BEARING WITNESS TO GNAWING TRUTH

One mid-week, early September, 1986 morning, my backpack and I took a ferry from Seattle to Victoria, British Columbia. Upon arrival, I met a Customs Agent. He asked where I was headed. I told him I didn’t know. I’ve often traveled with only a vague plan, which I adapt as I speak with people I meet along the way.

He recommended a place prosaically named “The West Coast Trail.” He told me the Trail was 47 miles long and traced the western edge of Vancouver Island. He enthused about the Trail’s beauty and how hikers traversed a combination of surfaces: sandy Pacific Ocean beaches, dozens of cliff-climbing ladders and many stretches of springy boardwalks made out of split logs (because the forest floor was usually soaked with rain), on elevated ridges offering ocean panoramas, while passing through one of the world’s thickest, greenest rainforests. The agent said I would see very few other hikers and that I would likely see sea lions and maybe cougars, eagles and grizzlies. He also told me there were two tiny aboriginal Canadian villages along the way and that the natives would sell me salmon they caught in the wider rivers that flowed out of the forest and into the ocean.

It sounded exotic. I felt lucky that I’d met this guy.

The agent told me that I could begin the Trail by hitch-hiking about forty miles across Vancouver Island, where I would find a river adjoining a small native reservation. There I would find a Native man who would, for a few dollars, transport me using his skiff, across the river, where the Trail began. The agent told me I was lucky: much of the year, the Trail had heavy rain and excessively strong winds. In early September, I might see some sun.

After extolling the Trail’s virtues, the agent cautioned, “There’s only one down-side: the mice. They know that hikers camp where the rivers meet the ocean. And if they smell food in your tent, they’ll eat through the tent’s walls and to get it.”

“Wow,” I said, “that sounds bad.”

He said, “Yeah, it is. And big groups of them will raid at one time. Make sure you tie your food up in a tree at night.”

Duly noted.

In the late afternoon, I started hitch-hiking out of Victoria. An amiable, forty-ish Canadian sporting a t-shirt and a bushy mustache stopped for me. Having seen me with my pack, he guessed that I was going to the Trail. I confirmed his suspicion.

He said, “The Trail is great, eh. Except for the mice. They’ll eat their way right through your tent and your backpack. And there are tons of them. It can get kind of crazy. Make sure you tie your food up in a tree.”

OK, then.

Reaching the beginning of the dirt roads, I needed another ride to get closer to the First Nations village where I had to catch the boat to the Trail’s starting point. In the next several hours, almost no vehicles passed me. Eventually, two electric company workers picked me up in their pick-up. The driver said, “You’re going to the Trail, eh?”

I said that I was. He said, “Well, it’s great! Except for…”

I interrupted, “The mice, right?”

Instead of “right,” I was tempted to say “eh,” but I didn’t; when people give you rides, especially after you’ve waited a long time, you shouldn’t make fun of them.

He said, “Not mice, rats! I’ve camped there and seen them. They’re big and aggressive. They’ll eat through your tent and your pack if they smell food. And there are big groups of them.”

Hmmm…

After having warned me even more emphatically than the others had, the pair dropped me off in the cluster of half a dozen weather-beaten ranch style homes that passed for a village. In perfect weather, I got a diagonal mile-long, spectacular, breezy, motorized ride across the sparkling blue river and started to hike. It was mid-day.

The trail was as beautiful and quirky as the agent and drivers had said. I walked until twilight on that first day. I stopped when I reached another river, from which I could draw fresh water, flowing into the ocean. I tied my food up in the branches of a massive driftwood stack, made dinner and watched the sun set over the Pacific.

The next day, seeing no other human, I walked about 15 miles with my full pack. Some of these miles were up on the cliffs’ ridges, accessible via the ladders. But many miles were on the beach sand. Lugging 35 pounds in often deep, loose sand is hard work.

Late in the day, I was happy but tired. I found another camping spot where a river met the ocean. I set up my tent just above the high tide line, cooked some dinner, and watched the sunset. When it became fully dark, I watched the stars for a while and then entered my tent as I listened to the soothing sound of ocean waves.

I quickly reached that state halfway between wakefulness and sleep. Then I heard some scratching along the nylon tent’s edge. I figured it was a mouse. I thought, “Damn! I forgot to tie my food up.”

I swatted the tent and the sound stopped. Easy.

But a minute later, the scratching resumed. I swatted the tent a second time, again stopping the sound momentarily. Within seconds, I heard more scratching from the tent’s far side. Two rodents were trying to enter. Then a third.

I grabbed one of my sneakers to serve as a mouse swatter. I also reached for my flashlight and switched it on. I heard a sound moving up the side of the tent and shined my light on it. From below, I could see the silhouette of a rodent’s body. It was at least six inches long and three inches wide; clearly a rat, not a mouse. No bueno.

With my sneaker, I struck the rat’s dark, running outline and launched it off the tent into the darkness.

I pulled out my Swiss Army knife and opened it. I told myself I would stab to death any rat that breached the tent. This may not have been realistic, given rats’ elusiveness and the knife’s smallness and folding blade. But the notion was somehow reassuring.

A few seconds later, a cartoonish, rat-sized lump moved under the tent’s floor. I hammered it with my sneaker. The rat scampered out from under the tent much faster than it had burrowed in.

Then something disturbing happened. Just as I looked toward the tent’s screen door, a rat leaped, belly up, onto the tent’s screen, two feet above the sand, momentarily grasping the screen with four clawed feet while it screeched at high pitch. It was like his rebel yell. Reacting as if to a fastball, I smacked the rat and sent it flying. My pulse quickened.

In about two minutes, I had gone from deep relaxation and solitude to having six frenzied, athletic rats simultaneously seeking to penetrate all surfaces of my tent. I didn’t like the trend and suspected the swarm would continue to add members. While I had never seen those 1970s rat movies, I imagined what it might be like to be overrun by dozens of hungry, perhaps vicious and rabid rodents. I was thirty miles from the nearest paved road. Miles from another human. On my own. In the dark.

I decided that I had to get my food out of the tent. I reached into my backpack and pulled out the nylon food bag. I put my sneakers on to protect my feet from rat bites, preemptively swatted all sides of the tent, howled, hoping to startle the rats, and again shined the flashlight out my screen door. Seeing no rats in my intended path, I opened the screen, crawled out, and re-zipped the tent door from the outside. With the flashlight showing the way, I ran to the large tangle of driftwood where the beach and forest met, about twenty yards away. Branches extended vertically on some of the logs. I tied the bag to a branch about six feet off the ground.

Then I walked carefully back to the tent, scanning the sand with my flashlight to detect any roving rats. I opened the tent door, quickly entered, re-closed it and laid back down. I reasoned that the rats would lose interest once the food was gone.

Initially, there was quiet. But less than a minute later, I again heard scratching. I realized that although the food bag was gone, the backpack itself probably still had the scent of food. Not having enough rope to tie the backpack onto a tree, I took the same preliminary steps to scare the rats from the tent’s door, opened the door, stood up and, using two hands, twisted my torso and flung the backpack as far as I could away from the tent into the darkness.

I re-entered the tent. This time, the silence lasted. I reclined and slept soundly.

I had acted stupidly. People clearly told me what I needed to know. I failed to apply their lesson.

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This past weekend, as I conversed with a group of eight other people around a table, I explained in a few sentences how I knew, in mid-March, 2020, that the lockdowns, closures, masks and tests—and later, the shots—were poor ideas.

One of those at the table said that hearing me express this view and my reasons for it made him feel stupid. He told me I should modify my message because people don’t like to hear things that hurt their feelings.

When I asked how I might change my message, he equivocated. Fundamentally, he suggested that withholding my view would be better than expressing it. To him, ignorance may not be bliss but it feels better than being on the defensive.

By stating my views, I hadn’t intended to inferiorize listeners. But later that day I asked myself, “Why should I try to make anyone who supported the Covid overreaction feel comfortable about having done so?"

I know, from experience and because I’ve read Dale Carnegie, that most people become unpersuadable when someone disagrees with, or criticizes, them. But those who can’t admit a mistake or express disagreement by presenting facts or logic aren’t, as a college friend used to say, “serious human beings.” I don’t want to be their psychotherapist, enabler or friend.

Moreover, in September, 2023, efforts to persuade are far too late to matter. Neither apologies nor belated expressions of awareness that they were scammed, help; so much irreversible damage has been done.

When I express my perspective on the Covid overreaction, I don’t seek to make people feel better about their unfounded fear and mob behavior. Guilt is sometimes appropriate, as here. Having supported Coronamania should permanently trouble the consciences of those who did so.

If people affirm Team Panic members, these overreactors will tell themselves that they were right, even when data and logic clearly showed they weren’t. They should have known—from the outset—that the mitigation was foolish and would hurt billions of people, worldwide. People like me warned them, just as the Canadians I met warned me about the rats. Rejecting Coronamania was not a tough call.

As I, and many others, have repeatedly observed, the virus’s risk profile was obvious in mid-March, 2020, from data from Italy and Spain and various ships, and from basic Biology and Sociology. It took off-the-charts gullibility—or overriding political and economic objectives—to believe that the most lethal respiratory virus in human history would suddenly emerge and that the virus was so dangerous that—for the first time in human history—we should lock down a society to vainly attempt to stop viral transmission.

Coronamaniacs’ resentment regarding my statements of fact is also misplaced because it disregards basic reciprocity. During the mania, the mitigation mob relied on lies and mockery to try to marginalize skeptics in order to silence us and control our behavior. They presumed they were smarter and knew more “Science” than we who opposed Scamdemic policies. They were 180 degrees wrong.

Hearing criticism or having people call me names during the lockdowns or Vaxxfest never made me feel inferior. Neither “mitigation” nor the shots ever made sense. I was certain that people had lost their heads over a respiratory virus and that locking down, masking, mass testing and injecting and giving away trillions of dollars would cause tremendous harm.

This is true whether someone supported the mania to advance a political, economic or lifestyle objective or simply because they were naive. Whether someone intends harm or not, the same suffering is imposed upon, and suffered, by others.

Although I didn’t care that people disliked me for my Covid stance, the masses’ gullibility did disappoint, frustrate and anger me. I was especially bothered by the profound damage done to the young.

I’ve been around for a long time. I’ve made plenty of mistakes. But when I err, I admit it and take responsibility. That’s true whether I ignore advice, as I did with rat management, or I was duped. Historically, I’m more likely to disregard advice than I am to fall for a scam; I’m skeptical by nature and because of life experience. Many claim to have well-calibrated “bullshit detectors.” But those who bought Corona and Vaxx mania clearly showed that they couldn’t separate truth from fiction. Perhaps their batteries ran out.

Another major difference between those who fell for the Scamdemic and those who’ve been conned in their personal dealings is that the latter group members bear—alone—the costs of their naivete. In contrast, those who bought Coronamania externalized their delusions to billions of others.

Given their own prior sociopolitical engagement, it seems odd that the belatedly contrite Coronamaniacs believe that people should withhold an opinion regarding a major public issue simply because weighing in might bother someone. The Covid-panicked whom I know have often expressed strong, albeit misinformed, opinions about a wide array of other topics. This is the lawn sign crew.

Further, I’m far from the first to observe that historically, many people have fallen for lies. Countless bestselling books provide historical accounts about, for example, the Vietnam or Iraq Wars. These books’ authors clearly intended to show readers that they should have seen that the actions that readers supported were unsound and destructive. Those authors didn’t withhold facts or analysis to spare readers’ feelings.

Everyone gets duped sometimes; some more than others. Being deceived can make people feel stupid. While realizing they’ve been misled bruises the egos of the deceived, the attendant embarrassment about being misled resembles having dental work done; sometimes, one accepts discomfort in order to prevent further damage.

Realizing that one has “been had” can be appropriate and constructive, because it may keep them from making the same mistake again. In the dental scenario, one might say, “I shouldn’t have consumed so many starches and sugars.” In evaluating future government or media statements, someone chastened by having realized he’s been lied in the past to might say, “This present narrative just doesn’t hold together.”

But a mass awakening seems unlikely. The mitigation supporters I know refuse to admit they were wrong about a public policy that hurt legions. Instead of apologizing for the harm they facilitated, those who belatedly see the harm caused take refuge, as the contemptibly phony Gavin Newsom just did, in this massive falsehood: “We couldn’t have known that this virus didn’t threaten any approximately healthy person.”

Near World War II’s beginning, Churchill delivered a rousing speech in which he said:

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.

The Corona overreactors will continue to lie as resolutely as Churchill vowed to fight.

Team Panic needs to hear the truth. Repeatedly.

Let’s keep telling it. Whether they like it or not.