The Year of Living Fearfully

“He has a terrible fear of dying because he has not yet lived…”. - Franz Kafka

In the past three months, I’ve been in Los Angeles, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado Springs, and South Florida. I see the same sorry sight everywhere: healthy young people and children, walking alone along a beachfront drive or in a wide-open outdoor space, wearing a mask. From the brisk wooded trails of Devil’s Tower to the breezy palm-tree lined beaches of Fort Lauderdale, people behave as if there is cyanide in the air.

Ever since March 13, when every grocery store in Los Angeles was wiped clean, right down to condiments and toilet paper, America has been gripped by mass hysteria. Fear has not only undermined rationality and common sense, but it has become the sorrowful guiding principle of a nation built on freedom and courage.

Fear has become celebrated as “caution”, supported by “science” and “experts,” when in fact it has only resulted in months of needless suffering and death. Death of the souls and spirits of millions. Death of livelihoods. Death of careers. Death of families.

Fear kills, and when we look back years from now, we will find fear killed more people than the virus.

Fear can only exist when information is obscured. The more information we have, the more we can determine our own individualized risk, and then adjust our behavior. Instead, facts remain obscured such that risk assessment is impeded. Additionally, should one suggest that mindful risk assessment should be intrinsic to public policy, they are excoriated by the hysterical masses.

There is currently a “surge” in COVID-19 cases, yet simple aggregate case counts are provided only for simple minds. We are never provided context, yet context always matters. Who exactly is testing positive? What demographics? Age? Ethnicity? Location? Co-morbidities? Where might have they been exposed? Most importantly, what percentage of cases are asymptomatic, and in which demographics?

According to the CDC, 80% of COVID deaths are in those aged 65 and older, yet they only account for 16% of the US population. 97% of deaths are those aged 45 and older.

553 people under age 24 have died of COVID-19, less than 0.2% of the entire US virus mortality volume. That’s fewer than the 4,000 drivers aged 15 to 20 who die every year in car accidents, yet I see toddlers running around with masks.

94% of deaths are associated with co-morbidities, and the average number of associated causes of death is 3.

That’s the average. In other words, those who are dying of COVID-19 are dying partially as a result of a lot of other things as well. The most common comorbidities besides age are having the flu or pneumonia, respiratory failure, adult respiratory distress syndrome, high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes. Even obesity is listed as a co-morbidity in less than 5% of deaths.

The CDC clearly states that only infected or possibly-infected individuals and healthcare workers should wear PPE.

And yet, on my flight into Florida, a seemingly healthy young woman in the row in front of me -- wearing gloves, a mask, and goggles -- sprayed and wiped down her entire seat and covered the seat from top to bottom in medical exam table paper. She even used a rubber band to keep the paper in place by strapping it around the headrest.

Not 20 minutes earlier, as I stood in line at a Starbucks at LAX, another young woman who co-owned a chain of substance abuse treatment centers in both Florida and Los Angeles told me that every one of their centers had been at capacity for months. Alcohol has apparently been the primary vehicle for those experiencing the despair of being locked up and unemployed.

The fear isn’t merely perpetuated by the media and by our fellow citizens. Fear controls the seats of power of our governments. Remember that elected officials are just regular people who have been handed power. Most have no special knowledge of anything, and certainly know nothing about epidemiology. The only thing they care about is maintaining power. Neither they nor the “experts” they rely on want to be blamed for anything, so they choose the route that appears safest and kick the can of collateral damage down the road.

That’s why these politicians don’t actually believe what they tell us, so they ignore the rules they’ve set for everyone else. They don’t fear the virus but expect the rest of us to live in terror. They still draw their paychecks and go to their fancy restaurants while everyone else can only weep in despair at the paltry $600 the federal government deigns to spend on them.

The worst element of all this is just how many Americans want to live in fear, and thus abdicate responsibility for their own lives. How else to explain their demonization of a course of treatment – hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and antibiotics – that only now has quietly been approved by the AMA? How else to explain their refusal to take vaccines?

Think about this. Instead of hope and faith driving people to cheer on treatments, the desire to live in fear drives the rejection of the same.

The only way out is to find the facts and take control of our own lives. Demand common-sense policies. Resist. Rebel. Don’t just do it for yourself. Do it for the millions of hourly workers who need their jobs back. And then recall or vote out those who inflict this nightmare upon us.

I knew this country was over back in March when I saw how many FREEPERS of all people were so willing to shut down their lives and businesses at the direction of some jackass in a governor’s office ... and even came here on FR and scolded their fellow conservatives for refusing to buy into the hysteria themselves.

See my tag line. I don’t have any fear of this virus, but I do live in fear.

I fear for my country.

I am terrified at what the foreign and domestic enemies of this country have wrought in our education systems, our media, our future, and now, from what I have seen these past five years culminating in this fraudulent election...our political body.

I will admit to being a bit freaked out in March. It was hard not to be when there was ENDLESS panic porn being blasted from every outlet.

Now that we’ve had almost a year to adjust to all of this, we can look back and see where things went really wrong.

It should be pretty clear that the government was woefully unprepared with masks, PPE, etc. and the initial “2 weeks to flatten the curve” was about trying to buy a little time to get a plan in place. But the governors LOST THEIR FREAKING MINDS when their lust for power was finally fulfilled and they were unwilling to give it up so quickly.

Masks - I wear one inside stores and businesses and I stay the heck away from people. I do not wear one outdoors.

Now that we’ve had almost a year to adjust to all of this, we can look back and see where things went really wrong.

No offense, but you are part of the problem. It doesn’t take a year to see where things “went really wrong” when you live your life based on core principles ... and shutting down lives and businesses is a disgraceful violation of the principles of any free society.

I wish you well. May I suggest a change in your FR screen name? “A real Karen” would be more appropriate. :-P

And then recall or vote out those who inflict this nightmare upon us.

As the decision is made on WHO to vote out, remember that all of the locales that are locked down are controlled by democrats. All of the misinformation and half baked information came from democrats (Fauci being the ring leader of bogus recommendations.) The democrats wanted to create panic and chaos so that they could steal an election. Along with the help of the media (all democrats by the way), the deep state (more democrats with a few democrat wannabes), the courts (more liberals leaning socialist) they seem to have accomplished that goal.

I am amazed by the educated, supposedly smart, Dems and Establishment Pubbies here in this blue state region who can’t for anything process information against the MSM propaganda narrative. Getting them beyond the immediate threat of the virus and salvation of the vaccine to look critically even at that, let alone the beginnings of the larger picture is nearly impossible.

Then, if you can momentarily take in some article or data as at least challenging their thinking, they have snapped right back in to their regimented brainwashing within 24 hours.

I submit you are still really missing what was going on, in hindsight, even back then.

It was no accident that you were inundated with a flood of messaging that included ridiculous propaganda videos from China, the burying of all information that was already available (and even published by Fauci!) as to simple cures, our government actively funding and pushing dishonest studies that looked to frame those simple cures as somehow dangerous, the suspension of so many of our rights from the start, the rolling out now of the Chinese social credit score system for any kind of movement, employment, etc., the global forced vaccine agenda from Gates, the UN’s roll in all of this, the ready rollout of voter fraud-enabling legislation justified by all of this last spring, the freeing of common thugs from prisons right before the perfectly timed launch of the BLM/antifa street attacks that started with the beyond-perfect George Floyd video, etc., etc.

Have you never heard of the steps and processes for the Soros color revolutions? Our own insurgency overthrow of other governments? Was your mind not prepped for this with the ongoing coup attempts by our own Deep State/corrupt intel and other political and government functions? Have you not read what China itself has published about the use of mild bioweapons to first paralyze an enemy nation’s economy?

I’m so proud of my family. We and our kids live in three states. We’re all together for Christmas. We drove to Florida to see my mom and her husband. Just before we arrived at my MIL’s place in Michigan she called to tell us she was exposed.

So we all shrieked in terror and did an immediate right turn at the nearest freeway to went east to Maryland. Because we knew someone exposed to COVID, we immediately sanitized the car and wore masks for the entire trip.

Naaaa! We went to Grandma’s house where we are today. She went and got tested and is negative.

No one, not the middle aged us, the elderly or my four millennials are freaked out with fear

Fear can only exist when information is obscured. The more information we have, the more we can determine our own individualized risk, and then adjust our behavior. Instead, facts remain obscured such that risk assessment is impeded. Additionally, should one suggest that mindful risk assessment should be intrinsic to public policy, they are excoriated by the hysterical masses .

As soon as we entered the second of the “flatten the curve” or the “slow the spread” periods, I wondered why we were not given the precise statistics on the ages and comorbidities of those dying from corona virus. Now that we know that even people who have died WITH corona virus are included in the stats (with a positive test or even just suspected like those in the 2700 added to the death total in one day in NY City) , it is even more important that an INFORMED adult in the USA should be able to make individual choices based on real information. We are denied this, both the information and the right to make choices in many blue states

I live in a place with a wide walkable road closed to through traffic. Sadly, as time goes on, I see more, not fewer, people wearing a mask while walking outdoors by themselves, with no chance of being within 20 feet of another person. They may as well be wearing a .... vote Biden ... sign. They probably believe that Biden will “keep them safe.” Sickening propaganda media.

I live in Maryland where not a single public school student has been in an in-person education setting since last March. Private and parochial schools have been open since September with zero outbreaks.

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