I’m retired and don’t
eat out a lot or attend crowded events, so the effect of this virus lockdown on
me personally has been minimal -- excepting a sizable hit to my IRA portfolio
and the closure of local golf courses.
But as the weeks have worn on, the incessant drumbeat of commercials,
public service announcements, and local news hairdos declaring that “we are all
in this together” and imploring everyone to “stay inside” have become
insufferable. Often these directives
are conjoined with salutes to the “heroes” in masks who are credited with
saving our secluded backsides from a dreaded plague. (Yes, health professionals
almost exclusively in the New York City area have done heroic work, but
hospitals around the country have been laying
off employees and suffering huge
financial losses due to a shortage of patients.) Another flood of commercials piggyback on the
panic with assurances that “take out” is available during these “difficult
times” and that your friendly auto dealer is prepared to postpone car payments
should you now be unemployed. A wistful hope about getting back to normal in
some distant future accompanies a few ads devoted to slavish obedience to
unseen authority.
A few signs of actual
courage, however, have begun to emerge.
A salon
owner in the North Dallas suburb of
Frisco opened her establishment and tore up the citation she’d been issued for
defying a government pronouncement that classified her work as
“non-essential.” Even more impressive is
the New
York City tailor’s commitment to
open up in the virus “epicenter” -- a metropolitan area that accounts for about
half of the (inflated) Wuhan deaths in the entire country. By doing so he defied the imperial arrogance
of Gov. Andrew Cuomo who snarkishly told beleaguered protesters to “get
an essential job” if they wanted to
work. Protestors in Michigan finally began
to see the light when it became
clear that it’s
not about your health when a
governor tells you that you can go to Home Depot to buy a sponge but not to buy
seeds for your garden!
It isn’t exactly a
portrait of “the home of the brave” that we’ve witnessed over the last
month. Instead, a docile population (about
70% in one poll) seem content to do
whatever Dr. Fauci tells them to do, ignoring the fact that even as late as
February 29 the long-time NIH epidemiological bureaucrat assured Americans that
it
was safe to go to the mall, the movies, and even the gym!
That pronouncement followed his comment
on January 21, “This is not a major
threat for the people in the United States.”
Nor have the cascade
of predictive errors given most
Americans pause when it comes to trusting the white-robed authorities who are
now ceded more credibility than was recently accorded holy scripture.
For those willing to penetrate the blizzard of media obscurantism,
there are many scientists and even a whole European country whose approach to
this epidemic differ radically from that of the shutdown-obsessed Fauci. One of many examples is Dr.
Knut Wittkowski who for 20 years was
head of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at
The Rockefeller University -- hardly a “country
doctor” as the New York Times described
a physician on the other side of its anti-hydroxychloroquine jihad. Here’s what Wittkowski said about the
epidemic: “With all respiratory
diseases, the only thing that stops the disease is herd immunity. About 80% of the people need to have had contact
with the virus, and the majority of them won’t even have recognized that they
were infected.” That was also the
approach taken in much-vilified Sweden, which undertook precautionary measures
far short of shutting down the economy and shutting up much of the population
in their homes. Wonder of wonders,
statistics actually show Sweden doing
better than most European countries
in terms of deaths, though Fauci fanatics will insist one only compare
it with its less densely
populated neighbor, Norway.
What is clear in any comparison, however, is that the Swedish approach
disproves conclusively the panic-producing numbers emanating from the Imperial
College of London study that predicted up to 2.2 million U.S. deaths and
500,000 U.K. deaths absent radical measures -- numbers endorsed by Fauci and
consequently repeated by the President.
But nothing like that apocalypse occurred in non-lockdown Sweden which
seems on its way to “herd immunity.” Swedish
epidemiologists, of course, have
explained their approach to the few uncomprehending journalists who dare to
engage them, but obviously these voices, along with many other likeminded
health experts in the U.S. have not
been heard by Americans whose eyes and ears are glued to Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr.
Deborah Birx, and the panic-loving MSM whose delight over a Trump-defeating
economic catastrophe is impossible to conceal!
So why has the country that used to tout itself “the land of the free
and the home of the brave” so quickly become “the land of the docile and the
home of the shuttered”? I proffer two
related reasons. First, Americans
possess an inordinate and false belief in “science,” incorrectly assuming that it
is next to infallible and that all scientists pretty much agree. “Follow the science” has been a mantra in the
U.S. for a worldwide experiment that’s never been previously undertaken. And if an experiment is the first of its
kind, it cannot be settled science.
Moreover, anyone with intelligence and a degree of honesty can see, as
noted above, how wrong the scientists anointed as our Corona pontiffs have been
thus far. Secondly, the propaganda power
of media, both political and commercial, has reinforced to an incredible degree
the panic-laded message of the public health bureaucrats in charge, thus making
the slightest deviance from the promulgated orthodoxy a blasphemous heresy. Mindless mask-wearing conformity and panic
emerges based on burgeoning COVID case numbers that to a non-addled mind prove
the virus is nowhere near as lethal as previously advertised and that herd
immunity may soon be attainable.
It has taken far too long to
break through these almost impenetrable cognitive and emotional barriers and to
challenge stay-at-home and wear-a-mask-when-walking-your-dog dictates that go well beyond wartime
mandates or anything “science” can vouchsafe.
I, like Dr. Wittkowski, have been chagrined beyond measure at Americans’
willingness to comply with these more-than-dubious requirements, and I concur
with his ominous warning: “I think people
in the United States and maybe other countries as well are more docile than
they should be . . . if people don’t stand up [for] their rights, their rights
will be forgotten.”
Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in
Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy:
"Who's to Say?" is also available
on Kindle
