COVID Confusion

Well the CDC recently changed its guidelines from 10 days isolation if infected to 5 days. This was a move fully done for the benefit of big business and not people, but hey sometimes we’ve got to lube the gears of the economy with blood. Specifically, the blood of people who are poor, but who cares about them anyway? I think there’s a fine line between government protection and government control, but we’re so far removed from any sort of protection I think it’s not a conversation worth having.

I first found out about the guidelines from my work. Since I work at a hospital, we have strict guidelines to make sure we stay healthy (e.g., able to work). Currently the rate of infection of my co-workers has increased more than exponentially. We literally went from a handful of cases to several thousand in a week. The hospital, like all hospitals really, is a business, so it acts like one. When the CDC changed its recommendations, the hospital sent out the email that it too was changing the COVID regulations to match. They must have had that notice prewritten too because it went out with a quickness.

However, this isn’t a post complaining about the hospital (although I think they are doing a lot of things to encourage the spread and not stop it). This is a systemic issue and it starts with the federal government. A pandemic doesn’t recognize state or country lines. Those lines are as meaningless as you or I in relation to the entire universe. It doesn’t care and if anything our insistence on setting fake lines in the sand to make ourselves feel superior is helping the virus.

Governments get to set their own “best” course of treatment for the pandemic, ranging from incredibly competent, well thought out guidelines that have essentially controlled the problem as best as a single country can. All the way to who the fuck cares? Looking at you US, UK, etc. Letting your people die unchecked is not a policy, it’s state sponsored bioterrorism and eugenics.

Making it harder for people to survive through the pandemic by forcing them back to work isn’t helping either. With enhanced unemployment expired and government officials saying that schools will remain open no matter how many people die, things are looking grim. We have states passing laws restricting the rights of businesses and schools to require masks, specifically in states like Texas. So much for small government.

The elected officials that are supposed to protect us and keep us safe are the ones driving us back to work and causing the pandemic to become even worse. The death toll at this point is outrageous and frankly I’m disgusted by the lack of political will to stop it. Not only are they ignoring it, they are actively trying to suppress the numbers. Several states have opted to stop reporting the number of new infections from COVID. We already know that both infection rate and death rate are heavily under reported, so I’m not looking forward to the future looking back on this time in history. Not that I care about how history views this time, I care about now and what we’re doing to stop it.

The sad part about all this is the disinformation that is allowed to run unchecked because it’s good for engagement in a world where corporations are more important than the people who keep civilization running. All those “low skill” jobs that everyone makes fun of? Imagine how quickly civilization would collapse if a fraction of those people stopped doing those things. Those are the same people we’re gleefully wheeling into the meat grinder to die or worse, suffer than die.

At the end of the day the failure is with the government. They could easily expand unemployment, pay people to stay home, pass sweeping regulations requiring vaccinations for flying or travel, free testing and N95 masks, just to name a few things. Not to mention this push to return to school, the federal government could dump 1% of the defense budget to give schools money to upgrade filtration systems to keep kids safe, offer virtual classes or hybrid systems where kids rotate in-person and at home schooling to keep class sizes sufficiently small that safe distancing can be accomplished.

Really there are a million ways the federal government could step in and do its job. As I’ve always said, the freedom of the individual stops where the next person starts. You can drink yourself to death if you want, that’s your right, but you do not have the right to drink and drive. You have the right not to be vaccinated if you want to roll the dice and die a horrible and painful death, because trust me, basically dry drowning is not a fun way to go. You don’t have a right to knowingly risk the people around you because you’re too selfish to do anything to stop the spread.

We have so many laws that prevent the individual from killing others. Seatbelts, speed limits, vaccination mandates, so many different laws. Yet wearing a mask or getting vaccinated against COVID is somehow a step too far. I guess if we look at history, it’s no surprise. There were pushback against seatbelt laws, vaccination laws, basically everything that keeps selfish people safe. The number of drunk driving deaths also is a good indication how well people in the general sense ignore the rules.

In short, this is a systematic failure of the federal government to do its job and part of the problem is because mega corporations don’t want the federal government doing anything about it. It’s just an interesting time we live in and my interesting I mean depressing.