COVID-19 – The Paradigm We are Choosing is Incorrect

Since February 2020, I have asked one question more than any other, “Why are we responding to COVID-19 with hysteria, emotional hyperbole, and ridiculous virtue signaling?” It is estimated that there are 320,000 different viruses that inhabited planet earth. Consider the following sourced from the Virology Blog:

“To estimate unknown viral diversity in mammals, 1,897 samples (urine, throat swabs, feces, roost urine) were collected from the Indian flying fox, Pteropus giganteus, and analyzed for viral sequences by consensus polymerase chain reaction.  This bat species was selected for the study because it is known to harbor zoonotic pathogens such as Nipah virus. PCR assays were designed to detect viruses from nine viral families. A total of 985 viral sequences from members of 7 viral families were obtained.  These included 11 paramyxoviruses (including Nipah virus and 10 new viruses), 14 adenoviruses (13 novel), 8 novel astroviruses, 4 distinct coronaviruses, 3 novel polyomaviruses, 2 bocaviruses, and many new herpesviruses.”

Now, consider the following:

“Varicella-zoster is a herpes virus that causes chickenpox, a common childhood illness. It is highly contagious.  After a person has had chickenpox, the varicella-zoster virus can remain inactive in the body for many years.”

Since chickenpox is a viral disease, let us compare methodologies of treatment for chickenpox to COVID-19. For chickenpox, we isolate those infected, we keep them comfortable, and we treat the symptoms until the virus runs out of steam. We use logic, known remedies, and we vaccinate. We do not force entire populations to self-isolate, wear masks, halt economies, cease business, or tolerate rioting and pillaging by domestic terrorists.

Why is COVID-19 being treated differently than every other virus known to man? Why are we treating COVID-19 like Bubonic Plague instead of like the chickenpox? While I understand that Bubonic Plague is a bacterial infection, I mention Bubonic Plague due to that bacterial infection being highly contagious and significantly deadly, to aid in clearing vision. The world has lived with bacterial infections and viruses since man began walking the earth. Yet, suddenly, COVID-19 is cooked up in a Chinese lab and the world is expected to cease.

There must be another reason than medical science and health of populations for the response to COVID-19. I worked in an ER before COVID-19 came on the scene. If you had a cough, a cold, a fever, or suspected you might be sick, you were encouraged to wear a mask. No fines for not wearing a mask, no arrests for not wearing a mask, if you were in an ER, and caught an infection from another patient; well, that is a risk of going to a hospital. Why is COVID-19 being responded to with fear, chaos, and a lack of scientific approaches?

The following image is a Johari Window. A Johari Window, “is a technique that helps people better understand relationships. It was created by psychologists Joseph Luft (1916–2014) and Harrington Ingham (1916–1995) in 1955.” The following Johari Window is intended to be an aid in understanding COVID-19 and the response from the government.

Hence, if the response to COVID-19, was purely scientific, the Johari Window would look like the following:

The same would be true for any of the purely single-dimensional Johari Windows. One source would dominate them all, to the exclusion of the rest. In a normal situation, a person should be able to expect some of each category of response would be melded together to achieve the greatest good, for the greatest number of people when looking at the four main responses to illness as represented in the Johari Window. However, as a hysterical surgeon at the VA reminded me, “COVID-19 is NOT normal times” [emphasis his.]

Why is COVID-19 different? Why is COVID-19 allowed to create such abnormal responses? Was there an edict passed by a world body that said everyone had to lose their minds over this particular Chinese disease? The WHO continues to relate that COVID-19 is a SARS-like respiratory disease. Well, the world has dealt with MERS (Middle-East Respiratory Syndrome) and SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) now for over a decade (2002), and none of the previous president’s or governors lost their minds and allowed America to come to an indefinite screeching halt over a virus. In fact, both SARS and MERS are viral infections, SARS originates in China, both are prevalent in the United States, and both are in the same family as COVID-19. Hence, why are we losing our freedoms, our lifestyles, our economies, and lives over another viral infection? The entire US was not ordered to wear masks when SARS and MERS first arrived; as a point of fact, over a million people had to die from SARS before President Obama even took notice of the viral infection. 

I have heard it postulated that the only reason COVID-19 is being responded in such brutally malignant methods was due to politics and how 2020 is a presidential election year. Consider Avian Flu, beginning in China in the 1990s, Avian Flu began spreading and was rampant from 2004 to 2014, no political points were made on Avian Flu during those presidential elections (1990 through 2014). As a point of reference, Avian Flu is still producing new strands and variants (2020), was also labeled a pandemic, just in time for the 2008 election cycle, and no significant political hay was made over the Avian Flu Pandemic, even though the Democratic Party made pandemic response a talking point for their platform.

Swine Flu (2009), the first global pandemic in 40-years, made huge waves in politics, originated in China, is still a major problem with Chinese pork leading to the demise of millions of pigs annually. Swine flu was a politically polarizing disease when it came to vaccinating and expanding the government’s health budget to prevent more outbreaks. Swine Flu affected Americans directly and led to preventive legislation, but again during election cycles, no political hay was made over the government’s response, and the government’s response was ludicrously useless for a long time.

Ebola, a highly infectious, very deadly viral disease, makes the human-to-human jump very easily. Multiple large-scale infections have been almost continuous in Africa since 1995. Infection is spread through all infected human bodily fluids, and in 2014 both American political parties made a test run to politicize Ebola to increase government control. However, by 2018, neither party was trying to make political hay on the disease.

The list of viral diseases and the lack of wide-spread draconian measure goes on and on. The forced mandates made during COVID-19 reminds one of the opposites of the instruction provided by Kipling in his poem "IF."

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

 I submit that the government forced mandates are illegal, immoral, unethical, and criminal. To force edicts, when legislatures are in session is abominable behavior where those governors should be held accountable. Law in America begins in the legislature, passes to the executive, and if signed onto the population. If vetoed, the legislation could be overridden. However, the executive cannot, and should not, be allowed to run roughshod over the executive; nor should the executive be run roughshod over by the legislative. All three branches of government must work together; why is COVID-19 being allowed to change this 200+-year-old dynamic in America?

Daily I see mayors enacting personal bias and edicts over the citizens in their cities and towns. I see a disparity between those who consider themselves above the law not following their own edicts, demands, and dictates. America has always been a country where the “Rule of Law,” was found in full force upon every person. Why are those writing edicts, dictates, and demands, not being held accountable for their nefarious actions? Why is the response to COVID-19 any different than the myriad of other viral and bacterial diseases that plague mammals?

The response to COVID-19 by governors and mayors has been and continues to be not only incorrect but dangerously incorrect. Consider the waste of money caused by hysteria in New York City, where upwards of $21 Million dollars was spent on outdoor hospitals and the USNS Comfort. As a point of reference, where the USNS Comfort was concerned, the bureaucracy that kept patients from being seen was almost as bad as the bureaucracy at the Department of Veterans Affairs; thus, not all the blame for the USNS Comfort being wasted can be foisted upon the city of New York. Consider the financial ties the governor of California has to a mask manufacturer in China, who signed the deal, then could not qualify for federal certification producing the masks; while the company has finally certified, the debacle remains highly suspect. These are but two different states issues where COVID-19 is concerned.

From forced mask mandates that were never considered by the state legislatures, to draconian social distancing, and other mandates about how a business can operate, to the state government and city hall acting maliciously against individuals and businesses, the response to COVID-19 has been unprecedented, unreliable, and unforgivingly hostile. Having discussed COVID-19 with many people who ask “When will this nightmare end?” WOuld not a better question be, “Why was this government-produced drama allowed to propagate in the first place?”

When the governors of NM and MN can interrupt free-travel and commerce against the law, many people should have been up in arms. Instead, like lemmings running for a cliff, the governors have been praised and followed blindly. When Seattle, Portland, New York, Detroit, and so many towns and cities in between have been mercilessly attacked by rioters, pillagers, and domestic terrorists, I expected a swift, decisive, and vigorous response, and instead was greeted with weak knees, yellow spines, and craven virtue signaling. Of all the COVID-19 responses, the threat to public safety by mobs and terrorists is of greater concern than the illegality of the actions of the governors and mayors, but not by much.

From February 2020 to the date of writing, the response to COVID-19 has been a farce, a rejection of sound scientific thinking, and a lawless and egregious drama, worthy of the lowest Kabuki Theaters. It is time to end the farce, stop the drama, and open America to business. Recovering from the failed follies of COVID-19 government edicts will require a decade or more. Thus, I am calling upon every American Citizen to stand and demand the COVID-19 drama, government overreach, and government made disaster to cease immediately. We the voters must hold the elected officials accountable for their thievery, their hysteria, and their inappropriate actions at the earliest opportunity.

Make no mistake, the response to COVID-19 has been nothing but a bad case of emotional hyperbole and government power grabs, and this must cease forthwith!

? Copyright 2020 – M. Dave Salisbury

The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the pictures.

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