A Trip Down the Memory Hole on Viruses

Let’s have some fun, acknowledging of course that logic and rhetoric have been dubbed as white supremacist (but what hasn’t already by now?, ex. all those racist cows that keep producing white milk). Odd that the left continues to argue that they own “the science” because: 1) Nothing is more “Western” than science, and 2) The idea that one can own “settled” science is, by definition, untenable. But, I logically digress.

On VIRUS A:

• We all recognize that one–why, it’s the novel coronavirus, also known as Co-VID19.
• Some agreed upon, non-controversial facts about it:

1. It originated in Wuhan Province, China.
2. It is highly contagious, relative to even other viruses.
3. It’s new; meaning we didn’t know very much about how it functioned, from its spread to its lethality.
4. It has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, particularly among the elderly and those with poor health or eventual co-morbidities.
5. Many governments across the world initiated and then implemented unprecedented and coordinated efforts to first slow the spread of the virus (“flatten the curve” in the United States) and now to “defeat the disease” which I can only suppose means that no one suffers from it and no one ever dies of it.
6. It is debated among people throughout the world how best to protect people. Is it strict lockdowns or no lockdowns? Hasty formulation of a vaccine and then forced inoculation, or achieving herd immunity? Masks, screens, social distancing, and isolation, or traveling, make-outs, clubbing, concerts, and Supreme Court nomination parties?
7. Said debate is rather politicized with people on the left arguing for greater, competent government (not Trump, according to Kamala Harris tonight) mandates and people on the genuine right arguing for what they see as individuals exercising informed agency and discretion vis-à-vis the virus.

Even with my unavoidable injections of subjective bias and opinion there, is there really anything to dispute here? I say not.

Now…

ON VIRUS B:

• That is a visual with which we are less familiar and yet we know well of that virus: It is HIV or human immunodeficiency virus, that which causes AIDS.
• Some agreed upon, non-controversial facts about it:

1. The disease most likely originated in the first half of the 20th century from the Congo.
2. As any child of the 80s knows, the disease is not easily spread. It manifested itself mainly within the gay community and is transmitted often through infected sexual partners. Yes, we children of the 80s also know that it is not solely a “gay disease”. This was drilled in our heads on a daily basis. Don’t you know that Ryan White and Arthur Ashe died of AIDS?!
3. According to the United Nations, 75.7 million [55.9 million–100 million] people have become infected with HIV since the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. 32.7 million [24.8 million–42.2 million] people have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the start of the epidemic. And, 690,000 [500 000–970 000] people died from AIDS-related illnesses in 2019 alone.
   4. It’s debated among people throughout the world how to best protect people from HIV/AIDS. Some advocate for condom usage, others for abstinence, still others for greater access to antiretroviral medications.

Uh-oh. You might see where this is going now.

To my new-leftist enemies (I call none of you friends), why no forced condoms? Why no mandatory abstinence, especially in the gay community? Why no constant push for massive, budget-busting, economy-destroying measures to eradicate HIV/AIDS from the planet? No social reprobation for sexually active gays? As one of your dear leaders, Andrew Cuomo proudly proclaimed as if channelling Madeleine Albright regarding Iraqi children, all of the lockdowns and death and destruction and evisceration of personal freedoms during the Co-Vid hysteria are worth it if just one life is saved. Why, AIDS could be wiped off the face of the globe with state agents really cracking heads in a perpetual Stonewall raid everywhere! Do they not care for the gay community?!

This isn’t just what we in the whole ethics orbit call wildly immoral disproportionate action, and if you’ve been arguing about moral proportionality up until now, good for you, but I contend here that you are missing the bigger (huger?) point; namely that HIV (VIRUS B) is far more infectious, lethal and simultaneously the causality of its spread, well-understood, than Co-VID19 (VIRUS A). And yet, while millions have already perished from VIRUS B and hundreds of thousands more still die annually from VIRUS B, the left feels (nor has ever felt) any compulsion towards rubber mandates but relishes cracking down on people who refuse to slavishly follow dubious “science” and wear a face-diaper so as to avoid contracting a virus that has a death rate in the ten-thousandth percentiles.

The jig is up. From the beginning of this left-made catastrophe, this was all about the realization of the ultimate progressive end: total control over the masses whose behaviors, attitudes, tastes, lifestyles, dress, guns, dance, accents and beliefs the elite-establishment all find repugnant. It was never about saving lives, and this is evinced by how random and arbitrary the whole lockdown regime and their media lackeys have sold it.

Anyone with a brain cell sees the stupidity in it, so they denigrate those who even question it.

The virus stops being contagious when you eat or drink in a restaurant, but is highly infectious before you sit down. If you attended a BLM rally-riot or went out to get shot by a teenager in Kenosha with your Antifa pals, well, no need to social distance then. The virus understands your call against racial injustice and capitalism and thus, spares you. Quite the brilliant virus, especially compared to the apparently anti-gay, malevolent Virus B. In Britain, you’re safe from contracting the virus if you’re about three feet apart; in the United States, six. Five feet eleven inches; oh shit, DANGER ZONE. You fat rubes need to exercise–the apparatchiks say–so you can go off to your cycle class with your mask on that your grandmother crocheted for you after even she did not die of COVid, but you’re not going to spread it when you’re heavily respirating on a stationary bike, so off with that thing!

It would all be so laughable if it wasn’t so murderous.

The timing of it all is impeccable–I suppose one has to give credit to the left establishment for that–they never seem to miss an opportunity to war against us rubes.

Their hatred for Trump is never grounded in what he should be hated for: a genocidal war in Yemen, not really bringing American troops home, putting neo-cons in charge of foreign policy, corporate malfeasance fueled by the Fed. No, it’s his tie that’s too long, or his golden condo, or his white supremacy (God, will Biden/Harris ever drop this one), or his hot exotic wife, or his alpha-ness–in other words, how he makes them feel–that renders him the ultimate target of their wrath.

And the final thing: even as Co-VID “raged” in the country, aside from his crucial error of listening to Little Fauci and Destructa-Birx in shutting down the country, Trump has followed his seemingly infallible instincts and sided with guarding individual agency and freedom: for men and women, gay and straight, Miley Cyrus and incels in their parents’ basements–everybody. He’s also followed some good science in the Great Barrington Declaration.

The wrath now, especially after he himself beat the little cold, is immeasurable. For many reasons, beyond not ever wanting condom or mask mandates, I hope he wins.

Freedom, agency, and a whole lot of fun are at stake.