Opinion by Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD, Medical Director, Natural Solutions Foundation, January 4, 2021
I would like to say that this is as bat poop crazy as it can get.* Sadly, I do not believe we have reached the pit of irrational tyranny by the insanely fearful. Judge for yourself.
In Salem, OR, there is a store called WinCo [1] whose policy is that while shoppers are not required to wear masks in store, once they reach the sacred zone of self-checkout, masks are required.
Repeat: no mask required in store; mask required at self-service checkout. Just wanted to make sure you read that.
As a physician, I have to wonder if the robot checkout devices have a special susceptibility to viral diseases, against which this policy is designed to protect them. If so, I must remind the policy makers at WinCo that masks do not prevent the transmission of viral disease even if the target of protection is a robot.
The unmasked, and therefore highly offensive, nay, dangerous, shopper, an elderly lady, was prevented from scanning her milk and bananas by the duty-inspired checkout robot-protecting employee, who clearly did a valiant and most noble job of whatever it was that he thought he was doing.
As a psychiatrist, I have to wonder about the mental state of those enforcing this irrational and harmful regulation.
Using the magical powers embodied in his special employee override card, he bravely pushed aside the lady and shut down her machine, scattered the potatoes of a masked checker out-er and attempted to grab the phone of a man filming the brave actions of the obedient but, sadly, highly irrational employee. The employee, while interfering with commerce stated that the unmasked lady, a shopper in a strange land, was somehow trespassing while carrying out the normal functions associated with a food store: buying food. His further statements may have been magical incantations since they make no sense in any other way.
He also apparently assaulted the female shopper. Good job, Mr. Stalwart! Freedom has been saved and the curve has been flattened by your timely use of your magical powers, assisted by the override card. Not a single quart of milk for that unmasked miscreant. Gotham can sleep safely tonight!
Thanks for being there, Sir. Without your actions today, we might not have realized just how insane, irrational, unscientific, politicized science-avoidant and meaninglessly authoritarian the behavior of the faithful can get.
Oh, one more thing, Oh Brave One: Did you know that the Americans With Disabilities Act, a national law, and the Oregon Statutes and Regulations which mirror it, along with the CDC recommendations and the Oregon ones that mirror them as well, provide for people to NOT be required to wear a mask if they have a disability that prevents them from doing so safely? And that interfering with that is a felony offense? Didn’t know that? Apparently they left that out of the Bully Your Way to Pandemic Success manual for employees.
Perhaps the CEO of WinCo Foods needs to bone up on the mask exemption law and make sure that HR knows about it, too.
But, in the meantime, “Good job, Fella!”
Examples as good as this one of brute force, thoughtless, self-righteous stupidity are hard to find. I anticipate, sadly, I must admit, that they are going to get easier as more people like you wander around exercising your miniscule ‘authority’ wherever you can, no matter how foolish or hurtful it might be — Or how unlawful, risking heavy court judgments. Are you listening bottom-line guardians of WinCo?
Letting your crossing-guard mentality managers abuse elderly individuals who cannot breathe through masks will get you sued. Are you listening elderly lady?
Assert your right to breathe: https://tinyurl.com/maskexemption.
Prof. M Rectenwald, PhD, sums up the situation:
“…there is one thing that they do to create the social cooperation: they force it on you. In other words, what I’ve argued is — and I argue that in Springtime for Snowflakes — is that while this willy-nilly anything-goes postmodern epistemological presumption may seem to be liberatory … (w)hat I suggest is that in fact, when there’s no objective criteria for a truth claim, then anybody can impose a truth claim of their own and then when they’re collectivized, it becomes a mob insistence that you believe something that’s completely insane and that’s exactly what’s going on. … That’s what it comes down to. It comes down to force. By collectivizing this subjectivism, they end up imposing it on you through mob force.” [2]
[1] www.wincofoods.com
[2] https://mises.org/library/un-woke
* That’s not a formal diagnosis by a me as a psychiatrist; it could be, though. This reported behavior is that crazy. My statement, however, is a personal expression of outrage based on many decades of observing what passes for normal and not normal human behavior.