Rob's Soapbox - Attention Everyone: Let It Go!

<p>Rarely does someone find a way to express what I am thinking in a more eloquent fashion than I can.&nbsp;Kudos to Jonah Goldberg, a conservative who isn’t insane, for putting pen to paper and finding a way to say what needs to be said over, and over, and over again; getting louder every time. A few days ago his column spoke to not just me, but also to multiple friends of mine who saw it and cheered; including some of my most liberal friends, proving that there are still a few of us who can think outside of our tribes.</p><p><br></p><p>Making his piece even more noteworthy, over the weekend, Oregon legislators made it known that they are moving towards making indoor masking, regardless of vaccination status, permanent. Oregon is one of the few states that never lifted its indoor mask mandates and now will become the first to create a mask society. Such lunacy makes many of us shake our heads and wonder what world we’re living in, but it also further points out the divide between us as a society. </p><p><br></p><p>If you tortured yourself and watched the Sunday morning news shows all you heard was that the Omicron variant is death…despite endless initial research showing that while it is incredibly transmissible, it’s also not at all dangerous. In fact, it’s akin to the common cold. Yet, we have to scare the living hell out of everyone over cases, not outcomes. With that, I present to you Goldberg’s article, with minor changes made by yours truly:</p><p><br></p><p>I’m just gonna throw it out there: If I had to guess—and it’s just a guess—Omicron is good news. The panic and the economic tumult caused by the panic isn’t good news. But I’m betting that the variant itself, is.</p><p><br></p><p>Let’s say you’re a maverick scientist with a god complex who plays by his own rules. You want to help humanity by getting rid of COVID as quickly as possible. Maybe just maybe, you’d genetically engineer the coronavirus itself to be super contagious but also much, much more harmless; virtually no deaths and very few h