Demotion

SCENE: Mitch BERG is biking through Como Park when he hears some muted sobbing. He looks toward a park bench, where he notices Avery LIBRELLE sitting, wearing four masks, which are becoming slowly soaked in tears. BERG visibly hesistates, but his sense of compassion overwhelms his reflexes. He gets off the bike and walks over toward LIBRELLE

BERG: Er…hey, Avery…

LIBRELLE: (Stifles a sob) Stay at least 12 feet away!

BERG: Nooo problem. What’s the matter?

LIBRELLE: I…I don’t know. It’s just that with the CDC suddenly scaling back mask mandates, and Governor…

BERG: Klink

LIBRELLE: …Walz ending mask mandates early, I just feel…(sobs again)I.

BERG: How?

LIBRELLE: Strangely… empty.

BERG: Like part of your purpose in life has been removed.k

LIBRELLE: (Small sob)

BERG: Like all your moral authority has been snatched away.

LIBRELLE: (Bigger sob)

BERG: Like you’ve lost your only response to that evolutionary instinct you have to respond to what you see as an existential threat – a sabertooth tiger or a famine or Pearl Harbor? That you’ve had your power to fill the void left by generations of plenty, safety and security has been ripped from your life?

LIBRELLE: (Wracked with a convulsive sob).

BERG: (Lets LIBRELLE cry a bit, then) Well, the good news is, most people have been vaccinated…you’ve had your vaccine, right?

LIBRELLE: (mustering some irate composure). Of course.

BERG: Well, there. you…

LIBRELLE: Twelve doses.

BERG: (jaw flaps in breeze for a moment before he shakes it off). Makes sense. To go with the four masks.

LIBRELLE: It’s six.

BERG: Of course it is.

And SCENE.

30 thoughts on “Demotion

  1. Many of the reactions by the Karens and their ilk have always been more akin to religious than anything else. The fact that the commies soiled Christianity left a lot of people, the kind who need a religion, looking for something and the Kung flu was just that thing.

  2. On a note not totally making fun of Avery, it’s struck me for a while that we could have harnessed the civic spirit of Minnesotans a little over a year ago by preparing places where the sick could quarantine.

    Judging by the rate at which cases and deaths dropped right after we started vaccinating, it was our “essential workers” who were the primary route of infections,and if we’d had some people willing to be quarantined themselves as they cared for those with clear hazards, we might have avoided millions of infections and hundreds of thousands of deaths.

    Just sayin’.

  3. To harness the civic spirit of Minnesotans a little over a year ago for a disease with 99.5% survival rate for those 70 and under would require a massive effort of evangelizing (propagandizing for the less religious). Which did happen. But as it became obvious that the evangelists didn’t themselves believe their own message along with the various hypocritical aspects making up the pandemic reaction (professional sports for one, a candy store in Jordan for another), that civic spirit for many of us disappeared and turned to cynicism.

    And to mention the subjects of another blog posting, “we won’t get fooled again”.

  4. And this is what we’re up against. Fraud-ci now claims that racism is behind the Kung flu deaths. Almost all relate to the social determinants of health dating back to disadvantageous conditions that some people of color find themselves in from birth regarding the availability of an adequate diet, access to health care, and the undeniable effects of racism in our society.

    Vodkapundit responds

    Do you know who Fauci implicitly left out?

    Asian-Americans… but we’ll circle back to them in a moment.

    The Wuhan Flu is primarily a killer of the old, the obese, and the malnourished.

    We live in such an age of plenty that not only do our poorest citizens tend to have the highest rates of obesity, they also tend to have the highest rates of vitamin deficiency.

    Is it racist that COVID has such low morbidity rates in sub-Saharan Africa, where people are skinny and spend plenty of time in the sun?

    We can lay the blame for an awful lot of that obesity at the feet of Well-Meaning Government, for issuing dietary guidelines that took the “diet” out of “diet.”

    Among other mistakes.

    Whatever Washington’s culpability, eating tons of crap is not good for you, although Insanity Wrap does enjoy the occasional snack-size bag of Cheetos.

    It isn’t racist to say that, any more than it’s racist to note that Asians in this country have far lower rates of obesity — and far lower rates of Wuhan morbidity.

    Healthier people tend to stay that way. Less healthy people are more likely to die when they get sick.

    It’s called “morbid obesity” for a reason.

    Remember that MO has noted that the least vaccinated are black and Hispanics.

  5. Texas: Mask mandate lifted.

    Dhimmicraps: Jen Rubin- Abbot is going to kill more people.
    “Beto” O Roark- its a death warrant!!!
    Gropey Joe- it’s Neanderthal thinking!!

    Texas today:

    Today Texas reported:

    * 0 Covid related deaths–the only time that’s happened since data was tracked in March, 2020.

    * the fewest Covid cases in over 13 months

    * the lowest 7-day Covid positivity rate ever

    * the lowest Covid hospitalizations in 11 months.

    Thanks, Texans!

    Lol, “neanderthal” what a putz

  6. Mitch,
    I know that it was probably hard to tell with all the masks, but are you sure that wasn’t Rachel Maddow and not Avery? Maddow reacted to the repeal of the mask mandates, as typical true believers would, stating that she would have to “rewire her brain to not see people without masks as threats” to her. Dave Rubin commented on her announcement, “Liberalism is a disease”.

  7. JDM–the civic mindedness I’m thinking of would have been to arrange a few temporary ICU wards around the state that would have been staffed by people who wouldn’t have been distributing everywhere–say 1000 beds–and say another few thousand rooms (perhaps simply use unused hotels) for people to recover until they were no longer contagious. We’re not talking about super heroic measures here.

  8. Dave Rubin commented on her announcement, “Liberalism is a disease”.

    Michael Savage wrote the book “Liberalism Is A Mental Disorder” 16 years ago, and he coined the phrase a few years prior to that. Nice to see others are finally acknowledging what he said so long ago. Like he was ahead of the times, or something.

  9. BikeBubba, spoken like someone who wants to do a public good, not exploit a tragedy for political control.

  10. Rachel Maddow needs to get rid of the mask, and go with the plain brown bag. Be sure to put in two eyes holes, Rachel.

  11. David Hogg says he’ll continue to wear a mask so people won’t think he’s a conservative.

    I will continue to not wear a mask, because I don’t want people to think I might be David Hogg.

  12. The best response to the this pandemic would have been the same response we have had to earlier pandemics: take common-sense precautions, isolate the sick, and protect at-risk populations.
    The reason we did not do this is a combination of citizen passivity, and the belief by out elites that elites were far better at managing the pandemic than ordinary people making decisions for themselves.
    The result has been a disaster that we will have to live with for generations.
    And they still won’t admit that they totally f*cked things up, so look forward to a repeat performance when the next public health crisis occurrs.

  13. Bill C–just call me “Pollyanna!” :^) Seriously, being actually civic minded too often means you’ll fall prey to the Blagos and Daleys…..

  14. Pollyanna-ism is a good thing (from what I remember) because it looks for the good in anything. My concern is that it can mutate to Charlie Brown-ism – hmm, I never thought of Nancy Pelosi as Lucy before – in which Good People get cheated by Blago and Daley. After the most recent election and my thoughts about the pandemic reactions, I don’t think we can afford to be so gullible and naive anymore.

  15. Related, I think:
    Why are people harping on everyone, even those who’s vax risk isn’t far away from their c19 risk, to get vaccinated?
    I can see vaccinations for people at risk, or even nearly at risk, but sixteen, now twelve, pushing ever downward toward infants (who already have vaccinations to deal with)?
    Is it truly concern, or is it something else?

  16. The CDC shouldn’t have removed restrictions without requiring proof of vaccination.

    There are no golden tickets out of the pandemic. But vaccine passports will allow a faster return to quasi-normalcy for some sectors of the economy and will have the added benefit of testing the resolve of the anti-vaccine set. And eventually they may spell the difference between meaningful community (herd) immunity and a virus that continues to mutate in a pool not small enough to snuff it out.

  17. Emery, by “anti-vaccine set” You must mean blacks and hispanics.
    It is problematic, to say the least, to institute formal rules that afflict blacks and hispanics more than whites, don’t you think?

  18. So, since Biden and Fauci were as wrong as could be about the wisdom of Abbot and Desantis of opening up their states & dropping masking and social distancing rules, shouldn’t the news media point this out? That empirical evidence shows that Biden and Fauci (and themselves, for the most part) were wrong?

  19. Inequities will always exist in pretty much every aspect of life. The imperative should be to reduce the inequity that exists in effective ways that do not penalize. This is true with vaccinations as with other areas. The flip side of this is wanting to still allow for personal choice. With the knowledge that choices always have opportunity costs.

    Design the system so that those who wish to participate with the rules receive the greater benefit. We shouldn’t begin to implement a vaccine passport system until a strong majority of people who wish to get the vaccine have gotten it. Once we hit that point, the system should be designed to accommodate people with foreseeable issues, such as no smartphone, or medical issues that preclude vaccination. We should be sure that those who do not wish to be vaccinated have had the opportunity, but if they decline that opportunity, the cost (e.g., restrictions to travel) is theirs to bear. But if they change their minds, they need only be fully vaccinated to get the benefits previously denied.

    Good design takes careful thought and planning. This allows people the freedom to decide, but not the freedom to put others at risk.

  20. ↑↑ It is a shame that Mitch allows naked racism like this on SITD.

  21. Emery proves that he’s willing to do anything that his government overlords want him to do.

    Go ahead, dumb ass. Get your “vaccine passport” and make sure that every time those gubmint elites say that you need to inject an unproven vaccine into your body, you can be one of the first in line to get it.

  22. Regarding the notion that we ought to require vaccination before loosening things up, what the heck ever happened to personal freedom and responsibility here? Reality here is that the CDC made a model, good or bad, that took the current infection rates and estimate of immunity rates (currently closing in on 70%), and said that with what we know now, face masks are no longer an important part of the response, especially outside.

    By no means should we be saying “Deine Papiere, bitte.” to everyone as a condition of accessing this freedom. That method has a heritage that we ought to abhor.

  23. Better the carrot of a lottery than the stick of “Show Me Your Papers.”

    Of course, a real American would understand that whereas a Canadian would not.

  24. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
    https://ohiovaxamillion.com/

    “Are you getting vaccinated?”

    “Nah. the odds of me getting Covid are like a thousand to one”

    “What if, in return for getting vaccinated, I enrolled you in a lottery with odds of a million to one?”

    “Sign me up”

    We are certainly dumb enough as a people to have a 100-million-to-one lottery entice a meaningful number into getting vaccinated in order to enter.

  25. But if the bribe works to get people volintarily vaccinated, then what’s the problem? It’s certainly more democratic than your preferred procedure:

    “Are you vaccinated? You know it’s mandatory to avoid putting others at risk and if you get caught, I acting as Local Neighborhood Karen have the authority to order these troops to open fire and execute you on the spot.”

    “Nah. The odds of me getting caught are like a thousand to one”

    “Open fire.”

  26. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 05.18.21 (Afternoon Edition) : The Other McCain

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