By Dr. Harold A. Black
blackh@knoxfocus.com
haroldblackphd.com
Merry Christmas.
There is little doubt in my mind that we are governed badly at the federal, state and local levels. Recent history simply reinforces that certainty. I no longer trust the judgment of the leaders of the Senate, the House of Representatives, FBI, Justice Department, the Pentagon, any cabinet member, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health and any researcher in who is dependent upon government funding. The COVID panic is a prime example of gross mishandling by governments. Starting with President Trump, the panic-induced move by his administration to shut down the country undoubtedly did more harm than good. Instead of realizing that virtually all the victims of the disease were elderly with co-conditions and addressing that issue, the government shuttered the economy, destroying thousands of small businesses while leaving the big ones open. Mask mandates were imposed despite conflicting evidence as to their efficacy. Schools were closed and our youth basically lost a year of education. When some schools re-opened the teachers’ unions in many states refused to go back into the classroom until social “justice” measures were enacted that had nothing to do with their jobs. There was a litany of bad judgments made by many governors and municipalities – many of which still exist today. It should be evident, even to the casual observer, that the rules and mandates that were imposed have very little scientific justification, even though we keep hearing “follow the science.” An example is the local mandates imposed in Knoxville. Virtually none had any scientific justification. The data show that the disease is deadly amongst seniors with co-conditions but not as much for other cohorts. Yes, there are cases among the young, but requiring children to wear masks and get the vaccine is akin to child abuse. The flu remains a major killer of children, yet we ignore the flu and panic over a virus that kills fewer children than accidents.
Even though many of us know COVID’s victims, for the vast majority of our population the disease is a mere nuisance. Look at all the athletes both amateur and professional who test positive, sit out for a week and come back and play as if they only suffered a cold. If a person feels better if they wear a mask, then so be it. Yet, many governments still want to impose mask-wearing and vaccine mandates for populations not at risk. The public knows this and its little wonder that there is much opposition against such dictates. The media is complicit with the government in trying to keep the people scared by reporting infections while in the Trump years they reported deaths.
We now have variants of the disease appearing. One of the reassuring facts, not widely reported, is that the variants seem to be less deadly than the original COVID-19. Yet some governments around the world want to keep their citizens scared and have reimposed lockdowns, closed borders and banned air travel to certain countries. Many populations are fed up. People realize that if these measures worked, then we would have eradicated the disease long ago. It isn’t a leap to realize that governments are lying to their people. Consider the case of natural immunity. We heard from the very beginning that vaccines and natural immunity would lead to the lessening of the disease like it has done with every disease in history. There are data from Israel that show that natural immunity is several times more effective than vaccines in combatting COVID. Yet the Biden Administration has gone silent on the veracity of natural immunity and is insisting that everyone is vaccinated (except for the illegal migrants at our border) despite studies warning of the dangers of being vaccinated if one has natural immunity. Why is the government ignoring natural immunity? Now the CDC is recommending that everyone get the boosters. Are they all getting kickbacks from Big Pharma?
I have no doubt that unlike Austria, New Zealand, Australia and other countries, Americans will not tolerate another lockdown. I believe that the government knows this as well. Our tradition of independence and personal responsibility is different from that of other countries. Also, the realization that we are being poorly governed will hopefully give us leaders in the future who believe in the American dream and cherish our traditions of freedom and liberty.
