August Editorial Winner

Maskers of the Universe

By Zeke Lay, Choctaw Times 

As our War of Independence began in 1775, America was hit with an epidemic of smallpox. Like our current virus, it was spread by human to human contact and there was a period of time when individuals were contagious while experiencing only minor symptoms. Unlike today, the mortality rate was 30%; for young and old. Smallpox is a nasty disease; survivors are left pocked and disfigured for life. On top of that, because the disease was common in Europe for a long time, most of the enemy troops were immune. 
At the time, there was no real scientific knowledge, yet they knew that hygiene and quarantine helped. They also knew that inoculation, purposefully infecting with a (hopefully) mild strain to gain antibodies, gave immunity; but the procedure itself had a 2% mortality rate. If this disease was allowed to run rampant through the Continental Army, America would have no troops in which to fight. 
Inoculations were forbidden at first. Yet some of the soldiers did it secretly anyway. A private physician from New York was caught helping them and was jailed. Throughout the fall and winter of 1775 smallpox ravaged Boston. Rumors even surfaced that the British were deliberately spreading the disease. When the British were finally routed there in March of 1776, Washington ordered only soldiers who had already survived the disease to re-occupy the city. But smallpox continued to spread, fears grew, and recruiting suffered. 
Washington was a survivor of the disease himself and immune. Thankfully, he was also decisive. Fearing an epidemic he said; …”should the disorder infect the Army…we should have more to dread from it than from the Sword of the Enemy.” In February 1777 he ordered the secret inoculation of all troops. The program was so successful it was repeated at Valley Forge during the hard winter of 1778. 
More recently, we had a flu pandemic in 1968; anyone remember? Before the Chinese owned our politicians and media, it was accurately labeled the Hong Kong Flu. In two winters (68-69 and 69-70), it killed over a million people worldwide. Yet there was no quarantine except for those who were ill. While the Hong Kong Virus killed the young and the old there were no mask mandates, no social distancing, and no shutdown and subsequent spoiling of the American economy. We missed no political conventions, no World Series or any other sports. We even had the Summer Olympics in Mexico City… and Woodstock.
While every life is precious and every death a tragedy, must our governing strategy be weighted mostly by fear and woe? And if we must, should we not expect a higher degree of accuracy for virus statistics from our government; in order to be properly informed? Close down the world economy and the bottom fifth of all wage-earners living on the margin are in jeopardy for their lives. As a result, the UN projects deaths from starvation in the Third World at 260 million, many of them children. Business, our economy, is not some optional function; neither are our schools. 
Recently one of our city mayors compared the Wuhan virus with smallpox while arguing in favor of a mask mandate. How would Washington’s troops have responded to that?