Journaling the Coronavirus (COVID19) Pandemic, Reflection #40
April 21, 2020
Enforcement.
So far, the major effort to increase testing has been led by a media and governmental effort to describe the tests as some form of allowing those testing negative to feel relief, however momentarily, and those testing positive to get treatment, although there really is no treatment. This morning, both the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times ran articles about changing the word isolation to quarantine.
For the first time, the ‘bite’ of testing results starts to make an appearance. Testing is something that is likely to be done to discover those who carry the virus. Those people testing positive for whatever reason would be immediately and forcefully quarantined to a single room in a residence or unknown facilities. Then, those people’s contacts (discovered by interview, social tracking, and cell phone tracking) would be found and quarantined, as well. As opposed to the voluntary isolation being requested by medical personnel today, for any incidence of the virus, law enforcement would be involved and the rules for breaking quarantine are likely to be applied with the threat of draconian punishments…since there simply are not enough police or other personnel to monitor everyone who is a positive tester or a contact of such.
How much harsher can things get?
Well, apparently, there is no end to just how dire the race to fight off a virus that is simply not that virulent when it comes to the totality of the population is going to be. How is one to deal with this? Certainly, and probably why this subject is being handled so lightly and tenderly right now, there is an understanding that as these new rules go into effect people will begin avoiding being tested under any circumstance. Even being tested for possessing the antibodies due to having had the virus already will not suffice. like all of a sudden the ages known fact that once you get such a disease and survive you are immune is being tossed out the window with no empirical proof whatever.
Be careful out there and be very discerning about what you are reading and learning about what our leaders are doing and how what they are doing may affect you. Being shut into a bedroom for three weeks or more, or taken to some sterile distant ‘facility’ under-enforcement, might not sound like that much of a burden but, and believe me on this one, such an experience will change your life for all time if it happens to you.
What Are Your Thoughts on the Matter?
Taiwan seems to have been very successful combating the pandemic but yes they did have draconian measures were taken very early. So thousands of lives were saved. Can we put a dollar amount on lives saved? Are the lives of those over 65 and /or disabled worth less? If we sacrifice freedoms for pandemics are we less likely to get them back the longer it drags on? Or do we, as a society, just accept the deaths of some members as a sacrifice on the altar of capitalism , not unlike the Mayans who threw people into sacred cenotes to appease the gods. Are we any more civilized?
Capitalism is simply a word used to describe the social and economic structure of how our culture exchanges goods and services for other goods and services. It is a formalized system of trading.
The problem is not about capitalism versos the lives of some people. It is about all people. If the eoncomy is stopped, like it is now, then untold millions are going to die because of a lack
of ability to trade things like money for services or food or whatever. There are about 220,000 people who die every month in the USA of all manner of causes. Illustrating one cause, in this case
the virus, and then making it stand out glaringly and holding it out as being the single cause we can’t stand to have people die from…to the point where we allow all these other unnamed and uncaused
people to die is simply unconscionable. But here it is. The dying form all the other stuff that the economic stoppage is going to cause has really not begun and the loss of things that were once
the very definition of what it was like to enjoy the American experience of living will begin now and go on through the rest of everyone’s lives who are living today. So many people in America have
lived so far from the survival level that they have lost sight and understanding about how it is to live at survival level, where comfort isn’t even considered anymore, where relaxation becomes
a forgotten back item, where trust does not exist between any members of the culture who are not directly tied to survival. I fought, I struggled and I have lived within the constraints, unfair as
many of them have seemed, not to live at the survival level I saw ask participated in when I was with the CIA abroad. Most of the world lives at that survival level and it was always wonderful to come
home and go to bed at night dreaming dreams about how to bring the rest of the world to where I was and to live in the conditions I lived in. To watch that all go away in a blinking instant, to watch
all that disappear when it did not have to, and to lose the ability tho have those dreams any longer is the cause of my grief. I do not live in shocked surprise as many are experiencing already across
this once great nation…but I live in a ghostly world of waiting, waiting for what has to be coming as the country gets the summer surprise of all time…one which ninety some odd percent have no clue
is coming and will be utterly shocked by having to participate in.
Semper fi,
Jim
98.5% of the population is being controlled for 1. 5% who fall sick. Draconian measures are afoot pushing our collective acceptance of suspension of our basic rights. Money is being thrown out as a panacea and the ultimate cost will decrease our ” entitlements “. When is enough, enough. I fear it’s long past with little outcry.
I understand Denis, but I think there is never a too late, as long as there are good men willing to do good things.
thanks for the straight from the heart comment…
Semper fi,
Jim