Yep, my son goes to the school that had the water pipe break. So he’s been home for the past 21 days.
Today I finally get a break.
The schools have been completely turned on their head, and with them many parents’ lives.
We used to have five days on, two days off for the weekend.
Now we have two days on, five days off for the weekend.
On top of it, if your kid just happens to have a last name on the wrong side of the alphabet from their friends, then they won’t be seeing their friends all year.
And I’m sorry, but I don’t believe for one second that school will resume full-time on November 6.
Some excuse will be found to keep the teachers home, earning their full salary and benefits package while their parents suffer.
Parents don’t have a union; teachers do.
We’re killing our kids, so slowly right now that we don’t notice it. In a year or two, however, we’re gonna see a lot more suicides.
We’ll be surprised how young they’re happening, too.
A kid in my sixth-grade class at Helena Middle School killed himself, way back in ‘92 or ‘93. I always remember the teachers telling us about it later, mentioning how he’d done his homework first, before getting the rifle or shotgun. He had to pull the trigger with his toe.
Our whole class went out that spring and planted a tree in that young boy’s memory. I can’t even remember his name.
This is the reality we’re creating for our young today - a depressing future where the only bright spot might be that gun. Bright because it gives you a way out.
Killing the young to save the old...really makes sense, doesn’t it?
About as much sense as it makes having two men that’ll be dead in a few years running for president.
Why do we have people that are going to die in a few years making policy that will affect all the rest of us for twenty years, or thirty or the rest of our lives?
Why don’t we have younger people making these decisions? After all, they have to live with them.
When you don’t have to live with them, you don’t care.
Biden and Trump and most of the fools in Congress don’t care. I’m 100% confident that Trump and Biden will be dead before 2024. Their health is terrible.
As a nation, our health was terrible before this virus ever hit our shores. We’re the fattest nation on earth, consuming more sugar and salt than all the rest of ‘em. We drink and do more drugs as well.
Why?
Because deep down we know this society is rotten to the core, and self-medicating by overindulging is one of our nation’s main coping mechanisms.
The wool that’s been pulled over our eyes for the past 8 months hasn’t helped any.
Here in Missoula, we had four deaths last week from the virus since this all started...and now we have nine.
More than doubled. End of the world, isn’t it?
And...who exactly has died? Young or old?
I dunno, and the local health department, the state, and all national tracking data refuses to tell us this.
Know why?
It doesn’t fit the narrative.
Right now the narrative is that we’re in the second wave. We keep hearing that cases are going up, that hospitalizations are going up.
But deaths are way down.
In fact, deaths are down 18% compared to the spring. Back then, someone with the virus had a 25.6% chance of dying. Today they have a 7.6% chance.
Why is this?
“That's primarily because increased testing is catching more mild cases, younger people make up a larger share of cases than they used to, and hospitals and doctors are better informed and prepared now,” Business Insider reported a couple months ago, when the trend was becoming clear.
Here’s how NPR put it this week: "The people who are getting hospitalized now tend to be much younger, tend to have fewer other diseases and tend to be less frail than people who were hospitalized in the early days of the epidemic.”
Here in Montana, our cases have only gone up since the mask mandate went into effect.
The mask mandate was issued in mid-July...three months after the pandemic started.
Here’s a graph of how that went:
The curve was not flattened. In fact, the curve shot straight up.
‘So Greg...are you saying that we should have never put the mask mandate in place?’
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.
If we would not have done that - and simply allowed people to wear masks if they wanted to, allow businesses to make people if they wanted to (which many were already doing) - then we would have seen a big uptick in July...and a flattened curve by now, in winter...with cold weather and all the ‘experts’ telling us to be scared.
But we didn’t do that.
Instead we made everyone wear masks. So fewer and fewer people got it...right?
Maybe. And in my opinion, that’s bad. I wish we would have let people get infected...like’s happening now anyway.
Compare Montana’s graph to South Dakota and Sweden, two countries that didn’t lockdown and didn’t mask-up:
As you can see, they’re doing about as well as Montana is...a state that has masks and has locked-down.
Masks just delayed the inevitable.
Look at Sweden - no masks, no lockdown...and they got the second wave, same as everybody.
You honestly think you’re gonna stop mother nature? Listen to her laugh!
How long do you think we’ll have to wear masks? Statewide, I suspect Gianforte will rescind the mask mandate sometime in January.
Here in Missoula, our draconian and anti-Trump health department will keep the order in effect well into next summer and possibly fall, all to spite Governor Gianforte and President Trump as they move us forward into 2021.
Half the country doesn’t want the other half to succeed; the old spend most of their days trying to hurt the young...all under the guise of trying to help them.
We close our schools to protect the physical health of our kids, all while their mental health falls off a cliff.
There are going to be serious consequences for our current actions in the years to come.
And the people putting those actions into place today?
They’ll be long gone by the time the bill comes due.
They’ll let the young handle that. After all, it’s not their problem anymore.