If you don't like abortion, don't have one; if you don't want to risk China Flu, stay home

The first is the facile response of those who like abortion (such as Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, who encouraged its use to reduce the number of negroes, imbeciles and the children of the criminally-inclined) to those who oppose abortions: individual choice should rule (side-stepping the question of whether a 9-month fetus should have a say in the matter). But the same crowd is now calling for the reimposition of a complete economic shutdown on both a national (Joe Biden) and local (CA Governor Newsom, NYC de Blasio) scale. They’ll finish off the last of the small businesses, impoverish families, and condemn millions to isolation and depression. What happened to their concern for individual freedom?

I’m of an age, and have certain health conditions that place me in the at-risk catagory for this disease. I could stay locked up at home, ordering in food, eschewing local retailers in favor of Amazon, and be perfectly safe, but I prefer a robust economy, food available on grocery store shelves, enjoyable dinners out at restaurants, and the company of my friends, and I’d like to be part of that world. But regardless of my choice: shelter in place, or go on with life, do I have the right to insist that the rest of the world stop for my benefit? Why?

Do you remember when a two-week shutdown was imposed to “flatten the curve”, so that hospitals wouldn’t be overwhelmed with COVID patients? The crisis never hit (U.S. Hope left NYC Harbor, the Javit’s Center hospital was never used, and, just as a for instance, the entire state of Maine currently has 17 COVID- hopspitalized patients, none in ICU). The flu is here, perhaps to stay, but certainly not to remain in its intial, more dangerous form: viruses mutate, and don’t last if they kill too many of their hosts.

(Related). A few months after this panic started, I read an article about one of our recent pandemics, 2008, I think. The then-current administration (could have been Bush, maybe Obama, does’t matter) was horrified to learn we had no established plan to deal with a pandemic, so the CDC was tasked with coming up with one, which it did: national shutdown, tracking, quarantines, etc. It was put on the shelf when that particular panic fizzled out, but it’s been there, ready to use, for the past 12 years years, and Whoo Hu Flu provided just the trigger to try it out, so they did. Boys and their toys.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

H. L. Mencken

Available on Amazon; maybe I should market a COVID version