On the Front Lines: Where Nobody Cares About COVID

A fascinating article published in the December 2021 issue of The Atlantic called “Where I Live, No One Cares About COVID” by Matthew Walther is a good example of how few people care about COVID anymore.

Walther, editor of The Lamp, a Catholic literary journal, and a contributing editor at the American Conservative, lives in rural southwestern Michigan and writes that no one in his geographical area takes COVID too seriously — and neither does he. He notes that he has “spent hundreds of hours in bars and restaurants,” going to weddings and on plenty of family vacations with his wife and children — all without once donning a mask.

In addition, he and his wife welcomed their fourth child in 2021. “From the first phone call to the midwife a few months after getting a positive pregnancy test until after the delivery, the subject of the virus was never raised by any health-care professional, including her doula, a dear friend from New York.”

Walther says their children never missed a beat and attended “their weekly homeschooling co-op” without ever donning masks. On the rare occasion his children witnessed people wearing masks, his kids were “distinctly uncomfortable.” Walther explains that as best he could tell, “they are dimly aware that ‘germs’ are a remote cause of concern, but only our oldest, who is 6, has any recollection of the brief period last year when public Masses were suspended … and we spent Sunday mornings praying the rosary at home.”

There is a particularly funny passage in the article where Walther addresses a CDC recommendation that all adults get a booster “vaccine.” He said he found himself genuinely reeling: “Wait, there are four of them now? … They all sound like the latest entry in some down-market action franchise: Tom Clancy’s Delta Variant: A Jack Ryan Novel, Transformers 4: Rise of the Omicron.”

Walther continues, “COVID is invisible to me except when I am reading the news, in which case it strikes me with all the force of reports about disaster coups in Myanmar.”

Towards the end of the article, Walther asks how it is that people “breathlessly quote what various public-health authorities are now saying about masking and boosters.” He concludes — and I wholly concur — that most “sophisticated adults are generally capable of winking at overly stringent guidelines. In the case of COVID, many are not.”

Think back.

Remember when we were told that we could wait for the American public to acquire natural immunity to COVID-19? Once we achieved this milestone, we were told that we all could “return to normal.”

That never happened.

Then it was the diktat that everyone had to get the so-called “vaccine” to ensure public safety. Well, that certainly didn’t stop the spread because the “vaccines” were never designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 (though leaders strongly implied or stated outright that they would). Check it out for yourself. It’s in plain English on the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) website.

We are now in the midst of the latest mutation, the “Omicron” variant. Mini-public health tyrant Anthony Fauci tells us mere mortals that we must get a third booster in order to be considered “fully vaccinated.” Oh, yeah? Why? The original “vaccine” couldn’t stop the spread of the second variant, named Delta, so why would a third booster stop the spread of the Omicron variant?

The most important question is, will we cede freedoms to our tyrannical government by giving up our liberty to choose what we put into our bodies? Tyranny advances in tiny increments, so people fail to notice freedoms diminishing ever-so-slowly. Maybe Walther’s reference to “disaster coups” is more apt than many people think.

My view is we are witnessing power grab theatre at its worst.

“Just wear the mask.”

“Just stay home.”

“Just cancel Christmas.”

“Just stay away from people.”

“Just do your part.”

“Just get the jab — it’ll protect others.”

It simply never ends.

Nobody can avoid having the common cold spread through our communities every year, and such is COVID. Why? Because adenoviruses, rhinoviruses, respiratory syncytial viruses, and many others are extremely virulent. They mutate so quickly that it makes creating a vaccine for the cold virus virtually impossible.

So how about that COVID-19 “vaccine”? It’s an experimental gene therapy that has resulted in more than 19,000 reported deaths and more than 800,000 adverse effects, according to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) as of December 3, 2020.

Did you know that the swine flu vaccine (in 1976) was abruptly halted after 32 deaths, as reported by the CDC? Why have the COVID-19 vaccines not been questioned by the public, let alone the so-called health-care professionals and experts?

Outside the insular world of the insipid elite and professional classes in major metropolitan areas, most Americans now lead their lives as if this COVID nightmare had ended a long time ago. They got over it.

Case in point: I embarked on a road trip with a good friend through the free state of Idaho in July 2020. I never wore a mask anywhere nor thought about COVID for a full nine days other than when interviewing various business owners.

We stopped at a Lakey’s Cafe for breakfast one morning and struck up a conversation with the owner. He knew we were not locals. I was sporting my turquoise sunglasses, not exactly an Idaho look. We were curious about the effects of COVID in the area. We explained that we were from L.A. but weren’t inflicted with COVID psychosis or any other related paranoia. We were so happy to be in a free state where people thrive without masks and related silliness. Mike, the owner, explained that no one had mentioned COVID since April 2020. After two weeks to “flatten the curve,” the people of Idaho quickly got on with the business of life — work, family, sports and church — just as they had before the pandemic fear-fest began.

Mike left L.A. nine years ago to pursue a completely different career and lifestyle. He was fed up with leftist politicians fleecing local governments for their wasteful bleeding-heart projects that only made his neighborhood look increasingly like a ghetto. We asked Mike if he was happy with his decision to relocate to Idaho.

“Hell, yes,” came his response, and I’m sorry if it offends you. “I never stopped living my life [for COVID-19]. If anyone contracted it, they had therapeutics readily available. They stayed home for a week, took the therapeutic protocol and got well.”

I walked away from that conversation thinking that freedom-seekers and committed warriors have long since put COVID — which is basically a seasonal flu — in their rearview mirrors and marched on with their lives.

As with Walther and many millions of other right-thinking, pro-science, anti-propaganda-and-control Americans, COVID was a blip that came and went. However, its dramatic effect on some persists through the news in a sort of an alternate reality, defining the lives of far too many benighted, bedraggled and befuddled citizens.

Stay safe. Ignore the narrative.