The Sheep Must Be Shorn,
and Into Mutton Made

I mentioned it at the time, but it bears repeating: the whole “flatten the curve” program was conceived as national, while the pandemic was regional and seasonal. It was all about saving the hospitals from overuse by COVID patients. That was the rationale. Do voters remember this rationale, this excuse? 

Most areas shut down had insignificant amounts of infection, and were NOT clogging their hospitals. In April 2020, I took a friend to the hospital. It was nearly empty. The stressor on the hospitals in the Pacific Northwest was not COVID but the lockdown. The hospital staff was even mumbling about lack of revenue in the hospital, with an undercurrent of worry for the people who [they thought, not implausibly] needed treatment.

The whole thing was crazy. Yet Americans went along with it, like dutiful sheep willing to be fleeced or slaughtered, and as many states’ governors forced the lockdowns to go on for month after month, fearing (apparently) breakouts of the disease in their states, and that they would be blamed for them if they did not extend lockdowns. And then, by huge clicks of the memetic ratchet, the issue became partisan! What a gloriously ridiculous clustermuck.

The damage done to the spirits and health of the people is still incalculable. Yet my state’s idiot governor was voted in for another term.

The explicit case for lockdowns only made sense in certain regions. National lockdowns never made sense. Federation-wide lockdowns made no sense. And while it is easy to blame the several states, the whole horrid exercise was initiated by Trump and his team of “experts.”

In the “national” capital.

twv

Addendum: Of course, there are still partisans of lockdowns and mask mandates here in the West. These people are, as near as I can tell, just letting out their inner Mao.