Monday, March 15, 2021

Week of 03/15/2021

Coronavirus Plus One Year and The Biggest Lie Told

As of this column’s posting, it has been a little over one year since the COVID-19 novel coronavirus was officially declared a global pandemic.  And since everyone else is fixated on going down Misery Memory Lane, this commentator had might as well chime in.

One whole year of hell, complete with all four horsemen of the Apocalypse - War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death - prancing around America like the whole country is their personal horse show.  Disease, supply shortages, economic collapse, riots, police murdering people, protest leaders getting snatched off the street by secret police… in America no less, jackbooted thugs starting a riot just for a presidential photo op, cancelled sporting events, millions hospitalized, millions dead, wildfires, natural disasters gone crazy, social isolation, elderly people dying alone, and an insane election that ends with a bloody insurrection and a failed coup whose enablers want us all to believe never happened.

There were plenty of lies as well for this year of hell.  Lies about how bad it was… “it’s no different than the flu.”  Lies about the scope of the outbreak… “it’s just a few people and soon it will do down to zero.”  Lies about how far it will reach… “it’ll never come to America!  We have oceans separating us.”  Lies that it even exists… “it’s the new Democratic hoax.  This hoax from China… it’s all a hoax!”  Lies about how to treat it… “they have the bleach that you can inject. This thing that will kill it in fifteen minutes.”  Lies about how long it will last… “Once the weather gets warmer, you’ll see the number of infections go down.”  Lies about wearing masks… “they don’t work.  I can’t breathe in them.  They just keep putting the toxins back in our lungs.  I have a medical condition.”

But the biggest lie told this past year is the one that is still being regurgitated today all around us.

“We’re all in this together.”

Bullshit.

Bullshit!  We are *not* “all in this together”!  We’re not even close to being that!  You know it and I know it.

We have a significant part of America that to this day refuse to wear masks or socially distance.  Not only will they not do those, but they will violently confront anyone who challenges them on it.  And I mean violently.  They have assaulted people numerous times.  They’ve had throwdown fights in the WalMart like children.  They have “mask burning” parties like they used to have “book burning” rallies, and teach their kids to join in.  They’ve even assaulted others simply because they were wearing masks. 

We sure as hell are not “in this together” when you have aggressive and violent people like that.

This same faction has been following a certain orange-skinned con artist who spread a lot of the other lies about the pandemic.  They’ve been gathering at rallies and conventions, booing at the notion of either wearing a mask or socially distance and then dismissing the outbreaks resulting from such super-spreader events.  People get sick?  People dying?  Not from them!  Not from those events!

I’ve seen people who actually get COVID and end up in the hospital for weeks, and yet their co-workers refuse to wear masks, refuse to maintain social distancing, and continue to regurgitate lies about wearing masks, betting their lives that they’ll get the vaccine soon and then everything will instantly be back to normal.  And this is not some recent delusion, but one they’ve been chanting for almost as long as the pandemic.

The problem is this… as long as we have these COVIDiots around carrying on with their obstinate delusions and lies, this pandemic will continue to haunt us.  And not just for a few weeks or months, like our current President optimistically believes, but for as much as five more years.  Five more years of being told to wear masks and socially distance while still hoping to get enough people vaccinated to reach hypothetical herd immunity.

As of this article posting, almost 30 million Americans have been infected with COVID.  Over 500,000 Americans have died from COVID or COVID-related ailments.  It is speculated that as many as forty-percent of them did not have to die.  How many family members, how many friends, how many neighbors and co-workers could still be alive today if we did the bare minimum of what was needed and wore masks and socially distanced?  How many of those people would be with us today if not for the lies on top of lies on top of lies regurgitated by that faction that hate masks?

Let’s get brutally honest here… as long as we have that faction of COVIDiots running around not doing what is the bare minimum necessary, we will never be “all in this together”.  We will always have a faction working against us, against ending this pandemic, and all so they won’t be “inconvenienced” or “live in fear”.  That *will* affect all of us, because it means that this one-year milestone of the global pandemic will most likely be one of many.  And all for a bunch of lies.

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