I went back to work on June 23.
I’d been out of work for 101 days. Now I’m working three nights a week. I used to get about 25 to 30 hours a week. Now I get around 8.
We weren’t wearing masks that first week I was back. The next week we voluntarily started to. The week after that the health department said everyone had to.
I’d love to talk more about this aspect of my life, but earlier this year my employer received emails from people trying to get me fired because of what I write on this site.
Missoula: The Berkeley of the North
It’s very important for this sleepy college town to flex its liberal muscles, to be part of the team.
That’s Team Biden.
Biden will win Missoula in November; that’s a fact. Trump will win Montana in November. That’s a fact as well.
Deep down, no one is going to argue this. Everyone knows it’s the truth. But Missoula is gonna try its darndest to do its part in Trump’s downfall. Hence their response to the virus.
What’s more contagious at this point, the virus or the fear?
If you want an in-depth look at the virus numbers and which counties are affected most, I’d suggest John Hopkins.
Here’s their data for Missoula.
The county has 115,000 people.
Missoula has had 124 cases since this all started, but currently has just 1 case. Just one person in the county has died from the virus. The fatality rate for the county is 0.81%.
Missoula decided to stop testing people for the virus after they became ‘too busy’ with current cases as well as close contacts.
See the problem here?
Once they begin testing again, cases will go up.
The virus is in Missoula, has been for half a year. Most of our young and healthy people have it now, or have had it. Most didn’t even know it.
On June 19, the Missoula County Health Department began what they called a Sentinel Testing Plan, with the goal of doing 1,800 virus tests each week.
This was in line with state guidance sent down from Governor Bullock.
Ten days later, Missoula stopped all testing.
Why?
“Due to a high volume of new cases and close contacts, the County Testing Clinic is prioritizing testing of symptomatic patients and their close contacts this week, June 29th, until further notice.”
The county admitted that it could only do 80 to 90 tests a day, and that they were overwhelmed.
“We started getting really overwhelmed with people who are having symptoms and close contacts that needed to get tested, and so we just got to the point where we didn’t have the capacity to continue to do the sentinel testing,” Missoula City-County Health Department COVID-19 incident commander Cindy Farr said.
Missoula stopped testing people nearly 3 weeks ago.
When are they going to start testing again?
After all, the general theory is that you begin to show symptoms in 2 weeks. We’re a week past that point, and yet our health department is still monitoring the close contacts
"Testing people for COVID who actually do not have symptoms for COVID is a way of actually having a warning system and a better sense in the community about the presence of the disease,” Health Department director Ellen Leahy explained on July 8...over a week after she ordered all testing to stop.
Am I the only one seeing a problem here?
Our health department admits the best way to protect the community is to do testing, and yet it refuses to do tests.
This is not a mistake. This is a calculated strategy to ensure that Missoula remains in a semi-permanent lockdown until the election.
This is the strategy in blue enclaves all across the country.
Because eventually Missoula will resume testing. And guess what’ll happen? New cases will be detected.
These will mostly be young, fit, healthy people in their 20s and 30s. Most won’t be showing any symptoms. If they’re smart, they won’t get tested at all, allowing them and their dozens of coworkers to keep working, their bosses to keep their businesses open.
This will become especially apparent in three weeks when unemployment ends.
Do you really think we’re going to shut down businesses and send workers home for weeks on end when the government isn’t paying them?
How do you think that’s gonna work out?
The Semi-Permanent Lockdown States
They’re gonna give it a try in California and a few other states.
This is their new normal - coming out of lockdown, opening up businesses for a week or two, then closing them down for a couple months before letting them reopen again. Oh, and we’ll close the schools down while we’re at it, so even if you’re business is open and you do have a job...good luck going to it with our monumental childcare shortage!
How do you think that’s gonna work out?
Personally, I think it’ll lead to a mass exodus of the well-off and skilled workers of that state for neighboring states, Montana being a prime one.
I also think this will help lead to an eventual splintering of this country/nation, as well as a second civil war.
This on-again, off-again shutting-down of businesses will happen in California until the election, and if Trump wins, until a vaccine. When’s that gonna be? Who knows.
So for the rest of 2020 and most of 2021 and probably into 2022, California and other blue states like it will do two months on, two months off...or something similar.
As you can imagine, around 90% of small businesses will close or relocate. The only thing that could save them is a drastic change in political leadership in that state and the others like it, though with most of the well-off and talented leaving, this is unlikely.
So as a nation, we’ll be forced to have open-states and shut-down states, which will fall along red and blue lines, respectively. Travel will of course have to be limited between these states, as the open states probably won’t have face mask laws and will mandate the schools remain open...no matter what.
The fighting won’t be far off.
I think the country is irrevocably broken. We no longer ‘agree to disagree.’ Now if you have a differing viewpoint, you’re the enemy, one that needs to be destroyed and their career prospects cancelled.
Facts and reason and logic are meaningless. If you have a fact that someone doesn’t like, it’s fake news. The incessant pitch from the anonymous voices and fake accounts on Twitter now have more influence on our policymakers than our occasional trips to the ballot box.
As Americans, we’ve become a husk of our once proud and gloried past, of trailblazing innovators and bold explorers, people that weren’t afraid of failure or risk or even losing their lives if it meant the country could become stronger because of it.
Now we find those days are gone, soon to be erased from the history books as we vehemently lash-out against anything that assaults the new puritanism that’s so forcefully taken us ahold.
What Fits the Narrative and What Doesn’t
If you like statistics, you can find a lot to explore. Here’s a site, Worldometers.
I personally like to compare lockdown areas and non-lockdown areas. Consider Sweden.
They have 10.1 million people and nearly 75,000 total cases so far, though many of those have long recovered. They’ve had 5,500 deaths and have done 600,000 tests. 547 deaths per 1 million people.
Then there’s Michigan, a state that had some of the most draconian lockdown rules, such as fishing boats are fine, but motorized boats are not...unless you’re the governor’s husband.
They have 9.9 million people in Michigan, and the state has over 69,000 cases so far. They’ve had over 6,000 deaths.
Lockdowns didn’t make a bit of difference. I suspect we’ll discover masks are the same way.
Viruses spread. We’re lucky this one kills less than 1%. But nothing’s going to stop the spread.
The whole idea was to flatten the curb. We did that, and we knew the virus would come back. But the narrative changes on a daily basis. Currently we’re in the ‘open or close the schools’ narrative. This will be replaced in a week by something else.
The Symbol of Fear
And then there’s the masks.
Many cities and states are now requiring these. How is that working for them? Let’s look at the CDC statistics for the week.
Consider Atlanta, which instituted the mandatory mask order six days ago. Despite that, they’ve had over 21,000 new cases.
Consider California. The whole state has been forced to wear masks for the past 26 days, since June 18. Despite that, California has seen over 60,000 cases in the past week.
Now, with Atlanta you can argue that the order hasn’t been in effect long enough to have an impact. But how do explain California? The state has been using masks for a month, and it has done nothing to slow the spread.
Indeed, the virus is spreading now more than ever.
As we knew it would. The idea was to flatten the curve, and we did that. Once you stop doing that, the curve will rise once again.
It ain't rocket science! In fact, this was expected.
What wasn’t expected was that the economy would rebound as much as it has, which means Trump could win in November.
So we have to force more closures, more seizure of personal liberty. Hence the masks, and when we realize in a month from now that these don’t work - like many now realize in California - some new ploy will be foisted upon the American people by the corporate media that hates them so.
We can go on, if you’d like.
Illinois put a face mask order in effect on April 30, over two and a half months ago. The state is one of the worst in the country, with nearly 7,000 new cases last week. Those face masks are really working, aren’t they?
Maryland put a mask order in effect on April 18, nearly three months ago. Last week they had over 3,600 new cases.
Finally, we have New York. Face masks were ordered on April 17. Two weeks after the order went into effect, the state was still having 2,000 to 3,000 new cases each week. Last week they had nearly 2,500 new cases.
None of the states or cities with mask requirements will ever admit they did anything wrong, both from a pride standpoint and a liability standpoint.
They say it’s about protecting the elderly and saving lives, but we know what kills most people in this country - cancer. Politicians don’t care about that.
Cancer isn’t really a threat to Trump. We’ve thrown every kind of spaghetti at the wall that we can over the past 4 years to get rid of Trump, and now we’re trying the virus and the lockdowns.
Maybe it'll stick, but I think they’ll both fail like all the other tactics did.
You can tell they’re getting more desperate to get rid of Trump the closer we get to November. I think the pressure has also ramped-up with all the Epstein news that’s come out over the past few months.
Do you really think the British Royal Family is going to go down without a fight? Do you think Bill Clinton is, or Alan Dershowitz or the hundreds if not thousands of influential politicians, businessmen, actors, and philanthropists?
I think there’s so much going on behind the scenes right now and we have no clue. The virus is a very convenient way to paper over all this, with the great expectation that the truth will never see the light of day.
But I think the truth is coming, and I think it’s going to change the world a lot more than this virus has.
