Source: Pipeline News, By William Mayer, April 27, 2020
San Francisco, CA – PipeLineNews.org – As regular readers are aware, this author has been writing about everything Wuhan for nearly the entirety of the month [please to Season of the Anointed , Comrade Fauci and Field Marshall Birx – The New High Priests of Scientism and Socialist Realism – Engineering How Things Should Be ].
During this period of time, in many states those seeking access to medical care of a non-emergency nature are finding that numerous roadblocks have been placed between themselves and their ultimate care providers. This is the case throughout California’s San Francisco, Bay Area which is now under the command of the counties’ various public health czars who are exercising extraordinary powers.
These bureaucrats are entirely unaccountable to the citizens who must foot the bill as well as bear the pain caused by an imposed, or tightly regulated shutdown of commerce, freedom of speech, movement and assembly.
Additionally some of the largest health care providers in the state have hidden their doctors away from any contact with the public, outside of the nightmare environment of emergency rooms, which are full of people with non-critical complaints. Not knowing how widespread the practice is, but having gained a bit of perspective based upon reliable sources, it seems that the reality of health care provision including complicated diagnoses, in many cases are being made over the telephone. This includes the writing of prescriptions. In some cases, for highly informed patients this might work reasonably well but for the average ill person it means making judgments that are not fully informed.
As many are aware, at this point the master plan for dealing with the Wuhan flu is being entirely directed on a grand scale by the nation’s various public health entities, most prominently America’s NIH/CDC Leviathan – the Fauci/Birx Circus. At the micro-level, county health departments have assumed larger-than-life roles, enabled here in California by Governor Newsome’s Declaration of Emergency – N35-20, which grants the governor nearly total power to act as well as delegate exercise of that power to various state and local governmental entities.
Section 8 of that declaration is chilling; it grants the governor the unprecedented power to use:
“…the State’s power to commandeer property – hotels and other places of temporary residence…as necessary for quarantining, isolating or treating individuals who test positive…”
There is more than circumstantial evidence pointing to the desire by Newsom and his county level henchmen to use this crisis as an opportunity to further collectivize the state and bring it into compliance with the Marxist notion of “socialist realism,” how things should be:
According to the California Globe, during a recent Sacramento press gaggle when California’s pretty-boy governor Newsom was asked by a Bloomberg reporter about the “opportunity” that the Wuhan hysteria might provide, he replied:
“There is opportunity for reimagining a [more] progressive era as it [relates] to capitalism, so yes, absolutely we see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern.”
The visceral antipathy towards market capitalism now on display by Newsom, his leftist brethren and the state’s GOP useful idiots should be of real concern to the citizenry. But that isn’t the case, please read on, it’s as if pod-people are actually walking the streets and occasionally even voting.
Turning to a concrete example, in my place of residence, the San Francisco East Bay Area’s Contra Costa County, the imperial grand wizard aka the Director of Public Health is Anna Roth. Referred to in the county’s difficult to find compensation schedule as “Employee Number 9373.” Roth has been minted in DC administrative state fashion, an RN with the requisite Harvard and University of California public health management degrees. Her rate of compensation is [at a minimum] an unconscionable $405,909 and possibly as high as $479,000 according to a public interest organization that monitors such information. Sources indicate that the average compensation package for SF Bay public sector CEOs is $177,000 plus benefits of approximately $50,000, meaning $250k, plus or minus.
The contrast between for profit private sector managers – who generally answer directly to the board of directors and know that future employment is dependent upon performance – and insular public officials drawing extravagant salaries who never face consequences is stunning.
During the manufactured Wuhan crisis, this writer has sought to interface with Contra Costa County [CCC] public information officers seeking answers to the most basic of questions. As of this writing, every attempt to establish meaningful dialogue has failed, the exchange of a few words being insufficient given the nature of the problem.
Based upon a great deal of research, we feel justified in presenting an indictment of the CCC Health Department’s leadership.
The department has a $1.8 billion dollar budget and 4,400 employees, both by far the largest items in the county’s $3.5 billion dollar budget. The Director of Public Health makes over $400,000, yet the department was caught entirely flat-footed by the Wuhan “crisis,” having no off-the-shelf readiness plan. This is despite what should have been the general understanding among health care professionals – a data driven wake-up call – prompted by a 2005 George W. Bush WH finding, that preparing for pandemics was vital to the continued economic viability of the nation. 20 years later the concept of “public health” remains a bad joke – please refer to, National Strategy For Pandemic Influenza , November 1, 2005.
The CCC Health Department, rather than issuing genuinely data-driven directives has instead engaged in a series of increasingly severe, blunt-force measures, even as the incidence of Wuhan in the county [1.2M population, 23 deaths] continues to fall to levels that are statistically insignificant.
But this didn’t stop CCC Health Commies from issuing an April 17 order mandating the compulsory wearing of masks in all “essential businesses.” It had previously been optional, but rational options seldom survive in these climates. Disobedience to the edict can result in a misdemeanor charge punishable by a fine and up to 90 days in jail. These people and the sheeple [see end note] who blindly are willing to self-load into the trains heading for the Gulags, are totally serious.
As a test of the new regime this reporter entered a local supermarket sans face-mask:
- I was threatened with arrest half a dozen times, told that I would be physically removed from the store – fortunately, they thought the better of that – and actually hassled by shoppers – “ you are an asshole,” being the least unkind comment made by those eager to goose-step for their masters, ultimately the Hegelian god of “order” and “public good.”
- Was informed that use of the self-checkout system would be made unavailable.
- Again threatened with arrest by the mouse-like store manager who barely escaped a physical altercation due to his invasion of my personal security space, and then to cap it off was told that I would be BANNED from the store f-o-r-e-v-e-r…oh my.
We have repeatedly asked health department public information officers exactly what metrics all of these decisions are based upon only to be told that they are driven by “models,” you know the ones that first predicted 2.2M US deaths, then 222,000 then…well far less…can we call it a day?
It turns out that those actually doing the modeling, principally those at the UK’s Imperial College and the World Health Organization have been relying on severely flawed and intrinsically unsound Chinese Communist, Spanish, Italian and other data sets that have no relation to what’s happening in the United States and actually, little relation to what is actually taking place within those very different countries.
Also a fan of taking rash action based upon imperfect or imagined data, is Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation co-founder Bill Gates who suggests that the “exponential growth ” of Wuhan in the U.S. can’t be controlled until the DC goons destroy the last vestiges of federalism, totally lock things down and assume dictatorial control of the society.
In keeping with this kind of pretend empiricism, the typically stupid April 17 CCC Health Department regulation even goes so far as to inexplicably exclude from the definition of a “proper face-mask” anything that might cover part of the fore-head, or the eyes, as if shopping blind would be a reasonable option.
“As used in this Order, a “Face Covering” means a covering made of cloth, fabric, or other soft or permeable material, without holes, that covers only the nose and mouth and surrounding areas of the lower face. A covering that hides or obscures the wearer’s eyes or forehead is not a Face Covering. Examples of Face Coverings include a scarf or bandana; a neck gaiter; a homemade covering made from a t-shirt, sweatshirt, or towel, held on with rubber bands or otherwise; or a mask, which need not be medical-grade.”
So under this administrative order, a shop-type OSHA approved full-haz-mat mask or hunting/military style balaclava do not qualify. I do have a suspicion however that a Muslima wearing hijab or niqab would be greeted quite differently.
What was learned in this little real-world experiment?
Well a lot and none of it good:
Though we rightly congratulate ourselves in America about our marvelous experiment in self-government – republican democracy – 234 years into the gambit, that remarkable idea becomes largely chimera if our beloved Constitution can be shit-canned upon a simple declaration of public emergency by any of the several states [which are adamantly NOT the laboratories of democracy], by the Feds, or both. In this role, assumed powers take on a plenary nature, the wet-dream of the evil little commies ensconced away in the niches of the administrative state colossus.
Perhaps most disturbing eine bestellung ist eine bestellung “an order is an order” sheeple types have proliferated far faster than advocates of freedom from oppression. It’s because of these self-righteous little bastards that we have been ordered to “shelter in place” – house arrest in disguise.
Those of us who resist this assault on everything blessed about the United States must realize we are in the minority. We are the living examples of what Freud wrote about in Civilization and its Discontents, our superego being incapable of constraining the beastly urge for liberty emanating from our souls.
End Note:
Our use of the word “sheeple” to describe those who without any forethought simply act as told by authority figures is purposeful. Please consider the following passage from this writer’s 2017 book, Islamic Jihad, Cultural Marxism and the Transformation of the West .
“…However absent the constraining influence of an ethically delimited tradition, utopian ideologies can quickly morph into license to murder, often on a mass scale. The implications of this theory have been tested in laboratory settings and proven valid.
Consider the research of social psychologist Stanley Milgram who, at Yale University during the early 1960s explored the implications of obedience within a rigid entirely secular hierarchy.
Briefly, Milgram placed two separately sequestered volunteers into a scenario in which one was designated the interlocutor and the other the party being questioned, thus establishing an unequal hierarchical authority relationship:
Milgram => interlocutor => test subject.
In actuality, there was no flow of electricity; the party being interrogated was instructed to play along as if he was really being tortured in this manner. The ground rules held that the pain would continue to increase until the question was correctly answered even upon the understanding that at the highest level the voltage would supposedly be lethal.
In what was clearly surprising to the researcher, 2/3rds of the inquisitors followed orders to the letter and proceeded to administer what they believed to be a fatal jolt to the other party simply upon the understanding of having been given “permission” by an authority figure who claimed to be acting for a higher good, in this case that of science.
This is the basic mechanism whereby the foot soldiers of the progressive left and the Islamists feel ethically unfettered in pursuing their utopian schemes believing that they’re “working for the greater or common good” or pursuing “more lofty, even godly” purpose which is, in the case of these two “isms” a prescription for horror…”
©2020 PipeLineNews.org LLC, William Mayer. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
