Mark Cuban, owner of Dallas Mavericks, has hired a research firm to spy on Dallas shoppers at hundreds of locations to find out how much social distancing is actually occurring among Texans. Predictably, they found that 96% of Texans weren’t complying with the standards, which surely means that Texas is a COVID-19 hot zone, with skyrocketing death toll? Not in the slightest, not that Cuban cares. Cuban is someone who clearly has too much time on their hands, and he needs to find a psychologically healthier hobby than snooping on others. But he’s completely fallen for the pandemic propaganda, and is now wasting his millions by becoming a voluntary busybody for the government. He’s just another not-too-bright receptacle for government propaganda, only one who is much more dangerous to the well-being of Americans’ freedoms due to his wealth and influence.

This type of busybody, hall monitors of the social distancing and mask-wearing directives, that has emerged from the woodwork by the thousands since the 24/7 propaganda saturation campaign began, is known as a ‘Karen’. Someone with an “inflamed and perverse interest in the personal conduct of others”, someone ready to call the cops at the drop of a hat if they see someone flouting any rule. Mark Cuban is a Karen. So is the gas mask-wearing scold patrolling Walmart for signs of non-conformity. They’re the Pandemic Puritans, N95 vigilantes, and they are magnifying the Hell we are already living through.

Another excellent article from Jeffrey Tucker on the flu pandemic of 1957.

The flu, H2N2, killed 116,000 U.S. citizens. At the time, the US population was at 172 million, so a little over half the current population. Meaning that H2N2 was far more deadly than COVID-19. And yet, Americans went on with their lives. There was no cowering in fear, no thin-skinned mayors and governors ready to lock down their communities.

Ron Paul remembers 1957, but doesn’t remember any flu propaganda or lock downs. In fact, he doesn’t remember the flu being a topic of national conversation at all:

Here are lives that the lock-down advocates don’t appear to care about: the lives that will be lost because of the lock-downs. Benjamin Miller of the Well-Being Trust puts that number at 75,000, but it’s surely a conservative estimate. Anxiety, depression, drug and alcohol abuse, and the general tsunami of despair being felt by the more than 30 million Americans who got the loaded chamber in this lock-down roulette.  So 75,000 deaths are an acceptable sacrifice…for what, exactly? Lock-downs didn’t mitigate “the spread”, and it appears to have made it worse.  We now have a ghoulish, utterly evil and tragic outcome: lock-down deaths will outpace coronavirus deaths.

They are now being dismantled.

I know this juicy piece of news is getting stale, but here it is: Neil Ferguson, the modern-day tea leaf reader formerly employed by the Imperial College of London whose predictive models foretold over 2 million COVID-19 deaths for the U.S., and half a million for the UK was caught being visited by his married female romantic interest at his home during the time he had tested positive for COVID-19. Meaning, of course, that he doesn’t believe his own BS predictive models. These models essentially gave world governments a perfect excuse to throw off any constitutional limits and revert to their natural authoritarian form.

The public has since been informed that he will not face “police action” for his lockdown violation. This, while normal Brits are being harassed and caged for doing much less. Directives and punishments for thee, not for me, apparently.

He has since resigned. Please, world, never listen to him again.

Ector County, Texas, cops are now the subject of understandable ridicule and outrage from across the country for the arrest of Gabrielle Ellison, owner of Big Daddy Zane’s bar in Odessa. They showed up for the arrest with an armored vehicle and machine guns, and they look just as pathetic as you’d expect.  Just look at them, these idiots are cosplaying their childhood cop fantasies. And I’m not quite sure how much protection they’re getting from those vests.

This type of overt thuggery is the rule within an authoritarian regime.

AIER’s Jeff Tucker, formerly of the Mises Institute and pristine writer, has penned a great essay comparing society’s reaction to COVID-19 with the reaction to the 1960’s Hong Kong flu that killed over 100,000 U.S. citizens. It was at least as severe if not more so, than the present virus, and yet society did not shut down, and government did not assume total dictatorial power. Tucker points out that Woodstock occurred in the midst of that flu season. Life went on, more or less, in the face of that pandemic. People were careful, but they didn’t lose their minds the way many seem to be doing today.

Something in the way that this new virus is being sold has short-circuited our common sense. Is the propaganda just getting better? I’d say that is definitely a large part of it, combined with social media’s ability to amplify that propaganda. That might even be the whole explanation, that this is just a uniquely successful fear campaign waged for ratings and power, but one in which the fear grew out of control, taking on a life of its own completely independent of the latest propaganda or facts.

Risk is all around us. Death and injury happen could happen at any moment, and do. Just imagine if we had accurate, up-to-date statistics for every single risk we take as we move throughout our lives, beamed at us 24/7. It’s safe to say that it would affect us more than just a little. We’d lose our minds. We’d cower inside our homes, disinfecting constantly, and begging government to protect us. Exactly as we are behaving now in the face of COVID-19.

We can’t cower any longer. This virus is just one risk in a long line that we face every day. And as more evidence emerges that places this virus very low on that list, we must realize that we have to shake ourselves loose from the psychic paralysis that has frozen society. We have to go about our lives, and stop obsessing over risk. It’s an unavoidable fact of life.

There is, however, an enormous risk that poses an existential threat to our lives, the lives of our families, and our future. It’s the overreaction of government. Federal and state government have responded to the virus by unleashing Hell on Earth in the form of 30+ million unemployed, and a civilizational cataclysm the likes of which has never before been seen. Societal pressure cookers like this have existed before throughout history, and the results have always been grim. Dictators, genocides, and ruin lay on the other side. That’s a risk we can’t afford to ignore.