“The most outrageous lies that can be invented will find believers if a man only tells them with all his might.” ~Mark Twain

How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again!” ~Mark Twain

I didn’t expect to spend a good portion of my time in 2020 talking and writing about a virus. But it is only necessary because of the gullibility of people.  I wouldn’t be talking about this much, if at all, if there were no government shutdowns, and if I didn’t feel like I was walking in a hospital every place I go.

The establishment sold fear.  They sold it hard. And it worked.

We already had two very different political worlds in America going into 2020.  There are obviously great degrees of variation in this, but it is still reality.

Now there are two very different worlds in terms of coronavirus fear.  There are the pro mask people and the anti mask people. Actually, I don’t know of anyone who is anti mask in the sense that they believe others should be prohibited from wearing one.  They just don’t want to be compelled to wear one, and they think it’s stupid.

So maybe it is more accurate to make the dividing lines between people who are in favor of quarantining and those who are against quarantining.  But again, I don’t know of anyone who is against quarantining in the sense that they believe others should be prohibited from quarantining.  I don’t know of anyone who says that people have to leave their house and not distance themselves from others.  The people against quarantining just don’t want to be forced to stay inside their house, and they don’t want to be prohibited from meeting up with others of like mind.

I have said from day one that anyone who is fearful of the virus is allowed to stay home, to distance, and to take any other precautions on their own, as long as they don’t interfere with the rights of others.

It is really the use of government force in response to the virus that gets to the heart of the matter.  I know of a couple of libertarians who were terrified of the virus, but they did not favor government-imposed lockdowns.  I’m sure there are a few people who are very pro mask who don’t believe everyone should be forced to wear one.  But the people who fall into these camps are so small as to be almost irrelevant.  But if someone believes the media hysteria of the coronavirus but doesn’t believe in any government force in response, then I will consider that person on my side, even if I may discount their opinion on the virus itself.

Digging in Deep

The problem I see at this point is that I don’t know how some people are going to change their position.  They have dug in so deep, how can they possibly reverse their stance at this point?

If 99% of people get back to a somewhat normal life – something at least resembling February 2020 in America – then I could see the remaining 1% just giving up and pretending like everything is fine now without addressing some of their previous concerns.

I have heard several people say that they won’t go back to normal until there is a vaccine. But what if a vaccine never comes? Are they literally going to stay locked up in their house for the rest of their life?

I know of many people who have shifted their opinion since March 2020.  This includes conservatives and libertarians.  I can’t really think of any people on the political left who have changed their mind on the threat of the virus, but I’m sure there are a few somewhere.  Some have at least softened their stance.

The conservatives and libertarians I am speaking of were very fearful of the virus back in March 2020.  For some reason, they believed the hype coming from the people who have continually lied to them in the past.  I don’t understand how you can assume that the same establishment media that will lie to you to get us into a war would not be lying about the seriousness of a virus. Sure, there were supposedly expert epidemiologists warning us of the dangers, but the establishment media also finds national security experts who tell us to go to war.

Anyway, the people I do know, or know of, who have had a change of heart, have done so in a variety of ways.  Some flat out will admit that they were bamboozled, but this isn’t many.  Some will just pretend like they never did change their mind and that they knew is was overblown hysteria from the beginning.  I find most people though are somewhere in between.  They will slightly admit that they have had a change in opinion.  They might say that we know more about the virus now and that it isn’t as big of a threat as was thought in March, and there is definitely some truth to that.

It has now been about 6 months since the hysteria started, and some have been quite aggressive with their views since the beginning.  I have been firm in my beliefs since the beginning of this, so it is no problem for me to get back to a normal life.  I don’t have any explaining to do when I walk into a store without a mask because I never wore one in the first place unless it was absolutely mandatory.

But what about the other side?  What about the people who were telling others that they were going to kill granny if they go to the store without a mask?  How do they back down from this position?  Even if the coronavirus completely goes away, there is always somebody out there with the flu.

Not Backing Down

Earlier this week, footage was released of Nancy Pelosi walking in a hair salon without a mask. She was getting her hair done, even though salons in California are essentially shut down.  And Pelosi has, of course, been a hardcore proponent of mask wearing and promoting any kind of fear of the virus that she can.

In good leftist fashion, she attacked the salon owner for supposedly setting her up.  It is Pelosi who wants the apology.

Many people on the right are calling her a hypocrite, and rightly so.  People hate hypocrisy.  But I think there is something worse about this than just the hypocrisy.

Looking at Pelosi’s actions – going to a salon and not wearing a mask – it tells us that she doesn’t believe the things she is saying.  She knows there is no safety issue with going inside a salon and not wearing a mask.  Yet, as a politician, she strongly endorses all of the government-imposed measures that are done in the name of safety.

In other words, Nancy Pelosi knows this stuff is fake.  She knows that there is no major safety issue.  Yet, she doesn’t mind lying about it for political points, even though it has wrecked hundreds of thousands of small businesses and resulted in tens of millions of people unemployed.

Unfortunately, most people on the left will tune this out.  They will call it a rightwing talking point.  They may not even like Pelosi, but they will not concede a point to the other side.

I also witnessed this in the reaction to the news that the CDC website classifies only 6% of the total COVID-19 deaths as being the sole cause of death.  For the other 94% of people, there were co-morbidities. In other words, someone could be dying of cancer and test positive for COVID-19, and they would be listed as a coronavirus death.  This has been something that the non-fear side has been pointing out for a long time now.

It is amusing watching the responses to this on my Facebook feed.  Again, the fear people just dig in deeper.  They have to explain it away.  It is nice to see them on the defensive though.

I have seen numerous posts pointing out that just because someone has other health issues, it doesn’t mean they deserve to die.  They will say that they could have lived a long life with other ailments and that the coronavirus put them over the edge that they otherwise wouldn’t have gone over.  I have seen many variations of this, and they speak to us as if we are completely stupid.

They are saying these things as if most of us didn’t comprehend this before their enlightening post. I have seen a few people say that 94% of deaths had nothing to do with coronavirus, and this is not accurate if you are basing your argument on the CDC website.  It is certainly plausible that some of these people would have lived significantly longer had they not contracted the virus.  I really don’t even know this for sure, but I do concede that the CDC statistic itself doesn’t mean we can assume that the 94% with co-morbidities would have died in the same timeframe anyway.

But here is the frustrating and rather unbelievable part.  The fear side won’t concede anything with this.  They won’t concede that a lot of these people would have died anyway in a short timeframe.  They won’t concede that maybe a good portion of these people would have died at the same time with or without the coronavirus.  They have their death count, and they’re sticking to it.

This little piece of information put out by the CDC is quite relevant no matter how you slice it. It shows what many of us have been pointing out for many months.  The death count, at minimum, is vastly overstated, and doctors and hospitals have been incentivized to label everything a COVID-19 death that they can.

In other words, it doesn’t matter what comes out now.  Even when something comes out like this from the CDC, an agency which the fear side relies on so heavily, it doesn’t change anyone’s opinion, or at least not visibly.  They just dig in harder.  They can’t concede that, at least, maybe the death count has been overinflated.  They will never admit that they were wrong, no matter what comes out.

The best we can hope for is that a majority of others find a way to get back to a somewhat normal life.  When the fear side sees other people going out and having fun, then maybe they’ll slowly get back into society and just not address their previous fears.

I don’t think most people on the fear side are like Nancy Pelosi.  They don’t see it all as a political move.  A majority on the fear side really are fearful.  But since it has become a political issue, it becomes harder for them to back down.  Of course, it was their side that made it a political issue in the first place by supporting the use of government to use force on people. They didn’t have to forcibly shut down private businesses.  They could have just chosen not to go themselves.

The worst thing about these people is that they think they are smarter than they are, and they think the other side is dumber than they are.  Some of the people on the fear side really are intelligent people when it comes to many things.  But they vastly overestimate their own intelligence, and they lack humility. I can see it just in the tone of the Facebook posts and comments that I see.  These people think they are vastly superior, intellectually speaking, so they think it is ok to mold society in their own vision.  This is the vision of the political left.

I have had many people talk down to me on this issue.  They talk to me like I’m an idiot.  So how can these same people ever admit that they were lied to?  How can they admit that they were suckered by the media hype of a virus?  The answer is that they will never admit it.

The best we can hope for is that they quietly drop the fear selling, and they drop their masks. They are just waiting for a statement from the CDC “experts” giving the all-clear sign.  Then they can take credit for their policies of lockdowns and mask wearing and say that, thanks to them, we can go back to a somewhat normal life again.  That is the only way I see that we can get back to a somewhat normal life.  Let’s hope.