By CRAIG E. CAMPBELL
They congratulated themselves at the Centers for Disease Control when they announced vaccinated people may attend small outdoor gathering without wearing masks.
Claiming science has shown the vaccine is effective most of the time, the masters of science and disease control proclaimed this was a significant step towards returning to normal. Everyone of us should drop to our knees, face towards Atlanta, and praise our most gifted servants at the CDC for granting us this newfound freedom.
Without the vigilant management of this horrendous coronavirus by these gods of government, the human race would have faced extinction. After all, Covid-19 is one of the most deadly diseases to ever infect humanity, they would lead you to believe, so without the government clamp-down to destroy businesses, taking away our constitutional rights to assembly, and ensuring we did not make irresponsible individual decisions that may harm others, or even kill us, humanity would have faced termination.
It sounds like a truly honorable and noble pursuit by our government elitists: Save humanity from the deadly coronavirus pandemic. Bravo…Bravo.
But was the coronavirus really such a deadly disease that our government leaders needed to violate our constitutional protections of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Was it such a deadly disease that we had to implement draconian restrictions on society that caused increased suicides and depression; increased violence and civil unrest; increased unemployment with a disproportionate impact on minorities, and has nearly made the United States a bankrupt nation through numerous trillion dollar relief bailouts?
Let’s look at the CDC data on global pandemic deaths, as of March 2021 from the following chart:
Let me break down the numbers:
- Black Plague – 200 million deaths out of a world population of 0.39 billion.
- Smallpox – 56 million deaths out of a world population of .46 billion.
- Spanish Flu – 45 million deaths out of a world population of 1.82 billion
- HIV/AIDS – 30 million deaths out of a world population of 4.46 billion
- Covid-19 – 2.7 million deaths out of a world population of 7.9 billion
So, Covid-19 has not been nearly as deadly a pandemic as all previous global pandemics, yet our freedoms as Americans have been systematically hand-cuffed for over a year in the “interest of public health.” COVID-19 primarily attacks the elderly and those with underlying conditions, especially conditions like heart or lung diseases, or diabetes.
The fact is, over 90 percent of those who died from Covid-19 in the United States were over the age of 55, most with other medical conditions. Did we really need to bring the United States to the brink of collapse over Covid-19?
The CDC has constantly moved the goalposts on wearing masks. Why would this be? Forgive me for being pessimistic of government, but maybe this past year has been a test to determine how much compliance government can achieve by placing a fear into society and exaggerating the impact of a disease to determine the level of compliance control government can gain over our lives.
As to the mask themselves, how effective have they really been? Here is a comparison of state Covid death rates which documents the uselessness of strict mask mandates:
- New York (Strict Mask Mandates) – Death rate of 0.0027 – 51,386 deaths out of a population of 19.3 million
- New Jersey (Strict Mask Mandates) – Death rate of 0.0027 – 25,301 deaths out of a population of 8.9 million.
- Michigan (Strict Mask Mandates) – Death rate of 0.0019 – 18,449 deaths out of a population of 9.9 million
- Texas (Relaxed Mask Mandates) – Death rate of 0.0017 – 48,966 deaths out of a population of 29.0 million
- Florida (Relaxed Mask Mandates) – Death rate of 0.0016 – 34,848 deaths out of a population of 21.6 million
- California (Strict Mask Mandates) – Death rate of 0.0015 – 61,399 deaths out of a population of 39.6 million, and
- Idaho (Relaxed Mask Mandates) – Death rate of 0.0011 – 2,031 deaths out of a population of 1.9 million.
- Alaska (Relaxed Mask Mandates) – Death rate of 0.0005 – 341 deaths out of a population of 733,391.
It has never been about the masks. Sure they probably provide some level of protection from spreading the disease, but this is about ascertaining the level of compliance government can squeeze out of their subjects.
Last week I traveled out of state. While walking through an unnamed airport I heard the obligatory public address announcement that we should all be wearing masks in the airport.
What caught my attention was the announcement went something like this: “Federal law requires all passengers to wear masks while inside the passenger terminal. Wearing masks helps prevent the spread of disease. Your compliance with this requirement is appreciated.”
Get what the announcer said: “…helps prevent the spread of disease.” That made my skin crawl, as I could see our future. Once government has socialized us into wearing masks for Covid, because they said so, couldn’t they also mandate masks for the seasonal flu; the next global disease like SARS, Eboli, tuberculosis; or maybe just to protect against the common cold? Of course they will think they can.
Fact is, as I am writing this piece, the COVID infectious rate is lower than the annual average seasonal flu infectious rate, yet the CDC still pushes us to mask-up. They have established the bar that, we the people, will comply with useless mandates presented as protecting the health of our nation because the wizards of Washington said so.
How about mandating protection for the potential spread of HIV/AIDS? That was over twice as deadly as Covid. I would never support that type of insane government intrusion into my life any more than I can tolerate the lunatics mandating masks in communities that have no demonstrable outbreak of Covid among the general population, like Anchorage. Even with Tuesday’s assembly action to repeal the emergency orders, they left the mask mandate in place.
Don’t be sucked into the lie that the mask mandates were to protect the population from Covid-19. It was never about that at all. It has always been about government elitists, who know they are smarter and wiser than you and me, taking control of our lives to increase their power over us.
Our constitutional rights have been flushed down the toilet with this past year of pandemic paranoia and with this new-found power you can bet we will see more “government mandates” in the future to protect us from ourselves. Our rights under the United States Constitution are but a shadow of what that wonderful document gave us in 1789. How much more are we willing to concede?
Craig E. Campbell served on the Anchorage Assembly between 1986 and 1995 and later as Alaska’s Tenth Lieutenant Governor. He was the previous Chief Executive Officer and President for Alaska Aerospace Corporation. He retired from the Alaska National Guard as Lieutenant General (AKNG) and holds the concurrent retired Federal rank of Major General (USAF).
