This just in, we’re all going to die – eventually.
Come to grips with this and life becomes less scary. Then you don’t become obsessed with prolonging your time spent on this spinning ball of chaos, at the expense of enjoying said time.
I’m not advocating diving out of airplanes sans parachute or jumping in front of buses. I also am not advocating sitting at home, cocooned in shrink wrap, wearing a face mask and inhaling vitamin supplements between jabs of the vaccine of the moment.
Somewhere in between is the sweet spot that few seem able to find.
The topic sprang to mind as I sat waiting for a NASCAR truck race at Watkins Glen to finish Saturday afternoon. It sits in a red-flag delay as I type due to lightning in the area.
The odds of any of the vehicles or crew members being struck by lightning should the race continue are infinitesimal. Similarly, odds are good no spectators will take a hit, presuming they do not stand in an open area holding a flagpole and wearing the metal spikes that help turn golfers into lightning rods.
But, in an abundance of caution, a phrase we hear a lot in these litigious and fear-mongering times, the vehicles sit waiting for Mother Nature to move on to other parts.
It wasn’t always this way, and I can speak from personal experience. Four or more decades back, a cousin and I used to make periodic pilgrimages to Watkins Glen to watch racing that sometimes involved a guy we both knew running in the Trans Am series.
On one of those occasions, we were watching a Formula 5000 race – think Indy-style open-wheel cars powered by domestic V-8 engines with a 305-cubic inch limit. These class cars ran from 1968 through 1982.
It began to rain – hard. There was thunder and lightning. The racers’ response was to pit for rain tires, the grooved examples that road racers use to run in the wet. The event continued.
Meanwhile, my cousin and I sat at the top of ALUMINUM !!! bleachers, maybe 50 rows high, situated on a hill, and watched the race.
If you are familiar at all with the Watkins Glen track, we were at the end of the uphill stretch that leads to the Esses, the back straight, and the bus stop (interloop) that slows cars ahead of the sweeping carousel turn.
Al Unser Sr. was leading the race and was clocked at 180 mph in the traps near the end of the back straight. This at a time when due to the rain and the rooster tails of spray shot into the air by the open wheels, you could only the see the front of the lead car and nothing of the trailing vehicles.
As for my cousin and I, we sat on the potential mass electric chair and thought little of personal danger. Only afterward did we give it any notice.
We might have died from a lightning strike, but we didn’t. I might die from COVID-19, but I like my odds there, too.
The hysteria of the pro-vaccine crowd and Orwellian governments only strengthens my resolve.
Their rush to censor anyone who would cite counter opinion smacks of desperation.
Just this past Friday Joe Rogan, speaking on his wildly popular Spotify podcast, mentioned getting feedback from doctors citing concerns that ineffective vaccines, such as the ones we are encouraged to take, can spawn super bugs.
Rogan mentioned a 2015 peer-reviewed study that raised the specter of this in general, not regarding COVID-19, which was a few years in our future.
And the cries are out to cancel Rogan and deny him his platform. He must be punished for being – in a word — correct.
You can’t be allowed to pass on correct information when it differs from the government approved narrative.
The nanny state purports to want to save us from ourselves with vaccines that don’t prevent infection or its spread, don’t kill the disease and now seem to be in need of a nonstop amount of boosters to maintain that ineffectiveness.
Had my cousin and I been at Watkins Glen today, NASCAR would have played the governmental role by saving us from ourselves. First, NASCAR halted the race with a red flag due to lightning, then it called it off 11 laps short of the scheduled distance.
Whether NASCAR was looking to protect the spectators, avoid lawsuits, just clear the decks for the upcoming race at the same track in the more popular Xfinity series, or vacate the cable channel for scheduled Major League Baseball, is open to debate.
What is not open to debate is you and I will die at some future time. Try ignoring the fear merchants along the way and living a little while you wait.
Sam Ross Jr's site 