It’s really simple. If you don’t have the fortitude to stand up for your opinions, resist bullying and tell the social media mobs to go fry an egg, then shelter in your metaphorical womb, check with the Woke and The Wonderful about their latest agenda items and directives so you can parrot them accurately, and shut the hell up.
At least Galileo was threatened with torture by an authority that wasn’t bluffing before he retracted what he knew to be true. What was Kelly Stafford, the wife of Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford, afraid of? Yet she quickly followed up her video, which was 100% correct, with a nauseating retraction on Instagram, as she wrote,
“I should never have used the word ‘dictatorship.I got caught up in the heat of the moment, that is my fault. I don’t know the answer and I won’t pretend to. I care about the people who are losing their lives or battling this.. and also the medical staff who care for them. and it is hard knowing these local business owners and watching them struggle and having to lay off their employees, not knowing how they are gonna make it. So I’m sorry. i let my emotions get the best of me. I love Michigan and the people here.. don’t get that twisted in this. This place was my rock during my tough times and I wish there was an answer that pleased everyone but we know that is definitely not the case.”
Her initial statement was concise, clear, sensible and correct. The Democratic Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, has repeatedly engaged in abuses of power in panicky, excessive, arbitrary executive orders related to the Wuhan virus. The only reason it has not received more attention is that so many Democratic governors have been equally arbitrary and, yes, dictatorial. A conclusion that their party is exploiting the pandemic to condition Americans to increased government control and make them dependent on nanny state assistance for survival is certainly supportable.
Of course, Hanlon’s Razor applies. They could just be fools.
For example, radical progressive Washington Gov. Jay Inslee issued new COVID-19 restrictions for his state Sunday. They include more limits on social gatherings, mandating the closure of bars, restaurants, and gyms, occupancy restrictions for businesses, bans on indoor sporting events, and prohibitions of wedding receptions and funeral wakes. The orders not only limit the number of people permitted to attend religious services; they prohibit choirs, bands, and ensembles, and even bans congregational singing.
Good citizens of totalitarian regimes learn to keep their head lowered and plead for mercy when they speak out of turn, or against the official definition of the greater good. People like Kelly Stafford put all of us in peril by emboldening the foes of our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
Ethics Alarms 
From the It’s Not All Bad files:
CA Judge Orders San Diego STRIP CLUBS MAY REOPEN
Churches? Not so much.
I’ve got to assume, Paul, that this comes as no real shock to you. I’m still trying to figure out why eating a bag of Doritos before my first beer protects me from Wuhan.
“I’m still trying to figure out why eating a bag of Doritos before my first beer protects me from Wuhan.”
Believe.The.Science.
Sumb!tch d_d, no wonder I haven’t been getting the desired results.
I’ve been skipping the Doritos…
Now perhaps you’re being a little hard on San Diego.
Our strip clubs may be open, but only if they’re serving food.
Churches do not provide the essential service of chicken wings, you see.
I wouldn’t attribute the listed restrictions to malice nor stupidity.
Decreasing the size of social gatherings decreases the size of potential outbreaks.
Singing is known to be a high-risk activity for the purposes of respiratory illness spread, even before COVID.
Indoor dining is relatively risky because masks are off.
Meetings are not a good idea when there are infinitely safer remote alternatives.
Other stuff on the list can be justified under similar cost/benefit analysis.
I personally miss theatre and gatherings (duh) and do worry for people whose livelihoods and mental health are at stake (also duh). I still think the conversation should be centred on finding the balance between contagion control and economic activity: what should be prohibited vs discouraged, how things should be enforced, what incentives/penalties to use. I don’t think it’s productive or warranted to accuse the other side of being malicious/inept/socially irresponsible/science-ignorant.
Unless they are malicious/inept/socially irresponsible/science-ignorant.
If you can explain how the same people insisting on these measures encouraging George Floyd protests and going to social and political gatherings of their own manage to hold these two positions without be 1) stupid or 2) dishonest, please do.
Keep the elderly and the health compromised quarantined and let the rest of the population go about their business.
Not in this lifetime, OB. I’m 75, COPD, Type 2 Diabetes. If you w3ant to quarantine me, you better have more than 16 people to do it, because I have 2 8-round clips. Whether or not I want to risk Wuhan is my business and MY business alone.
Bingo.
“you better have more than 16 people to do it, because I have 2 8-round clips”
Always admired and respected your supreme confidence, d_d; always will!
That’s true, d_d. My point was let the not at risk population do their thing. If at risk people want to do their thing as well, that’s fine too. As my 73 or so year old friend in Amsterdam said the other day of all the fear in Holland, “I don’t want to live in fear. If I die, I die. It’s not way to go through life.
Also not expected to be possible, unless you expect all these vulnerable people to be self-sufficient, or intend to invent drones to deliver their goods and care for them, or train caregivers to use hazmat suits.
The strategy for dealing with COVID-19 rests upon trust in the public health establishment.
The public health establishment forfeited reasonable expectation of trust on June 5, 2020.
Complete agreement. And they have done nothing since to restore that trust.
There is no way for them to do so.
I try to separate official policy from politicians and their ilk green-lighting protests in their admittedly irresponsible communications.
Regardless, dismissing or viewing overly suspiciously all quarantine measures risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
If we were getting reliable information on which to base our decisions, I would agree. Unfortunately, all we are getting is politicians, who are looking at the wrong numbers and a media who insist this is a “pandemic”. It is not. Pandemics generally involve entire populations. This Wuhan virus does not, except in the minds of our elected leaders, who have no idea what they are looking at nor howe to evaluate it.
States have relied on coercive measures to mitigate COVID-19.
For coercive measures to work, it requires trust.
As my late wife used to quote, “Never attribute an action to maliciousness when it can be explained by incompetence”.
Any discussion of crushing ineptitude ought include mention of The Gotch’s Razor…
Gov. Whitmer’s orders have been ruled unconstitutional. She has no authority to issue and enforce them. If I started making declarations that people have to follow and hired my friends to walk around with guns, imprisoning and taking money from people who violated them, I would be on the same side of the law that she is. All the state troopers enforcing those orders should lose their law enforcement credentials permanently.
This is the 3rd time I’ve tried to post this comment. It’s not going through. I’m going to try this time without a link to the website I got the data from.
Crap, that’s annoying. I just posted a comment and had it deleted by WordPress for whatever reason. Aaaarrrgggg!
Now I have to write it again from memory. Here goes:
The argument for all the recent closings is that the number of new infections documented in the US has skyrocketed. In mid-April, the 7 day moving average of new infections peaked at around 32,800. Yesterday, Nov 19, the 7 day moving average was almost 170,000.
For those of you who want a talking point against the closures, though, I suggest looking at the number of deaths attributed to Covid, which has dropped substantially. Again mid-April, the 7 day moving average of deaths peaked at around 2,250. On Nov 19 the 7 day moving average of deaths was about 1,400.
So in April, 2,250/32,800, vs. now 1,400/170,000.
Calculating the infection fatality rate is more complicated than just comparing today’s deaths vs today’s total new infections, but the point remains valid: something has changed. Covid is still not something you want to get. But whether it’s due to better treatments, lower initial inoculum due to mask wearing, a mutation in the virus, the virus having already ripped through the most vulnerable sectors of the population, a combination of all of those, or some other reason(s), Covid is clearly less deadly than in the early phases of the pandemic. I don’t have any data on this, but I would also guess that the long term effects for survivors of the virus all also much less severe than 7 months ago.
This changes the equation in the arguments for or against shutdowns. As you all know, on you have to put the damage to the economy, ruined lives due to that damage, depression and other mental health problems due to isolation (including increased suicides), and other negative impacts of the closures on one side of the balance. Looking at death rates, the side of the balance for those arguing for more shutdowns looks considerably lighter.
I think you’re right about most of those factors. One thing that I haven’t seen anyone talking about is the efficacy of these lockdown pronunciations on human behavior.
1. For every new lockdown, you are going to get diminishing returns. People can only muster so much spiritual and mental effort, and only towards only so many things.
2. The longer any lockdown goes on, the more you are going to get diminishing returns. This is not something to cast blame over; it’s just human nature and politicians and so-called “leaders” need to take these things into account instead of just saying “science” over and over again.
3. The more data people collect (including the anecdotal kind) the less compliance we will see. I just talked to a friend who visits hospitals all over Southern California for a living, and he is OVER the lockdowns, because he’s seen the exact opposite of hospitals being “overwhelmed.” Two days ago a friend told me that he knows someone who recovered from the virus and said, “I’ve had worse flus.” You can describe the boogeyman on the news, but over time, people will get a sense of the real threat (or lack thereof) and act accordingly.
4. The hypocrisy of pro-lockdown politicians is a hugely underrated factor. If Nancy Pelosi and Gavin Newsom think that they can break their own rules because they’re making a personal safety judgement call, EVERYONE is going to assume the right to do the same. We’re not going to take this any more seriously than they do.
5. This includes the media and health professionals who refused to offer an objective critique of the mass protests and riots. I think this is the most underrated cause of any virus resurgence. When ten-thousand people were crammed onto the freeway, shoulder-to-shoulder, and it was on the front page, and none of the experts cared, it might as well have been a giant, flashing, neon sign saying “LOCKDOWN IS OVER” to everyone in my neighborhood. It doesn’t even matter if some of the protests were relatively safe. What matters is the messaging; everyone who didn’t protests is still able to see that the rules are being arbitrarily broken for one specific group. You can’t just say, “well, justice is important to them, so it’s worth the risk” which is essentially what the “scientific” community told us. Guess what? Juan visiting his lonely grandma, hugging her, and letting her know she is loved before she dies is important to him, too.
#3: Absolutely. In March and April, I heard hospitals were slammed, especially in the New York area. I don’t hear that now. People are still dying from this (I just heard a friend of my wife’s died a couple of days ago), but the rate is way down. I saw a study about a week ago that not being vitamin D deficient reduces mortality to 10% of what it is if you are deficient.
#4 I hear there’s a recall petition for Newsom. I heard it from a friend who’s a Democrat. With so much political division in the country, my hat’s off to Newsom for providing an opportunity for everyone to unite on something.
Americans hate being told what to do. They are willing to make sacrifices so long as they know why and for how long.
It is apparent to a great many people that the whys are becoming increasingly muddled and the how long is arbitrary. Most of all, they see the double standards and the increasing lunacy of some of the restrictions.
Thank you! My point exactly.
Typo in the last paragraph. The second sentence should read: “As you all know, on one side of the balance you have to put the damage to the economy…”
The website I got the data from is w o r l d o m e t e r, without all the spaces. Why is that being censored? Very worrisome. It’s just a data aggregating site.
Per their “about” statement:
“W o r l d o m e t e r is run by an international team of developers, researchers, and volunteers with the goal of making world statistics available in a thought-provoking and time relevant format to a wide audience around the world. It is published by a small and independent digital media company based in the United States. We have no political, governmental, or corporate affiliation. Furthermore, we have no investors, donors, grants, or backers of any type. We are completely independent and self-financed through automated programmatic advertising sold in real time on multiple ad exchanges.
W o r l d o m e t e r was voted as one of the best free reference websites by the American Library Association (ALA), the oldest and largest library association in the world.
W o r l d o m e t e r is a provider of global COVID-19 statistics for many caring people around the world. Our data is also trusted and used by the UK Government, Johns Hopkins CSSE, the Government of Thailand, the Government of Pakistan, the Government of Sri Lanka, Government of Vietnam, Financial Times, The New York Times, Business Insider, BBC, and many others.”
As somebody said, “Cases! Cases! Cases! That’s all these people talk about!” May have even been Trump. They also keep talking about how in the past “increased cases have led to increased deaths.” If it’s a two week thing, that should be happening already.
To be clear, deaths are increasing from where they were in, say, October. They’re just clearly not anywhere near the rate they were back in March/April, especially when you compare the number of deaths to the number of documented infections.
And who’s dying? People in nursing homes and the few younger people with underlying conditions. Neither classes of which should be out and about.
Chris Marscher made the point the other day that people act woke because they want to conform and not stick out and they want to have friends. I think Chris is right. This woman just wants to be liked and fit in. It’s a more powerful motivation than I’d given it credit for being. Go along to get along.
She also doubtless was screamed at by her assigned handler in the Lions organization or the Ford family, whoever it is that wants to stay on good terms with the Michigan state governor and legislature.
Actually, Mrs. OB and I are having drinks with some new neighbors down the street who, as have we, have restored a mid-century house of some significance and we should be allies on that front. If Mrs. OB will agree, If it comes up, I’m going to act as if we disapproved of Trump and gladly voted for Biden, just to see how it goes. They strike me as likely being earnest, run of the mill limousine liberals. Should be interesting. Why fight it?
See, this illustrates why I am reluctant to call this country “America” anymore.
WHERE in the F*CK is the MASS DISOBEDIENCE, already?!!!
Now, I have to qualify: I am in no state of health to join in the necessary rebellion. But I am only one. In the large numbers that are able to rebel – yet not doing so – I see a reflection of mass weenieism. Call it “systemic weenieism.” It’s a predominant attitudinal self-denial that is insidious – and inexcusable.
But the rebellion has to be, must be, organized, you might contend. NO, it does NOT! Which ad slogan says, “Just Do It?” But now, it seems like the whole population of decent and honest people in this country are clinging in terror to a “duck and cover” strategy. Yeah, those old drills in schools would’ve made sure ALL of us would’ve survived the nukes (/sarcasm). Each of you is like the bear in the Gary Larson cartoon: You know the hunter has his gunsight on you, so all you can do is look back toward the hunter, point to the bear next to yourself, and suggest with sign language, “Shoot HIM instead!”
SOMEbody has to lead the way, even in a DISorganized revolt. I suggest emulation of farmer Max Yasgur (link follows). Sooner or later, if you don’t stand up on your own, come what may, EVERYONE will neither have, nor need, legs – everyone, that is, except the presumed “ruling class.” OFF ’em!
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/go-pound-sand.html#:~:text=%27Go%20pound%20sand%27%20is%20an,in%20the%20traffic%27%2C%20etc.
“WHERE in the F*CK is the MASS DISOBEDIENCE, already?!!!”
Coming right up!
You bet’cha!
My family has decided to forego our usual huge family Thanksgiving at my mother’s home in favor of several smaller gatherings. My wife and I are hosting our daughter and her family of four, and my siblings are each hosting only their children and grands. There will no doubt be numerous Facetime calls to the other groups during the day. My mom will be having dinner with my youngest sister and her husband, both of whom had COVID earlier in the year. Although my siblings and I are all over 62 and in the high risk category, we are being especially protective of our mother, who is 85 and certainly the most vulnerable of us all. We are praying for a more normal Christmas gathering.
This does beg the question.
Why has this lasted so long?
Looking back at eight months of “fifteen days to flatten the curve,” IMHO it is lasted so long at least partially because the wrong people have been taking all the precautions. Without all the precautions and restrictions, millions of young healthy people with little to fear from the virus would have already had it and been immune by now. It seems the government wants us all to contract the virus, one at a time.
One idea that could have ended the pandemic sooner would have been to, in exchange for financial compensation, offer to squirt COVID-19 up the noses of healthy people under 30 years of age and quarantine them for 2-3 weeks.
That would have paid off in reducing the rate of transmission.
Isaac:
“Churches do not provide the essential service of chicken wings, you see.”
Bread and wine won’t cut it?
These people are heroes!
http://lbpost.com/news/curfew-protest-coronavirus-huntington-beach