The CDC’s cure for COVID-induced mental illness is to ban guns
One of the consequences of government-mandated lockdowns, masks, and other tyrannical reactions to COVID has been an increase in mental illness leading to an increase in homicides and suicides, but if you’re Joe Biden and the CDC, you don’t fix the problem you created, you use it achieve another to-do item on your punch list: ban guns.
It is an indisputable fact that COVID-induced mental health illness has been a consequence of government mandates, which is why the Hon Josh Frydenberg MP of Australia — a country living in a perpetual state of lockdown since COVID arrived — is calling for an immediate end to lockdowns for the sake of his nation’s mental health:
There are two key reasons why Australia must bring stringent lockdowns and border closures to an end at vaccination rates of 70 to 80 per cent, our economy and people’s mental health.
Former Australian of the Year and psychiatrist Patrick McGorry has spoken of a “shadow pandemic” occurring in our midst.
As a result of COVID-19 he has said, “a substantial minority of Australians will develop a new episode of mental ill-health to a degree that justifies and requires professional help.”
Recent figures out of our two locked-down states, Victoria and New South Wales, are alarming.
It has been reported that in Victoria more than 340 teenagers a week are ending up in hospital with mental health emergencies. These numbers are an 83 per cent rise on last year and a 162 per cent increase on 2019.
Teenage girls are particularly affected, suffering anxiety, depression, eating disorders and suicidal tendencies.
Over the last year, in New South Wales, around 8,500 people under the age of 18 presented at emergency departments for self harm and suicidal thoughts. This is up nearly 50 per cent on pre-pandemic levels.
The fact that kids in Victoria and New South Wales are not in school, where they can learn with their teachers and socialise with their friends, is having a profound impact on their behavioral development and educational outcomes. (emphasis mine)
A CDC report released last year revealed that America hasn’t been exempt from COVID-induced mental illness. “Elevated levels of adverse mental health conditions, substance use, and suicidal ideation were reported by adults in the United States in June 2020,” the report noted.
This brings us to today’s CDC and Director Rochelle Walensky, who recently revealed how she plans to use the mental illness issue to create new ways to “prevent gun violence” ban guns (via Reason):
As director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Rochelle Walensky has a lot on her plate right now—perhaps too much, given her history of misrepresenting COVID-19 research, promoting dangerously mixed messages about vaccination, issuing confusing and scientifically dubious advice, and laying claim to vast powers that Congress never gave her. But Walensky’s pandemic-related duties did not deter her from publicly switching focus to a highly contentious subject that has always spelled trouble for the CDC: gun violence.
“Something has to be done about this,” Walensky told CNN last week. “Now is the time. It’s pedal-to-the-metal time.”
Although that metaphor suggests hasty action, Walensky emphasized that she is not calling for new gun controls. “I’m not here about gun control,” she said. “I’m here about preventing gun violence and gun death.”
In Walensky’s view, the CDC needs to investigate the causes of gun-related deaths so that public policy will have a stronger empirical basis. “I swore to the president and to this country that I would protect your health,” she said. “This is clearly one of those moments, one of those issues that is harming America’s health….We haven’t spent the time, energy, and, frankly, the resources to understand this problem because it’s been so divided.” (emphasis mine)
Though Walensky claims she will conduct her research by “embracing wholeheartedly the firearm-owning community,” the CDC’s history along with Joe Biden’s push to eliminate the sale of all handguns and rifles and his belief that “no amendment to the Constitution is absolute” provide plenty of reasons to doubt her sincerity, especially with COVID-induced mental illness to fall back on.
And let’s not forget that Jen Psaki has already informed America that Biden intends to go around Congress to ban guns. “We are considering a range of levers, including working through legislation, including executive action,” Psaki told reporters. “That has been under discussion and will continue to be under discussion.”
By the way, Republicans have been pretty keen on the idea of using mental illness to deny gun rights for several years. Just sayin’.
It’s tempting to erroneously dismiss Joe Biden and the CDC plan to use COVID-induced mental illness to ban guns, but with state and local governments already finding ways to unconstitutionally disarm America during the so-called pandemic, it won’t take much for Uncle Joe to get his way.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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