A heart attack is no fun.  I discovered this the hard way a few days ago.  As a consequence I found myself on the frontlines of the Third World War ­-- the global war against the Chinese created, and deliberately disseminated, COVID virus.  Having spent time on the front lines, I am now writing as a war correspondent.

For several days I lived with the battle-hardened infantry of this war.  People who were exposed to as much lethal danger as most soldiers in the thick of combat.  I mean, of course, the nurses and their doctors. 

Such an experience can be rewarding, for I learned many things about this war:  what it is like to be in constant danger while being overstressed and physically exhausted; what it means to see people that you have come to love suffer and die; what it means to know that the powers-that-be are incompetent and doing harm and you can do nothing to stop the idiocy.

The first thing to report is this war is serious.  It is no joke. People die in astonishing numbers.  Those that don’t die suffer terribly.  Even the most upscale hospital, like mine, has been overwhelmed with the suffering -- stretched far beyond its capacity.  Much ingenuity was needed during the peaks of the pandemic to find safe ways of compassionately taking care of the COVID sick.  Fortunately, during my time on the war front, the peak waves had passed and the soldiers have been given the opportunity to recuperate.

In our culture soldiers hate death.  They see too much of it.  Even the most hardened has compassion for the wounded and the dying -- even his dying enemies.  And this compassion is especially felt if the fallen is a companion. 

Nurses and doctors are particularly torn up by too much COVID death and suffering because their patients are their companions and often become dear friends.  A patient has a very intimate relationship with a nurse and affection between them can form instantly. 

Doctors have these bonds, as well.  Recently, one doctor that I know was devastated because he had just attended the COVID death of an old friend he could not save. 

In a shooting war, the troops in battle always see something very different than the generals running the war.  And, they often don’t like what they see.  In this COVID war that disconnect became all too obvious from my conversations with nurses and doctors.  Would it surprise you that doctors sometimes talk politics during a surgical procedure?  In recent years I have been conscious, and only slightly sedated, during such procedures ­­-- three of them during the COVID War, including my very recent angiogram.  Listening in on the banter it is obvious that the doctors working on me, and their assistants, have zero respect for the generals -- i.e. the dictating politicians. 

The nurses in the hospital are, quite properly, too circumspect to volunteer political opinions.  But they will once the barrier is down.  The ones I encountered are truly cynical about the mandates that have been imposed.  They are well aware, from practical experience, that these mandates are not only useless, but they are also counterproductive.

Unfortunately, a certain faction of politicians glory in the opportunity that COVID provides to bully the populace with mandates.  We all know the type.  And they have Dr. Fauci to give them their excuse for imposing tyranny.  I was astonished when a very mild-mannered doctor of my acquaintance -- a highly respected infectious medicine specialist -- slipped out a curse word when Fauci’s name was mentioned.  Such language doesn’t bother me, but in this case, I was shocked -- it was so uncharacteristic.  It was the last thing I expected from this true gentleman. 

The doctor was right about Fauci, of course.  Fauci is best described as an “actor in a white coat.”  He is in no sense a scientist.  He lacks the integrity, the ruthless self-honesty, and public truthfulness that is essential to practice as a scientist.

A key message that I take back from my recent days on the front line is that the political management of the pandemic is a total botch.  It almost certainly has made things far worse than they might have been if politics hadn’t intervened.  After all, the real experts in this epidemic are the doctors and nurses on the front lines ­-- and a few pioneering scientists such as Robert Malone and Geert Vanden-Bossche -- not the bureaucrats, not the politicians and their media and Big Tech lackeys.  The real experts are shunned by these politicians.

While political mismanagement of the pandemic has likely killed a multitude who would still be alive, its worst impact is on the economy and the morale of the nation. 

Rigid mandates have done most of the harm.  That rigidity is a powerful signal that the political establishment is terrified of the people they govern.

Drop a plastic cup on a tile floor and it bounces unharmed.  It is resilient.  Drop a glass and the glass shatters.  Its rigidity is its downfall.  The impact initially opens a single small crack.  The stress of impact then instantly propagates the crack and bifurcates it until the glass is nothing more than a multitude of shards.  Excess rigidity disintegrates under sudden stress.

So the politicians ­-- I really mean “progressives” when I say politicians -- are afraid of the People, of the bedrock citizens of this country.  They seek rigid control.  And, these politicians see COVID as a perfect opportunity to permanently establish that control so they can never be cast out into political oblivion.  But, in so doing, they have made a terrible political mistake:  they have unmasked themselves.  They are shown as not really being the “servants of the people.”  Rather they have revealed that they think themselves to be our masters.  And now we all know them for what they are. 

In their greed for power and complete control, these progressive politicians believe that COVID, together with temporary control of the federal government, has given them a very narrow window to “fundamentally transform” this country, as a former president put it.  But you do not fundamentally change what you love.  You fundamentally change what you detest and want to destroy.  This very slogan tells all we need to know about how much these people despise you and me and real democracy.

The COVID reign of politically induced terror and control will inevitably be the downfall of the progressive faction.  They have lost credibility with the common citizens of this nation.  How do I know this?  A brief incident told me the truth of the matter.

I was lying on the gurney in Emergency while the paramedics were checking me in.  Next to me was an extended counter behind which one of the nurses was fussing with a computer.  Suddenly she pulled down her mask, turned her head away from us in politeness, and sneezed.  Then she put her mask back on.  No one thought the incident strange, except me.  What I had just witnessed was open rebellion against the mandates.  Rebellion by the deeply knowledgeable.  Rebellion against tyranny.  And, it was obvious, everyone there was a comrade in arms.

Image: Library of Congress

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