The Masks We Wear
By the end of the Vietnam War, after all the pointless destruction, the saying went that America had to burn each village in order to save it.
Is our government doing the same to our country?
I hate to be callous, but life is callous, and I want to ask older people and the sick if they are indeed in favour of wrecking millions of lives in order to, maybe, only maybe, help them avoid coming into contact with a virus which is seemingly everywhere already?
The overwhelming majority of deaths have been in the elderly and the seriously ill - by overwhelming I mean there is zero risk to young people.
If I were 80, and were given the choice, I would choose for young and healthy people to be allowed to live free - especially as it seems there is no preventing the spread. What we can do is keep the elderly and the ill as isolated as possible.
In South Africa, we are talking about another hard lockdown. Do we honestly think the first one ‘worked’? Who really believes the surge in cases now could have been prevented? The virus was clearly here already, and a real lockdown is never truly possible. People need to shop. Lots of people need to work, no matter what.
If the lockdown was likely just a gesture, on the other hand nobody is now denying the overwhelming probability of an economic apocalypse. Millions of jobs lost in an economy that was in recession already. Yet still we are pursuing a lockdown that is clearly ineffective in dealing with the spread of the virus.
Act on certainties. Not on uncertainties. Another certainty that has emerged is that economies cannot be switched off and on easily. It is an eco-system, not a machine. There is no button to start things up. Businesses all depend on each other. So it’s a long process for everything to get moving again.
(And by the way, the second wave in the US is being spun by media - death rates are way down. The ‘surge’ is just an increase in testing.)
Like the US in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no exit strategy for us, no idea what winning looks like in this scenario.
For me, the madness of the time is summed up by the mask hysteria.
A few months ago, the WHO told us masks were unnecessary. This was after and during the Chinese and Italian waves.
Now everybody is acting as though masks were the definitive way to stop the disease. This is absurd.
Again, how can you take an absolutist position on something that has no certainty. I could literally point you to scores of serious studies which show masks do nothing.
Fauci even said a while ago that the effect is purely emotional - it simply creates the feeling that you are ‘contributing’, something like a social media slacktivist post.
I reckon most masks are just little nests of germs and bugs that you touch and spread.
For the masks enthusiasts out there, ask yourselves, how does mask-wearing end? Are we just going to do it for another year? Have you seen the babies and kids out and about wearing masks? It’s simply ridiculous, and harmful, and its an abdication of your face and ability to communicate to a government which has never shown itself to be on your side or on the side of logic. Why be absolute about something tenuous?
I wonder if the government would actually want us gradually to stop wearing masks. They can’t undo it now as testing increases. The sunk costs are too great. They have little room to ease up without losing credibility. Maybe they want the regulation to fade away, like e-tolls. An unenforceable law is actually unjust.
Either way, I think we can all play a role in shifting the consciousness around this issue.
I think some of the biggest heroes in our country are the people who work hard to employ themselves and a few others in a really tough environment.
It’s time to fight for them. Our country simply will not cope with a 50% unemployment rate.
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