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The New Normal

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The new normal

By Steve A. Stone
May 27, 2020


Dear Friends and Patriots,

Have you heard the many talking heads on TV telling us we have to get used to a “new normal?” It’s an interesting reference, don’t you think? So, what exactly is this “new normal” they’re talking about? You should know. Many of you have been my friends for years, and I know for certain every one of you is a patriot. You’ve all heard this “new normal” stuff before. You should already have ideas about what they’re talking about.

The “new normal” is the exact same thing President Obama referred to as “fundamental transformation,” only, to a great extent, it’s now been realized and we’ve been experiencing it. “New normal” is how certain progressives are characterizing their desire to retain many of the social constraints placed upon us recently. They want us to get used to following rule by edict instead of the rule of law. None of the changes in our lives over the past four months has been the result of any law. How could it be? Congress hasn’t done anything except pass a couple of funding bills that added almost $4T to our nation’s already huge debt. It’s the changes recommended by long-time government bureaucrats, the “guidelines” if you will, that have changed our behaviors, that and the impositions of our state governments. We now queue up at least 6 feet behind other people in lines, and then we look behind us to make sure the next person is at least 6 feet behind us. We only go out of our houses if we have to. We no longer shop at many of our favorite stores—they’re not open. We are just now being “allowed” to do things like go to church, go to the beach, eat inside a restaurant, gather in small groups, and attend some public events. The states are now allowing such things, but only if they’re done within the “re-opening guidelines” and we maintain the social distance and mask guidelines.

We’ve heard certain Democrats in national office urge their constituents to accept permanent changes. They speak of a great opportunity to become a different kind of nation once we’re “allowed” our liberty again. They argue for an entirely new social structure, a “new normal.”

Here are a few things the “new normal” movement wants to institutionalize: wearing masks whenever out in public; teleworking instead of going in to the office; staggered work and school schedules in attempts to minimize peoples’ exposure to each other; more and more disposable “safety” wear like masks and gloves; sports and music events playing to vastly reduced, socially-distanced crowds; social tracking to monitor our interactions with others; re-engineered factories that are set up to allow for social distancing; more expensive products as the costs of achieving the “new normal” affect company profits; more and more consumer goods ordered on-line and delivered to the customers’ homes instead of shopping in brick-and-mortar stores; on-line business meetings utilizing conferencing technologies that are adapted to any kind of computing device, including smart phones; health assessments before entering office buildings, schools, hospitals, and other places where large numbers of people congregate. There are many more aspects of the “new normal.” This sampling should give you the essential idea, though. Do you get a flavor of fear included in all of it? Yes, one aspect of the “new normal” is the institutionalization and general acceptance of irrational fear.

At this point, it’s useful to wonder if any nation on Earth would respond to the next epidemic or pandemic in the same way. Is the idea of shutting down an entire country to be considered part of the new normal, with the attendant inconveniences, destruction to economies, and constant fear-mongering? Gee, I certainly hope not.

Did you notice in the list of “new normal” items above how much technology is factored in? Yes, it’s true. The “new normal” being promoted would take more advantage of technology and purposely push people farther apart.

I know all this is distressing to you. It’s been distressing to me, too. Not that much has changed in my life. To an amazing degree, I didn’t change my routine. At work, I was deemed “essential” and continued to report in to my office every day. But, over 80% of my organization didn’t. They supposedly teleworked and stayed home. I’m sure some of them did work, too, but others couldn’t possibly do most aspects of their normal routines because the heart of their jobs wasn’t office-based. It made as much sense to put them in telework status as it might if your sanitation company told the people that collect your trash to stay home and phone it in. Things that we consider vital to do in normal times just aren’t being done—and our leadership says that’s okay. To a disturbing extent, my own organization is already adopting the “new normal.”

You all know I use certain methodologies in my writing. When I try to delve into a complex subject, I apply principles of critical thinking. I use the Socratic Method in my analysis and ask “Why?” as many times as necessary to arrive at conclusions that are logical and seem to be the best fit for the known circumstances and objective evidence. This COVID-19 episode has required a bit more than my normal routine. I’ve had to add considerations for motives. It appears to me there may have been crimes committed. In criminal law, prosecutors do not have to prove any motive, but they often do have to provide a logical sequence of events that best matches the material evidence. They have to bring forth witnesses, explain the evidence, articulate their theory of the crime, and convince the judge or jury of the guilt of the accused. But, they aren’t required to prove motive. Such things are necessarily unprovable, so prosecutors are allowed to openly speculate on motive. Judges and juries have to pay attention to actual evidence presented, but are free to make up their minds on whether or not any prosecutor’s theory of the crime – their speculations on sequences of events and motive – has any credibility. We’re all watching the COVID-19 saga and we’re all participating in it. It affects everyone to some greater or lesser degree. My compromises are relatively few, but I have made some. Others have been affected to their limit—they’ve acquired COVID-19 and succumbed to it. We’re all in this, but we should all be asking questions. After all, there are those calls for adopting a “new normal.” Shouldn’t we understand why? Shouldn’t we wonder what motivation is behind the calls for any “new normal?” What was so wrong with our “old normal?”

There are some questions we can’t answer with any degree of fidelity. We are all certain the virus first appeared in Wuhan, China. That seems to be well-accepted, though not definitively documented. China doesn’t unequivocally admit it did, and instead hints broadly that it may not be true. If not in Wuhan, then where? If not a Chinese-sourced infection, then who else did it, and where did it really come from? We’ll only hear learned speculations on the origination. The Chinese government has every reason to want to lie, and one thing the Chinese government has excelled at for the past 70 years is the creation and propagation of lies.

We don’t actually know if the virus is natural or not. There are quite a few virologists who assert it has traits that indicate it was at least modified in a lab somewhere. Somewhere? We can ask where, but we’ll never actually know. No one will ever admit to creating the COVID-19 virus. Why would they?

We don’t know why the World Health Organization hesitated for over a month in alerting the world that a new and deadly coronavirus was loose in the world. Yes, they did that. They knew at least by December that the virus was loose and already affecting Korea, Japan, and some places in Europe. They knew the virus was being spread by people who had been in Wuhan. But they didn’t say anything. Why not? It’s easy to speculate on the appearance of a pro-Chinese tilt to their actions, but was that really it? Were they urged to stay quiet by the Chinese leadership for a reasonable purpose? Did they remain quiet according to any arrangement with the Chinese to allow them time to take some kind of proactive measures? Or, were they individually rewarded for their silence? We’ll never know. No one will tell us.

We don’t know why certain governors in the U.S. decided it was better to concentrate COVID-19-positive patients in nursing homes. We can speculate those decisions in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and at least a couple of other states were the result of dumb recommendations from the senior health officials in those states, but was that the reason? Early on the Center for Disease Control put out that the severity of infections depended somewhat on what they termed “virus load.” They noted that health care workers, regardless of age or physical condition, had a greater risk because of continuous exposure to infected patients, increasing their own personal virus load. Orders to transfer people who had tested positive at hospitals back to the nursing home where they came from and, later, to send even more infected people to those same nursing home became death sentences for the elderly residents. In state after state, it was deaths in nursing homes that accounted for the majority of victims. Was that because of some evil plan? Was it ineptitude? Was it poor infection control by poorly supervised staffs? Was it due to just...[Read more in PDF]

https://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sstone/200527

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