“Serious affairs and history are carefully laid snares for the uninformed.”
— Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun
It might be fair to compare the pandemic’s “mask mandates” to Cold War duck and cover drills, per Mr. Beatty’s Daily Post op-ed, “Crazy Mass Paranoia”; if the comparison weren’t infected with insults, misinformation, and poor advice. I feel like I’ve been the victim of a school boy’s “subversive prank”, not the opinion of “…a highly educated man, with advanced reading skills…”.
However; it seems “foolish” to mock such tragedies and look for ways to distill “crazy mass paranoia” from them, while spreading behind fake-news and conspiracy theories that undermine trust in those “government vaxx jihadists” and their ”fanatic acolytes”.
Are these the lessons taught by our parents, or the ones we “figure out as kids” when hiding under our desk?
I hope our kids learn that two nuclear weapons were detonated in Japan, in 1945, and more than 200,000 people may have died, and after that, people in the U.S. were justifiably terrified of, “when the Russians drop the big one” on us. So, instead of being a “silly idea conjured up freaked-out adults”, “Duck and Cover was not only a means to survive the attack, but was a patriotic duty so we could live to fight the godless Soviets and preserve the American Way”.
And, learn that almost 6 million people worldwide have died from the pandemic so far; and that a vaccination can “profoundly decrease the likelihood of infection and hospitalization”.
And, learn that research suggests that COVID-19 started in the wet market in Wuhan, China, likely by a live Chinese raccoon dog; and that it could be unwise to make premature judgments and conclude that the virus was “man-made (like maybe in a Chinese lab”), based on unfounded assumptions.
And, learn that the VA does not perform antibody tests and does not recommend them because of test inaccuracy and the spreading of false information. And many other, “straight answers from the Biden administration about COVID antibodies,” might be found in the CDC’s “Interim Guidelines for COVID-19 Antibody Testing”.
I hope our kids learn that not everything cannot be objectively measured, like the benefits of duck and cover drills, masks and vaccines or the harm of language that divides.
Mostly, I hope they learn that time changes everything.
In it together…
Kevin Thomas
Euless, Texas
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