This, even as more and more evidence makes clear that our recent "pandemic" is in every sense of the phrase a plannedemic, and one that even brazenly inflated casualty numbers cannot render any more deadly than is a typical bad flu season.

Don't get me wrong: Six members of my immediate family tested positive for COVID. (And each recov ered fully, thank God). So I am not a bit cavalier about the real suffering of the last 18 months.

But my friends and neighbors sometimes appear to be in a literal race to embrace the entire spectrum, from vapid to vicious, of whatever soul-crushing and freedom-smashing offal spews over us from the mouths of the pundits and "news" anchors haunting the corners of our living rooms, offices, and ear buds. To wit: last fall there was a local fish monger who shouted me down for the grave crime of not fully covering my nose. Her loud, unrelenting insults showered over me like foul residuum from a sickly sneeze. Or this spring my wife observed a shopper who literally screamed accusations of murder at a fellow shopper, a mild-mannered woman also guilty of the naked-nose atrocity. And how quickly we changed our entire society: just two years ago someone irrationally shouting accusations of murder in the marketplace would have faced potential litigation for slander , or worse, been dragged away for (much-deserved) observation.