The New Normal Won't Be Normal At All
The NBA has now made it official that the Toronto Raptors have become the Tampa Raptors for the foreseeable future. Covid-19 is the culprit.
In a similar vein, the NHL is toying with the idea of an all-Canadian division this season to get around the border restrictions imposed by the Trudeau government. The seven teams would play each other endlessly in something resembling the old Original Six days.
Meanwhile, NFL and NCAA football teams continue to field shorthanded rosters each week as players exposed to someone with a positive Covid-19 test— or testing positive themselves—are banned from playing. (If you hear of an NFLer who gets critically ill it will be the first)
Most fans have decided to reluctantly accept these impositions on normalcy in the hope that “stopping the virus” will herald a return to the way it used to be. But anyone thinks the current mask/ lockdown/ snitch-line protocol will end anytime soon probably also thinks the New York Jets win the Super Bowl.
In other words, they’re deluded.
This is not to say that the virus will never retreat in the way previous viruses did. In spite of the best efforts of our media and politicians to prolong the Panic of Caseology the scourge will recede, perhaps as early as this winter. People such as Nobel Prize winner Professor Levitt of Stanford, who in February predicted a population fatality rate of 0.04 to 0.05 percent, regardless of lockdown, will be seen to have been correct all along.
What won’t recede is the new normal of fear that governs everything these days. The new culture of suspicion and hyper vigilance that dictates wearing a mask while on the toilet and sequestering in the basement. And subservience to “experts” anointed by Joe Biden who label car crash victims as Covid victims. Once the panic meter has been engaged there is no going back. This pandemic has no reverse gear.
As an example, millions have spent the past months rationalizing all manner of draconian standards handed down by their class of health gurus and @CNN analysts. In discussions/ arguments with friends/ family they’ve created a new tolerance for breaching civil liberties in service of something-something-something. Scenes of police hauling away surfers or breaking up orthodox Jewish weddings are now simply the price we pay for a “cure”.
It’s now accepted as gospel that hospitals are on the verge of collapse. Yet according to University of Toronto infectious disease specialist Dr. Neil Rau, “the hospital system has been overwhelmed in prev yrs due 2 a bad influenza season. We didn’t close every restaurant & gym and control people’s lives like this. This is really an over-reaction.”
Facts such as these cannot halt the conviction that sees millions of asymptomatic people forced to act as if they might spread a disease for which they have no symptoms. Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of Trump’s Task Force, says that, as opposed to media assertions, “asymptomatic spread ‘never’ drives outbreaks and that it’s only a “rare” asymptomatic person who spreads it at all.”
That’s not what CBC is pitching. For the Corp. and other media it’s all disaster/ all the time. All this disinformation is in service of a virus that, in Canada today, results in one percent of positive tests being serious or critical, and where 99.9 percent of the healthy under 70 population will survive any brush with the virus.
In the face of this resistance to reason how does anyone think the mask fetish, the cross-border protocols, the hyper-vigilant virus testing for any Covid strain will be abandoned when the coast is clear? Remember how airport screening began with mildly intrusive searches and then escalated as shoe bombers made taking water aboard a plane into a federal crime? Remember being able to take a bottle of wine in your hand luggage? Good times.
Project that rollout to the removal of civil liberties on speech and public behaviour brought on by Covid-19. Think there won’t be a permanent six-foot reality? Also consider the reluctance of many to attend future large gatherings at sports events, concerts etc. Can people unforget the hysterical admonitions of the experts to shelter in place?
With so many now vigilant about the germs and viruses that have always surrounded us in the environment, will we see full houses for the Raptors? Or will we even see the Raptors back in Canada?
The sale has been made by those in authority. They call the shots. No one is allowed to dissent. That was the end game. And there’s no going back when the Woke media warns you that resistance will invite the cancel culture to ruin your life. This is the new reality. Get used to it. And if you value your freedoms, tough luck.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his next book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx