Don's Non-national issues column (I forgot to post it last Tuesday)

     THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   8/29/2023

New season, same old hype, hysteria

National issues column: Biden’s Burisma lies; Election integrity, voter ID, honest elections—at https://donpolson.blogspot.com/

As our summer RV camping draws to a close in Oregon’s coastal Waldport, it’s worth reflecting on the camaraderie, generosity and amiability of people you meet and camp next to in America. We started at a lakeside campsite in the Oregon Cascades, then changed plans to skip the Idaho visits to friends and Stanley Lake, spent a little “stay-cation” in our Bend, OR, home, and finally basked in coastal “outdoor air conditioning.”

A coolant leak, a reticence to subject our cats to excess heat with unreliable AC units in our rig, and a mobility-affecting knee problem, forced a change. Time in Bend allowed for sending x-ray images to my Red Bluff orthopedic surgeon, a 10-hour round trip for a consult, and the news that I need a new knee. Do they let you keep the old knee, maybe as a paperweight example of what not to let happen?

Fellow campers, the “crabbers,” share their abundance every summer. We don’t ask or drop hints; neighbors just feel generous when they reach their limit with more crabs than they expected. We heard a generator next to a tent to vacuum-seal their catch before icing down. Crab omelets, crab cakes, crab salad, or plain butter and garlic—it’s more-than-worth the effort to disgorge meat from shells.

On health-related local news, let’s hope to avoid resurgent “COVID protocols and mandates.” Seriously, folks, after most of America was relieved at being “over” the shared nightmare of masks, closures, shutdowns, lockdowns, forced vaccinations, etc.—which even POTUS Biden pronounced “ended” last year—the “mask of shame, submission and fear” rises as if from the grave.

In 2020, I wrote numerous columns on the fallacious misinformation behind every single pandemic policy and mandate, columns I reviewed in 2022 to see if subsequent data undermined anything. Nope; what was true then, remains true to this day.

The COVID-ocracy, even COVID-iocy, is coming back; see “It Sure Looks Like Mask Mandate and Vaccine Requirement Plans Are in the Works,” by Matt Dempsey, RedState.com. Morris Brown College, Lionsgate Films and Kaiser Permanente are forcing compliance (since revise or reversed), while increasing numbers of deluded people are virtue signaling via masks, donning the badge of subservience.

Debunked “false facts” of the pandemic: 1) Masking prevents the spread of the virus; 2) Vaccines prevent contracting the virus; 3) Vaccinated people cannot spread the virus; 4) The virus originated from a Chinese “wet market” selling bats;

4) Churches, bars, restaurants, and anti-mandate protests spread the virus—but not Black Lives Matter protests because racism apparently trumps disease; 5) Ivermectin is not for humans.

6) “Flashback: Revisiting the ‘3.4%’ COVID Death Rate Lie,” (pjmedia.com) when the actual death rate for those infected was less than 1%, a bit more lethal than the annual flu. Finally, Children had a vanishingly small risk of hospitalization and death from COVID, the lowest of all age groups. They should never have been subjected to oxygen-depriving masks, and learning-crushing remote lessons. Unions, you have some nerve!

Thinking masks protect you from a virus, as opposed to droplets from sneezing, is like thinking that chicken wire will keep barnyard fumes from your nose. No matter how many layers of chicken wire, that stink goes through. It’s like thinking a screen door will keep smoke out of your house.

From the first cruise ship that suffered a COVID outbreak—thousands of passengers and crew were exposed, hundreds infected, but just a relative few, elderly passengers died—it should have been obvious that the only truly vulnerable segments of the population were very elderly folks with “co-morbidities.”

I’m an example at 72 with COPD, a lung disorder, which is an official condition that excuses me from masking and depriving my lungs of oxygen. I was kicked out of a hardware store, a grocery store and an REI store in spite of having a doctor’s note and a copy of the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) policy exempting me from masking.

Let civil disobedience spring forth if the COVID-itarians try any of it again. Health “authorities” should stick to what is provable, tested and peer-reviewed rather than simply regurgitating CDC or WHO agenda-driven propaganda and policies.

“In California This Weekend, We Saw Again, How Easy It Is to Panic Americans,” (Townhall.com) illustrates the absurdity of the climate warriors and their need to instill visceral fear and guilt, and use hyperbole and “the sky is falling” rhetoric. “Worst tropical storm in a century” was the rant. Turns out that numerous hurricanes that have taken aim at California. All—Jen-Kath (1963), Hyacinth (1972), Kathleen (1976), Doreen (1977), Norman (1978) and Nora (1997)—ended up, just like “Hilary,” being fairly typical winter storms.

It's not exactly local but news media types attempting to downplay Biden’s abysmal Maui fire response were shamed over their double standards. They endlessly castigated President Bush’s Katrina response, and Ted Cruz’s absence from Texas when that state had a power grid outage, even though he had no local authority.