most is that it seems we've already begun to go down the road where unvaccinated people are second-class citizens.
Again, we have to step back a couple of notches and ask the question, what is the end goal? Is our end goal really to inject people? Again, there is the economic incentive for "Big Pharma" to hawk their vaccine products (and get paid for them). But really, shouldn't the end goal be immunity? Vaccination is not the SOLE means of conferring immunity. Some sources state that the immunity from contracting COVID-19 and recovering from it is several times more effective than getting vaccinated. Not only that, I've even heard that getting vaccinated after recovering from COVID-19 reduces immune response in some people.
I had a severe illness lasting about 2 weeks in late Feb. 2020. The symptoms of it were influenza symptoms. At no point during that did I feel in grave danger, like not being able to get enough breath, but it was approaching that. All I remember is that for the first couple of days, my eyes hurt a little to move, and I did not wake up fully. I had a cough for months after that. It very well could have been COVID-19. I never had a formal test for it, but colloquially, virtually everyone I converse with about that episode seems to think it was. The timing seems to have been just too good for it not to have been, in their minds. But now that I have had my "Janssen jab" as I like to call it, I guess I'll never know. Any antibodies I have could have been from a COVID-19 infection, could have been from the vaccine. I don't know if medical science could tell the difference at this point.
Considering all the reports of side effects of getting vaccinated, such as injection site pain and being laid low for a couple of days, I really did not want to get vaccinated, partly due to that aforementioned belief that I had COVID-19 already and therefore natural immunity. Also, for a while now, I have had a sore upper left arm. Put those two together, and I really, really wanted to wait for my sore arm to heal up so that they could inject that. I did not want to add the pain of injection to something that has been so chronically sore, and I did not want them to inject my dominant arm. But alas, the let's go, Brandon we have as a President demanded the serfs in his fiefdom were to get vaccinated. Since where I work now is de facto a federal contractor, this has direct applicability to me.
I want to take an aside for a second to explain that I think I have been responsible for precisely three jobs in my entire over-half-century life. Every other job I've had has been the product of someone else's influence. Even delivering newspapers in my early teens is the result of a friend of mine recommending to the Courier Express that I be the one. I think Kwik Fill/United Refining Company of PA only hired me because my oldest sister recommended me. I think Radio Shack/Tandy only hired me because of the recommendation of my friend. Similarly, I think I only delivered for Domino's due to the influence of my friends. I only worked that summer for Al Boxall's Concessions due to one of my friend's urging. I never had to interview for Information First or for ExuCom because my friends and acquaintences ran them. I only worked at UCA&L/SSG/ClientLogic/Sitel because of urging of one of my college instructors (thank you, Vince Wood), and for a second stint because of a director level person I befriended in the first go around. No, the only jobs I really got for myself were, supervising the computer lab for a few hours per week in college, working for a few years for a guy I met at a mutual friend's wedding, and for Amazon when they first opened up their sortation center in Lancaster, NY. And the latter was frankly anyone who could show up on time and pass a drug test; I don't think they rejected too many folks for that one. I'm reasonably certain I would not be working where I am now unless that aforementioned friend I met at the wedding called me up when somebody left. (He had closed down his business and decided to work more conventional jobs instead of being self-employed.) I've applied for and been interviewed for many more jobs, but for whatever reasons, it was not to be my path. Jobs that I think I should have been perfect for, I have been rejected. I guess this is quite a long way of saying that for whatever reasons,
work is not particularly easy to find for me, seemingly more so than
average. So....I like to be warm...and dry...and not be hungry...so a job is particularly precious to me. Not having one is unsustainably not an option. Yes, I have enough savings that, barring once in a decade events like needing to buy a vehicle or replacing my furnace, I could live comfortably for several years. But again, that's not sustainable, long term. Anyways...enough of the aside.
So, much as I am not anti-vaccine at all, I had little choice but to get jabbed. I very highly doubt that my sore arm would have qualified as a medical exemption. I also looked at my company's religious exemption form. It wants an attestation signature from my spiritual leader. I think this presumes it would be an imam, a priest, a rabbi, a pastor, or similar. I am a nondenominational Christian. Sorry, my spiritual leader is Jesus Christ, so it's more or less impossible to get His signature for that form. Besides, as Justice Gorsuch points out, I don't think it needs to be any religion at all, just a sincerely held moral objection. But just the same, I hear that the objection of using fetal stem cell lines to develop the vaccines is the main objection by Catholics. However, I see on the Vatican's Web site that Pope Francis is even encouraging vaccination. (And He is said by Catholics to be infallible.) See, having at one time considered myself a Catholic, it's extremely tough for me to square that with the Vatican's pronouncement that it considers this research morally objectionable, and the only reason they think vaccination is morally acceptable is because there is no other vaccine available. This implies that the pandemic poses a greater danger to the faithful. This is the sort of thing that leads me to declare myself nondenominational.
What I am is pro-vaccine choice. But apparently, according to a few lexicographers such as Merriam-Webster, I am an anti-vaxxer merely because I oppose a mandate. That's just blatantly incorrect.
This let's go, Brandon mandate is just wrong from the word "go." It's logically ludicrous. Again, what is the goal? As before, the real goal should be immunity, not vaccination. But even trying to consider the goal of "vaccines for everyone so we can have herd immunity" falls painfully flat. There is no explanation as to why OSHA needs to enforce this for the magical number of 100 or more employees. Again, it is the most smart virus in human history if it knows that you work with 99 or fewer people and therefore pass you by. In my own case, it's ludicrous to mandate I get a vaccine; I work out of my home, I have ZERO virus-transmitting interaction with vendors, contractors, my coworkers, or even the public. It's medical insurance company theatre, with the only audience being the federal government. This virus is also so extremely smart that it knows that you're unemployed or retired, and won't bother you if you are. Otherwise, the mandate wouldn't be for ONLY people working for companies of 100 employees or more, it would be for EVERYONE. To me, there is no sane way around that; it's either everyone medically eligible, with Amendment I exceptions, or no mandate at all.
Yet another thing that makes no logical sense is Uncle Mark's mandate that masks be worn in all indoor public places. The stated goal is to reduce the COVID-19 spread so that hospitals are not overrun with new cases. Let's start with its start. If it's so darned important, why was it not enacted immediately? Why wait until 6 am the next day? If the goal is to reduce new hospital admissions, why is the criterion for the mandate to end a tentative date, and not when admissions numbers drop?
Even the prospect of wearing a mask is dubious at best. The majority of sources I have read or heard state that the gear that everyone goes around in is so ineffective (maybe 5%, 10% at ABSOLUTE BEST) as to be negligible in containing coronavirus. You'd have to have everyone in an N-95 to even approach being effective. The typical mask is little more than a chin diaper. Besides, the way a lot of people wear it is nothing short of knee-slapping hilarious. They must think they never breathe through their noses at all, because they're not covered at all.
Last year, Uncle Andy was urging (heh, oddly not mandating) everyone to wear a mask. What the heck, make it of whatever colors you like, put whatever artwork (or advertising?) you like on it. What's the big deal? Well, I'll tell you what the big deal is. Apparently, Andy, you've never had to wear corrective lenses in your life. If you did, you'd realize that especially fall through spring, the very act of breathing will fog them up, making it impossible to see at all clearly. Could you be that daft?
What's even more funny about Uncle Mark's mandate is some towns and villages, primarly on county borders (such as Marilla), whose heads of government publicly said, yeah, nah, we're not doing that, we're not eforcing jack, good luck with that. We're not going to force our businesses to lose business due to the fact potential customers can just travel a few more minutes down the road into, say, Wyoming County, and shop there. It became even MORE hilarious when Auntie Kathy likewise decreed a state-wide masking mandate, with the responsibility for enforcement being the counties. And several county sheriffs' offices likewise said publicly, yeah, about that...we have no intention of enforcing your silly mandate.
It has also struck me as almost Marxist-Leninist to call keeping spread out as "social distancing." The implication to me is, "hey, I don't want to be antisocial. I'd better do it for the community good." While that is kind of true, I have always thought of it as "personal distancing," and putting the word "social" in it was a weird turn of phrase, but sort of carefully chosen. Besides...it's a joke how it is being followed by a LOT of people. They are either woefully bad at judging what 2 meters or 6 feet is, or they just don't really give a damn. People stand IN THE MIDDLE OF aisles that are 2 or 3 meters wide. How am I supposed to keep 2 meters away from you if the aisle is not at least 4 meters wide? I ALWAYS try to be mindful of where I am, and my surroundings. Stores were not built for personal distancing, the aisles were spaced for reasonable density of product. As a result, many firms decided to make all their aisles one way. People also seemed to not be able to grasp that and follow it.
What even further erodes confidence in public officials is the fact that even vaccinated, and if applicable, boosted people are dying of COVID-19. Yet the media narrative continues to pound that this is a disease of the unvaccinated. Guess what? It is therefore now proven fact that contracting the disease is not the sole province of the unvaccinated. This again does not take into account that a lot of immunity is conferred by recovering from the disease, but it is nonetheless possible in all these cases to get, transmit, and sometimes die of COVID-19. I will have to emphasize, though, that either natural immunity or vaccination statistically does help quite a bit. It's not all doom and gloom for the vaccinated, it's just not the panacea that the media seem to think it is.
Another erosion of the public trust occurs when you use misleading statistics. From the very beginning of the South African announcement of the next significant mutation, the omicron variant, yes, it's somewhat concerning that it is many more times communicable than the delta variant. But at the same time it is much, much less virulent. Virtually all research since has proven this to be the case. So why do you continue to try to justify your actions and mandates solely on infection rates? If, for example, 1000 more people contract delta, and 60 of them need hospitalization, but when 1000 more people get omicron, yet only 15 of them need hospitalization, what's the difference? That base rate of 1000 new infections is meaningless without the companion severity statistic. Omicron is 4 times less of a problem in our example. You need to start thinking and talking more in terms of what matters, namely our capacity to handle it. You're making us conjure up the old phrase, lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Speaking of statistics, why is it that the "more free" states, like FL, TX, TN, etc. are having much less infection rates now, but in states with more controls imposed seem to be worse off? Could it be that their more hands-off approach is working better, that initially letting people be more free has had the side effect of more people being naturally immune?
Anyhow...there's really no good way to wrap this up. As mentioned in the beginning, there are so many interrelated subjects to cover, there is no particularly good way I know of to organize it all. The thing to keep in mind is that although control measures seemed by most to be the thing to do early on, we are getting awfully weary of your explanations of why you think we need to continue to live such restricted lives.
English is a difficult enough language to interpret correctly when its rules are followed, let alone when the speaker or writer chooses not to follow those rules.
"Jeopardy!" replies and randomcaps really suck!
By the by....in case you couldn't tell, "Uncle Andy" would refer to former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo, "Auntie Kathy" to current Governor Kathy Hochul (pronounced like "HOE-cull"), and "Uncle Mark" to EC Excecutive Mark Poloncarz.