The lockdown is, for all intents and purposes, over. Here in Texas the gyms are finally open as is the rest of the local economy, and mask-wearing is optional. In states with restrictive lockdowns people are taking matters into their own hands and opening up their businesses despite orders to remain closed. Never has the difference between the political parties been so blatantly obvious and Mother Nature is going to determine which party is using “science” in their COVID-19 response.
If you believe that COVID-19 is a killer just waiting for us to drop our mask wearing, social distancing defense so it can kill millions, hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds (depending on model used) then the republicans are doomed as they will pay the price for opening their states too soon.
If you believe COVID-19 is not a killer, that most people infected by the virus remain asymptomatic, and only the older, vulnerable portion of the population need to be protected then the democrats are doomed by retribution for the destruction of our economy by over-reacting to suspect models.
There are encouraging signs from the blue states with repressive lock-down policies. In New Jersey Atilis Gym opened yesterday in direct defiance of the governors orders. When the State Police showed up they told dozens of protesters standing outside the gym they were in violation of the governors COVID-19 orders and then bid them all a good day. The crowd erupted in applause, this is exactly the kind of discretion we expect from our fellow citizens working in law enforcement.
There are also too many stories about intolerable abuses against law abiding citizens being reported daily. There is an epidemic of poor judgement based on questionable science by what the editorial board of Free Range International has designated Low T Tyrants sweeping across the Blue states.
In Salem, Oregon Lindsey Graham, the owner of Glamour Salon opened on May 5th because she needed to feed her kids, pay her bills and save her business from bankruptcy. She was closed by the police and fined $14,000. Two days later Child Protective Services showed up and I’ll let her describe the visit:
On May 7 child protective services showed up at my home. They questioned my husband and I. Questioned my child without me present. They searched our home,’ she said as tears welled up in her eyes during a press conference Friday.
‘And I never expected such a violent, aggressive, vindictive thing could ever be done to me or my family because I’m trying to earn a living. Because I’m trying to work,’ Graham added.
Graham is a mother to three kids: a six-year-old son, a three-year-old girl and an eight-week-old son.
Low T Tyranny is defined as a government official knowingly lying to your face and daring you to call them on it. If you do they immediately play their victim card making you (not their bullshit answer) the problem. There is a lot of Low T Tyranny going around these days even in once reasonable states like Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health Rachel Levine was on a phone-in press conference explaining why she moved her mother out of a nursing home the same day she ordered recovering COVID patients be to sent from local hospitals to local nursing homes. During the press conference a local newsman referred to Ms. Levine as “sir” several times. That is understandable, I’ve listened to the tape and Ms. Levine (a transgendered woman) has retained her masculine voice. She answered the question the reporter saying her mother asked to be moved because she’s a smart old gal who can figure stuff out. This implied that if your mother wasn’t smart enough to ask you to move her out of a nursing home that is about to receive convalescing COVID patients then that’s on you, or her, or whatever.
Then Ms Levine had a melt down over being addressed by the masculine pronoun as if one can intuit declared gender over the telephone. Her outrage became the story; not her obvious hypocrisy in moving her mother out of harms way. That is Low T Tyranny, thrown right in your face, by a person who knows decent law abiding citizens will give her a pass at risk of being branded a transphobe.
So what now? We let the virus play out and one side or the other is going to be proved wrong. At this point I must note my theory about how the virus would go appears to be wrong. I thought the Wuhan Virus was every bit as virulent as advertised and it had already passed through much of the population. This theory was based on my conviction that our federal government cannot possibly react fast enough to contain a virulent virus. Now that there has been more extensive anti-body testing it appears that COVID-19 has a long way to go before we can reach anything close to herd immunity. COVID-19 did not tear through the land last December as I thought it had.
What does that mean? Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of the Stanford Medical School, who recently concluded a study of every major league baseball employee (only 0.7% positive for the COVID-19 anti-body) said this:
“I think in the back of people’s heads there is this idea that somehow we can eradicate this disease if we just stay locked down. That is not possible. The serologic evidence, even the MLB study, suggest this. It suggests the epidemic is too widespread to eradicate. It spreads via asymptomatic contact. Like people who don’t have very many symptoms, even mild cold symptoms can spread the thing. They aren’t going to show up for testing. They aren’t going to show up at a hospital or a doctor.”
Last march I wrote about Farr’s Law, named for British epidemiologist William Farr in 1840. He stated that epidemics develop and recede according to a bell-shaped curve with or without human intervention. It appears that COVID-19 is receding, that once again Farr’s Law has proved valid. The democrat politicians who are threatening to keep their state, city, or county locked down well into summer are in for a rude awakening. As each week passes with less cases identified and a declining death count they will be forced to make decisions that the public has already made for them.
They are going pay this November for the incalculable damage they have done to our economy. The United States is (in the words of T.R. Fehrenbach) “a country grown so great even fools cannot destroy it.” That doesn’t mean we have to tolerate them in elected office.