***

If you want an example of the way contemptibly dishonest government officials together with abominably incompetent or outright ill-intentioned so-called “journalists” have thrown gasoline on our already raging suicide and drug addiction crises, you couldn’t have done better than the New York Times this morning.

Or the Washington Post.

Or CNN.

Or CBS News.

In fact, at 10:30am today, if you’d simply clicked any of Google’s first four search suggestions after typing “85” and the first three letters of “infant” in the box, a list of 72 headlines would have appeared, with every major news outlet represented, and each a variation on this first entry from CNN:

85 Infants Under Age 1 Tested Positive for Coronavirus in One Texas County

Perhaps that sounds a little frightening to you.

But imagine you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans who nobody in charge gives a damn about.

You wake up every morning prepared to do battle with dark demonic voices in your head declaring the world a monstrous place in which every minuscule sprinkling of joy is counterbalanced by a horrific infinity of hideous pain but escape from which, they relentlessly urge, is only a razor blade to the wrist, or a plastic bag over the head, or a hastily ingested bottle of pills away.

The damnable voices are nothing if not patient. They wait for those moments of vulnerability, when you’re deprived of the only two talismans potent enough to keep them at bay and stop you from getting sucked into the fetid whirlpool of self-annihilation they never cease urging you on toward: human companionship and a regular work routine.

But, you’ve been deprived of both for months because of some virus that’s basically harmless to anyone who’s not old or seriously ill.

That’s just one of many facts that will turn out to have been tragically kept from you.

You don’t know that the average age of those listed as fatalities is around 80 or that the CDC itself has quietly published estimates according to which the virus you’ve been taught to obsessively fear on top of all the other crushing psychological burdens you bear is no more deadly than the flu.

You don’t know that the little man who’s always on TV gleefully pushing for more restrictions and smothering any sign of hope that the miserable desolation he’s inflicted on you will end anytime soon said the very same thing himself when addressing his peers. He’s so successfully managed to cut you off from your fellow human beings that you don’t even have the consolation of knowing there’s anyone else struggling under the same awful burden.

You think the despair driving you over the edge is yours and yours alone to bear.

As the voices tell you that’s because it’s all your fault.

So it never even occurs to you to wonder whether the daily death tally that was relentlessly drummed into your head for months making everything seem even more horrific and hopeless might be exaggerated.

You haven’t even noticed that the media stopped reporting it weeks ago, or wondered what the numbers look like now, or why on earth you’re no longer hearing them.

All you know is the frightening headlines you’ve been bombarded with for months as you struggle with the voices and try not to let the hands that your heartless mayor or governor has condemned to idleness and solitude become the devil’s gruesome playthings.

But not knowing the virus used to justify depriving you of the daily routine and human company that provided your only means of salvation could have been met by simply isolating the sick and elderly, you don’t blame the politicians and bureaucrats for your suffering.

You blame yourself.

The voices are right.

They’ve been right all along.

You’re a weak and worthless wretched piece of garbage, a cancerous blight whose only contribution is to make an already hellish world that much worse.

Your only distraction is the internet. But some version of that headline screams at you everywhere you look:

85 infants…all under the age of 1…all came down with the dreadful killer virus in one day…

You find yourself compelled to read on to see if it can really be as bad as the headline makes it seem. You don’t want to, but there’s nothing else to do, no one to talk to. And the voices, they insist on it; berating you for your heartless lack of concern for all those poor suffering doomed little babies.

Alone, isolated for months, deprived of work, recreation, and human companionship, you read the words of a Texas official named Annette Rodriguez. You’ve been breaking down in fits of uncontrollable violent weeping several times a day for months now. You feel today’s first awful episode coming on as you read Annette Rodriguez ‘s heartwrenching tale:

If 85 innocent babies were struck by the killer violence in one small Texas town in one day, there must be tens of thousands subjected to its agonizing almost certain death all across America. There are probably hundreds in your city alone. And, selfish worthless wretch that you are, you complained about being alone in order to save those millions of dying infants, for the number grows irrationally as your mental state spins out of control.

By now you’re weeping and smashing your fists and head into the floor. And the voices say, “Peace is at hand, you can end your suffering now, blow out the pilot light and turn on the gas, or open the drawer where you keep that box cutter, or get that bottle of pills. There are so many ways to find relief.”

And the voices lyingly label weakness strength as they chant, “You just need to be strong enough to do what you yourself know needs to be done. You’re alone. No one will miss you. Nobody cares. Think of those millions of dying babies. Think of how awful this world is”

You don’t know that 80% of COVID-19 infections don’t cause severe symptoms or that 40% cause none at all.

Nor do you know that the virus is virtually harmless unless your old or antecedently ill.

How could you? Nothing that might have saved you from the decrepit state of miserable fear and loathing you’ve been sinking further into each and every day is ever mentioned in the headlines that in your sweet, tragic, wounded innocence you never think to question.

And, of course, you don’t notice that Annette Rodriguez neglected to mention exactly WHEN those 85 babies were diagnosed with the coronavirus.

CNN or whichever media outlet’s accursed article you read went on to state that “in Texas’ Nueces County, the number of new coronavirus cases skyrocketed in July after a flattening trend,” causing you to implicitly assume that Annette Rodriguez was reporting case results from the day before. As did the tens of millions of others who read it or one of the 71 virtually identical articles that were spreading like a deadly online pathogen this morning. The headlines alone, which is all most people will ever read, left that despicably false impression.

You’ll never find out that those 85 alleged cases represent the total number that occurred over the last 5 months.

Or that all but one of those infants were diagnosed over 3 months ago.

Context for the “85 infants have tested positive!!!” panic stories:

* 85 is the total number <1 to test pos since March
* They were primarily found through contact-tracing family members.
* There is no surge in infant positives.
* None of them died.https://t.co/9iGXXG2WLH

— A.J. Kay (@AJKayWriter) July 19, 2020

That plea by Annette Rodriguez to “please help us stop the spread of this disease” which drove you over the brink of despair was so despicably disingenuous that it might have been issued by the demonic tormenting voices themselves.

But that’s something you won’t ever discover either.

Nor will you ever learn that there wasn’t a single COVID-19 fatality among the 85 infants she so skillfully made you and millions of others believe were doomed. The lone fatality had been hospitalized for symptoms entirely unrelated to COVID-19

Not that it matters.

Even if you weren’t alone and isolated and someone could explain to you the crucial distinction ignored by the media and their anointed experts between dying WITH a virus and dying FROM it, in your broken wretched state, screaming and crying, as the voices urge you to keep crawling towards the oven, or the drawer where that box-cutter sits, or the bottle of pills, you’d never be able to understand.

And in a minute or two, you’ll be beyond understanding and you’re suffering, which perhaps you were finally starting to get under control when these wretched lockdowns – as unnecessary as they were unspeakably cruel  – demolished your only defenses, will come to an end.

***

We’ve heard countless stories about people dying from COVID-19 these past five months. Though they had a tendency to turn out to be misleading or outright false.

There was the 21-year-old soccer coach from Spain whose death was attributed to coronavirus in headlines around the world.

Soccer coach Francisco Garcia dies from coronavirus at age 21

But you often had to read well past the headline to find out that he suffered from leukemia as well. And sometimes that other factor that almost certainly played an outsized role in his untimely demise went entirely unmentioned

Who can forget hearing the troubling story of the media medical expert on COVID-19 who became deathly ill for months, nearly dying of the virus? And how many of those frightened out of their wits by that story even heard when it later emerged that something else was the cause and he was never infected with the coronavirus at all.

Though the media has occasionally reported on the spike in suicides the lockdowns they’ve pushed on us have caused, they almost never try to humanize all the suffering by telling anyone’s tragic story. That’s why I had to imagine what it was like for someone barely coping with life to face these lockdowns myself. In fact, the headlines reporting the sudden increase in suicides we’ve seen these past few months usually make it sound like the virus itself is the cause rather than the cruel measures imposed on us in response.

Last week dozens of media outlets ran stories on some remarks CDC director, Robert Redfield, made, all with headlines virtually identical to CNN’s:

CDC director says masks are key for reopening of schools

But you invariably had to read well-in to discover that Redfield had also made the following shocking report:

“We’re seeing, sadly, far greater suicides now than we are deaths from Covid,We’re seeing far greater deaths from drug overdose, that are above excess, than we had as background, than we are seeing deaths from Covid.”

 

The fact that the media doesn’t think the director of the CDC’s admission that suicide and drug addiction are causing much more death than COVID-19 tells you all you need to know about their agenda and the extent to which you ought to trust what they’re telling you about masks.

We know that many harrowing tales of people driven to suicide or back to drugs because of these lockdowns have played themselves out across the country these past five months and many more will in those that follow.

But we’re never going to know just how many since no one wants us to.

It’s clear the bureaucrats in charge and their media enablers would prefer we never even learn about them at all except to the extent that they’re able to pass off the massive volume of human tragedy they’ve caused as another reason to be live in fear of the virus itself. They’ve done far worse than entirely abrogate their obvious responsibility to inform us of any of the horrific side effects the brutal restrictions they’ve imposed on us have had. When they’re not actively covering up all the horror they’ve caused, they use it to create even more.

The media have abetted the efforts of countless despicable bureaucrats like Annette Rodriguez to drive the nation into a panic with lies and misdirection. Perhaps you’re strong enough not to have been too damaged by it all and you never think about your fellow Americans who weren’t so lucky or those whose luck will run out soon.

But it’s long past time someone started thinking about them.

There’s a debt to be paid.

They’re owed a day of reckoning.

The people who did this must be made to face the consequences of the countless Americans driven beyond the edge of despair by their lies and incompetence.

May God grant their souls the peace in death they were so brutally and cruelly deprived of in life and divine justice be delivered on the heads of those who so deprived them.