Four Years Ago, Events that Caused Immense Damage Began

This time of year, I am reminded that it was about four years ago that governments took us all, like lemmings, over the cliff of epidemic response disaster.  Nothing that was done made the slightest difference in ultimate infection or mortality rates; may have exacerbated them.  And four years ago, I put the first ad in the Star Tribune about the type and level of damage that this response would cause.  The idea of shutting everything down, closing schools and businesses, telling people not to interact with each other, was unfathomable to me, not just unprecedented but with no evidence to support the idea that these policies would limit transmission and mortality.  I and a few other people tried to warn of the inevitable failure of and damage caused by these policies, but no public health or government official had any intention of listening.  They were driven by fear.

Now almost everyone acknowledges both the failure and the damage.  We see constant research and articles about the harm done to overall health, to the country’s financial condition, to people’s social lives, and most of all to children’s educational attainment.  But I have no expectation that anything different will be done the next time.  Loud and fearful voices will be raised demanding that the government do something, anything; and our cowardly non-leaders will just enact the same stupid policies that failed before.

And of course, the damage in America has been exacerbated by the George Floyd situation and the pretext his drug overdose death became for exalting racist supposed anti-racism actions by governments and private businesses.  Nothing epitomized the ludicrous idiocy of pro-regressives more than telling people they couldn’t celebrate holidays with their families because it wasn’t safe, but encouraging mass rallies, rioting and destruction of public property, with no concerns that those events might increase transmission.   Fat Timmy Walz, who fully revealed himself as the Incompetent Blowhard by his mendacious, evidence-free actions during the epidemic, was the epitome of this hypocrisy.

So now we have a country in which people truly are more divided than ever, with an unsustainable federal deficit and debt load.  A country that is doing its best to become fully racist and discriminatory in all aspects of life, particularly against any group that succeeds based on hard work, knowledge, experience and skills.  A country with massive levels of distrust of government and public health officials.  A country in which the majority of the population dispairs that the quality of their lives will improve, and so turns to social media distractions, drugs, alcohol and gender dis-affirmation.  A country in which children are treated as ideological tools for social change.  In short, a nation on the brink of irreversible and rapid decline.  So thank you, Fat Timmy and all your tryrannical counterparts.

But I do offer true thanks for all the readers who have contributed so much to the blog and especially to the folks at the Powerline Blog, Scott Johnson and John Hinderaker, who were so helpful in spreading the message about the epidemic response and who brought far more attention to the blog than I could do myself.