Op-Ed by Scott Lazarowitz

Former Congressman Ron Paul is right about the government and medical fear mongers inciting panic among the American population. Bureaucrats and their media spokespeople are scaring Americans to accept unnecessary abridgments of their freedom.

And it’s very troubling now with the “liberals” and their calls for more fascism and controls, and pleas for censorship, just as it was with the warmongers after 9/11.

Bernie Sanders recently accused Donald Trump’s alleged coronavirus “unfactual information” of “exacerbating the crisis,” and said that, “the first thing we have got to do, whether or not I’m president, is to shut this president up right now.”

But all Trump has done is to tell the truth about the coronavirus COVID-19, that for most people is really no different from the seasonal flu. The symptoms are similar, and for most people the symptoms are mild symptoms.

For Bernie and the media propagandists, everyone should just obediently believe the hype that implies that COVID-19 is as serious as Ebola, and shut up.

(However, while Ebola has a 90% mortality rate, coronavirus COVID-19 has a less then 1% mortality rate. That’s quite a difference, Bernie.)

Like the neocon warmongers and interventionists who censored criticism of government psychopaths after 9/11, the “liberals” will be going after any speech that doesn’t fall in line with the official narrative propaganda of COVID-19.

After 9/11, there were many instances of government-imposed censorship. In the years after 9/11, Sen. Lindsey Graham said, “I wish we could find some way to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war. During World War II, you had limits on what you could do if it inspired the enemy.”

Note the “We’re At War” thing. We’re “at war” so Graham says censoring or stifling freedom of speech (especially our criticism of those imbeciles in Washington) is okey-dokey for him.

And Graham and his fellow statists also reject due process. He said that if someone is accused of terrorism, then, “If you’re an American citizen and you betray your country, you’re not going to be given a lawyer.”

Naturally statists who worship the high-and-mighty rulers do not understand that we’re talking about those accused of “betraying their country,” not people who have been tried and convicted of such acts.

But soon the non-hysterical and non-irrational will be accused of “terrorism” or of “giving people COVID-19” if we don’t go along with the hype and panic, and who knows what will happen then.

The “liberals” are now the ones with the “We’re at War” mentality, with the overblown, over-hyped “War on Coronavirus.” Unlike during the H1N1 crisis of 2009-2010 when Obama was President, now Trump is President. That’s different. So the Trump haters’ inner Nazi is now showing in full glory.

Besides the president of France Emmanuel Macron saying, “We are at war,” here in the U.S. government parasites like Joe Biden and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are calling for the military to get involved with COVID-19. As Becky Akers notes, Cuomo has already militarized New Rochelle. (Oh, what will the Petries do now?)

Herr Cuomo wrote in a New York Times op-ed, “our best hope is to utilize the Army Corps of Engineers to leverage its expertise, equipment, and people power to retrofit and equip existing facilities — like military bases or college dormitories” … (For COVID-19 sufferers? Or for those who object to the “liberal” fascists and their police state? We just don’t know.)

And the president of Massachusetts General Hospital has said that “we need to think about this in almost a war-like stance,” so, I’m sure that he and the doctors have their battle fatigues on, the ambulance tanks revved up, and ready for the kill.

In Massachusetts, the alleged birthplace of the American Revolution, the liberal Republican Gov. Charlie Baker has ordered schools closed, a ban on gatherings of more than 25 sheeple, and he’s ordered restaurants and bars closed down. Other U.S. state governors are doing the same, and some are ordering more extensive bans and closures.

The sheeple are responding to the media and “officials” propaganda by flooding grocery stores and hoarding toilet paper and other goods, like it’s an impending blizzard or hurricane. The restaurant closures will elicit more hysterical crowding of the grocery stores, so the fascists in control might consider closing them, too. What then?

The rulers just don’t get the freedom thing, do they?

What, not let all the businesses be open and let the informed public make their own choice whether to voluntarily go into a restaurant or bar, or not?

No, NOT voluntary! “Voluntary” doesn’t enter the vocabulary of a fascist, or socialist like Bernie Sanders who wants the government to control just about every aspect of everyday life, with all the people being compelled by force to comply. OBEY!

With the stock market collapsing like in 2008, and many people now losing their finances and with the business closings many people losing their necessary commerce and paychecks, I am hoping that someone takes these bureaucrats and their dictatorial orders to court.

And what if business owners and their customers and patrons engaged in civil disobedience, and went about their lives as usual? What would Gov. Charlie Baker do to them? Arrest them? And put them into over-crowded jails, putting them at risk of coronavirus COVID-19?

And all this hysteria and government conniving with a contagious virus, that, as Dr. Jeremy Faust of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School wrote, isn’t as deadly as the media are making it out to be. Compared to Ebola, COVID-19’s mortality rate of probably less than 1% is quite low, taking into account all the people who have probably already had it but because of mild symptoms assumed it was just a flu or cold and so didn’t bother reporting it or even going to the doctor.

It is mainly a serious problem for those who already have respiratory illnesses or other serious medical problems, and for the elderly whose immune systems are weaker because of age.

And by the way, because of the media’s sensationalizing COVID-19, and with the fascism and militarism of this latest situation, just how many strokes and heart attacks might happen (or have happened) because of all the stress and worry being inflicted onto people by fear mongers and the stock market collapse and uncertainty they have caused?

Scott Lazarowitz is a libertarian writer and commentator. Please visit his blog.