Resist The Authoritarian Response To The Coronavirus

[pbrower2a]

I am resisting irrationality.

Scientists and doctors treat the physical, but there is the metaphysical aspect of life to understand which is more powerful than the physical.

The thoughts you put into your brain can wreak more havoc on your system than any physical virus.

Caving into fear and panic are poisons that you yourself put into your body, and they cause damage to your mental health, emotional health and also your immune system.

I continue going for my daily walks because I need them for my health and well-being. I am not caving into fear and panic because I know they are poison to my system. I take precautions like washing my hands frequently and when I go out I bring hand sanitizer and also wipes that I use to wipe down doors and other things I touch.

We do have to deal with the physical aspects of disease, but they are symptoms of something that is already in our belief systems and our thoughts and behavior that we have put there way before hand.

I can't allow ignorant authorities to control my life when I know better how to live it. I've been into health all my life, seldom get sick because of my practices, and unlike Trump, I KNOW that the buck stops with me. I am responsible for what I put into my brain that weakens my body, mind and spirit. And fear and panic are killers.

Going out for walks is a good idea. You cannot get COVID-19 from fresh air. Keeping yourself in good mental shape (and physical activity contributes to that) makes you less vulnerable to serious infections.

I also say -- use the time for expanding your intellectual world. Here is a very good start for anyone:

https://www.gutenberg.org/

It is free! Some states have closed the public libraries, but if you have a computer and Internet access you have perhaps the greatest library at your disposal. You have material from the Epic of Gilgamesh to... early Hemingway? The focus is on material in the public domain due to expired copyrights. That does exclude much, but just think of what is available. Anything in its final form as of December 31, 1924 is potentially available.

May I suggest that you look again to any collections of great music?

[pbrower2a]

This minor (don't lie and claim otherwise) pandemic has served as a wake up call.
The vast majority of humans are blithering fools, willing to enthusiastically get down on their scrawny knees and pray to their government to strip from them of all of their invaluable freedoms and liberties, simply because the government narrative states that it "must be done" to "keep you safe." Americans, unfortunately, are not exempt from this.

Ending up in intensive care is not an exercise of freedom. If you have caused someone to get into the ICU or the morgue because you have spread a dangerous disease, then you deserve to feel guilty about such.
 

I have been shocked and appalled by how so many people are coming out as being little more than thoughtless media drones. This is roughly equally true of people on the right and the left. No critical thinking, no reasoning, no rationality. Just brain-dead hogs who will gladly be dragged along by the nose ring to the slaughterhouse. Cheering and commending their killers all the way.
What's even worse is that they will not be contempt to lose merely their own freedom, but will bully and harass their fellow citizens into also giving us up. This whole event has been a sick frenzy, fueled by depraved, sub-human leaders and abetted by armies of millions of mindless dolts.
The lot of you have no respect for liberty, and it's a wonder this nation has managed to maintain any vestige of it for so long. Our actions, our rhetoric, bears absolutely no respect or love for anything that makes us free, that makes us American.
We really are no different than our ancestors -- human nature never changes. It's times like these that make this inherent truth so crystal-clear. You -- you, America -- are nothing more than bottom-feeding, self-loathing rodents, practically demanding slavery. We're no different than the Russian peasants who installed a government which would go on to exterminate millions of their own. One can hope that we or our descendants do not some day meet a similar fate, but there is little evidence to suggest that we will not.

Big Business made some of the decisions and let others -- typically elected officials -- impose them. That is how things happen. COVID-19 is an unusually-dangerous virus. How dangerous? We do not really know. Think of how we found out about AIDS.  

Honestly this country might as well close up shop and abandon all pretense of governing with basic human decency and honoring basic natural rights. We are nothing. Bring on eternal martial law and dictator Nancy Pelosi because some folks are coughing and a few people in some nursing homes passed away.

People on the Left often consider Donald Trump the 'dictator'. Yes, he is the most despotic President that we have ever had.

[pbrower2a]

Let’s be honest here, a large number of the “anti-authoritarian” posters who are against these lockdown measures seem more concerned about inconveniences to their own lives as opposed to actual authoritarianism. That isn’t everyone, but some posters definitely seem to be more concerned about themselves than, well, authoritarianism.

We seem to be accepting some short-term social regimentation across the political spectrum because our squabbles about the relationship between management and labor, between pro-choice and anti-abortion, between cultural divides, and between faith and reason  can look trivial. We have seen reports out of China and Iran showing how badly governments can muck things up if authoritarian, secretive, and corrupt. People well-connected in China and Iran have gotten CORVID-19 and died. So did a retired judge in Italy  who was a genuine hero in the struggle against the Sicilian Mafia.

So when will some prominent figure of mass culture, politics, academia, or politics die? People started to take AIDS seriously when such people as Arthur Ashe, Liberace, and Rock Hudson died of it and a reinforcement when Robert Reed and Freddie Mercury got it and died.

To be sure, CORVID-19 is very different from HIV?AIDS... its lethality is not completely established, and long-term consequences are unknown; obviously it has different means of spreading. We may be taking means better at stopping bacterial infections than at stopping viral infections -- but bacterial infections make people more vulnerable to viral infections. 

Democracies have taken authoritarian measures to meet dangers that can destroy the system. If one did not know that there was a war going on against you-know-who, you might have thought Britain a totalitarian state during World War II. The economy was regimented to almost the same extent as the Soviet Union, and much normal behavior was proscribed. But that is a mere inconvenience in contrast to having the Wehrmacht, Gestapo, and SS in one's country. One knew that when the war was over, that life would be back to normal. 

If we go too far with CORVID-19, then what do we lose? There will be economic losses, to be sure. The inconveniences are obvious enough. If you have a strong social in social media, then maybe life will not be as lonely as it might be. However people may have derided Facebook... we may need it.

So... after it is all over, we will get to go out to eat again; we will be able to have more face-to-face conversations with people, and we will all experience pent-up demand. But anyone who gets a fatal case of CORVID-19 wi9ll not get to do such things.         

[pbrower2a]

There's no evidence that Social Distancing and Mask Wearing have significantly minimized the death toll, or even the number of cases. 

There's no evidence because they were not actually enforced. No rule is going to work if you have half the population not following them--clearly someone in the 'law and order' segment of the population should know this. It's like having a road where everybody speeds, and then claiming going the speed limit is pointless as it doesn't prevent accidents.

While I don't believe masks should be mandated for the vaccinated at this point, the fact that people who are not vaccinated are not wearing them does not somehow refute decades and decades of proven evidence that masks do work at preventing individuals who wear them from spreading diseases.

This is a patent non-truth.  The scientific consensus prior to last summer was that universal public masking was not appropriate in response to respiratory pandemics because it had never been demonstrated as effective.  Mechanistic plausibility for face masks to control asymptomatic transmission of a respiratory virus (i.e., filter efficiency) neglects to consider aspects of a mask's fit.   

Social distancing, sanitizing everything, wearing masks, and eschewing pointless travel were the best safety measures when no vaccine was yet available. Getting vaccinated solves a huge number of problems. I might be dead had it not been for inoculation, as I had some nightmarish side effects.

Nearly half of all Americans are duly inoculated, which means that we are in the quandary of "half full and half empty".  Except for very young children, practically nobody needs an excuse now.  I can imagine cities finding excuses to round up the homeless as Chicago does in extreme cold waves. If you aren't inoculated, you get inoculated. Even without that there are such misdemeanors as littering, public urination, and loitering that can be used as pretexts.