What nonsense!
~ Lao-tzu, 2,500 years ago
What am I afraid of?
Are you afraid of catching a bug that most people will completely recover from? That will give most people mild symptoms at worst? That won't even kill as many people as the annual flu?
Do you worry as much about getting the flu? Or getting in a car crash? Or dying of heart disease or cancer? Because you have a much better chance of having any of those things happen to you.
Are you willing to risk giving up your freedom of movement and association forever, because someone told you to be afraid of a bug?
Are you going to snitch out your neighbor because he's not obeying and conforming like you are? Does his refusal to conform make you uncomfortable about your own lack of reflection and your submission to peer pressure?
Are you OK with curfews? (Not like the virus works on a time schedule.)
Are you OK with arresting a father and daughter playing tee-ball in an empty park (which actually happened in Colorado)?
Are you OK with politicians telling you where you can go and what you can do, what stores are allowed to be open, and what you can and can't buy when you get there?
Are you OK that in some communities you can now be fined and imprisoned for not wearing a mask outdoors (even though non-surgical masks do nothing to protect you from the virus)?
Are you OK with killing the global economy to stop a bug? With putting millions out of work? Is it worth it?
Do you realize that hiding in your house will only prolong this madness, because it makes it far more likely that infections will spike again since we'll have established no herd immunity against the virus?
Do you realize that there's nothing magical about six feet? That a virus can travel farther than that, and that it can survive on surfaces other people touch at the grocery store?
Do you realize that the number of dead worldwide is still a vanishingly small fraction of a percent?
Are you tired of living in a media-induced panic? One that elected leaders who love power are all too happy to cash in on?
Do you realize you are being played? Manipulated? Controlled?
When are you going to stop? What will it take?
"But people are dying!"
Of course they are. People die every day. And they die in far greater numbers of other incidents and diseases than they do from C-19.
As a reminder, here's where things stand today:
0.001%: The number of C-19 deaths worldwide. One one-thousandth of one percent of the world population.
0.006%: The number of C-19 deaths in the United States. Six one-thousandths of one percent of the U.S. population.
That's what you're terrified of. That's what you're Covid-shaming people for when they dare to go about their lives. That's what you're handing over your freedoms and your economic security for.
You've been propagandized into thinking that if you let life go on as normal, everyone will die. They won't. It's a respiratory virus with a 95%-plus recovery rate. It's not the black plague. You let the media tell you every day about new cases and more deaths. You've let them condition you into seeing those who question the insanity as dangerous, reckless, irresponsible "Covidiots" who want to kill everyone. You don't stop to think that maybe they've taken the time to think through the official narrative and have found it lacking, rather than obeying like mindless sheep.
Every time you hear about someone going out and actually living life, and your response is "Do they want everyone to die?" -- then you can be sure you're being controlled by others telling you what to think. If you have a "Stay Home Save Lives" motto on your Facebook profile, or you go out of your way to announce that you're practicing "social distancing" and scolding anyone who doesn't, then congratulations -- you're a good, obedient little citizen who's dutifully fallen in line and doing what you've been told to do, with a little virtue-signaling thrown in for good measure so that the herd will pat you on the back for conforming, just like they have.
And if the solution to what terrifies everyone is to turn the world into a giant prison, then is the "cure" really worth it? If your fear has you handing over your freedoms, then what have you gained? You may have avoided catching a bug, but at what cost to your liberties and your quality of life? Is avoiding a bug really worth it if it means 24/7 tracking of your movements for the rest of your life, mandatory vaccinations, or being put under house arrest every time you have a sniffle? Is your safety, your fear of death, really worth the trade-off?
Our lives will never go back to the way they were, all because terrified humans allowed politicians drunk on power to prey on their fears.
One good thing about a situation like this is that you really get to see what people are made of. You can see how most people are truly brainwashed sheep, easy as pie to control when you fill them with fear. And the rest of us suffer for it. As my wife likes to say, never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Look, I know all about fear. I've always been an anxious person. A lot of it stems from early childhood trauma. Everybody's afraid of something. My point is, in this current environment, the thing to fear is not some bug that won't kill most of the people it infects, but rather the people fanning the fear, and the citizens who are willingly letting the government turn us into a Soviet police state out of that same fear.
The herd mentality, the pressure to conform, the unthinking reflection -- these are the things to guard against. Not a bug that will run its course, as all bugs do.
Must you fear what others fear?
What nonsense.
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