I heard an interesting story recently which sounded like a good idea at first glance.

It goes like this: A prison in England wanted to help inmates rehabilitate their skills. The prison offered adult education classes to the prisoners and one convict named Nicholas Webber decided to use his adult education time hacking into the prison’s computer system.

What seemed like a good idea initially turned into a rather poor idea after Webber hacked into the prison’s computer system. Maybe the prison should have looked at why Webber was in prison? As Paul Harvey would so eloquently say, so here’s the rest of the story: Webber was in for hacking computers.

This story made me think of the reactions to the pandemic we call COVID-19. The nationwide shutdown at first seemed like a good idea, it was presented as something we had never encountered in our lifetime. Our country, however, had experienced other pandemics like the 1917 Spanish Flu, West Nile Virus, Ebola virus, SARS, and Asian Flu just to name a few. What was different about this one?

We were first told that it was nothing to worry about. Elected officials told us we didn’t have to wear masks or change work. Then it all changed after the impeachment hearings ended and from my perspective, it seems like a good idea gone horribly wrong. We soon were told that COVID was deadly, that it could get any of us and probably would. We all went along with it and the country and most of the world shut down.

This is where it gets confusing, at least for some of us. After we were told we didn’t have to wear masks, then the narrative changed to we have to flatten the curve to not overwhelm the hospitals. When we did flatten the curve, the narrative changed to we don’t have enough respirators. When it became clear we had enough respirators, we were then told that we had to wear masks and social distance ourselves.

I was fine with masks because when I lived in Japan for two years starting in 1980, I saw the Japanese people already wearing masks, so it was not foreign to me. Social distancing also was not a problem until the unintended consequences exploded. Engaged couples could not hold wedding receptions, families that lost loved ones as we did could not hold funerals. Church services across the country were shut down for the most part, but after Memorial Day weekend, once again it all changed.

This time, while most of us could not go out of our homes for work, church or anything not deemed essential — and there are growing lists of essential jobs and activities — other groups of people could protest and riot. Oh and by the way, for them, social distancing and wearing masks were very much optional. The justification given by some politicians was that the ability to protest or riot was more important than social distancing or wearing masks. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a lot of us were not interested in following rules that only applied under certain circumstances.

Lately, as many of us have spoken out about the hypocrisy of certain politicians telling us we have to do what Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx tell us to do, those same politicians ignored the advice from Fauci and Birx and did what they wanted to do. There are other scientists like Dr. Scott Atlas who says that the lockdown and its consequences are killing people. Suicides are up, depression is up, domestic violence is up, not to mention elective surgeries not being done which can lead to more deaths down the road because an ailment was not diagnosed.

This blatant hypocrisy will not last. Americans will not stand for this. The hard part is the time between now and when Americans stand up and say enough.

I was proud to hear that Provo City Mayor Michelle Kaufusi recently stood up to her city council that just passed an ordinance mandating that everyone must wear a mask indoors and outdoors in public places and large public gatherings. The ordinance fines organizers of events $500 and $55 fines for those people who are not organizers of events, presumably attendees.

Kaufusi vetoed the mask mandate ordinance, although the Municipal Council then voted to override her. Good for you, Madame Mayor. I have often opined about mayors who won’t stand up to their city councils, so I hope more mayors follow Kaufusi’s example even if their city councils, as Provo’s did, override a veto — because it is the right thing to do.