“Oceania was at war with Eastasia,” wrote George Orwell in 1984. “Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”
America is at war with COVID. America has always been at war with COVID.
It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the latter propositions well epitomize what one writer calls our “massive COVID lie,” a “horrifying charade.” In fact, warns the Federalist’s Molly McCann, if this deception isn’t ended, it will end our constitutional order.
Oh, it’s not that coronavirus isn’t real. It’s as real as heart disease — which every year kills approximately seven times as many people worldwide. It’s as real as cancer, which claims almost four times as many victims. It’s as real as drowning and vehicular accidents, two things which, if you’re a child, are more likely to take your life than is SARS-CoV-2. Yet we still let our kids swim and don’t put them in roll cages in cars (though some put them in masks in cars).
In reality, the COVID Con amounts to a kind of hysteria we usually just study in history books (the Salem witch trials come to mind). And a “recent article in The Guardian discussing France’s vaccine passport” perfectly epitomizes this, writes McCann. She then continues:
It describes the Great Plague that struck Marseille in 1720 (the final contortion of the Black Death), noting that it “kill[ed] more than half of the city’s population.”
“[S]truggl[ing] to find a delicate balance between halting the spread of the disease and damaging vital commerce,” the city authorities, The Guardian tells us, ordered travelers “to carry a ‘bill of health’ and ships arriving at the Mediterranean port underwent a 40-day cordon sanitaire or quarantine.”
“Three hundred years on,” The Guardian seriously intones, “President Emmanuel Macron is walking an equally tricky tightrope …” Hopefully, you spotted the glaring problem with this comparison. In 1720, the Great Plague in Marseille killed more than half the city’s population.
“We have gotten to the point in this ‘pandemic’ where government leaders and a worryingly high percentage of the American people are acting like COVID is a crisis on par with Marseille’s Great Plague,” McCann then states. “We have been buried in facts, figures, mountains of data, constantly shifting information, misinformation, and more. We are relentlessly briefed by the media about rising infection rates or the current capacity of local ICUs.”
All this over a disease whose fatality rate, according to last October CDC data, is less than one half of one percent. McCann cites a higher figure from Johns Hopkins, 1.7 percent. Whatever the case, though, this data includes high-risk individuals. Note here that “95 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have occurred among people who were 50 or older,” the AARP tells us, “even though the majority of coronavirus cases have been reported in people under age 50.”
Moreover, approximately 80 percent of the victims have been 65-plus, with decedents’ average age being ~80. In addition, 78 percent of China virus victims have been overweight/obese.
The point is not to write these people off, but this: If you’re not in a high-risk group, your chances of dying of coronavirus approach zero. There’s a multitude of things more likely to kill you.
What’s more, the virus is treatable, and renowned COVID doctor Peter McCullough has stated that 85 percent of the disease deaths could have been avoided with proper treatment. Add to this a recent United Kingdom study indicating that the new Delta variant is 20 times less deadly than the original, and the picture is clear:
As McCann points out, whatever COVID once was, it is not now an emergency — and it hasn’t been for a very long time.
Despite this, “we have all assumed roles in a live rendition of Hans Christian Andersen’s folktale ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes,’” observes McCann. “The government plays the lying emperor, whose hubris resulted in him parading naked in public while declaring he wore clothes. The American people play the silly subjects who disregarded reality to humor the monarch’s farce.”
In a way, though, none of this is surprising. First, man has always been an emotional being, prone to acting more on passion than reason. Second, there’s the power of perception: People don’t trouble over heart disease, cancer — or what poses a greater risk to their children (e.g., car crashes) — as much as the China virus because they’ve long been inured to those things. But COVID is a new threat, and one magnified via demagoguery.
It’s also not surprising that some moderns would equate the virus with Europe’s Black Death. While the latter killed off one-quarter to one-half of Europe’s population, everything is relative to moderns — and in particular everything is made relative to themselves. And in the minds of those who think microaggressions are a problem and committing them warrants punishment, their COVID experience is like the Black Plague, relatively speaking. “Where is my safe space?! Socially distance! Wear a mask!” Their subjective COVID reality is as bad as the objective, medieval bubonic mortality. It’s like that when you’re self-centered and the whole world begins and ends with your own feelings.
In her article, McCann goes on to warn that the China virus lockdowns, regulations, and other proposed “remedies” (e.g., vaccine passports) have too often involved the violation of constitutional rights and that we’re facing the very overthrow of our constitutional order itself, which amounts to the death of the Republic. She proposes that state legislatures intervene, forbid vaccine passports and ban government entities and businesses from requiring things such as masks and proof of vaccination.
Libertarians will consider this overly intrusive. What’s for sure, however, is that if we don’t kill COVID paranoia, it will kill us.
