America's Cold

 

I went to work for a few hours today. It’s Monday and we’ve just passed at least one milestone from my point of view, the temperature dropped below zero. I’ve been here for 13 years and it’s never been that cold. Some years it doesn’t even get below 30. Today and tomorrow, both below zero in the morning. I remember seeing it hit the single digits in 2011 when Tulsa experienced what people here refer to as ‘snowpacalypse’. My employer lost a week or more of deliveries and retail baseball sales which we never recovered that year. Back then the youth baseball teams were pouring into the store and loading up on bats, bags, cleats and every other kind of equipment we sold.

We didn’t move nearly as much that year. Amazing the effect of a really cold winter, the ripples are felt all over the state and the nation. Not to mention the already devastating Covid 19 year (the lost year) that is still keeping schools closed and a lot of states shut down. At this point it should be obvious that the lost businesses and lockdowns decreased individual freedom and transferred that liberty to the state. Individual states put serious restrictions in place that were unlawful. California and New York, the worst offenders, even had restrictions in place to keep families from gathering. But even here in Oklahoma the mask mandates put in place in cities did nothing to slow the spread of the virus.

What did finally slow it down? 

Apparently getting Trump out of office was the key. Almost immediately after the WHO (World Health Organization) changed the way cases were reported, on January 21 no less. What else happened that day? Joe Biden was sworn in as president, coincidence? Maybe not. The old method was causing a lot of false positives to make the spread of the disease seem much worse. WHO decided to lower the threshold for testing and viola! Cases started coming down almost immediately. I’m including the link to the news story because for more detail because it’s not really my expertise. But that’s just a recommendation you say. I found at least one state (Kansas) that changed their policy as well, even though it was almost 2 weeks before WHO’s press release. 

That tells me that a lot of these states and private labs knew how unreliable the above 35 measure was and went ahead anyway, making the case numbers spike. When the numbers spike local officials (technocrats) become little emperors, holding mid-day pressers and suggesting new mandates. They grind us down with statistics and numbers and expert recommendations that don’t make a lot of difference. They add their hot breath to the fear narrative that keeps pumping along like steam engine. Every time some new official or administrator or statistician speaks the machine gets more fuel. I got to the point where I despised the timid voice of our ‘nannie state’ mayor on radio and TV. I had to start clicking it off whenever they spoke.

Top politicians and health “experts” want to be seen doing something so they have meetings, essentially.

A lot of you probably have someone at work who loves meetings, adores them. They love presentations and information that could easily be put into an email. They love to take questions. That’s all that happened in 2020. The world caught a bad case of the flu and we had meetings about it.

I’m concerned about those careers that are lost for good. We can’t go on like this pretending that this Chinese virus is like Ebola. It’s not just the masks and the distancing that needs to end, it’s a general sense that all people are disease carriers. The forced isolation is bad news for people who need help; it’s causing depression and increasing suicide. We have new flu strains that pop up every few years and flu shot doesn’t kill them all. Why all the fuss about travel and distance and vaccines now? I don’t care how conspiratorial it sounds this has never felt right to me.

The question now is how does all shake out in the upcoming year? Do we all need to carry vaccine cards to travel and test every week? Do mayors and city councilors keep telling us to wear masks in public?

I believe Americans will get back to normal at some point and regain a sense of their personal autonomy and liberty. But it won’t happen without a strong rejection of technocrat politics. Weather can only set back business so much, but surrendering control to public officials is the end.