My Coronavirus Ordeal Intensifies

The coronavirus epidemic just got real to me. McDonald’s has stopped making all-day breakfast.

Prior to this, I was telling everyone the epidemic was a great misfortune but not a catastrophe. Now I must agree with the toilet paper hoarders. Suffering has begun in earnest.

Today I did my best to adapt. I was determined to be strong. I made myself a big slice of country ham and several bacon-grease biscuits with red eye gravy. I’m no longer sobbing now. I think I can handle this.

Yesterday I learned that two counties not far away have put lockdowns into effect. That was disturbing. It made me wonder if my county was next. I live in the most conservative county (i.e. “sane”) county in the state, so I have good reason to hope for relatively intelligent leadership.

I checked the local paper’s site, and it says they’re not locking us down. They closed Internet cafes, though. Not sure what that’s all about.

Honestly, if I’m locked down, I plan to go out anyway. They don’t have enough cops to prevent it, and there will be enough “essential” businesses open to let me blend it with law-abiders. In truth, I will probably end up obeying the law, because the businesses I frequent are generally on the essential list. Grocery stores. Hardware stores. Places that sell firearms.

I assume this county wouldn’t be crazy enough to close gun stores. Many liberal-dominated cities are shutting them down. It’s obvious that gun stores are essential. The right to self-defense is extremely important. Liberals don’t see it that way, however, and they are always looking for underhanded, back-door methods of taking away our civil rights.

If the disease becomes widespread here, I’ll probably be more careful, but right now, getting this disease is like winning the lottery. It’s not common at all when compared to colds and the flu.

I’m disappointed to see that the government plans to hand out over a trillion dollars in totally unnecessary vote-buying tax money. Our economic problems are being caused by panic, not a relatively minor epidemic. We will have higher taxes because of the handout. We should just get out of the way of progress and let capitalism do its thing.

Here’s something funny: leftist Sweden isn’t imprisoning its citizens. They’re taking a relaxed approach, because, hello…it’s the correct thing to do. Evidently someone over there is capable of understanding simple math. You have to wonder how America’s leftists will take this.

Sweden won’t have a catastrophe. Even Italy didn’t have a catastrophe. No country will.

Here’s something that will raise your spirits or give you heartburn, depending on how you look at it: the lady in charge of the White House response says the initial coronavirus predictions may have been WILDLY (my word, not hers) exaggerated. Welcome to Club Reason!

I’ll embed a video of her appearance. If you don’t want to watch it, I’ll mention a key point. Initial death toll prediction for the UK: 500,000. Current prediction: 20,000.

So they were only off by 96%. No biggie.

Extrapolate to the US, and you get around 80,000. Terrible? Well…it’s the same number of people the CDC says we lost to the seasonal flu last year. Did you mourn all last year? Were there mass cremations? Did we shut down stores and tell grown people they were grounded? Don’t think so.

Here’s a screaming uninentional admission from the video: there is no antibody test. Hello? Remember me writing about the Chinese researchers who said the false-positive rate was 40-80%? Am I a genius because I read a news story and told other people about it?

If you don’t have an antibody test, you’re guessing. They’re judging people by symptoms, and coronavirus isn’t the only bug that causes respiratory failure.

It looks like we’re going to find out we misdiagnosed a huge number of flu patients. The epidemic’s numbers may collapse inward. For this, we deprived each other of toilet paper.

Should we have locked the country down just to be safe? Of course not. We already knew, from looking at the numbers available to us, that this disease was not going to spread that widely. It would have been inexplicable had it come to the US and hit a large percentage of the population. That would have been totally inconsistent with the way it worked in other countries.

We should have sheltered fat people and old people from the disease. I’ll bet we could do a lot of that with a trillion dollars of tax money. Think about this: even if you spend a trillion dollars, if you let people work while you spend it, you have earnings to mitigate the loss.

Not that I think we need to spend a trillion dollars to help “bubble people.” I’m just using the figure we’re actually spending. We could do it for nearly nothing.

It’s scary being part of an unthinking herd. Even if you know they’re wrong, you can still get swept over the cliff with the lemmings. Thank God I’m in the country and among conservatives.

In other news, I watched a Hickok45 video this morning. He’s the old guy in Tennessee who shoots steel in his backyard. He reviewed a Glock 20, which is a full-size 10mm pistol. I was glad to see this, because I ordered a Glock 20. I already have a Glock 29, which is the compact version, but I thought it would be nice to have a bigger one with a bigger magazine, to wear in my yard. I don’t want a heavy pistol bogging me down in the grocery store, and I want to keep my out-and-about gun in a pocket, but it’s okay to have a big carry pistol displayed openly at home.

Should I be content with a compact in the car. I don’t know, but I can legally put an AK47 in the backseat, so it doesn’t matter. I used to keep a similar rifle under the seat of my truck. I’ll tell you what. In a traffic dispute with a carload of bullies, nothing gets you respect like a rifle with a 30-round magazine.

When I saw that ammo hoarding was starting up, I ordered myself some 10mm bullets, primers, brass, and powder. I did not hoard. To hoard is to buy more than is reasonable. Anything up to 1,000 rounds, in a particular caliber and load, is reasonable. Back during the Obama panic, people were buying pallets of ammunition, and a lot of them were flipping them on Gunbroker. That’s hoarding.

Anyone who says a thousand rounds is a hoard is not a good shooter, because that person doesn’t practice. If you practice, you know you can shoot a thousand rounds in a week.

I have another Youtube favorite: Paul Harrell. He’s a true expert. He has won prizes in tons of shooting competitions, and he has been through a bunch of military schools. He was a military instructor. He even killed a guy with a deer rifle. The man was attacking Harrell and his wife, who were on foot, in a pickup truck. Harrell put two rounds through him and got charged with manslaughter, but he was acquitted.

Harrell is a remarkable person. He’s generally a class act, although he has given people the finger in a couple of videos. He’s very smart and very patient. He would have made an exceptional attorney. He thinks his videos through very carefully, and he’s extremely thorough.

About 20% of gun lovers are absolute jerks who ought to be muzzled. Harrell knows this. He knows that no matter how carefully he words his videos, some couch commando will pop up in a comment and “correct” him. Watching him speak is like watching George W. Bush deliver the carefully constructed messages his team crafted in anticipation of leftist distortions.

Recently, Harrell was attacked by a much less popular creator: Caleb Giddings. Giddings was on a “reality” show featuring people who shot well. It was actually a multi-episode game show. He got weeded out and lost, but he still has an ego that won’t quit.

Harrell posted a video about shooting revolvers, and this set Giddings, a competition revolver shooter and former insurance agent, off. Giddings posted a response in which he accused Harrell of ignorance.

I’ll embed the video, but I don’t recommend watching it.

Giddings used the AH word to describe Harrell, and in comments, he made very arrogant remarks about his own shooting ability, compared to Harrell’s. He said something about Harrell’s championships lacking certification from recognized bodies.

Giddings drank Scotch all through is own video, which kind of looks bad given that it was a gun video. Guns and liquor aren’t supposed to be seen together. In Florida, alcoholics and potheads are legally barred from concealed carry, and this is probably true elsewhere. The federal NICS form lists drug and alcohol abuse as things that will prevent a transfer.

I have to admit, I’ve had more than a couple of beers while carrying. This was a long time ago. I wasn’t thinking. It’s a big deal, however. I rarely have more than one drink now, so it won’t be an issue ever again.

Harrell got fed up and responded to Giddings with a one-hour spanking that has to rank as one of Youtube’s all-time harshest rebuttals. He proved that Giddings said a lot of things that weren’t even close to true, and then he crushed what was left of his reputation by displaying a table full of awards. He took a plastic bin full of medals and dumped it on the table.

I don’t know who is the better shooter, but it would take at least two people to carry Harrell’s awards, and he even wins tomahawk-throwing matches, which is a little ridiculous, to be honest. Giddings has his credits listed on various gun-related sites on the web, but they don’t provide long lists of marksmanship championships, and knowing this guy, if there was such a list, it would be on every site he’s involved with.

My guess is that he would fare badly against Harrell.

A bunch of Harrell’s half-million fans went to Giddings’ video and left uncomplimentary comments. The dislike/like ratio was very high.

What did Giddings do? Did he admit fault? Actually, he turned the comments off and hid the likes and dislikes. This is not helping him. It makes him look cowardly and even more dishonest, and on top of that, he can’t get rid of the comments on Harrell’s video, which has a much bigger audience. Giddings only has about 50,000 subscribers, and he will probably have considerably fewer tomorrow.

His personality is very unpleasant. He drips venom. He seems very insecure. He doesn’t honor other people at all. He contemns them, and he does it from a pretty unimpressive position. He’s like a movie character who makes you long for the moment when he finally gets punched in the face. He is not someone you would want to know, unless you’re also a jerk.

Giddings is currently in the Air Force, so I guess he didn’t make it as a professional shooter or insurance salesman. If he had the kind of talent he thinks he does, he would be making a living shooting, like Jerry Miculek. If Miculek acted the way Giddings does, people might understand, but it looks awful coming from a semi-pro with a day job.

It’s very interesting. It reminds me of the days when blogs were actually blogs and not corporate pseudopods. Giddings trolled Harrell, who had done nothing to provoke him, and he got bitten very deeply in the rear end. The Youtube crowd wasn’t having his nonsense.

The whole kerfuffle makes me think of things I’ve done and said in the past. God is love, and his children should also be love. Men should be men, not boys. Not arrogant punks who have no appreciation for anything. I’m glad I’m finally improving.

It’s too bad there are so many insecure macho men in the gun crowd. They ruin things for everyone. I quit using The High Road because there were so many jewels filling the board with poison. I joined another board, and I make liberal use of their “ignore” feature. When someone says something nasty, I try not to respond at all. If I do respond, I try to say something mature but clear. The ignore list is wonderful.

Similarly, I quit watching Gordon Ramsay again. Earlier in the week, Youtube started suggesting his videos again. I don’t know why. I watched several, and then I quit and deleted them from my history. If you keep something bad in your history, Youtube will recommend similar things. Ramsay is a mess. He spreads hate everywhere he goes. I don’t care if it’s an act (it’s not). I don’t need that circulating in my blood.

Every day, when I look at Youtube, I tell it to stop recommending certain channels. The Mormons. News stations. Political vloggers. Movie-related channels. Keep that mess. It makes my stomach hurt.

I guess I’ll try to finish my steel target array today. Then I’ll do a lie-packed video about Jerry Miculek and see if I can get some attention!