The New Crime of Infection. POTUS and the Media’s Strawman.

For my original piece immediately after the announcement.

The recent turn of events are potentially bad news for the left and anti-Trump groups. The natural response to any person falling ill is compassion and support, this is especially true when it’s the President (that doesn’t mean you should change your ideology or vote, but some people tend to do that).

More importantly, a 73 year old man that is a bit heavy, easily getting over the virus that is supposed to be the scourge of mankind is not what the left wants us to see. They want panic, riots, and endless lockdowns, at least until they are in power. Then poverty and government dependence will do.

So, the spin started aggressively and immediately. First they doubled down on panic. Ridiculous headlines about chaos in our government, postponing the election, all because the President caught a mild flu ¹. The truth of course is that they would not be so angry at the prospective change of power, the replacement of someone they hate so much, be it with Pence or Pelosi. What they feared of course is that no such change was going to happen nor be necessary. Here is some of that:

“… throws election into chaos and threatens a government crisis”

“… is the most serious known health threat to a sitting US President in decades”²

“White House residence staff ‘nervous’…”. Says “source” of course.

When that insanity didn’t really catch on, they switched gears. the White House, the Trump family and the GOP in general was accused of all sorts things relating to the infections. The general idea of the criticism revolving around flouting masks, refusing to exist and work only through zoom (virtually), and a condemnation for catching an illness. Here is an example in an exchange with a reasonably well followed leftist lady.

My typo’s aside, I was just a bit tired of all the pansiness going around. She had no idea how to respond, especially since I had not been rude, and so simply called me a BOT. A day or so later she thought of a better response, deleted her previous one and said that I must be a “Proud Boy”.

In any event, the idea here is twofold:

• First, that Trump and the right are somehow proven wrong on their general attitude of the virus and masks, by this positive diagnosis, and
• That Trump, his wife and others are guilty some moral and criminal act by catching the infection.

Both of these are absurd. And these are catching on much better than the first hysteric reaction that CNN fostered about chaos. Because in today’s world nothing is holy except weakness and safety. “Safety First” is one of the seemingly benign mottos that are carrying the Western World to it’s grave.

Without getting too sidetracked on those concepts which I have covered elsewhere, the point is that it occurs to me, that to many people the accusations above make sense because the concepts that actually are behind the criticized attitudes are now so foreign and rare that they never even occur to the many people. These are concepts which hold many important things, like honor, dignity, duty and courage above safety. They were common enough, especially in men not too long ago, but we know that this gender is rapidly disappearing even while hundreds more are invented.³

Because these concepts are alien now to many if not most people, the only thing that makes any sense to them is that a person, such as Trump, would not wear a mask only because they thought they were invincible! They must think that either they are superhuman, or that the virus doesn’t exist or something along those lines. Because few can fathom nowadays that someone would take a course of action other than the safest at all times.

No one (relevant at least) said that you can’t catch this weak virus or any other without a mask. In fact, you can catch it (and spread it) with a mask as well apparently. Here in Israel, everyone but me apparently wear masks all the time and everywhere (it is enforced by the police on a national level everywhere and always!) and there are plenty of infections. Trump did not think that he can’t catch it, he thought that the President of the United States has to do his duty, including meeting people. He also thought POTUS should not coward in isolation. I have personally never worn a mask in now more than 7 or 8 months of panic (not an easy task where I live), and never did I state nor think that I can’t catch this virus. On the contrary, I have spoken about how rampant it is from the very beginning. I along with other family members and friends may very well have caught it… like many people around the world under socialist rule, I have no access to testing so we have to wonder if any of the several times we were ill in the past 8 months was due to corona (or another similarly weak pathogen).⁴

In short, we don’t wear masks because we are not sheep, because we are not surgeons in an operating room, because we have not worn them for millennia despite the existence of infectious diseases. We don’t wear masks for the same reason that we don’t crawl on the ground on all 4’s.. despite the fact that doing so would shorten the range of any airborne infectious particles we might exude. We don’t wear masks for the same reasons we don’t just stay indoors, which is much “safer” than masks, and for the same reason that we drive, and fly, and work, and play sports among many other things. Not because we think we are immune to all pathogens, nor invincible.

We also think that the virus is harmless in the vast majority of cases, and that it’s danger and lethality have been overstated by a massive factor. I am happy to have been among the very first to state so since the very beginning of this circus. And so if Gd forbid, Trump, the First lady, Gov Christie, and others in the GOP leadership recently infected all dropped dead, then perhaps the argument could be made that they erred in their behavior. A few examples don’t change the worldwide statistics but that argument at least would be reasonable. The one the media is making is not.

They are not proven wrong simply by catching the disease. In fact, by living normally, catching it, getting over it, and now being immune and continuing to lead their normal lives they would prove that they were right.

The left and mainstream media fear this conclusion being made by people, and so to counter it and move on back to more accusations, they might softly utter that most citizens don’t have access to the kind of world-class care that would allow the President to quickly recover. This is true, and rich coming from the very people that have done everything in their power to make sure such therapeutics are not available, and in fact prohibited, to the general public. (“Trump is rushing the Vaccine! stop it”).

The truth is that there isn’t much to the “world-class” care other than the therapeutics that the FDA does not allow others to take. Though I am sure, our political opponents will shallowly and typically focus on the “helicopter” transfer to the hospital, as if helicopter rides killed coronaviruses. Get donor plasma, or synthetic antibodies and you are good to go. Take a vaccine prior, and you are good to go. Nope, sorry, the same governments that lock you down, restrict your movements and travel, and close down your businesses are the same that ban you from using therapeutics that could save your life. But what’s important is that you walk around with a mask like the rest of the sheep.

The above relates to being proven wrong. The second attack by the left is a moral and criminal one. It is not a crime to catch the common cold, the flu nor the coronavirus. In fact, it is not a crime to fall ill at all.

Now this is a bit more difficult concept to tackle and explain. Many perfectly courageous and brave people are not driven to acquiesce to the circus by personal fear, but rather by fear of being responsible for any spread of the virus. Fear for others. This is more commendable of course, but also misses a very fine but difficult to convey reality.

Firstly it is by no means an uncontested fact that slowing the virus is helpful or saves lives. It is possible that these measures extend the length of the wave, thereby making it harder for people actually at risk, to be careful for that long, and increase deaths. You can see any of my earlier articles for predictions to that effect and then subsequent data supporting this. Extending the length of the pandemic with lockdowns and restrictions also obviously extends all the deaths and negative effects of those lockdowns and restrictions including poverty, social unrest, depression, drug use, suicide and the rest of it. It is possible and even likely, that the best course of action was to let the virus spread naturally through the population, peak and whither, while older people and those actually at risk could protect themselves very aggressively for a shorter period of time (as was predicted and suggested in my very first article on this so many months ago). After that, the heard immunity of the population at large would be the best line of defense for those at risk.

Anyway, not to develop that line of thought further here, suffice to understand that we don’t often know the best path and we will disagree about what that path is. We won’t agree on the exact goal, much less on the best way to achieve it. Certainly government bureaucrats will not know the best goals nor the best ways to achieve them. And they certainly don’t have the right to dictate and invent new moralities for us. It is silly to accept their word as gospel and accuse all who cross it as sinners (ironically, this type of thinking makes people acting identically, sinners in some cities, states and countries while not in others since the bureaucrats don’t agree on how much freedom to take away from their citizens how fast and for how long). With this in mind, what is important is freedom. As much as is possible. Each individual can live their life with the risks they are willing or wish to take.

Certainly we cannot have governments enforce endless indirect effect morality on everyone.

We used to believe in freedom, despite the existence and prevalence of infectious diseases. We used to drop dead from everything from yellow fever to typhoid, and we believed in freedom. Even as our ability to combat diseases increases rather then decreases, we are ending that same freedom. If you want to wear a mask, go ahead, wear five of them. Walk around in a hazmat suit. I will fight for your right to do so. Want to stay in your home due to the fact that people (or mosquitoes or whatever it may be) out there might carry in infections disease, go ahead. But do not enslave others to do the same, nor to have to teach the mentality to their children.

We are responsible for direct actions, not indirect ones.

Otherwise we could not live. And we cannot let them reverse our values on this and thousands of years of basic Judeo-Christian morality (and in this case universally accepted morality) and flip it on it’s head overnight. When we drive we put others at risk. Same when we fly, work, travel and do sports. You can sneeze and cause a tsunami according to the butterfly effect theory. You can definitely at least cause someone to look around and not see the bus that hits them. We are at risk each and every day and we put others at risk every day. As nations we take risks to uphold our values and interests. Americans put themselves at risk to defend their national interests, liberty and freedom around the world. In Israel as a nation we are daily at risk due to our choice to return to our ancient homeland after 2 millennia, now located in the middle of the Muslim world, and establish a Jewish state. We do this only at great risk and maintain it each day with iron and courage.

And not too many decades ago, before we had taken that risk, and thought instead that we had taken none, we were butchered by the millions in Europe. Life is risk. Neither risk nor death were discovered in a Wuhan fish market some months ago… even though that’s what one would think from seeing what is going on. This is not the first infectious disease in history, nor is it the only one, though it’s certainly one of the least lethal. When a person does not want to catch an infectious disease, they don’t go out in public. They don’t enslave the public. They may wear a mask, but they don’t put on a mask on everyone else. Immunologically compromised people take precautions all the time. In extreme cases some people live in a sterile bubble. But they again, don’t enslave everyone else, nor put them in bubbles. And in these cases people are actually in great risk, unlike the situation for the great majority of people in the current situation.

In any event, if it is not as I put it then where would it end? Why can we walk around each year freely during flu season? People can die of the flu and our stats say that they do by the millions, so we need to be locked down every flu season, right? In fact, year-round, since diseases including the flu exist year round. Beyond that, why is walking around with a mask enough? Obviously you can still get and spread this disease to others even when wearing a mask. They fail, it falls off, we make mistakes, we touch it.. touch our faces, touch others, other surfaces, touch and exchange money, touch everything in the supermarket etc and etc. So it follows we should never leave our homes, though of course then we’d all quickly die… since there would be no one to build homes, nor grow food, run hospitals, nor anything else. Our less hapless enemies that surround us (in Israel’s case) and wouldn’t be so hysteric would just come in and finish us off. Our soldiers couldn’t leave their homes anyway.

We say “safety first” all the time, but in truth it’s not safety first. Otherwise nothing is possible but decay. Our countries first, freedom first, honor and dignity first… lots of things first before we can get to safety. At least that’s the way it was and ought to be.

1. Even if the President becomes incapacitated or worse if Gd forbid the President died, as tends to happen to people at point or another, the Vice President simply takes over. If HE dies, the lefties should be happy to know, Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House takes over. With as little chaos as the change after an election. In fact less chaos since the change is obvious and not subject to debate or fraud. No recounts, no voter fraud etc. Clear cut line of succession spelled out in the Constitution
2. I don’t know how many decades they mean, but Arab terrorists hijacked planes, crashed one into the Pentagon (2 into the twin towers of course) and tried to crash another into the White House. That was a serious health threat for G. W. no? As was getting a dirty shoe thrown in his face. Reagan was shot, Kennedy (who was not healthy to begin with) was shot and killed, and Lyndon Johnson (who also some cancer removed) and Eisenhower had heart attacks. Reagan also had colon and skin cancer during his second term if getting shot wasn’t enough. But I guess Obama was pretty healthy and I assume flu-free for 8 years?
3. You may recall George Herbert Leigh Mallory, being asked why he wanted to to climb Mt. Everest, famously responding “Because it’s there”.

   Or perhaps the innocent exchange about racing the lagoon shark in the Return to the Blue Lagoon:

   Richard: The first time, he almost got me. But I was too fast for him. This time, he was lying in wait, so I dive in! And I can see down his mouth, there’s about five hundred teeth with stripy little fish all around his gills, and he comes at me! He misses me, stupid sea slug!
   Lilli: Seems silly to me.
   Richard: Silly?! It’s not silly, it’s dangerous.
   Lilli: Exactly, that’s why it’s silly. I don’t understand why you have to do it.
   Richard : I like the way it makes me feel.
   Lilli Hargrave: What do you mean?
   Richard Lestrange: [point to his stomach] Inside here. It feels all alive…

4. My brother, whom I saw frequently before the travel bans, and is living in Los Angeles, was able to finally get serological testing showing that he had in fact contracted the virus (he, his wife and young son all got easily over it without issue).