Dakota Beacon

If you are old enough, or if you are a pop music history buff you will recall Petula Clark singing, “Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’, don’t stand in the pourin’ rain . . . “.  We need to take this to heart. Our nation has been a collective basket case since the first diagnosis of COVID-19.  We have got to get over it.   I don’t mean we should be reckless or thoughtless.  I don’t mean we should take unreasonable risks.  What I mean is we need to move on with life.

Over the weekend we have had more and more of these governors’ and mayors’ edicts restricting our very right to exist.  One business owner who has gone viral is a restaurant owner in Los Angeles.  Mayor Garcetti closed her business while right next door authorized a movie set to open up.  You have probably seen her impassioned objection to this unfair decision.  It is not only unfair but totally outside of someone’s authority to shut down a lawful business.  In Staten Island, meanwhile, on the other coast, a pub owner in desperation set up what he termed an “Autonomous Zone” where he continued to serve beer and sandwiches despite de Blasio’s blanket shutdown, er, not “blanket”, exactly, because a couple of blocks away business was open as usual.  Canada is not immune either - a barbecue restaurant owner, Adam Skelly, in Ontario, was arrested for opening up and serving his barbecues.  He needs to feed his kids, he says.  Well, in Ontario that is a crime punishable by having an “authority” - in this case a public health official - renting the local police to do her dirty work, arresting him outside of their official capacity as a police force governed by elected government officials, instead as rent-a-cops answering to an unelected health official.  By the way, no health complaints specific to the barbecue business were lodged.  It’s just . . . COVID-19, don’t you know.

Our world is being turned upside down over a flu.  It has been argued that this particular flu is dangerous (although this is disputed), especially to certain demographics - the extremely elderly and those with serious underlying health issues, such as diabetes, cardiovascular conditions or other problems.  People who are in an especially vulnerable group should be very cautious.  However, for most people not in those categories, this is the flu.  Normal precautions should be taken, perhaps more stringently adhered to - if you are experiencing symptoms of any kind of illness, stay home.  Don’t go out shopping; if you need something have it delivered until you are well again.  Don’t go to work.  Perhaps there is a role for government in underwriting costs associated with sick leave, so that businesses are not severely impacted.  Don’t go out to visit friends or to restaurants and skip your worship customs until you are well.  These are all reasonable.  

Our government should be censured for any obstruction it poses to allowing for medications which may be helpful in treatment.  I said “may” be helpful.  Even if they don’t work in all cases or have not been specifically listed as treatments for this flu.  I refer specifically here to hydroxychloroquine, although this should apply to any other medication deemed safe enough for treatment of other conditions.  This withholding of safe drugs and treatments by various state governments and/or the FDA is unconscionable.  We withhold effective treatment and then we close people’s businesses and deprive them of their livelihoods instead.  What kind of idiots are running this?

Well, in truth, it is not without a plan.  The plan is to destroy our economy and our culture, separate our families, stop our religious freedom and our freedom to assemble with friends.  Why?  You may well ask.  The answer is because no sane people would substitute state control for their families, their free enterprise livelihoods, their religion, their social and cultural life.  That is why.  I have written before about the fact that the family is the main bulwark against state authority.  This will always be true.  It is why statists like Hitler or Mao pit family members against one another, calling upon children to betray their parents and their neighbors.  They get points for it.  We see even this aberration now in America - Cuomo and de Blasio have called upon people to rat out their neighbors, as have other authoritarians such as Gretchen Whitmer.  They set up tattle lines in the hope that there are enough miserable human beings to go around trying to make trouble for others for whatever reason.  Fortunately, and to our credit as a people, these efforts have not been very successful.  We will probably see some reward incentive in the next generation of these calls for betrayal of each other.  Let’s hope our price is out of their range.

What should we do?  We have been visited by a dangerous disease, courtesy of China.  We need to protect people, of course, but we cannot let China destroy our economy either.  We cannot allow China to shut down our businesses any longer.  We all basically agreed to a two or three-week shutdown to give health care facilities time to gear up in case of a wave of illness.  That was last April.  We can’t do this anymore.  Minnesota is suffering right now.  Especially anywhere near a state line where people might be able to find normal existence in the next state.  We’ve seen the devastation of Broadway.  Even the rotten tree they put up in Times Square signifies the end of good times.  And they were so evil in New York that even the small pleasure of watching the rotten thing lit up for the “holiday season” was blocked by vans and trucks so that no one could do so.  How ugly do they think they need to make life?  

My own view is this:  We need to first stop referring to “cases”.  What is a “case”?  Is a “case” a person who is sick?  What is “sick”, then?  I would say that someone with symptoms of illness is sick.  If a person is not sick he should not be quarantined.  It has been found that transmission of this virus is very rare from asymptomatic people.  We should go with this assessment and act accordingly.  As stated above - if you are sick stay home, isolate yourself, take care of yourself and avoid exposing others.  Simple.  When you are well, go about your business.  By calling every positive test result a “case”, false positives included, just about everyone is a “case” of something.  This is meaningless.  Let’s refer only to a person who has symptoms as a “case”.  This playing with numbers and statistics is a form of economic warfare.  All summer we have seen shocking statistics, some so shocking that they even debunk themselves, like the “100% positive” results in Florida.  Tests so sensitive that everyone is “positive” are used to shut down our businesses and our schools.  I was taking a distance learning course this spring.  It screeched to a halt because there was no one there to process my college transcripts.  No one was in the office “due to COVID-19”.  Teachers seem to love COVID-19.  I don’t know why - they must hate their work.

So, one is to stop calling everything a “case”.  Two is to protect, not expose, our elderly to the virus the way Cuomo did in New York - basically deliberately infecting nursing home residents to get the numbers up.  Three, we need to stop incentivising diagnosis of this virus and falsely ascribing cause of death to it.  It has been nothing short of a scandal - people falling from ladders to their death have been ruled a “COVID” fatality, people killed in motorcycle accidents have been listed as “COVID” deaths.  Obviously people who are dying of other, natural, causes, also are being falsely listed as “COVID” deaths.  This hypes up the hysteria, which is one reason for doing this, but it also helps fill the coffers of the health care providers because the government has made COVID profitable.  It has another unfortunate effect and that is to obscure data which would be useful in other health research.  Fourth, we need to stop hyping this up in the media.  I had at least one “friend” on Facebook (not really a “friend” in the normal sense of the word - I am usually pickier than that) who unfriended me because I said we needed to stop calling everyone who might possibly test positive a “case” if they are not sick.  This was enough to melt her down like the water melted the Wicked Witch of the West.  I actually was wondering how long it would take her.  I was invariably polite and civil as she grew more and more hysterical.  She finally melted.  This, while amusing, is really not a healthy social climate.  Our media has grabbed onto this like the yellow journalism and sensationalism that sold extra editions of newspapers at the turn of the last century.  I suppose anything is considered fair if it supplies their business.  There is a side issue to this of inestimable importance - and that is the silencing of all opinions not in line with the government/media narrative.  People are literally shut down on Twitter for expressing any thought that comes into conflict with their approved opinion.

We need to stop incentivising this disease.  Our government could find less destructive ways of helping those struggling with the economic effects of this than making it profitable to over-diagnose it.  Instead of a blanket benefit aimed at reimbursing health care facilities and providers just for COVID-related care, they should help with all care and incentivise honest bookkeeping on this disease - both for the future of medicine and science and for our economic well-being.  And it is just better all the way around to incentivise honesty in reporting.  

Five - let’s strip these governors of their absurd delusions of grandeur.  They have no right to trample on people’s right to earn a living, to send their kids to school, to go about their lives, to visit their families, to worship or to congregate for any other legal purpose.  They are obviously not really concerned about transmission of the virus.  If they were they would not countenance BLM protests.  They would not go to exclusive French restaurants to party with friends.  They would not travel to be with family for holidays.  They would not be getting their hair done.  They would not have exempted their friends and business associates from lockdowns while imposing them on the rest of us. They do all of these things, so we have to know they are not truly worried about COVID-19 in the least.  They need to be taken to court and stopped.  We need to establish that we still have all of our rights.  

Six.  And this is important.  We need to stop with the masks and face shields.  These are not effective in stopping this virus.  I have seen men with full beards wearing these little paper masks.  They are not air-tight.  That would be impossible.  In fact these mask mandates are used only as a tool of subjugation, not as a preventative or control of disease.  

We should support those who stand up to these petty tyrants and open their businesses.  People need to have a reason to get up in the morning.  Is it really better to see suicide and other violence explode?  I think I’ll take my chances on the virus.  In case you have not noticed, our Constitution has been shredded and our freedom and self-government has been usurped by a cadre of so-called “health experts” who have proven nothing in the way of their ability to curb or slow the disease.  It would take a magician to do this, in all fairness.  They are not magicians.  Some of them are not even practicing physicians.  At the same time we have heard from numerous qualified professionals who have said many of the same things I have said here (you may remember the “white coat press conference” of a few months back).  

We are reaching the point where people are desperate.  Losing a business in most cases means losing one’s home, perhaps one’s family.  Certainly one’s own health as well.  Today it was reported that San Francisco, a mecca for gourmets, is finding that its restaurant industry is imploding.  Surprise, surprise.  It is often heard among midwesterners that they deserve it for being a gaggle of socialist Democrats.  Many of them, I do not doubt, however, are not even Democrats.  Many of them are hard-working business owners.  Restaurants seem to be among the first and most heavily affected businesses.  This is a very demanding business - both in terms of finance and in terms of labor intensity.  It’s small wonder they are the ones we are hearing from first.

It is not enough to tell people to “work from home”.  Most people cannot do this.  Unfortunately, most government workers can, so they just figure everyone else can.  Try running a restaurant from home.  Even if you don’t seat people and therefore make a profit, even if you run a subsistence operation with “curbside” service, you can’t survive for long.  I salute those who defy these unreasonable shut-down orders.  They are taking the risks for the rest of us.  Remember them when you do go out to eat - if they are still around, support them.

I said to my former Facebook “friend” that we are rapidly becoming a nation of hypochondriacs.  It is destroying us.  Not the virus - that is bad enough, but our reaction to it.  Nothing could please China more than seeing our industries and businesses fold “due to COVID-19”.  

Seven.  We have allowed this hysteria promoted by our state governments, so-called health “experts” and China, to deprive us of a normal election process.  This is by design.  We, like sheep, have been herded into this nonsense.  Absent the COVID panic we might have had a normal election with only the usual kinds of Democrat corruption.  Instead we allowed this virus to take over our election process with the mail-in ballot scheme.  We see the result.

Which brings me to my final point.  Eight.  When the dust settles and we return to sanity we must punish the government of China for this.  They not only developed the virus, but they willfully and knowingly allowed it to spread around the world.  For this and all that it has meant to our lives we need to hold them strictly accountable.  We must not lose sight of this in our struggle to survive it.  We should put China last among nations with whom we trade, we should very severely limit the number of Chinese citizens we allow to enter the U.S., we should carefully screen those who deal with students or visiting professors or other professionals as to exactly what they are up to.  Practices such as that of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp should be outlawed.  A governor has no business making foreign policy.  Economic, “cultural”  and student exchanges with China need to stop.

In the meantime, don’t sleep in the subway, don’t stand in the pouring rain and take responsibility for yourself to avoid getting sick or exposing others.  We don’t need the government to do this for us.

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