Tuesday, June 23, 2020

‘Stay Home Stay Safe’ … Say What?

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Near the top at a Dallas County, Texas government COVID-19 web page, just below a link people can click on to find out about a “job opportunity” in the county’s new “contact tracing” surveillance program begun in the name of countering coronavirus, there is a chart titled “TODAY’S COVID-19 RISK LEVEL.” Lit up is the highest risk level on the chart, appearing on a red background: “STAY HOME STAY SAFE.” You can see other governments across America promoting a similar message of fear at their similar web pages.

Say what?

Here we are over three months into the American coronavirus scare whipped up by people in the media and government. And this scare was preceded by months of sensational reporting in America on coronavirus overseas and the authoritarian government actions taken there in the name of countering coronavirus. Over all this time, it has increasingly become evident that coronavirus is much more like the flu viruses that Americans routinely deal with in its danger instead of being the super-killer disease originally advertised. It has also become clear that the threat of serious illness and death from coronavirus is largely concentrated among elderly people and people who already have major health problems. Thus, we see the large percentage of coronavirus attributed deaths — increased by government mandates — in nursing homes while professional athletes who have coronavirus tend to have no or minor sickness. Also, children seem to be at nearly zero risk of great harm or death from coronavirus.

Take this information all together and most people would do well to just get on with their lives as normal, accepting a risk from coronavirus that, for younger and healthier people, can be significantly less than the risk posed by routine activities such as driving to work, school, errands, and social activities — all of which, by the way, governments have forced many people to stop doing, supposedly to protect them from coronavirus. Of course, Dallas County, whose county government is hyping a coronavirus threat, also never had anywhere near the percentages of deaths for its population attributed to coronavirus as did places such as New York City.

This sort of fearmongering is not just taking place in Dallas County, where well over two million people live. Local and state governments across America, as well as the United Sates government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and prominent US government officials, including National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Director Anthony Fauci, are playing up coronavirus danger.

Looking more at the Dallas County coronavirus risk chart, it is clear that the plan is to fearmonger about coronavirus as long as the county government can get away with it. That may be quite a while as many people have become devoted to their fear of coronavirus as if it were their cherished religion. They cannot fathom that their government, from the local to state to national level, would be so wrongheaded or evil that it would blatantly misinform them to such a great extent and for so long about a supposedly super-dangerous health matter. And the severity of governments’ coronavirus crackdowns, including stay-at-home orders, mask mandates, and forced business closures, further leads many people to think the government must know coronavirus poses an unprecedented threat. We are witnessing firsthand how propaganda projected relentlessly by government and media, coupled with despotic government action, can mollify many people, allowing the enforcement of unjustified and oppressive mandates to persist.

While the coronavirus risk chart is still stuck on the highest level of alarm, the lower levels would only push back the alarm level in small increments and never back to recommending just going about life as before. It can feel like this is some sort of dream or practical joke given that all this purported risk is in regard to a disease that should be of little concern for most people. Moving down from “STAY HOME STAY SAFE,” the chart threat levels are “EXTREME CAUTION” on an orange background, then “PROCEED CAREFULLY” on a yellow background, and then, finally, “NEW NORMAL UNTIL VACCINE” on a green background.

That’s right, even the chart’s lowest level of alarm for this massively over-hyped disease is a dystopian “new normal” where ordinary human interactions like hugging a friend or relative you do not live with or choosing not to wear a face mask while shopping may be discouraged or even prohibited. Discouraged or prohibited, that is, until you take a vaccine that has been rushed into production without the following of regular protocols for promoting safety and efficacy and that may well cause much worse consequences than would the disease the vaccine is purported to protect against. Now that potential vaccine sounds like something we should be warned about.



from ‘Stay Home Stay Safe’ … Say What?