Snake Oil Salesmen
Two years on, it is past time to wonder if we have been sold a bill of goods.
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who feels we have been sold a bag of crap about both the pandemic and the response to it.
Not really a new feeling, I’ve been very skeptical since the panic-demic began in 2020.
As we approach a total of a million deaths in the US since February of 2020 (yes, it has been two years of hysteria), one begins to wonder if any efforts of our so-called public heath institutions have been more than marginally effective, or we would have lost a large percentage of those people anyway.
The fact is that we have had more deaths AFTER we had the vaccines than we did before they became available (and the deaths have largely continued apace) even though lockdowns, restrictions, masking, and social distancing have remained in effect (largely in blue states - where performance is the same - or worse - than red states without those things).
The statistics reveal the highest risk of dying from the virus is some other underlying condition. We know the risk groups. We understand the comorbidities – and yet we continue to handcuff those lacking any of those conditions.
We know Omicron is weaker than the original flavor of SARS-CoV-2 or its initial variant, Delta. We know that while Omicron carries a higher transmissibility and kids are more vulnerable to it, experiential statistics show it is far, far less likely to cause death or conditions serious enough for hospitalization.
It is also highly likely, according to many doctors and scientists, the current vaccines and “boosters” are not the correct formulation to constitute protection or even act as a therapeutic against this variant.
Even so, there is no doubt the virus posed a mortal risk to some people with certain vulnerabilities and the losses are tragic, but in the balance, the response to it has been equally a tragic, doing damage to far more people than the virus could.
The issue for me is that where covid deaths are relatively quantifiable (even accepting that “deaths WITH Covid” have been comingled with “deaths FROM Covid”), the societal damage can only be estimated. There is no way to accurately quantify the psychological, societal, or economic impact of doing something (likely wrong) versus doing nothing.
But isn’t that is the mantra of politicians and bureaucrats, that “Something must be done!”?
If there ever was a phrase that could be trademarked for government, that would be it.
If you think back to the beginnings of this pandemic, it is clear our leaders went from irrational complacency (urging people not to worry, issuing “all is well” statements) to raging agoraphobic hysteria in record time.
“Misinformation” and “disinformation” quickly became watchwords, their meanings changed to mean “anything information that does not originate from the government” – even though that “information” changed often, was routinely contradictory and given enough time often proved wrong – and yet people were (and continue to) have their free speech rights curtailed through outright bans or civil penalties.
But it isn’t just government that no matter the issue, believes “Something must be done!”. There are legions of Chicken Littles crying “The sky is falling!’ These are the first people, when faced with any manner of trouble, look to government to hold up the sky.
After the past couple of years, our cumulative experiences certainly appear to indicate this to be a case when government did something when that something was at least as bad as doing nothing.
Maybe it is human arrogance to believe we can defeat nature in every battle, especially when the possibility that “nature” was weaponized in gain of function experiments in a Tony Fauci funded lab in Wuhan, China.
It is my belief we were sold placebos as cures.
I also believe the placebos were never a real solution, merely a vehicle to allow politicians and bureaucrats claim victory.
The public cried out that “Something must be done!” and that is what they did – something.
Perhaps it is past the time one should consider that for the past two years our lives have been ruled by Snake Oil Salesmen, hawking their mysterious curatives from the back of a wagon.
The media have been complicit in stoking the panic. Instead of checking facts and verifying what the government was directing, they became mere propagandists enabling fear and compulsion to "do something".
Another good one, will of course send on to family and friends!