We are in receipt of a submission from one of our readers, who writes under the nom de plume (that’s high school French) of Graychin. Here’s what he has to say:
Yes We Can
In case you missed it, my dear fellow Portlanders, I recommend you read Matthew Walther recent essay in The Atlantic titled “Where I Live, No One Cares About COVID.” Where he lives is rural Michigan, but it might as well be any place outside the progressive fever-swamps of our coastal urban centers.
“[T]he virus simply does not factor into my calculations or those of my neighbors,” writes Walther. They have been “forgoing masks, tests (unless work imposes them, in which case they are shrugged off as the usual BS from human resources), and other tangible markers of COVID-19’s existence for months – perhaps even longer.”
Can you imagine? Perhaps you can’t, but then, when was the last time you got out of the city? When did you last find yourself in Forest Grove or St Helens or Medford or The Dalles? The truth is, you can find glimpses of the post-pandemic world Walther describes even within the city limits.
For example, I know a sporting goods store in SE where half the customers ignore the “masks required” signs at the door, and no one calls the police or kicks them out, or even bats an eye. I know a church in NE where a growing number of parishioners – in a silent protest implicitly endorsed by the clergy – are happily leaving their masks at home, and no one panics.
These people are not stupid. They are not in the throes of some death-wish. More than a few of them have seen friends and family get sick, even die. But they’ve listened to the talking heads, they’ve considered the risks, and they’ve made their peace with the virus and decided to “keep calm and carry on.”
We can too, if we want.
We can quit parroting the medico-political talking points of “experts” who are always contradicting themselves. We can stop pretending that mask-wearing is a virtue. We can quit scaring the hell out of our kids, most of whom aren’t even at risk from this disease – and we can stop injecting them with a failing “vaccine” (with a concerning risk profile) that they manifestly don’t need.
Finally, as it becomes undeniably clear the virus can be caught and spread by both the vaxxed and unvaxxed, we can quit dividing our friends, family and fellow citizens into The Clean and The Unclean, and treating them accordingly.
Yes, we can.