We just passed 150 of “15 days to flatten the curve.”
The following is an article by Dr. Tom Woods. In it he explores some of the nuances of the Democrats trying to shame people, especially young people, into giving up all the good things in life maybe forever.
By now we’ve all gotten the message: you’re selfish if you’d like to do the kinds of things that once gave your life meaning.
For these people, life is about nothing but the avoidance of death.
Virtually everything you’ve looked forward to has been canceled, and nobody will tell you when you can have those things back. “When we have a vaccine,” comes the raving lunatic’s answer.
Nobody was giving you that answer when they were pushing “15 days to flatten the curve.” They didn’t dare.
Instead, they kept us in our homes for those 15 days, and then 15 days after that, and 15 days after that. Each time they pushed the date back we grew more demoralized, more resigned to a barren life without “large gatherings” – i.e., everything that makes life fun – and “virtual” events over Zoom.
Oh, and no hugs, no weddings, 10 people at your father’s funeral, and a long list of other grotesque demands.
What metrics were they using to decide when we’d be allowed back out again, when our businesses could open (and when they could operate at a level that made profit even a remote possibility), and when those life-giving pleasures that bring us meaning and fulfillment could be resumed? Who knows?
All we heard was: everything is canceled.
Maybe you can have it in 2021.
Maybe you can have it when there’s a vaccine – as if there’s a guarantee of that.
Well, a terrifying statistic came out last week showing the grim – if entirely predictable – effects all this inhuman regimentation has been having on the young, particularly those between 18 and 24.
Here are some figures from the federal government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. They are percentages of people who have considered suicide within the previous 12 months, organized by age.
Note that the 18 to 25 group fluctuates between 6.8 percent and 11 percent:
Now, from the Centers for Disease Control, we find that percentage (for the 18-24 group) has leaped to 25.5 percent — and this survey asks not about the previous 12 months, but whether they’ve considered suicide just in the past 30 days:
(Note also the huge jump in the numbers for people in their mid-20s through their 40s; to see the graphic more easily, just click on it.)
We’ve taken away everything they love, deprived them of the opportunity to socialize and to experience those irreplaceable moments of youth, and demanded they accept this dystopia as the “new normal.”
Now that’s selfish.
Part of the natural order is that parents make sacrifices for their children, not the other way around. If vulnerable people wish to isolate themselves – a perfectly sensible course of action for some individuals – then they should isolate themselves, not demand that young people sacrifice everything dear to them and live atomized existences for a period of time that our overlords refuse to specify.
As I pass through middle age, the thought would never occur to me to make these demands of younger people. Am I prepared to tell them that while I enjoyed these pleasures when I was young, for the sake of my comfort they cannot have them? Who thinks like that?
Some of us – yes, even many of us in middle age and beyond – are prepared to say: this is no way for anyone, young or old, to live.
We want a life that includes weddings, family celebrations, hugs, live concerts, drinks with friends, thriving businesses, the arts, school dances, theater, and friendship from less than six feet away – and we’re willing to accept whatever risk accompanies these things, because no other kind of life is worthy of a human being.
And it’s not just the deprivation of basic, non-negotiable joys that the lockdowns cause. Even the New York Times admitted that lockdowns will lead to 1.4 million excess TB deaths, 500,000 excess HIV deaths, and 385,000 excess malaria deaths.
That’s on top of the 1.2 million children UNICEF expects to die as a result of the lockdowns.
Not to mention how many people have been prevented – by deadly regulations driven by irrational fear, or by irrational fear itself, drummed into them by a grossly irresponsible news media – from receiving major medical care they need. In the UK they’ve been predicting more avoidable cancer deaths than COVID deaths because of this problem.
Meanwhile, Doomers have been peddling a comic-book version of the virus. When Wisconsin courts said bars could reopen, this was supposed to lead to a massive spike in deaths there. All the social-media scolds said so. No such thing happened. Did this cause them to rethink their comic-book approach? You can guess the answer.
They practically cheered when spikes hit Arizona, Texas, and Florida, and they blamed those states’ reopenings – even though those states had been open for eight weeks before the spikes occurred.
Those spikes are over now, and they were brought down without lockdowns. Yes, some bars were closed, but what really happened, as Alex Berenson put it, is that they simply pretended they were restaurants.
South Dakota never closed at all. They had an outbreak at a meatpacking plant, but those are unrepresentative of society at large when it comes to the virus. The state is doing great – just 17 deaths per 100,000. Oh, they have low population density, you say. Well, Rachel Maddow insisted that disaster was bound to strike there, even mocking the governor: “You realize it’s an infectious disease?”
In fact, Governor Kristi Noem is now using her sensible approach as a selling point to recruit new South Dakota residents.
Everybody wants to criticize Sweden for not locking down – and no wonder: if a country can have good results without locking down, it makes the lockdowners look like the crazed sociopaths they are.
Oh, Sweden had a high death rate! That’s what they say. Well, around three-quarters of the deaths in Sweden occurred in some kind of long-term care facility, and the Swedes admit their failure there.
But that has nothing to do with the overall soundness of Sweden’s approach, since those facilities are isolated from society. How did society at large do? Extremely well. Number of people under 50 who died, out of a country of 10 million? Seventy.
These days there are barely any deaths at all in Sweden.
The virus does what it will do, despite the ad hoc destructionism of our control freaks with their white coats and clipboards.
There’s a sickness out there, all right, but I’m not talking about COVID-19.
I’m talking about the irrational, fact-free response.
Demand your life back.
Take your life back.
That isn’t selfish. You get one life. You want to live it. That’s normal.
What’s selfish and abnormal is the presumption that other people are entitled to your life.
If they want to live as prisoners in their own homes and experience life over Zoom, they can be our guest.
The rest of us intend to live.
Are you with me?
I am with Dr. Woods. It is one of the great things about this country. So long as one does not impede the ability of others to enjoy life and liberty as they wish, everyone is free to experience life as they want to. If you wish to shelter in fear inside your home, go ahead and do it. However, the rest of us should be free to live life to its fullest. All lockdown measures should end. Most, if not all, never had the consent of the governed for more than a few weeks.
Of course, if Joe Biden is elected President, that will all change. Then the whims of government types will become commands to be obeyed without question. The greatest and most successful experiment in human governance will be over.
Do not cave into them.
You are not alone.
You can make a profound difference.