As I wrote about previously (I’m not going to link here, just look up my posts on the pandemic), I was certain that if Trump lost the election, soon afterward this pandemic would become something like a bad dream. Biden will heal us all! If you watch the news (I don’t. It’s no longer fun to watch since Trump left office.), then you’d know for certain that it’s the Biden Administration that is saving the country. I do however read a bit of news online. Even then, because of the obvious positive (progressive) bias, it’s very little.

It’s been more than a year since we were told Fifteen days to contain this virus. Of course it’s taken a lot longer and as I wrote last year (again, search my posts using the keywords pandemic and/or virus) that in fact, we would probably never eradicate this virus from the planet. Even is everyone on the planet was vaccinated, there would be variations that popped up in different areas of the world and that we would have to learn to live with this, fairly minor virus, indefinitely.

Minor virus? Yes, because as of this writing, in the U.S. there have been 549,000 deaths. That’s in a year. The page I linked has a lot of interesting information. Please take a moment to at least look at one or two of the articles. But to get back- yes, it’s a minor virus. In a year, it has yet to perform as we were told so many times it would, killing as many as two million people the first year alone.

Of course we’ve been told that the lockdowns and the social distancing, as well as wearing masks, have mitigated the horrendous death count that was expected. In fact, all of that waas nothing more than a tactic of fear.consider the Hong Kong Flu of 1968-69. More than a million people in the U.S. alone died. Those are estimates because np one went into a panic, and no schools or other venues were shuttered during that time. That’s right, a million paople (possibly more!) died and no one took much notice of that epidemic at all. Anything any of us read about this online, the number of deaths, is just a guess. Not everyone believes there were a million people that died from this, but others place the number as much as four times higher. No schools closed, no businesses closed, sporting events continued unabated, and no, there was no vaccine that ended this epidemic. It just ended. Sort of.

We know a lot more (well, we believe we do) about this current virus than at the time we did about the one out of Hong Kong. We have multiple vaccines right now where, depending on availability, get inoculated against it. What we’ve seen from government over the past year is unprecedented since war was declared against the Japanese on December 8, 1941 and all of government and industry came together. It was fascinating to watch, wasn’t it? But why the difference in response from 1968 and 2020?

It’s easy. Today we have twenty four hour news. In 1968? In the U.S. we had ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news programs that, after commercials, were about 20 minutes in length. Not much time to spend on many topics, especially considering it was the height of the Vietnam conflict and that is what I recall seeing on television during that year. I probably was aware of this “Hong Kong Flu” but it never reached any level of panic like what occurred a year ago. Conspiracy theorists abound. I’m not one of them. I do, however, believe we have received incorrect, okay, call it “false” information about this pandemic from the beginning. I also though, give a benefit of the doubt that because, initially, there was so little known about this virus, it was easy to transmit what later become false information. Innocently. But then it became famous from the first Obama Administration: Never let a crisis go to waste. This, I believe, is what we are witness to, today.

Our government, of whom we have implicit trust, would never take advantage of their employer (us) whimsically, would they? I’ve used a few words here in preparation to discuss just that. It’s kind of amazing that as time has progressed, the words we’ve used (me, a blogger, other bloggers, some pundits on television) have begun to come to fruition. It wasn’t that long ago that many of us seriously feared the agenda of the newly anointed Biden Administration. what we have witnessed is exactly the disaster that was predicted before he swore to uphold the Constitution. Example? Look at what’s happening at our Southern border. Even Democrats in Congress are outraged about what is going on and although Biden tries to blame Trump for these issues, it was he, alone that told immigrants to swarm the border during the campaign. Of course, now he’s saying something completely different. That’s just a single example and no, I don’t think a Republican administration would be any better in their messaging either. I mean, the Trump administration was all over the place, concerning the pandemic. We’d read something on Monday, by Thursday, the CDC, or whoever, would be walking the statement back. Who the heck, even more: what the heck are we supposed to believe? I’m certain that after a year? I have no idea. Do you?

We’re saved, or so we’ve been told because of the aforementioned vaccines. Please don’t take my comment as snark, because it haas been a herculean effort to develop, test, and have approved, a vaccine for this Chinese virus. It’s a huge money maker for the pharmaceutical companies because the Federal Government is paying for every vaccination. No, I’m not anti-pharma. Imagine if the government told Big Pharma that they’d buy all of the curatives for say breast cancer. How long would it be before we had several cures for this horrible disease? A year? Less. I’m in favor. Let’s do this for breast, ovarian, prostate, and lung cancer. That’s not all of them but consider a government push, like we did for the moon in the 1960’s. How many lives might be saved, or at least extended?

For all of the generosity of the Federal Government (Wait! Isn’t that our money?) will they want something from us, concerning this pandemic. As more states become completely open (my state, Arizona, just rescinded all state mandates, even though we were “mostly” open), many people have come to the conclusion that yes, we may have in some instances over-reacted to something that at least for oir country, was far less a pandemic than what we wore told to believe. The last actual pandemic that affected the U.S. was the one of 1918-1919, known as the “Spanish Flu” (it had nothing to do with Spain and in fact, may have originated in the United States – again, speculation). That pandemic did kill millions worldwide. It is estimated that in the U.S., it killed 675,000. The population in the U.S. at that time was 103 million,. Do the math. Then do the same with the current pandemic of 549,000 deaths with a population of 330 million. Okay, it’s .00655 vs .00166 (Spanish Flu vs. Wuhan Virus) deaths. Of course, any death from any disease, especially one that was accidentally released from a bio-warfare lab in China, is unconscionable to any rational person.

What does any of that have to do with what is currently being considered in any state legislature and of course,, Congress? Well, again, states are attempting to get back to some sort of regular order: that meaning releasing business becaue these same depend a lot of the tax revenues of the businesses to operate. Then there’s the black mark upon society as a whole: School. Will the teachers unions agree to enjoin the science that their members are safe from contracting the Chinese virus from five year olds? That’s unsure and the problem exists in that the Democratic party is a subsidiary of the teacher’s unions. Even though, currently, the virus is seemingly subsiding, will the teachers unions allow full-time, in-class teaching? No state will be able to force teachers back to work unless they tell them “No work? No pay”, even then…

Is any of this scary for anyone? How about that unless you’ve been vaccinated, you will not be able to attend any venue, restaurant, movie theater, sporting event, unless you can prove you’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19? Yes, this is an actual Biden Administration initiative that if passed by Congress, would segregate the vaccinated from those that are unvaccinated. So why is this an issue? It’s been well reported that 34% of healthcare workers say they will not be vaccinated. Some 50% of Americans say they will not be vaccinated against COVID-19; Why? They see no reason to receive an inoculation from a virus that presents itself , in the majority of the population, as mild. Imagine, up to one-half of the population along with nore than one-third of health-care workers will refuse to get vaccinated. That’s amazing. Why is it that those on the front line of healthcare refuse to be vaccinated, alomng with a slim majority of Americans in general? This story, from the Washington Post shows the numbers to be higher. Why is that?

Safety and effectiveness seems to be the majority response from those tasked with caring for others that have contracted the virus. If doctors and nurses refuse to be vaccinated, why should ordinary Americans? So far, there’s no proof, at least any transparent, that any ff the vaccines will cause direct harm to the public. Like any medication though, there are some indicators that the public need be aware of before being vaccinated. But does rushing a vaccine into production and upon the populace make it inherently unsafe? No.

This is actually something that all of us should be proud of. Recall the Ebola outbreak a few years ago that was warned may become a pandemic?There were only a few cases in the US and no one died from it. However, that spurred the government and pharmaceutical companies to race toward a vaccine. It took five years to come up with a single candidate. With the Chinese virus, we have multiple vaccines approved and deployed less than a year out. Does any of this indicate that everyone in the country (world?) should be vaccinated? No. Just like the yearly influenza vaccine, it should be a choice for individuals, based on what they know about any preexisting conditions that might be present. It’s good for the government to recommend that everyone receive the yearly influenza vaccine but what would happen if that same government required it’s citizens you be vaccinated and be able to show proof of that inoculation on demand?

This very scenario may be coming to a state near you. A big thank you to our federal government. That’s right, before you are able to travel, or attend any public venue (grocery store, pharmacy, restaurant, etc.), or travel domestically via ground or air, you’re going to need to show proof you’ve been vaccinated for the coronavirus. Yes, the government will then be able to track all of your movements. Sounds creepy but this is an actual proposal that may come into law, soon. there’s several articles online about this latest government intrusion, just look up “government passports” to see what’s being said across the political spectrum. Also, maybe ask your representatives in Washington of they support. this or not.