I was picking up a package from our rural post office in the California mountains during the nation's misbegotten adventure with the COVID-19 virus. In the hallway, a masked elderly woman approached me. When she saw the parcel, she flattened herself against the wall and screamed, "It can survive 48 hours!"
Perhaps you too remember just a few years ago the confusing, misleading government response to the COVID-19 pandemic, led by Tony Fauci, the highest-paid federal government employee.
Remember social distancing? Six feet, as I recall. How masks would keep us safe. No funerals allowed. The media's daily body count. The devastating school closures. The small businesses wiped out by misinformation. Fifteen days to flatten the curve. Gavin Newsom's strict disease protocols for ordinary people while he was dining out.
And China's laughable claim that nothing unusual was happening at the bio-lab in Wuhan, where, we learned later, our very own Fauci was secretly helping to finance research into that virus by the communists who run America's most dangerous strategic opponent. Nothing to see there, you understand.
All that came flashing back this week with the shocking news that a young woman had died of the plague at a Russian bio-lab known to have worked on biological weapons in Siberia. Hundreds of quarantines. Neighboring borders being closed to Russians.
Russian authorities belatedly announced: relax, nothing to worry about. Everything is fine. There's no medical emergency. Move along, as Leslie Nielsen so famously urged here.
Excuse us if we don't believe Vladimir Putin, the man who explained his invasion of neighboring Ukraine four-plus years ago wasn't an invasion. It was a "special military operation" because he had detected a dangerous number of surviving Nazis there.
This newest episode of official bunk prompted some pungent thoughts for this week's audio commentary.
You can access these brief audio thoughts by clicking on the flag here:
It has seemed to me recently that one of the underlying reasons for the bitter and profound partisan divide in our country these days is connected to the widespread lack of trust.
So, I did considerable research, and that led to this week's Sunday column:
The most recent audio commentary examined What's to Fear With AI?
Turns out, there's quite a bit that's worrisome. But it's not what you might think.
