Writing in Newsweek magazine, Sarah A. Morgan and Brian A. Smith discuss how the attitude of our "experts" and leaders have changed from reasonable to destructive control freak (see here for a longer, but very good explanation of how and why that happened) when it comes to dealing with the COVID19 virus, and how pandemics were reasonably handled in the past.

Sometime in the first few months of the pandemic, the tone of reporting and expert recommendations shifted. The default assumption of "we'll probably all get this, so let's just flatten the curve," gave way to something else, a hope that if we just settle upon the right policy, we can halt COVID-19 altogether. Governmental authorities have largely sidestepped the normal legislative process and relied on executive power to impose and repeatedly extend measures to control the spread. Even if we believe that defeating the virus is possible, that this happened without much public debate should be cause for alarm.

As anyone who has lived in Oregon can tell you, Kate Brown went from originally saying "two weeks to flatten the curve" to "lockdown is the only option, and I really don't give a damn about the economic, mental health, and educational wreckage it leaves, because COVID19 is the only true issue we face any more."

In early America, outbreaks of smallpox occurred with morbid regularity. Although Cotton Mather began to advocate smallpox variolation (the intentional introduction of a small amount of pox pus into the bloodstream of a healthy person in hopes of giving the individual a mild case that would create immunity) during the Boston outbreak in 1721, such efforts were unpredictable and dangerous. To be successful in creating immunity, variolation required that the patient actually catch the disease; inoculated individuals were themselves contagious and even with relatively mild cases required regular care for six to eight weeks.

Abigail Adams brought her children, their mattresses and the family cow from Braintree into Boston in July 1776 to receive smallpox inoculations. She expected it would be dangerous. Yet in comparison to the genuine peril of the disease itself, she appears to have considered it a matter of necessity. Adams was not alone—she describes at least six or seven separate households coming together at the home of her uncle for a total of 17 persons crammed into a single dwelling in order to endure the inoculation period in company, planning ahead so that there would be many hands to provide care for those who had the worst reactions to the inoculation.

Adams and her extended family and neighbors prepared for their inevitable brush with the disease prudently. Likewise, colonial and revolutionary governments adopted a wide variety of legislative measures to regulate inoculation and to limit the spread of the infection from those who contracted the virus organically, including setting up smallpox hospitals, quarantining individual households and blocking streets to redirect traffic around neighborhoods with known cases of the pox.

What they did not do was shut down ordinary society, or treat all risk as untenable or all persons as carriers. Churches still gathered; indeed, many held additional services of prayer and fasting on behalf of the afflicted. Businesses operated as normal, and families and friends still enjoyed spending time in company.

So probably because back then, our government had not grown into the monstrosity it has become today, people were still free to make their own decisions, choose to take their own risks, and help each other at the same time. And, they were able to do it without destroying the majority of the economy and their own well-being while trying to "control" a virus.

While the notion of police powers was a clearly established one at the founding, it does not appear to have been on anyone's mind that the use of the "public good" argument might extend to restricting the activities of ordinary citizens at home, at work or at worship. Then as now, many diseases had long incubation periods and some infected persons were asymptomatic. Yet there were no attempts to curtail the ordinary liberties of people who were not demonstrably sick. Nor were there efforts to impose a rigid set of regulations on social interactions between persons of sound mind with the ability to assess the risks for themselves. Importantly, life carried on despite the genuine prevalence of death as a result of disease—an entire war was fought and won on behalf of liberty during a smallpox epidemic.

Unfortunately, today leftists - as are seemingly all Democrats, especially Kate Brown, Gavin Newsom, Eric Garcetti, and Jay Inslee, just for starters - don't believe in silly things like ordinary liberties and people being allowed to assess risks for themselves. In their eyes it is their job to be our nanny, and make sure that there are no boo-boos or owies, because politicians know what is best for us.

Some protective measures are surely required in the face of the pandemic, but our legislatures and judges remain largely silent in the face of executive orders that demand indefinite changes to our lives.

You can see this with Comrade Brown and her constant and never-ending extensions of her "emergency powers", which she uses as her justification for her mandating worthless masks, and arbitrarily shutting down businesses because destroying jobs and the economy somehow protects people.

We — who have the benefit of much greater medical knowledge and technology than were available to the Founders — are not even having a public conversation about the tradeoffs between liberty and safety. What earlier Americans understood — and what those who advocate increasing restrictions in the name of safety do not—is that none of us are promised tomorrow under any circumstances.

Pandemic or no pandemic, for human flourishing and not just survival, we require society with others. This holiday season, we ought to remember this and act accordingly.

And even more unfortunately, many sheeple actually agree with Kate Brown. They have no problems with giving up their freedoms and liberties. They have been convinced by the media onslaught that we need to be cowards, living in fear, masked up and locked down, hiding from a virus with - according to CDC statistics - a 99% recovery rate.

It's heartbreaking to see what gutless cowards our society has become.