Dakota Beacon

Back in April we were being told that we might well see our hospitals, physicians and care providers overwhelmed in a veritable tsunami of COVID 19 cases - millions were going to be sick, hundreds of thousands were going to die.  Some began urging us to wear some kind of face mask or covering, while others, caught without supplies of masks, told us not to.  At the time I wrote a piece urging people to cover their faces in some way to slow transmission in the hope that hospitals could catch up.  Many also felt a need to “do something” and about all they could do was to make a mask.  

I don’t disparage this now, either.  I think at the time it was prudent.  In April we had very little information, thanks to China and the WHO, about this disease and how to combat it.  Our hotspot was New York, and everything Governor Cuomo did was a disaster - he panicked and demanded ventilators - 40,000 of them, if I remember right.  He was screaming that New York’s hospitals were going to overflow and President Trump sent him as much relief as there was - he got car manufacturers in the U.S. to retool and build ventilators and sent thousands of them to New York, he sent the U.S.S. Comfort to New York Harbor to help alleviate the swelling numbers of the sick.  None of this turned out to be needed - a cry of wolf that was really no one’s fault at the time.  Cuomo did other things which any fool would know would be very high-risk and counterintuitive, like sending sick COVID patients to nursing homes and infecting the most fragile of our citizens, the elderly, wholesale.  

We know a little more now than we did in April, although not enough.  What we do know now is that masks do not keep coronaviruses out.  They are like a screen door on a submarine.  Or a chain link fence put up to keep crickets out.  They also are likely to compromise the health of people who wear them over extended periods of time, especially unborn babies, those with heart or respiratory issues in particular.  They still make sense in areas of high risk - health care workers may need them when tending patients with highly transmittible illness, or premature babies perhaps, or those with seriously compromised immune systems.  But with the numbers in the hospitals within manageable range, it is beyond time to stop wearing them continuously.  

Unfortunately, now is when the states’ governors have swung into full-on mandate mode, demanding that everyone wear these masks whether appropriate or not, whether practical or not.  (Why?)  A week or so ago Edward Morris’s article explored the issues with wearing these face coverings in certain kinds of work.  One other option has been transparent face shields which do allow for a flow of air.  However, have you ever looked through a fishbowl?  That quease-producing distortion is a constant with the shields, driving most back to the suffocating of the masks.  

Now Anthony Fauci is calling on us to start wearing goggles.  Are we going to do this?  Or are we going to finally stand up and say “no” to unreasonable demands?  While the COVID threat was in an ‘acute” phase and we were in total ignorance of what it was and what we could expect with it, it was entirely reasonable to wear masks when in close contact with others who might be vulnerable.  Now it is no longer reasonable.  It is now clear that COVID is not going to totally go away.  It will decline but remain, just like chicken pox or measles, something unpleasant, to avoid if possible, but not something around which to organize our lives.

It becomes evident as we go on with this, that there is 1) no need for universal, all-day mask wearing to deter the virus; 2) no need to wear goggles or hazmat suits to conduct normal day-to-day business.  So why the persistence of governments to insist on this against people’s will?  Well, there are a lot of consequences and some of them may be reasons.

1.  Social distancing is changing our entire way of life and our culture.  No one shakes hands, a time-honored gesture of courtesy and a business gesture indicating a promise.

People who are normal need some contact.  Even if you are not usually a “hugger”, it is normal when meeting someone close whom you haven’t seen for a while, or when taking leave of a loved one, to hug or put an arm around him.  Children need contact.  It is more than just a “habit” for grandparents to want to hold a grandchild or for the child to hug or kiss the beloved grandparent.  It just is.  Kids need it and don’t think for a minute that grandparents or aunts and uncles don’t also need it.  It is NORMAL.  Close friends need it too.  The “social distancing” needs to go away now.  The reason for it?  Perhaps it is one more way to cut family ties, long a goal of totalitarians.  People are not on their guard about this because of the COVID excuse.  But this has been not a two-week emergency period, it’s been a life-changing five + months now.  You may remember the adage that you form a habit by practicing a particular behavior consistently for two weeks.  Will people (especially children) return to normal human behavior if this continues? And if not, what has been lost?

2.  The weird mask thing is not normal.  This is carrying a once-reasonable response to absurd levels.  Let me ask you this - does seeing everyone with a wad of cloth where half of their faces are normally seen normal to you?  Or is it not becoming grotesque?  We are not lab animals.  When we go into a restaurant, which used to be a pleasurable event, we are now greeted by someone in a surgical mask and purple latex gloves.  They mumble through the layers something about “vollo me” and we are led to a table with no appurtenances - no salt shaker, no little containers of jam or syrup, no table tents advertising dessert or appetizers, no real menus most of the time, just some xerox sheet which they throw away.  This is truly surreal.  Should we become inured to this?  Is that “healthy”?

3. The despots are using us to discipline each other - an army of self-driven Karens who act much like the babushka in the hall from the movie White Nights.  In fact, some of these mandates actually charge businesses with enforcement, threatening them with forced closure if they decline to be enforcers.  How is this legal?  This is not constitutional.  The governments are not paying these businesses for their enforcement services but simply threatening them.  Demanding services without compensation is not by any stretch “reasonable”.  One thing is certain - this is driving a wedge between people who never felt animosity towards one another before.  Dividing us is a prime goal of those who would deprive us of our basic freedom and trust in each other.

4. With the burdens mounting, “social distancing”, wearing masks, first indoors then outdoors, “sheltering in place” (house arrest, in other words), closure of businesses, ever more burdensome restrictions and demands - wearing masks outdoors in some cases, children wearing them, perhaps more gear required - goggles?  Hazmat suits?  What else can they devise?  One thing they are working on is tracking us, with or without our consent.  These restrictions could be used to set people up to give in to any demand to lessen them and return to something “normal”.  Perhaps a vaccine.  Many - in fact a recent poll says a majority of - people reject vaccines for COVID.  And well they might, given the “fast-tracking” of the production of them, the lack of liability and accountability on the part of the producers and distributors and the history of risk associated with them.  Add to this the use of aborted fetus cells in them, and many decent people will reject them . . . unless it is the only way for them to return to something that looks “normal”.

5. We are being lied to regarding the numbers of "cases" and the "COVID deaths".  A couple of weeks ago we were given a report that "100%" tested "positive" for the virus in Florida!  This is not a credible report.  We further learn that people who die of other diseases or even are killed in a motorcycle accident, are reported as "COVID deaths".  This is unacceptable.  As a self-governing people we need the truth.
   
   
   

This is about more than people objecting to inconvenience and discomfort of wearing masks, or getting their backs up when a fellow shopper or a store clerk upbraids them for not wearing one or not wearing it “properly”.  It is cynicism in the extreme.  Just watch the many videos of Fauci, the mask advocate now.  In March he said people “shouldn’t be wearing masks”.  Last month he said they should.  Now he says goggles are a very good idea.  He also says this isn’t going away.  He also threw the first ball out at a recent baseball game and then sat in the otherwise-empty stadium sandwiched between two fellows, not wearing a mask (well, it was under his chin).  In the whole stadium, he felt the need for companionship.  To hell with social distancing.  To hell with mask wearing.  Not for him!  After all, he gives orders, he doesn’t take them.  

We need to re-evaluate the people to whom we have given our trust to lead us and advise us.  It turns out they are apparently in it for something else.  Are Fauci and other high-level advisors heavily invested in vaccine production, perhaps?  If we all go about our business and get back to life we won’t be so anxious to line up for it and demand others do so.

What about hydroxychloroquine?  The evidence indicates strongly that it is a powerful drug to combat the effects of this virus, especially in combination with antibiotics and zinc.  There is no downside to using this safe, time-tested drug - unless you consider the fact that no one in a position of influence is making a dime on its sale.  So hydroxychloroquine is disparaged, its use ridiculed, jeered at as though it were some medieval witches’ brew.  A doctor in Ft. Myers even reported that pharmacies refused to fill his prescriptions for it!  Many whose lives might be saved, whose chances improved, are being denied this basic drug.  This is not ethical.  

Yes, COVID 19 is a disease and a serious health threat to the community at large, especially certain segments of it.  But it is not the end of the world.  It is being used.  And who is being harmed by this use of COVID 19?  Those sick with other things, who need other medical treatment and are being put off, their care delayed or denied; those who need others close to them actually being close to them.  A beloved uncle died last month.  He was elderly.  He did not have COVID 19.  He had been tested but the result was always negative.  He was in the hospital for injuries he sustained in a fall.  He was denied family visitors - “due to COVID 19” - and no one was there to advocate for him.  His medication was inappropriate to him specifically, but no one was there to consult with doctors.  He died of a massive overdose of prescribed drugs.  This is a death attributable to our response to COVID 19, not the disease, but the response.  His story must have been multiplied by many thousands over the summer.  Each a tragedy that need not have happened.  Each a heartbreak.  

Our grandparents die without a few last words of comfort from us, alone.  Our children are cautioned not to go anywhere near Grandma.  An otherwise innocent store clerk is slugged or worse because people are pushed beyond their limits and she is stuck in the middle by some governor to duke it out over face mask wearing.  This is absurd.  We need to stop this.  We must stop it because it is not about COVID or about wearing masks in stores or anything of the kind.  It is about us being trained to be controlled without asking questions.  Think about that.  We are admonished not to “stir things up” in the workplace, we are urged to “go with the  flow” and wear a mask wherever it is demanded of us.  We have checked our brains and our will at the door this summer over our unreasonable fear of COVID 19.  No one doubts its existence or even its seriousness.  But here is something we should doubt:  any government edict making it go away.  What we can be sure of is that the more power we cede to government to regulate our every move and to track us, the harder it will be when we want to end it.  Best to end it today, lest when the disease fades into the background the edicts and mandates remain, and the precedent for them.  That is the real threat to our health.