Wash your hands.
Don't touch your face.
Stay away from other people.
Wear a mask.
Stay two metres away from everyone.
Open the windows.
One hundred years of research since the Spanish flu, thousands of PhD's and untold millions in research grants, and that's it? That's all they got? Your grandmother's advice? When a real, Spanish Flu killer-pandemic comes along, that's what the public health officials are going to tell us to do, as we watch others dying in front of us?
It's a good thing this virus is not serious. (Look at the excess death rate. That's all that matters. Infections without symptoms are meaningless.)
The virus is not a medical problem. It's a flu. It's going to mutate, it's going to stay with us. There will be another one along later. Get over it.
The virus is a political problem. The politicians, punch-drunk from the continuing fall-out of 2008, and the shocking events of 2016, were faced with a public health lobby that was looking for its next panic, a media that was looking for something to beat the politicians with, and a sense that they were losing control over their countries. One by one, terrified by the prospect of being wrong and having the press hounding them, they looked around for something to do.
They were desperate. Desperate people do things that barely make sense to them. And make no sense to anyone else.
Lock healthy people inside their homes.
Shut businesses and shops. Make them spend thousands on virus paraphernalia.
If anyone is found to be infected, lock them up with their families for a fortnight.
Policies that are ridiculous on their face, and required fear-based propaganda to spread.
They did not do it to save lives. None of those measures will save lives.
They did it to stop the papers, television and social media showing photographs of patients lying on trolleys in corridors.
Public relations, not public health.
Never try to understand what desperate people do. By definition, it has no justification.
Never underestimate what weak, mean-spirited, small-souled people can do if they get into a position of influence. We are seeing it now.
Never underestimate how unscrupulous people will try to benefit from a crisis. See the "experts" lining up for their fifteen minutes of fame.
Never underestimate how much people who believe they are right will force their views on the rest of us.
There is nothing to understand here. To record, to document, to cost - yes. To understand - NO.
And never try to understand why your fellow citizens scuttled so willingly into their homes on 23 March 2020, and continue to go along with mendacious Government propaganda, and follow ridiculous advice. (Some do it, like me, to access what we need. But who wears a mask on the street?)
I will try in 2021 to focus on what I can do to maintain and improve the quality of my life, and of the few people left who mean something to me.
I will...
... exercise
... read
... continue at the day job until this s**t-show is over.
... listen to music
... try to eat well (but remember that chocolate is medicinal)
... keep myself and my digs clean
... experiment with all sorts of little things
... keep my head away from the crazy
One day at a time.
Which is mostly what I do every year. Because I've pretty much had this living thing down for a while now.
I could almost believe it, but why would almost every country in the world be doing the same thing if they didn't have to?
ReplyDeleteBecause the measures they are taking are not about fixing the problem but averting blame. Imagine you and some colleagues are independently faced with the same problem. Nobody knows how to tackle it. Whatever anyone does would frankly be just guessing. In those circumstances the main priority is to cover your backside. You'd confer with your colleagues and you'd all agree on the same course of action - that way, whatever the outcome, everyone is in the same boat. That is simply what we have seen with governments across the world.
ReplyDelete