An Ill Wind Blows

Let's shut down the media and the government for two weeks and see how quickly this crisis passes.

-Me, two years ago on Facebook

I said it at the time and I fully meant it. This was right at the start of the COVID panic, and I meant it as a slam on government, the media, and all too many regular citizens. We needed to calm down and take a breath in confronting the COVID threat.

We did not do that. Instead, we shut things down. We destroyed lives and livelihoods simply because we were scared. We stopped caring about human rights essentially because of raw, unfiltered fear.  We allowed irrationality to rule our thoughts.

That set the precedent that the government has the right to shut us up in our homes if it and only it deems the act necessary. This same government which is currently setting up a board of disinformation to determine what is wrong and what is right. 

Anybody but me feel a chill lately?

If it kills me I will haunt you

Well, I did it. I made the commitment. I wasn't going to; I was going to be thoroughly bull headed and not be bullied (yes, I mean bullied, and in the worst, most repugnant sense of the word) into it. But I have an appointment for my first dose of the COVID vaccine for June 8 at ten o'clock in the morning.

People, and by people I mean society, and by society I mean all too many of you out there, play on fears. You have successfully played on mine. I don't want others to get ill because of me. Further, I do recognize the very valid argument that I should not allow pig headed spite to influence what may arguably be a rational decision. Yet I still don't believe for a moment that COVID was, is, or ever will be a serious threat to me or my family and friends. It posed the greatest threat to a small and well defined segment of the population, a segment we could have and should have easily kept protected.  Shame on you, governors Whitmer and Cuomo, for what you did with the nursing homes: you caused more death directly and immediately with COVID that I ever will or would have, all the while you sons of...mothers deigned to lecture the rest of us on responsibility. The threat to the general population was tiny, and almost certainly would have been taken care of through herd immunity. 

Yet we had to destroy a robust economy, kill numerous small businesses, cause many deaths unrelated to COVID which could have been prevented had we not panicked and made people afraid to seek needed health care for other issues, and affect an election outcome because of it. I don't give a flying...leap what you think of Donald Trump or how happy you might be that he's no longer President. You need to ask yourself: do we want elections profoundly affected by sheer and unwarranted panic? We should not.

I haven't even asked what ought to be the obvious question: now that the government (our servants, mind you, not our leaders) has seen how easily we may be cowed, how much more quickly and over how little else might they try to lock us down again? Believe me, they will try when they feel the right pretense exists. Because after all, they got away with it before. It will harder to keep them from trying it again.

So I will kowtow, I will genuflect before your almighty and self defined omnipotent will, powers that be. I will get my shots. And if I may sign off as the curmudgeon I fully mean to be here, You're Welcome.