Author's Note: This post is very political. I'm a conservative and not ashamed of that fact. If this bothers you, find something else to read.
I know I should have posted this when this whole mess started. I meant to. But somehow, I never had the time or my head wasn't in the right place. But today, with a sprained ankle keeping me home from work, I think it's time to give my take on this whole Covid-19 thing.
It seems like I can hardly remember a time when this wasn't an issue, yet it's only been a few months. Like most other people, when I heard that a "new" virus was among us, I paid little attention. One flu was the same as another to me. Then the powers-that-be decided that all "non-essential" businesses be closed down for 15 days in order to contain the virus and "flatten the curve". OK, 15 days didn't sound unreasonable, given that this was something out of the ordinary. Better to be safe than sorry. Then 15 days turned into one month, then two months, then three months. In the meantime, the store where I work (and every other store) experienced shortages on toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Panic purchasing was rampant. Then, once the "non-essential" businesses were closed and people were forced into their homes, I had to have a special paper saying that I was considered an essential worker and please allow me to pass. This made me very uncomfortable. I'm an American citizen and I had to have a piece of paper saying I could be out of my house. It sounded a bit Third Reichish to me. I have still not been stopped by any police on my way to work.
But I went to work everyday. We weren't told to wear masks or gloves or anything of that sort. Not in the beginning. The focus was on getting the store stocked (with what little we could get) and cleaned up. We shortened our hours from six a.m. to midnight to seven a.m. to nine. People hated the inconvenience of the shorter hours and the fact that in several aisles, our shelves were bare. As a front end worker, I and my fellow front end workers took the brunt of customer's anger and frustration. "When are you gonna get some *&$%$# toilet paper in this place?!" was something I heard dozens of times a day. We had had to place limits on water, some fresh meat products and paper products (when we could get them). Customers just found ways to get around the limitations. Then, we suspended returns and exchanges at the service desk. Unless you got sour milk or spoiled meat, we weren't taking it back. Then we barred reusable grocery bags and put up plexi-glass at every register. About six weeks into the lock down, we were told that masks were required. About two weeks after that, we learned that we would have to have our temperatures taken before beginning our shifts. By that time, I was fed up. I was already starting to hear that the virus wasn't as bad as it was being made out to be. That the models were off or wrong or deliberately misleading.
Then we got the horrifying news about what this lock down was doing to our economy; the $22 trillion economy President Trump had worked so hard to achieve. And then I began to put two and two together. As I watched the liberal media and Democrat politicians gleefully announce how bad the job numbers were and how many people had filed for unemployment and how many small businesses were being forced to close permanently, it dawned on me what the whole purpose of this pandemic was. Mostly, it was to tank the economy in an election year and hopefully, keep Trump from being re-elected. They had already tried everything else---Russian collusion, obstruction of justice, quid pr quo, even impeachment---and Trump was still president. Trump was at a rally when he got word that he'd been impeached. But everyone, whether Republican or Democrat, knew that Congress didn't have the votes necessary to remove him from office. So the plan began to change from getting him out of office to sabotaging his re-election chances. China was more than happy to help since they were pissed off about the tariffs Trump had enacted, which had hurt their economy. Former Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel once famously said "Never let a crisis go to waste." So with this advice in mind, the people who wanted to see Trump humiliated and removed from office (a group that included a lot of Republicans, too) contrived together to let this virus infect the whole world. They allowed the Chinese to lie about the fact that the the virus was a "novel" virus (meaning it affected only animals) that could not be spread among humans. They allowed the Chinese to withhold the genome sequencing of the virus, thereby delaying the US and other countries from getting meaningful testing underway, while at the same time they let hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals fly all over, unchecked and untested. All the while this is happening, the President has already gotten his task force together. At the same time, the Democrats, who led House committees and subcommittees (many of whom had oversight), were choosing to focus on impeaching Trump rather than the potential damage the virus could do. When Trump announced the travel ban in late January, a move that probably saved countless lives, his reward was to be called a racist by the liberal media and by Democrats in both houses of Congress. While the President was trying to get a handle on the situation, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was telling people in California not to listen to his "fear mongering" and to come on out to Chinatown for the new year's celebrations. In New York, Governor Cuomo did likewise.
Now once President Trump unveiled his task force, the first order of business for the liberal media was to say it wasn't "diverse" enough. In other words, there were too many white people. I remember saying on Facebook that if I were assembling a pandemic task force, I wouldn't care about their skin color. I would want a group of eggheads who've never been on a date. But of course, to the liberal media, everything is about race. Most of us, in the beginning, believed that the models we were being shown concerning the number of people who would likely die from this virus were accurate. We wanted to believe that we were getting the truth from the media. Turns out, neither was the case. Both sides, the liberal media and the task force doctors, had an agenda. When President Trump said he would have the Navy hospital ship Comfort in New York Harbor by the weekend, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow called it poppycock. She said on the air "it ain't gonna happen." That Saturday, when the Comfort steamed into the harbor, she had had to eat her words. Whatever the President said he would do, he did. Of course, the liberal media was spouting their garbage that it couldn't possibly get done that fast. But they forgot who they were dealing with---a businessman who knew how to get things done. Everything he attempted to do was met by the press with derision and scoffing. He had acted in haste. He had acted too slowly. He did too much. He didn't do enough. No matter what he did, no matter how good the result, no matter how much it helped peopled, it was wrong. It was right about this time that I began to suspect that things were not as they appeared.
The press has always felt it had the power to influence us. Hollywood feels much the same and they're right. It was the press who fanned the flames of hysteria that caused the famous toilet paper and sanitizer shortages. It was the press who, at the President's daily press conferences, asked accusatory "gotcha" questions in hopes of getting a sound bite they could play on their evening news shows. When the President would answer their questions, they accused him of "hogging the stage". When he didn't know the answer to a question and deferred to one of his experts, they accused him of not knowing what was going on. When he famously made a few aside comments about research he'd heard about using sunlight and disinfectants injected directly into the bloodstream, the press said he had told people to drink bleach. It was in this atmosphere that I began to see with my own eyes that the liberal media was playing much too big a role in this drama. They weren't giving us information. Not useful information, anyway. They were fomenting panic and enjoying it while they were doing it. It was about this time that the experts began to contradict themselves. Yes, a lock down was necessary. No, a lock down will hurt us more than the virus. Masks must be worn when out and about. No, the masks are useless. Thousands of hospital beds went unused. In the meantime, people who had been scheduled for "elective" surgeries were cancelled because the whole of the medical world was going to be needed to combat the virus. When that didn't happen, when it became obvious that the field hospitals and hospital ships weren't going to be needed, people with open minds began to question. Why aren't we re-opening? The government had declared grocery stores, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe's, and other places that provide needed services as essential, while restaurants, nail salons, beauty parlors and bars were told to stay closed. Worse yet, while Planned Parenthood was allowed to stay open (remember those folks who had their elective surgeries canceled) and pot shops and gay dungeons were allowed to stay open, during Holy Week, churches and synagogues were told to close. Visiting your favorite glory hole was consider essential, but worshipping on Easter wasn't. For many, this was the last straw.
Those of us who know the Constitution began to see the capriciousness of the closings. As defiant (and desperate) people began to push back, governors of blue states doubled down on their power trips. Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot (who had gotten a haircut during the lock down when other people had to go without) issued a warning that churches that defied the order to stay closed would risk being closed permanently or being destroyed as a public health hazard. When a Mississippi pastor was arrested and his parishoners ticketed for holding a drive-in service, where people listened to the sermon from their cars with their windows rolled up, I had seen for myself that the heavy handedness was reserved for Christians and Jews. During the Muslim holy day of Ramadan, Governor Cuomo announced that he would supply 400,000 free meals. He made no such offer to Christians during Easter or Jews during Passover. The anti-Christian bias was laid bare for all to see and yet, the liberal media saw no problem with it. After all, they hate God.
Now because I work in a grocery store, I have worked continuously during the lock down. I feel very fortunate that I have been able to continue making a living while others have been forced to apply for unemployment. Supply is catching up to demand and many states are re-opening in phases, Illinois among them. But...the economy, the one President Trump rightfully crowed about, is in shambles. His enemies have done what collusion accusations couldn't do, what quid pro quo lies couldn't do, what impeachment couldn't do---hurt Trump by killing the economy he was so just proud of. Most of the liberals in media and in Congress are socialists, after all and this booming economy wasn't what they wanted. They didn't want this blatant proof of how good capitalism really is for everyone. They wanted us cowering in our homes; scared, poor, hungry. Waiting on the government for a handout. But many people, patriots and liberals alike, began to see that this was not how they wished to live. Their businesses were failing and many were having trouble feeding their families. They needed to get back to work. The liberal press, as always, was their to spin this. When President Trump announced plans to re-open the economy, socialist Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, pounded her fists, saying people should not be forced to go back to work. Forced? Does she not understand that most Americans WANT to work? That the businesses they had spent their whole lives building were in danger of staying closed forever if not re-opened soon?
While Americans could see that the virus was losing its potency and dying out, the liberal media continued to announce doom and gloom. They said, if we re-opened businesses, there would be a brand new outbreak. People who went to stores without masks were kicked out. People who protested at their respective state houses were called selfish for wanting to get businesses re-opened. They were told they didn't care about life. Please. When you advocate for killing babies in the womb, don't talk to me about how much you value life. Sane people began to argue "Look, if you're afraid and want to stay indoors, do that. But don't expect me to live in fear with you."
Which brings me to the title of my post. I think it's way past time to get on with life. I'm all for precautions when necessary. But when the experts are now saying openly that they were wrong about the impact this virus would have, I think it's time to put the masks away and stop the social distancing nonsense (which the experts also now tell us didn't have much impact on the virus either). I'm not sure who to attribute this quote to, but it's true:
"Fear doesn't stop death. It stops life."
It's not the government's job to safeguard my health. That's my job. There will always be new strains of viruses coming out. When the Hong Kong flu pandemic hit in 1969, we didn't close down the economy and force everyone to stay home. No, we held Woodstock. There are still those who insist we need to stay locked down until a vaccine is available. The people most pushing for this scenario stand to make money off the new vaccine. Bill Gates all of a sudden thinks he's a medical expert. Bill Gates is a globalist who wants to bring down the population and vaccine and chip those that remain. He's the same guy, as head of Microsoft, deliberately put viruses in his software and then offered his customers anti-virus software. This is all about money for him, which is why he's acting with the WHO and the CDC and George Soros and others who want a global government, where the US gives up her sovereignty. I know there are socialists right here on American soil who hope for that with fond anticipation. But I also know that there are patriots; people who want America to stay free and where the government stays out of people's way as much as possible. What this ultimately comes down to is this: will our government listen to us and remember who they work for? Or will they continue to ignore us and do what they want? Time will tell.
