It Can’t Be Killed
Not so fast! You thought your life had returned, that it was back to the good ol’ daze, and that you could wrap your normalcy bias around you like a big, thick pumpkin spice-scented comforter. Nah.
One of the worst things a physician can do is give into unwarranted patient perceptions, even when they fall short of outright delusion. But now a permanently enlarged portion of the panic population continues to be purveyors and consumers, even celebrants of a permanent state of fear.
Just ask California’s Santa Clara County Deputy Health Officer Dr. Sarah Rudman, who warns, “The order in Santa Clara County does require masking for everyone who steps into a health care facility.” What better sage perspective, doubtless enlivened by earning a Stanford Bachelor’s degree in feminist studies, and doing residency at Harvard, could there be to begin re-shackling people back to the “common good?”
Additional training at Cornell, U-C Berkley, and U-C San Francisco almost restricts the individual to one of two paths, government or institutionalization. Or teaching Feminist Medicine & Epidemiological Disparity-Equity. Anyhoo, Dr. Rudman is the perfect candidate to remind us all “That’s because we’re all at risk during this winter virus season. We all need to play a role in protecting ourselves and protecting each other.” This sort of rhetorical earnestness was the velvet glove over the terrifying hammer wielded by health commissars over the past three-plus years, and of course they weren’t going to relinquish that power.
The propagandists at the CDC – redundancy intended – are stoking fears of a “tripledemic” comprised of the flu, the COVID, and RSV. While I’ve personally never seen an adult who needed hospital admission for RSV, the captive Big Pharma-friendly CDC is worried about such hospitalizations leading to “strain” on the system, and miraculously, there are now RSV vaccines, as well as combo vaccines for the other two viral menaces. Along with the profitable viral shots, the CDC is again recommending mass masking in “high risk” communities, presumably any with a high preponderance of day care centers or public health officials.
Officials like Sonoma County’s Interim Health Officer Dr. Karen Smith, who “issued an order requiring health care personnel to mask when in patient care areas. This will take effect for health care staff from November 1st until April 30th next year. The order applies to staff at health care facilities including hospitals, clinics, surgery centers, infusion centers, dialysis centers, skilled nursing facilities, portions of long-term care facilities where nursing care is provided, and other facilities where patient care is provided indoors.” This Karen “also recommends that both vaccinated and unvaccinated people wear masks in public indoor settings,” because the (non)vaccines and masks work so well. It must really rankle this Karen to have modified the mass masking requirement, exempting patients due to “the incredible pushback on mask mandates.” Don’t these rubes know that doctors who clumped together in herd panic and got nearly everything wrong three years ago still know what is good for them? And once again, healthcare workers are punished in order to set a good example.
There have been multiple studies showing how pointless was mass masking in the face of aerosolized viruses, and it was laughable seeing every single co-worker and colleague come down with the China Flu despite all the masking, much as we all get whatever viral crap comes into the clinic or ER every year, despite all the costuming. That public health enforcers use the corrupt CDC as a rationale for their own local tyranny demonstrates what we all knew, that the fear industry never left, and will drive the show forever. You may have packed away your monster masks last week, but health care seeks to become Halloween-forever, where everyone wears the same costume always, the treat is ostentatious virtue, and the trick is the belief that any of it does any good.
