Note I’m not saying the COVID-19 itself is phony. I have enough friends in the medical profession to know there is something happening; that a virus is causing some real havoc in some places and among certain populations.
Why those places and those populations is a bit of a mystery, since neither the bands of homeless in our inner cities (Denver, for one, hasn’t even tried to make them social distance) nor the favelas of Rio are dropping like flies. But there is something there, and precisely what it is, and precisely how to combat it is something that will have to be explored at some other time — if enough wealth and sanity is left after this psychotic break with reality to do any reasoned and sane scientific research.
Why do I call the events of the last month and a half – particularly the insane measures adopted by our governments, and followed sheepishly by the majority of a terrified population – a fake war?
Because it is.
Sane people whom I respect give all credit and bow down to “Social Distancing,” I assume because they’re so terrified of disease (but that’s a subject for another post) that they have lost the capacity to think and examine facts rationally.
There has been no social distancing. In fact, several of the things we did to “induce social distancing” make things not just worse but a lot worse, should this be the terrifyingly contagious, stupendously lethal virus it was rumored to be.
Here are the “measures” taken that militate against stopping the transmission of the virus:
1. Congregating in “essential” stores
We have arbitrarily closed most stores, churches, and other places where people might congregate, leaving only grocery stores and other stores deemed as “essential” open (More on that later). Because humans are social animals, and because the closures induced a panic, people have been going to the grocery store every day, instead of oh, every week or so.
Sure, they were told to “social distance” in those environments. But we know for an absolute fact that – forget aerosols – most of the COVID-19 transmission is done via particles.
So, everyone going, one after the other, through the same store, touching the same things only increases the risk of contagion among the susceptible.
2. Closing schools
Schools were closed, but essential workers still need to work. So children who have neither parent at home were dumped, willy-nilly, into day care, where they are more likely to get contagion than in school.
How is that, you ask?
Well, any parent who ever raised children knows that the highest ages of contagion are the ages below age ten. Being basically young apes, little humans don’t get much about hygiene. Even the most vigilant mother with the smallest brood can only stop so much of the wiping nose with hands, keeping hands decently clean, not sucking on random stuff, up until that age.
So while school classes from middle school on are far less likely to transmit disease, we’re dumping kids into day care centers with kids younger than ten which, if anything, will facilitate the spread of disease.
3. Marijuana
In most states, pot dispensaries remain open and not just for pickup. Not only are addicts the least likely to take adequate precautions but pot itself – being mostly smoked – has a deleterious effect on the lungs, which will help the spread of the disease.
On top of the obviously and clearly “will increase spread” measures, there are a lot of other measures that at best do absolutely nothing or are contradictory with other measures taken/not taken.
1. Closing churches
Given example #3 above, you’re going to say, “But Sarah, if the dispensaries close, we’ll have a lot of addicts without recourse to their drug. Think of the suicides, assaults, and other violence caused by this.”
Yeah, you’d have a point if they hadn’t also closed churches.
Why am I comparing pot dispensaries with churches?
Well, in no way do I mean to imply that they are on the same plane. However, a lot of people are dependent on spiritual consolation, particularly when they lose their jobs, their money, everything keeping them sane. The number of suicides and violent outbursts resulting from the closure of divine services is certainly comparable to the number of people who would kill themselves because they were deprived of pot.
And while you might say that churches gather a lot more people than pot dispensaries, you’d be right, to an extent. That extent would be if you’re talking about some of the urban megachurches. In more traditional denominations, while there might be more people at any given service, there is more space for social distancing between people attending.
The way to solve that would be to have a maximum number of people per service and have people register online, not to close churches entirely.
And if social distancing must outweigh every other consideration, then surely pot stores must close.
At any rate, the fact that they are fining people for attending drive-in church services is another indication that all these measures are for show and at the whim of the politicians in charge, and having absolutely nothing to do with reality.
Bill de Blasio Threatens to ‘Permanently’ Close Churches, Synagogues if They Meet During Coronavirus
2. Abortion, full steam ahead
We are still performing abortions, while many heart procedures/cancer surgery/etc. are now considered somehow “elective.”
Regardless of what you think of abortion unless it is truly done to save the life of the mother (and not the psychological life or the economic life or some other not life-life) it is not an essential procedure.
Beyond that, abortion clinics are far more lightly regulated than any hospital on Earth, when it comes to cleanliness and disinfection (except perhaps Italian hospitals, as it turns out apparently hospitals were a major point of spread of COVID-19 in Italy.) This means leaving them open if the concern is to avoid the spread of the infection is in direct contradiction with preventing other surgeries, especially if they postpone heart surgery.
3. “Non-essential” stores
Appliance stores and clothing stores are considered non-essential, while Walmart and Home Improvement stores remain essential — and open, and crowded. Anyone who needs short sleeve shirts because they gained or lost a lot of weight since last year must shop at Walmart, while everyone whose washer has broken must shop at home improvement stores, instead of at an appliance store, which would be likely to have a lot less traffic (even in normal times) and likely to contribute a lot less to the spread of disease.
4. Parks
Parks are closed because, you know, people might walk less than six feet apart in the open air, and meanwhile, stores with aisles too small for people to go by without practically touching are open and among the few places open.
5. Attendance caps
Fifty people per store is one of the phoniest and most bizarre measures to come out of nowhere, based on nothing. The only thing it serves to foment is fear and a sense of the world being in turmoil.
The fact this measure is applied equally to your neighborhood grocery store, the Walmart super-center, a small hardware store, and a vast home improvement store, large enough that flocks of birds live inside it, shows you there is no scientific basis for this decision, no sense in the enforcement of that senseless law.
All of these aspects show that this is a phony war against an enemy which, if not non-existent, is not nearly as lethal as has been advertised.
I feel as though I’m living through a cosplay of the 1918 flu epidemic combined with a cosplay of WWII. Hardships are being imposed on people that not only do not fight the spread of the virus but might considerably worsen that spread.
There seems to be a lust on the part of the population to have harder measures imposed, in the name of feeling they are “doing something,” and a corresponding lust on the part of governors, mayors, and every petty law officer to impose as harsh a set of restrictions as possible.
Meanwhile, the media is stoking panic and behaving like dowagers getting one last chance to shine in the sun.
None of this is either stopping the spread of COVID-19 nor keeping the economy alive so that we can better stop other diseases, nor does it even help us figure out what the virus actually is and what it does.
This is like watching everyone run to fight an imaginary enemy while — unseen — armies of real enemies walk among them, killing people.
It is a phony war with real casualties. A butcher’s bill not only of those killed by it, but of those killed by the destroyed economy that will accumulate for decades.
