Shadow Boxing With Covid-19

The implementation of mass mandatory mask at this point makes no sense.

None.

Not even on a precautionary level does it make sense. But we've traumatized people so badly they don't want to move on with their lives. And they may have to wait still more if they're relying on a vaccine.

But there's little we can do at the moment. This superstition is in full gear now and it's likely to get worse before it gets better. 

It really is tragic people aren't even questioning the fact that this is less temporary and more indefinite. Still more creepy is looking at the avatars of politicians in masks. Something strikes me as plain wrong with that.

And the evidence to which they based their decision is weak and specious.

The media frames the debate as though, surprise, the science behind the mask mandates is signed, sealed and delivered. You'll read vague terms like 'growing body of evidence' often with no links or reference (it just "is" see?) or they refer to a PNAS study or The Lancet. In some places, an obscure (right, me calling someone obscure is indeed rich but hey...) computer scientist named Jeremy Howard has become to the mask movement what Algore the engineer is to climate change.

But the body of evidence sides with the 'recalcitrants'. Those singled out for being uncooperative. 

How's that for troubling Gulagish language?

While the media reports on its development, it could be false hope. Oxford experts working on one have said the virus is disappearing too fast and aren't able to test as a result of it.

So what is going on?

In the meantime, the body of evidence does not support mandating masks.

See here. And here.

It supports, if you want, at best voluntary action. In the absence of evidence, this is as far as we can go without sacrificing freedom.

If 70%, for example, of people want to wear them or private businesses opt for them as a requirement, I'd have no issue with that.

It's when the government steps in where we should proceed with caution.

The really troubling part is people haven't realized how bad the lockdown were mostly because they think the virus did it when in fact it was government with the support of the population.

If they didn't bother to examine the results, I imagine they will do so even less with masks.

We're not citizens at the moment. We're ruled as subjects. 

******

I was thinking about the lockdowns from a philosophical perspective (which inevitable includes the - don't say it! - economic aspect). As repeated (to mind-numbing levels) here, the 'unseen' of this questionable and heavy handed response was going to lead us to a place where the cure was bound to be worse than the disease.

Sure enough, slowly but surely, this is becoming more and ore the case.

Now we're starting to see reports of the trade-off of having locked down. 

And as you can expect, and as I've been arguing here for months, it's as ugly as you can expect.

This includes a rise in cancer deaths.

'If it could save one life' may have cost 200 000 lives in the UK alone.

Is this a good trade-off? 

The calculus of the lockdown was to stop the spread and now, along with mandatory masks, an impossible and unreasonable attempt to save every life but the negative trade off can't sustain this hope and claim.

How can it? How can a politician say, 'Hey, for every person saved from Covid-19, it only cost 199 999 lives!'? 

It can't. I submit it's in fact immoral to do so and traverses into malice.

If the metric is deaths, you can't only look at only one side of the ledger and not the other. Once we look at the other side, Sweden clearly comes out on top. It's not a competition to see who 'saves' more lives as a means to an end. It's about managing your society without compromising, again, its mental health, economy and freedoms.

Consider these consequences:

Starvation of kids. And what about 'for the children' anyway, right? 

Deaths of despair (including suicides).

This goes along with the other 'unseen' fall outs repeated ad nauseam on this blog and so what's one more time:

-Increased suicides.

-Domestic abuse (child and woman).

-Alcoholism.

-Bankruptcies.

-Double digit negative growth. 

-Unemployment greater than the Great Depression. 10 million of those job losses are expected to be permanent.

-Exacerbation of mental illness including OCD and loneliness.

-Mass starvation.

-People not getting treatment for health issues.

-Stockholm Syndrome. 

It's been taken to such an extreme that in Germany they prevented people from conducting mouth to mouth resuscitation while performing CPR likely causing to still more needless deaths.

We're talking millions and in some cases hundreds of millions impacted.

To say nothing of people not being able to see or bury loved ones.

Or the crime of the elderly of dying of thirst or starvation - as well as the disease - nursing homes. What are we doing to our youth? We're depriving them of enjoying their prime years and filling them with angst. Especially pernicious is the fact they're not in danger.

What about a 16 year-old who won't get their Sweet Sixteen party? The athlete who got recruited at a big school but lost it? People's lives have permanently been altered.

Seems to me if you're truly a humanist this factors into how you view a lockdown, no?

Sweden basically showed a lockdown was unnecessary. People who keep focusing on the deaths in long-term facilities as proof their decision failed are really stretching it. 

It really doesn't disprove Sweden erred in their decision especially considering several countries made this miscalculation including the USA and Canada. Sweden is coming out of this with their mental health and freedms in tact.

They're actually following the science and not letting the virus dictate policy. Countries like Germany, the UK, Italy, France, Canada, and the USA are doing the opposite.

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A quick word on selfishness as noted above.

It's often said people who don't wear masks are 'selfish'.

But people who support lockdowns often will admit it's because it's mostly about them not wanting to get the virus.

I don't need someone lecturing about how they're 'thinking about my health'. I'm old enough to make that decision for me. In any event, this kind of paternalism stinks of patronizing and pompous nonsense.

Like they really give a shit.

So who exactly are the uncooperative and selfish here. People insisting on not following the science on masks to me are the uncooperative ones and the selfish are the ones who think lockdowns are a legitimate way to 'fight' a virus or obtusely want to keep schools closed projecting their fears onto children.

The most concerning part is people are likely falling in line with the masks mandates because they believe a vaccine is imminent. This may or may not be the case. The media is certainly claiming it is. But what if it turns out to be false hope? Back in May Oxford experts worried the virus was disappearing to fast threatening finding a vaccine. This seems to have changed but worth keeping an eye out for.

Very little seems to make sense at the moment. Not sure how Quebec can justify, for example, its mandates on these grounds indefinitely. 

At the moment it's contained. More and more treatments are available. The vast majority of the population won't die from it. Most can recover from home.

Time to move forward and put an end to the psychological terror and trauma we're causing.

Time to lead the people.

*****

I don't think this virus is a hoax. It's real and it's dangerous. Precautions must be taken. Listen to the experts. 

All I'm cautioning against is giving up your liberty for security. From where I sit, it's a bad trade.

Everybody look what's going down.

Remember cats, it starts when you're always afraid. Masks can be fear-based behavioural modification.

I think the damage is done. We've gone onto another trajectory now. I'm out.