Do we really have control over our freedom?:

No one is coming to save you. No one. Not your parents, not your friends, not your teachers, not your colleagues. The only person responsible for your own life is you. Your environment shapes you into the person you are today and you don’t have a lot of control over that as a child but you’re responsible for your own life once you’re an adult. You’re reliant on your parents and other family members to raise you, and hopefully they do it in a way that doesn’t screw you up forever, but once you leave the house, you’re on your own.

People like to blame others for their own problems. We complain about other people’s habits, but that is just deflecting our own insecurities. If someone in your house doesn’t clean the dishes when you asked them and you get super upset, you’re probably dealing with some insecurity around authority, cleanliness, or dishonesty. “This person told me they were going to do something and now they’re not going to do it. I should be upset at them because they didn’t do something I asked.” Why are you upset? Because they didn’t follow your rules? If it’s kids, it’s understandable you’re upset because they’re members of your household. But adults have the ability to make decisions for themselves (as long as they have capacity, but that’s a whole other aside).

This is what’s happening with the lockdown though now is these individual liberties are being taken away and some people are blindly conforming. “I trust the government, they’re telling me it’s because of the science that things are locked down.” Is it really though? Because there’s little to no evidence you can get Covid outdoors. Yet parks and outdoor gatherings in certain places around the world are banned. Small businesses that are selling normal goods are shut down and yet Target and Walmart are allowed to stay open because they’re ‘essential businesses.’

Where’s the evidence showing that people are getting Covid in small shops? Or gyms? Or restaurants? Of course you’re going to get cases there when people congregate but how does that compare to manufacturing plants? In my opinion, and it’s hard to know if this is fact because our government doesn’t talk about where the cases are coming from, but I think most cases are happening in manufacturing plants, essential workers bringing the virus back home from their jobs or people congregating together indoors. It’s not coming from restaurants, gyms, and small businesses. So why do governments order a blanket shutdown type of policy?

It’s optics. It’s to show strength. It’s to show their citizens that they have things under control. But do they? We’ve been living with Covid for the last year and yet it feels like in some cases we haven’t learned anything. It’s obviously different depending on which place you’re living in, but man lockdowns cannot go on for this long. People are going to have to go back out and if they get the virus, so be it. That’s a risk they have to be willing to take. They don’t have to go out if they don’t want to, that’s up to them.

At the end of the day, all you can do is minimize your risk. You can minimize your contact with large groups, minimize your time indoors, and double mask to reduce your risk as much as possible. But you still could get the virus. What are you supposed to do? Nothing. It sucks but that’s how it works. We’re all going to have to get the virus or vaccine eventually. This virus is going to have to make its way through the population. Thankfully it’s a coronavirus, which means it doesn’t mutate as often as the flu, but this is going to be in our lives possibly forever.

Are we going to lock down the world forever? We can’t. People are hurting. People are lonely. People are isolated. They can’t see their friends, they can’t see their family, they can’t enjoy their hobbies, they can’t eat at a restaurant, and they can’t go parties to meet other people. Humans are social beings by nature. By isolating people, people are turning to vices; alcohol, drugs, social media addiction. What are the effects of too much of these? Depression, anxiety, suicide and rises in domestic violence. It’s no wonder these things are increasing at an alarming rate.

This is the thing that governments don’t account for when they make these blanket policies like this. What’s the risk profile? Yes you can reduce death for your population, which you absolutely should. I do not believe in the herd immunity mentality that’s like “leave everything open with no risk mitigation and whoever dies, dies.” No. That’s not what I’m saying. But what’s the downside for lockdowns for this long? Kids can’t get educated; that has lasting effects. People are drinking more, they’re more isolated, more scared, don’t have as much interaction with other people, and are turning to the trap that is social media. They can’t get leave because where do they go?

Lockdowns have precipitated a number of issues that have been bubbling up for a long time and eventually people are going to revolt. Why do we have lockdowns? We have them to reduce the burden on our hospital systems and not allow people to get too sick. We saw cases in Italy and other countries at the beginning of the pandemic where hospital systems were overrun, and it was terrifying. No government wants that in their country. But how long can you keep people jailed in their own homes?

Lockdowns for a period of time can be sufficient but eventually you have to let people get on with their lives. This is why you need systems in place like contact tracing, diagnosing, and isolation from others because then life can get back to normal. Look at Asia. Some of the Asian countries like Taiwan and Thailand have done an exceptional job of controlling the pandemic and are largely living completely normal lives. When people arrive in the country they are isolated in a hotel that the government pays for and once they get negative tests after a period of isolation, they’re free. Think about all the hotels around the world sitting empty that could be used by governments.

The West is losing the battle. The fact we’ve been living with it for a year and yet certain things have not changed is disappointing. The response from countries we thought were the best in the world has been bad. They’re doing whatever they can but the systems have not been in place to deal with a situation like this.

Wait till the next pandemic comes and it’s a Covid-like virus with a mortality rate of 5 or 10%. Then what? Then imagine it’s young people who are affected by this virus like the Spanish Flu? That’s a worldwide catastrophe. 10x the number of deaths with young people getting it is so scary, but that’s definitely possible. Scientists understand that these things are not going away. In fact they’re going to increase. We’re getting closer to animals that harbour these viruses because of deforestation, mining, and destroying nature in the name of profit. Our interaction with animals is only going to increase and the chances of another Covid happening are extremely high.

Do our governments recognize the need to invest heavily in technologies like rapid testing, bio manufacturing facilities, and vaccine research? They do now but will they always? I’m not sure they will be. Once Covid runs through the population/we vaccinate everyone, it feels like everyone is going to be going back to normal. This is the thing I keep hearing, and I’ve even said it myself, “I just want to get back to the way things were.” We’re never going back to the way they were. This is a new normal. We have to accept that. This isn’t disappearing and in fact could get significantly worse.

Our world is not prepared for a Covid-like virus with a high mortality rate. There’s no way we are ready and it’s scary to think about. Viruses are mutating like crazy, humans are becoming increasingly in contact with animals and given the slow responses of certain governments, we might be royally screwed. Covid has killed 2.54M people as of today (Mar.3.21) and yet that’s a proportionally small portion of the population. Now imagine that being 10x or 100x? 25 to 254 million people. That’s terrifying and yet this is possible with viruses. If we’re not prepared, this could be a reality.

Obviously I don’t want this to happen but it’s important for people to understand how viruses work. Viruses don’t care about your feelings or who you are. Their goal, like everything else in nature, is survival. In fact they’re not even alive because they’re a parasite. They need a host organism in order to be replicated. As long as they can replicate enough in a certain host and get passed onto another host, they’ll continue to thrive.

Based on the experience of the last year, is our world prepared for a virus that has 10x more deaths? Absolutely not. We need to get prepared otherwise we’re all going to suffer. Think about how much Covid cost the just the US economy. From one report, it was 16 trillion dollars in lost economic value (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2771764). Yet it would cost their government 10s of billions of dollars to prepare for the next one. That’s a reasonable return on investment.

It feels like governments understand the severity right now, but do you have leaders that trust science and are willing to invest in scientific innovation over the next decade? If we don’t, we’re all going to suffer grave consequences. Given the rise of nationalism and politicians who don’t believe the science, there’s a chance that this funding dries up. I hope people recognize the need as we’ve now lived through it, but I’m not so sure. SARS was a massive deal when it was happening but because it didn’t affect certain countries like the USA and Europe as badly, we let funding dry up. We didn’t invest in the best treatments and it has showed.

Pandemics are going to happen more often, and will our governments do enough to keep us prepared? I want to be optimistic but I’m not so sure. Politicians need to stay in power and that’s often bringing up issues that are important to voters today. We don’t tend to think too much about the future because we’re so caught up in short-termism. “What is going to happen to me and my family today or next week?” What about 10 years from now? Do you want to live in the world where we’re all locked up, the earth is burning and we’ve undergone irreversible damage to our planet? I certainly don’t. This is why it’s imperative for us to put our votes behind politicians who understand these issues, as well as the current ones and are willing to do something about it.

Going back to my original point though, I’m not so sure if we’re a free society anymore. Many people will argue we never were a free society because we’re bound by the norms of society, but when democratic western governments can shut down businesses and stop the free flow of people, it becomes scary. They have much more power than ever before and if those people in charge let power get to them, we could all be living in Draconian measures for longer than we expected. It’s also concentrated in a small group of people and they’re more likely to wield it in a way that harms most of the population. They’ll do everything they can to keep themselves in power and the people around them, but are they doing the best for society? I’m not so sure.

Are lockdowns as a whole good for society? To a certain extent, yes because they reduce death. But with all the problems I mentioned above, you can’t keep them going for much longer. Eventually people are going to rebel. It’s only going to get worse. Expect many more uprisings in the next decade across the world because people can’t live like this for much longer.

So are we free?

Because of Covid, I’m not so sure anymore.