Despite glaring uncertainties, we must not deviate from orthodoxy on COVID.  Vaccinations = good.  For everyone, no matter the rate of death or other serious adverse reaction from COVID versus from the vaccine.  Masks required, despite factually knowing they don't effectively stop getting the virus, and have long-term health consequences, especially to children.

The societal ramifications of COVID and of vaccination are apparent.  The very rich have gotten very much richer and very much more powerful, as the middle class and below have had the rug pulled out from under them due to ill conceived government policies, media cover-ups, and tech censorship.

How many people who once had secure small businesses are teetering on the brink of disaster?  We've ceded power over our lives to people who have no remorse about ruining others' livelihoods if they can proclaim it's for the greater good and keep us from finding out it isn't.  Wholesale censorship of divergent information is meant to obfuscate this and to keep us in line.  No matter what happens with COVID, this tyranny must end.

Alex Berenson got permanently banned from Twitter this week.  He allegedly violated the platform's policy against COVID misinformation.  Before his account was shut, one of Berenson's final tweets about the vaccine read: "It doesn't stop infection.  Or transmission.  Don't think of it as a vaccine.  Think of it — at best — as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effects profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS.  And we want to mandate it?  Insanity."

This was a train of thought that those in power won't allow us to contemplate.  Just as other voices, often people with exemplary credentials and real-world experience, have been eliminated from presenting their facts and points of view freely.  Anyone who doesn't agree to color within the prescribed lines has been systematically eliminated from public discourse.  Exploring and explaining factual information is considered too dangerous for us peons to hear.  The powerful have created a police state and enlisted our help to do so.

I just read Brian Joondeph's recent American Thinker column, which simply looks at who is, and who isn't, agreeing to be vaccinated.  It's a mild-mannered article, but he's careful to say the following: "To be clear, for the benefit of any reader eager to report this article and author to the medical licensing board as being anti-vaccine, this is not medical advice for or against the vaccine.  Instead, it is a commentary on who is vaccine-hesitant and why, an important public health concern if widespread vaccination is the goal."  Having to devote an entire paragraph to a "don't shoot the messenger" message, is telling.

The latest example of groupthink and repression is the many small local businesses that have been led to believe it's in their own best interest to allow only the vaccinated through their doors.  The very people our COVID policies have ruined are now becoming partners in repression.

Restaurants have sent out "reassuring" emails about how they are checking vaccination certificates of all diners, eliminating those of us who exercise our right to choose.  There is no consideration in this that millions of people are COVID survivors and, therefore, have vastly better immunity to the virus than those vaccinated.  There is no consideration that there are plenty of "breakthrough" delta cases among the vaccinated.  There is no consideration of the simple fact that someone who is not sick is not going to make anyone else sick — whether vaccinated or not.

Consider some simple information.  AIER presented a brief report Monday that shows the correlation between vaccination rates and COVID cases, along with a mathematical calculation and scatter-graph showing its work.  The organization has determined, based on July's data, how many people would have to be vaccinated to prevent a single case, or a single death.  This is a factual analysis, and it's interesting to see.

These people are from the group that presented the Great Barrington Declaration last year, which suggested a rational means for dealing with the virus, using common sense, established health procedures, and eschewing shutting down the economy.  Note that this factual report was deemed so dangerous that Wikipedia warns us not to read it.  That's a great example of the kind of police-state tactics being employed today.

I would suggest to the small business–owners who have already been stressed beyond reason that following the dictates of the people who put you in this position is not in your best interest.  Allow your loyal customers to act as adults, and stop enabling the heavy hand of government to keep a chokehold on us and on you.  We all deserve better.

Image: A sampling of "proof of vaccine" signs.  Bing search.

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