Listening to the latest news and reading it on-line, this is a question Debby poses. When will the Panic and the Lockdown finally come to an end? How long will the media, the governments, the big corporations, and far too many fearful people panic and react to the Beer Flu (COVID-19)?

There probably are quite a few valid answers. One thing is very definite: it isn’t going away soon. All the signs are that this will bedevil us for a good while longer. Let us talk about a few examples of recent stupidity, and then share some background, and try to answer the question.

For instance, we read about the criminal insanity of California, where a County board of supervisors tries to levy $20,000 in fines on a church for meeting for worship.

We read about Utah stating that KINDERGARTEN children who do not wear masks in school (and outside) will be CRIMINALLY charged.

We read about Connecticut, where anyone over age 2 must wear a mask virtually everywhere unless they can get a written doctor’s perscription exemptng them.

We read how in Tennessee a school is trying to forbid parents from watching their on-line children’s “virtual classes” at home. Prohibited from in-person instruction for Pandemic Panic fears, the school cites “academic privacy” as the excuse.

We hear how in Florida the airline Jet Blue kicked a family off the plane because the 2-year-old wouldn’t keep her mask on.

We also were told about the Wisconsin idiocy, where DNR mandates its employees wear facemasks when on Zoom or other virtual meetings.

I could go on, but you get the point.

Worse, we are constantly barraged with contradictory information. Masks (“face coverings”) are essential, without them we will continue to die. Some masks (like neck gaiters) are totally worthless for preventing infection. Singing spreads the disease. Singling spreads disease no more than talking does. The economy is roaring back from the flash depression. The economy continues to sink into a long term depression. The banks are doomed: failing and taking our savings with them. The banks made out like bandits in the Panic and will pay us more and better.

We’ve always known that a LOT of the news – printed, broadcast, or gossiped – is bogus. Less than accurate, slanted, intended more to sell things than really inform us. And that the “information” is a lie: it is mostly propaganda. But today – those are the good old days: now it is ALL clickbait and has as much relation to reality as the reporters and editors do to real-life jobs and experience. When even the media wonks all have two (or three) different opinions about anything and everything. And they can’t agree with their own words more than a few minutes!

We pray for this nightmare to end – and it is like one of those “no way out” nightmares more and more.

But will it?

Some claim that the pandemic will end on Election Day – 3 November 2020. When the media and the scumbag politicians change stop flogging it on us for votes. (And fundraising.) I don’t count on it. For one thing, the idea that the election will be decided on the evening of 3 November is a dream. If we are lucky, there will be a clear winner by the end of November. And even then, if Biden is the winner, we know what he and Harris will do: implement a continental public health dictatorship that will mandate masks, mandate vaccinations, and even medicate us into submission. (Not that a new Trump victory will bring less of a government dictatorship – just in different ways.)

And no, it won’t end when there is a vaccine – real or not. Coronaviruses mutate enough (and this one already has) that a vaccine must be constantly tinkered with, and will never be wholly effective the way a smallpox or polio vaccine can be.

Maybe it won’t end – not until the NEXT pandemic suddenly sweeps out of Asia (or even South America or our own Southwest). One which is as lethal as everyone seemed to think this one would be. One which is more contagious and more able to survive sunlight and heat and alcohol and detergent.

Or maybe it won’t end until we can free ourselves from enslavement by government and its fellow monsters: the media, the “financial sector,” and the medical and educational establishments. The modern Five Horsemen of Final Collapse? Perhaps.

Be prepared.

Afterword: Some Background:

My family and I are, mostly, outside observers, although our lives and work HAVE been impacted.

What things that were done in panic here in the Black Hills of South Dakota have pretty much been rescinded. Certainly what very few things which state and local government imposed. (Which was not much. Wish the tribes here had been as confident and real.) What we have left is the fear-driven requirements of most of the medical community (mandatory quarantine, masks, refusal to allow family assistance). And the liability-driven fear and over-reaction of big businesses: grocery store and big box chains, fast-food places, and others who remain semi-closed, driving people into unemployment and franchise-owners into bankruptcy.

We are now past Rally, and while it was NOT the extravaganza and massive turnout (more than a million people expected for the 80th Rally), it was still very successful: 480,000 vehicles coming to the Hills for Rally was much better than the 250,000 hoped for. Although unemployment is still very bad by South Dakota (and tribal) standards, it rebounded quickly and continues to improve.

But we are not a bunch of isolated, illiterate (uninformed) hicks and yokels. We see and hear – both from the news and from people we work with and talk to in remote parts of the Fifty States – how bad things still are.