https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eMnMj0-148

What in gods name will history have to say about the first half of the year 2020? That the world went insane over a pathogen with a 0.2% mortality rate, and governments panicked, bringing their nations to the bring of total destruction in a vain attempt to stop the spread of a virus?

I predict that the mass panic of 2020 will spawn entirely new fields of study and research. New frontiers in cultural psychology, mass psychology, will appear, and treatises will be penned on every aspect, as scholars rake through the rubble in order to ascertain just what the hell happened.  Few people will care about the virus itself in the coming years; curious minds will want to understand the origin and transmission of such a destructive psychological contagion as engulfed the defenseless psyches of the year 2020.

Was it social media? Cable TV? There have been deadlier-than-average flu seasons in the past, but no mass hysteria.  Individually, I’d say that we are getting smarter as the years go on. But collectively, we appear to be devolving.

Now that lockdowns of entire economies are beginning to lift, there is a feeling that a war is coming to an end. But a war against what? The shameful truth is that it has been a war waged against ourselves. Our government panicked and began firing their weapons wildly, and we were all caught in the crossfire. The homeowner uses dynamite in a vain attempt to kill the fly, which buzzes, still alive, around the wreckage after the smoke clears.

But the fact that most people willingly accepted the abrupt shuttering of their social world with no debate at all, is the most disturbing aspect. The total lockdowns were swift, and unleashed a true Hell on Earth for 30 million Americans. It should not have happened so easily. Future generations must learn the right lessons from this low point in the history of our species. We are not nearly as evolved as we fancy ourselves to be.

Salon owners are forced to wait until May 15th to open, while other businesses have been allowed to open on May 1st.  They rightfully sued the mayor for the completely arbitrary orders.

Walmart is open. Grocery stores are open. Many others are open. If the virus is here, forcing the salons to remain closed will have zero effect on transmission.  The mayor evidently doesn’t comprehend the devastation that her orders have had on her community, and the lawsuit is well-deserved.

From The Hill:

“Apparently @GovWhitmer believes she is a duly elected dictator of a socialist country. The people of Michigan need to stand up to her. Open your businesses. Go to work. The police think she’s crazy too. They are not going to arrest 10,000,000 people for going to work.”

The bulls are on parade at the capitol of the banana republic formerly known as the state of California. The cops are decked out in gear suited for a totalitarian regime, and the optics are revealing. And who are they opposing? Moms, dads, families with their kids, thousands of Americans brandishing American flags and signs demanding their liberty back.

It’s like a scene straight from some Third World dictatorship, yet it’s happening in California.

This is another visceral example of who will be enforcing the orders of “the libs”: not the libs themselves, but the cops. It will always be a cop that shows up to enforce a quarantine, “social distancing”, or a prohibition on church-gathering or beach-going.

The greatest part, though, is the crowd of protesters. “Surfing is not a crime!” reads one sign. The spirit is one of a resurgent liberty movement, galvanized by the buffoons that have revealed themselves to be nothing more than petty, authoritarian buffoons who throw a fit when someone ignores their commandments.

Weird, petty, and counter to everything journalism should stand for. But then again, journalism professors aren’t actually journalists, and shouldn’t pretend to speak for such a vast, decentralized profession.

At this point it’s less about safety and more about who will blindly obey.

I’ve been following Broadway actor Nick Cordero’s coronavirus battle closely due to the fact that he was placed on a ventilator early on. He has been on the machine for weeks, and his condition has gone downhill steadily, from requiring a leg amputation, and now to the revelation that he has developed holes in his lungs. I haven’t seen any coverage that pins the blame on the ventilator; instead it is implied that COVID-19 is the primary cause of his condition.

Severe lung damage is a complication of ventilator use, something no one has discussed during the mad rush to get ventilators to coronavirus patients. The most tragic mistake made by policymakers has been to promise a big payout to hospitals that placed patients on the ventilators, creating an enormous perverse incentive to ventilate patients whether they need it or not. Which means that many patients are ventilated unnecessarily.

The account of the ordeal by Cordero’s wife is gut-wrenching. She had initially dropped him off at the hospital believing that she would see him again just a few hours later; “I didn’t even give him a kiss or a hug.”  This was weeks ago.

If Cordero’s complications are indeed caused by the ventilator and not by coronavirus, if he never actually needed a ventilator, then he has become a casualty of one of the most misguided, evil policies in my lifetime. The public deserves to know the full extent of these crimes, and someone will have to stand trial.

The toll from murder-by-public-policy must not be forgotten.

“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” -Voltaire. H/t Laurence Vance over at the LRC blog.