I start by posing a question in the tradition of the ancient great Socrates. Where do you think this picture is from? It looks like it could be in the Ukraine, but it is not. It is Canada instead. What could be the reason for the assault on this pickup truck? Is there a terrorist or one of the ten most wanted loose in Canada? Alas, it is only a public protestor, one who objects to government policy, policy which many of us consider tyrannical. COVID tyranny, it appears, has reached a frightening new level.
COVID tyranny has spread around the world the last two years as if it itself is a virus. As COVID has diminished in severity, as we have learned more about COVID: who it impacts, what its effects are, how to treat it, etc, as the deaths per every 1,000 new cases have continued to drop, the fear and the sense of desperation emanating from Western democratic governments has only increased. Why do these governments move in the direction opposite the one which logic should lead us? Why are so many of their citizens following their lead, often without much serious thought or questioning?
One would think as we learn more about the COVID virus itself and as we become more adept at treating COVID patients, the rhetoric and assault on freedoms would be ratcheted down. We have seen a bit of that downward ratcheting of restrictions as elections draw near (and a brand new narrative is written), but in most places around the world, there is no other other reason for backing off that I can discern. Politicians who take a chance on freedom and have supported freedom the last year are doing well. Florida Governor DeSantis is up for re-election this year. His policies towards more freedom and a more open society are obviously popular and turning Florida into a solidly red state, so why aren’t more following his lead? The most recent polls show the race to be a runaway at this early stage:
Contrast these numbers with Biden’s. Biden is in the opposite COVID camp and his numbers are cratering fast. Do you think there is a link between COVID policy and popularity?
Too many governments around the world, especially the Western, more affluent ones, who don’t have enough real problems to solve apparently, believe they have all the “experts” in their employ, experts our politicians can direct to tell everyone else how to live their lives, from cradle to grave. When people object to COVID policy as mild-mannered Canadian truckers finally did, they threaten their government’s stranglehold of power over our lives and the government reaction is not what we would expect from a free and open society.
Former American president and founding father John Adams issued the following warning a couple hundred years ago:
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. (John Adams, October 1798)
His words have become more profound recently.
First, what about the value of life, our most basic right protected by the Consitution? Nearly fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the “right” to abortion throughout the country (abortions had been allowed only in certain states before that time). Former President Bill Clinton famously said a few years later that abortions should be “safe, legal, and rare”. They are some sort of necessary evil in his estimation. Does this Clinton statement still hold today? Abortions are still legal, albeit with some often-ignored restrictions. Whether or not they are safe is debatable (watch the movies Unplanned or Gosnell and tell me what you think), but they are certainly no longer rare. Today, any threat to reduce, limit, or restrict access to even a single abortion is met with an outrage usually reserved for events like attacks on our country. Take such a position and you are declared a misogynist for opposing women’s rights, never mind any discussion about the child’s most basic right of life. I also wrote on this topic previously: A-child-is-not-a-choice; Never-again
The point is that the respect for life, not just the lives of mothers at certain points in time, but the lives of all individuals, the unborn and the living, has declined dramatically throughout my lifetime. In the last two years, COVID has clarified so much of what people really think. In the U.S. today, there are many who do not care about the lives of their political opponents (they should all go to Hell and don’t deserve the same rights as those of us who are “in the know”) as well as those who advocate for no medical treatment for the unvaccinated (I have shared many such examples in the past; see below as well). They see no moral problems with this type of thinking.
They want to believe they are saving us all from ourselves. Who made them God? We often object to God’s terms of salvation. How do you think we will react when our politicians, our school boards, our colleagues and our neighbors try to save us instead?
Stop judging, so that you will not be judged. For with whatever standard you judge, you will be judged, and with whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you focus on the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the beam that is in your own eye? How will you tell your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye,’ when, in fact, you have a beam in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)
Why is it folks who want to deny treatment for the unvaccinated cannot see that the overweight, the out-of-shape, the drunk driver, the drug-addicted, the smoker, and so many others are accountable for their own poor health as well? We do not hold these folks accountable for deliberate mistakes that impacted their own health. Such a standard is not sustainable. I have been vaccinated and that makes me a good person, and so by extension, if you have not been vaccinated, you are a bad person and you must be made to pay for your stubbornness–at least until you think exactly like me. That’s a horrible standard. Where is the compassion? Where is the attempt to understand someone else’s unique circumstances? Where is the concern for those who are caught up in bad situations? Is there any logic or thought at all in this point of view?
Would these folks deny medical care to the drunk driver injured in an accident because he is most likely to blame for his own situation? We have never thought in those terms before, so why now judge the unvaccinated person by a different standard than the drunk driver?
Or maybe they want to extend their judgment to all those who lack the foresight and good judgment they believe they have themselves and have (hopefully) followed? That’s a really scary place to be if you ask me; you just might be wrong or maybe you made a mistake yourself once or twice. Furthermore, we are warned such judgment will come back to us in another form some day. Attempt to correct your brother or sister when they go astray, but do not condemn them. Of course, folks who think this way may not accept the words of Matthew or the other gospel writers; they see Christianity as just one of the many alternate paths in a sophisticated modern world, a wide world of wonderful choices (many of which are less restrictive and less demanding than Christianity), or if they are Christians, they do not truly understand the teachings of their own faith, and that is the real problem.
The decline of our national pride in religious, Constitutional, and moral values, the problem that Adams warned of, gained traction more than fifty years ago, but that decline has gained considerable momentum during the last fifty years; more people accept the alternative points of view and choices this world offers them. The nihilistic “tear down the past and all its icons” view is now institutionalized (in education, government, news media, social media, and corporate America) and is no longer restricted to a few fringe folks. The past was not perfect, yet this crowd’s plan is to throw the baby out with the bath water; they cheer themselves on for success in doing so, and think little of what comes next. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
Religion, which our founders, for the most part, thought very important, seems not-so-important to many today. Billy Graham, the famous American evangelist, spoke about Canada many years ago. Graham was much more optimistic about Canada’s prospects in 1978, but he clearly recognized their lack of church attendance back then. Go to the 1:30 mark to listen to his comments about Canadian church attendance.
He didn’t say it, but I will: first, the religious fervor departs, then we leave our churches, and then we find our nations in awful situations with no moral compass and no purpose, like Western culture today.
My parents said similar things about Europe when they lived there off and on in the 1950’s and 1960’s: beautiful places with beautiful churches which are mostly empty. What has happened to their values since their churches emptied? You can say church attendance is not a good measure of our future problems. You can also say that there are good people who do not attend church and that church does not necessarily make you a good person. You can say spirituality and belief in God is more important than attending church. Your conclusions would be wrong on all points. When we move away from community worship, we lose our perspective and judge our own actions through our own distorted lenses. We need our fellow parishioners to hold us accountable and to help us stay in touch with our common values.
From what I can tell today the Christian Church is more alive in Africa and places where Christians are still persecuted than it is in first world countries in Europe, along with Canada, Australia, and the U.S. These so-called Christian, freedom-loving, nations are looking for new problems to solve and leave their mark upon, problems like climate change and systemic racism, largely made-up problems that less affluent societies with much more substantial problems cannot afford to focus on. The West is focused on the wrong game and will eventually pay a reckoning for it. Let’s just return to God and the basics. We need revival.
So, collectively we abandoned organized religion (perhaps you call yourself “spiritual” or something nice sounding like that), then gradually we abandoned societal values, and today we all shake our heads as we watch the moral decay, increasing failures, and lack of common purpose from the most successful, affluent and richest countries in all of human history.
Many folks still don’t see the connection among these events because enough time lapses in between so they cannot remember what life used to be like (nor can they look to history either because they probably do not know it either). They lament the problems we all see, but still do not see the need for revival nor how the neglect of God, Church, and communal worship is linked to so many of our problems. They look for new solutions to what they see as new problems, but many problems were solved by others long ago.
Human nature has not changed since time began, and we’re not collectively smarter than all those who came before us. Accept that fact, please. We should look to past solutions for the future (this is why we are called “conservatives”). Don’t rely solely on the past, but carefully prune and build upon the knowledge our ancestors provided us. Do not abandon it because you believe you live in a more enlightened age. Chesterton said this about 100 years ago:
“Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead . . . Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.” (from Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton)
Canada Tyranny
When COVID-19 became a household name in 2020, the initial overreaction was understandable. We learned more, yet countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, and Germany stayed with such extremes, even after solutions and the data became clearer. California, New York, New England, and other U.S. states were no better. COVID was an opportunity to finally accomplish things we had never been able to do before–if only we could convince everyone the crisis must continue for a little longer. Leaders lectured us on the rules, but were caught time and again not following the rules themselves.
The last two years have been a nightmare, not so much because of COVID itself and the grave damage it has wrought. COVID has revealed the ills of our current culture: that we do not think logically or clearly and that we are being led more and more by our emotions. We are led by folks who call themselves experts, but are not all that smart themselves. What happens when something more life-changing than COVID impacts our culture? COVID is a big thing for sure, but it is not as much as we have been led to believe. It is not on the scale of World War II or other trying events in our history.
We are doomed if we don’t wake up. Future events will impact us more deeply and we will not be prepared if we can’t cope with events like COVID. Freedom disappeared in Afghanistan last year and Hong Kong the year before. These folks understand what they have lost. This year Russia invaded Ukraine and will likely install a puppet government soon. I expect it is inevitable China will invade Taiwan soon. These events should remind us of the lead up to WWII and how the West tried to appease the aggressors. Joe Biden tells us this week that liberty will win out in the end, but his empty words provide no solace for folks who have lost freedom yesterday. Think about this: how will we in the West handle the massive changes that could come from these future events? How will we respond to the loss of Western power that will diminish our current charmed status? We must be stronger than we have been to this point.
In any case, the past two years especially tell us we are ignoring the founding principles of our own Constitution, the document that has been a beacon to folks coming to our country from around the world. Folks who simply want to destroy the current system, are killing the golden goose; they don’t seem to care about the future, unless it is their own short-term political one.
The last two years were bad, and then the tyranny got worse in 2022, the year it was supposed to all get better, the year we supposed to get back to normal. Canada has taken us to that new low.
Interestingly, my sampling of Canada’s media show it is no longer sympathetic to its own government’s increasingly strict policies.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/manning-canadas-increasingly-autocratic-government
we’ve just learned that 400 trucks are enough to bring Ottawa to a standstill for three weeks. Taken separately they may not amount to much but at their core they share something potent: a belief in a wholly different world. Malcontents have always been there, but something — blame Donald Trump if you want, or the pandemic, or impatience with obvious injustices — has encouraged a determination to be heard, while the internet and social media has given them the means to challenge the beliefs with which we’ve so long insulated ourselves.
The Canadian government has determined that protesting is the problem. They don’t like the protestors scrutiny of their policies. Some protests lead to riots and violence, so shutting down such out-of-control protests may make sense, but not these protests.
the “national crisis” in Ottawa, where no one’s life was endangered and a major issue was what to do with all the kids the protesters brought with them. If the protesters had parked their pickups in some smaller, distant burg, would they have earned the same saturation coverage?
A few protesters lingered south of the blocked-off area. Tara Smyth said she had been at the protests all weekend and was now on her way home to Barry’s Bay, Ont., with her dog. She said she understood the police needed to clear the streets but said it’s not “right” they “have taken away people’s rights to speak up for themselves.”
“We have the right to come back once the roads are clear. We should be able to come back and stand on Parliament Hill and express our desires,” she said.
Smyth said she wasn’t concerned about the police potentially pursuing her for participating in the protests after she left Ottawa. “I haven’t done anything illegal. I haven’t caused any trouble,” she said. “I followed all the orders of the police, and I’m not worried about any repercussion of me being here.”
The Canadian leader, Trudeau, sought and quickly obtained authorization from Parliament to use the “Emergency Powers” act to shut down these protests. Maybe it makes sense to clear bridges and traffic routes that have been blocked, but you do not need an act of Parliament to do so. You also don’t need to destroy protestors livelihood to clear the streets.
Trudeau was losing the public relations battle and his options were either to negotiate or to use force to expel protestors. He chose the latter. But it is not a just action. I would have thought negotiation would have been the only option for a truly democratic society. Canada’s government is not so different than the U.S.; I thought they still believed in the sovereignty of the people. I never would have imagined two years ago that expelling legitimate and peaceful protestors would be chosen by any democratic, freedom loving nation. What’s gone wrong in Canada?
Again, a clear and obvious double standard stands out in this action:
New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh made the answer to that pretty clear when he announced his willingness to grant the government the extraordinary powers it sought to clear the laneways around Wellington Street, but stipulated they must never be used against “Indigenous land defenders, climate change activists, workers fighting for fairness.” Insisting that the rights of some Canadians deserve greater protection than others isn’t normally a position you associate with Singh’s party.
Did you catch that? The New Democratic Party Leader says this power must never be used against “Indigenous land defenders, climate change activists, workers fighting for fairness.” Why protect the rights of some but not others? It is acceptable to use these tough measures against truckers and their financial supporters, but not against the other groups, groups that are more aligned with you politically? Imagine such a bill passing the U.S. Congress, one which perhaps said it is okay to shut down Black Lives Matter protests but not other protests, not protests for groups and issues that are more near and dear to our hearts. If honestly reported (that is a stretch at times), such a proposal would never be put to a vote. If anything, we want our government to treat everyone fairly and this Emergency Act is anything but fair.
Imagine too now that our own government went after your bank account because you participated in or perhaps simply just donated to a protest, and a peaceful protest at that. The U.S. Declaration of Independence guarantees “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. “Pursuit of Happiness” was originally termed “Property”, something a bit more tangible and easier to define. This attack on the livelihood (i.e. the property) of those not breaking the law is a dangerous precedent, but one that was clearly on the horizon the last few years. As mentioned earlier, the promise of Life has been under attack for more the last fifty or more years and the promise of Liberty is slowly being dismantled as well the last few years. Now, we are seeing attacks on Property, the last of these three major pillars provided by God and guaranteed by our system of government.
TTAWA, Ontario (LifeSiteNews) — Canada’s Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland admitted Wednesday that the reason some Freedom Convoy supporters’ bank accounts were frozen under the Emergencies Act (EA) was to “convince” them to “listen to reason,” adding that some accounts will stay locked.
“These accounts, bank accounts, were frozen to convince people who took part in the occupation and illegal blockades to listen to reason,” said Freeland, as translated from French during a press conference announcing the end of the EA.
What do we draw from this commentary other than it may not be acceptable to peacefully protest in Canada? Why do they continue to hound these folks? The emergency has ended, yet the beatings will continue apparently:
At the same time, Freeland noted some accounts will remain frozen. “I’d just like to stress that there are bank accounts that will remain frozen but not because of the emergency measures. There will be other orders, court orders, and others, and because of these orders the bank accounts may be frozen.”
On Wednesday at the same press conference, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that he was ending the EA, saying “the situation is no longer an emergency.”
Wow. What else can I say? The emergency has ended but the police, as well, will continue to track folks down. Why?
OTTAWA — Downtown Ottawa seemed eerily calm Sunday after the tumult of weeks of occupation, but as the last of the protesters headed away from streets now controlled by police, they were warned criminal charges could follow them home.
“If you are involved in this protest, we will actively look to identify you and follow up with financial sanctions and criminal charges,” Ottawa police tweeted Sunday. A day earlier, interim Police Chief Steve Bell was asked whether police would continue to go after those protesters who had remained in Ottawa, even if they chose to go home at some point.
“The simple answer is yes,” he said, adding the investigation would go on for “months to come.”
“You have my commitment that that investigation will continue and we will hold people accountable for taking our streets over,” Bell said.
Not only are they going after protestors in Canada, but they are going after folks in the U.S. as well, folks who supported these truckers financially. Supporting peaceful protestors is a problem? Kamala Harris actively and openly supported freeing BLM protestors, some of whom turned violent and were arrested in 2021. Contrast those folks with truckers who object to being vaccinated, object to obtaining a vaccine that has proven to have limited capability the last six months, and against a virus that is now in decline, and in a country which is already overwhelmingly vaccinated. Mr. Trudeau, sir: what is the problem?
But West noted in an email that even when the powers under the Emergencies Act expire “that doesn’t mean that other tools, like the ones we saw used in provincial courts, won’t apply.” That includes the court order that put a freeze on U.S. Christian fundraising site GiveSendGo distributing the more than $8 million it has raised for the protesters.
I am concerned that COVID tyranny could continue spread as we grow accustomed to it. They are relenting in some places, maybe only because their game is up, but in Canada, the tyranny lives on. We must speak out against this.
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said the act had allowed them to cut off significant funding for the protest, to help bring it to an end.
“This is another example on how the concrete and targeted measures under the Emergencies Act are being put into effect. We have been able to freeze at least 76 accounts, representing $3.2 million that were attributable to illegal blockades.”
Something is very wrong here. Most Canadians supported vaccines and vaccine policies the last couple years. They have been more compliant than U.S. citizens it seems. But the most recent reactions from the Canadian government have gone too far even for Canadians. They recognize they are vindictive and more in-line with an autocratic government, even more so than the restrictions of the last two years.
The Canadian government towed these protestors’ trucks after three weeks in Ottawa (by the way, private companies in Canada refused to tow them). Now, the government says they may be auctioning them to pay for the government’s expenses. Governments never care about costs, at least not costs on this small scale, except when they use it as pretext for something else. They are attempting to put the protestors out of business, perhaps send them into homelessness, after the protests have ended? Why? Truckers who travel thousands of miles, mostly alone in their cabs are a threat to the future stability of the country? Are you kidding me? All this is for a virus that is clearly in decline at the moment. More on the numbers below.
Will they have elections in Canada soon? I don’t know much about their election process, but Trudeau would likely be out as his party is falling in the polls. He survived this crisis, but for how long will he be able to maintain power? Why not follow the DeSantis method instead? It is clearly working in Florida. Don’t politicians love to copy others’ success?
I hope the Conservatives are better than the U.S. Republicans, but Canadian media is doubtful of them as well. If the Conservatives displace Trudeau’s Liberal party it will be mainly because of Trudeau’s failures not any positive message of their own, but at least discrediting such tyrannical policies would be a start.
While Canada may have changed, it’s painfully obvious our political leadership is lagging woefully behind. None of the three major parties shows any indication of understanding what’s happening around them, much less adapting accordingly, fixated instead on whatever immediate gain they can squeeze from the commotion. Our prime minister is an increasingly grumpy and distant figure who prefers insulting and disparaging opponents while defining which views he deems “acceptable.” Conservatives spend more time hunting for leaders than searching for solutions and seem intent on plunging deep into the pool of eternal outrage.
The poll asked respondents whom they’d vote for if a federal election were held at that moment. 39 per cent of leaning and decided voters chose the Conservative party, while 31 per cent of respondents chose the Liberals.
In my last COVID post (Covid-is-still-Trending-Down), I mentioned Ontario Governor Doug Ford; Ontario is the province of the federal capital, Ottawa. I know nothing about Ford or his party or what he or it have stood for in the past. I know his party is not as large as the Conservatives or Liberals, but I can discern he at least has a head on his shoulders and is listening to his voters. He is doing the right thing at the moment. Why is it so hard for others to follow this lead?
Ontario-Governor-says-we-are-done-with-this
“We also know that it doesn’t matter if you have one shot or 10 shots, you can catch COVID. See the prime minister; he has triple shots, and I know hundreds of people with three shots that caught COVID. We just have to be careful.”
Ford added, “We can’t stay in this position forever.”
“We’ve got to learn to live with this and get on with our lives. I bet if I asked every single person in this room, ‘Do you want these damn masks on or do you want them off?’ They want them off. They want to get back to normal. They want to be able to go for dinner with their families, ” he said.
“Ontario will also lift proof of vaccination requirements for all settings at this time. Businesses and other settings may choose to continue to require proof of vaccination,” the government said.
The Numbers
U.S. COVID deaths were down by almost 25% the past week. They are now a little above 1,550 per day (as of February 28), much less than a month ago. However, we’ve not done that well overall. The U.S. still ranks 18th world-wide in per capita deaths. Do you think it might be because we have ignored, not followed, science? Maybe that will change now.
Still, I would say things are looking up at the moment. Cases have fallen to below 62,000 per day (and they are still falling quite rapidly). This a drop of 760,000 from six weeks ago on January 13, a 92% drop in cases. We are lower than we were at the same time a year ago, even after the remarkable rise in cases in December and January.
UPDATE NUMBERS
Last summer, it looked like we might be nearing COVID’s end, but it was not to be. The Delta variant struck over the summer and then Omicron this past winter. In addition, we thought vaccines were the silver bullet, but we have learned vaccine immunity wanes over time. It could not stop the spread of COVID during this past Fall and Winter. It helped some, but really not that much.
But this year could be better, or so some doctors tell us. Dr. Campbell in the videos below explains why we are in a good position now and what to expect:
Campbell-natural-immunity-questions-answered
Campbell-natural-immunity-explained
He notes both symptomatic and asymptomatic infection are offering good levels of protection and says it is remarkably fortunate that Omicron came and came at this time. He added that 98% of the people in the UK have some level of protection, either from vaccines or natural immunity. In addition, every time we get infected, we boost our immunity, so he concludes COVID will be endemic for a long time. Why do folks continue to tell us otherwise?
Our pediatrician in his newsletter also adds to this testimony.
Link to newsletter: https://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/manage/optin?v=001xQbTsTOUeGCCuHBIaK9NoqSiCrtJi5d_kvi0-tJS-L8K1JEayZdxQWmPMtfopQ60MJ4FpkexhFqGUrTcYYKSxP-IEbqaboMe22l_ofG55c8%3D
8) Immunity post natural infection lasts considerably longer than post 2 dose mRNA vaccination. Antibody related immunity last roughly 6 months post vaccine only. Natural infection plus a vaccine dose lasted well north of a year. (Hall et. al. 2022) Again, this is only antibody related. T cell activity lasts much longer and with better mutational specificity. The bottom line remains that in multiple studies now, natural infection once vaccinated or the other way around vastly trumps vaccine alone. Again, it is highly unlikely that repeated boosters makes any sense for the vast majority of us. Only, the high risk groups appear to need boosters 4 and on.
In his video from this past Sunday, Dr Campbell laments why our politicians don’t understand natural immunity.
Natural-versus-Vaccine-Immunity
God love you man. You are just trying to be honest and share your knowledge with us, but let me tell you about politics. The smarter politicians know the truth about natural immunity, but they think it is in their interest to mete out the information only to further their interests and not ours.
Australia has been quite a dumpster fire throughout the COVID era. For the last half of 2021, we started talking more about the limitations of the COVID vaccines, but Australia continued to rely solely on vaccines. Maybe it was not such a good decision. Omicron, which has been the least serious of all, the least pathogenic, impacted Australia more than any of the other strains. In the first two months of 2022, they experienced almost 90% of their cases (323K of 3.2M total) and 57% of their deaths (2,982 of 5,171 total). That does not look like they are improving and learning from mistakes, does it?
What a disaster, and what an overwhelming empirical case against their policies of 2020 and 2021.
Across the world things are moving in the right direction now as well.
On The Queen, COVID Tests and More
In the UK, Boris Johnson has lifted all COVID restrictions. The British seem on the right track at least. The Queen also got COVID, and you know what? It turns out the Queen is a right-wing, horse-medicine loving, conspiracy nut too, or at least her doctors are as they decided to treat her with Ivermectin. It appears to have sustained the 95-year-old throughout this ordeal. How much more could Ivermectin have done if shared more widely with all, not just well-known 95-year-olds in the UK?
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/queen-elizabeth-ii-has-covid-everything-we-know/
Back home, our family received our ‘free’ COVID tests from the Biden administration. We ordered them before we contracted COVID and the day they were available (which was exactly one year after Joe Biden promised he would begin shutting down COVID). The package took four weeks to arrive, and arrived three weeks too late to be of any use to us, a microcosm of American COVID policy, if you ask me. In fact, more than half the tests that were made available have not even been claimed by citizens, another microcosm of how out-of-touch our government is.
Our pediatrician also had a few interesting responses to his survey questions in this week’s newsletter. Folks in our locale, at least, have moved on:
Are you going maskless now that the rules are loosening?
77 % say Yes
Are you planning natural infection from now on if you have no risk factors?
84 % say Yes
I am in agreement. Being low risk, my family will be mask-less and naturally infected from now on pending any changes in variants necessitating a differential response. For the higher risk among us, masking and vaccinating makes complete sense
In his newsletter, he also discusses risk of heart disease post-COVID. We should be aware of such things, especially if at risk:
11) Heart disease risk increases after Covid disease. In a massive Veterans Affairs study, Dr. Xie and colleagues noted that veterans who had recovered from SARS2/COVID-19 had dramatic increases in cardiovascular problems during the year post infection. . . . It remains critical from now on that all individuals that have genetic risk factors for these diseases get vaccinated and maintain an anti-inflammatory lifestyle. This disease is not going away according to current realities, therefore, self care is the only best option. If Covid eventually becomes a common cold, then great. If not, then prepare for your eventual infection.
I end with one final link from Senator Ron Johnson. I have not had chance to preview this myself but have heard it has a lot of good information. If you have not seen it already, take time over the weekend to carefully review and ponder. Senator Johnson has been a leading advocate for common sense with COVID, one of the few politicians who has stood up consistently for the regular folks like us.
Seek the Truth 
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