Texas and Mississippi recently reopened fully. I think this is long overdue, but welcome. Obviously, it is reasonable to suppose both cases and deaths will go up, perhaps by a lot, in the short term, but that the long term history of epidemics indicates that the numbers will drop reasonably quickly, and a stable condition achieved in which deaths drop rapidly, and largely end. This is the prediction of Farr’s Law, which was described long before vaccines had been made reasonably reliable and generally available.
Here is the interesting thing: a think a LOT of people are afraid not that it will not work–that all the catastrophes Fauci keeps warning us about will happen–but rather that IT WILL WORK.
What sane person would not want a return to prosperity and normality? The answer, obviously, is in the question. None: that is the answer.
What I would like to propose is that what this pandemic has done is make a de facto virtue out of cowardice, and the cowards of the world HATE the idea that they might have to go back to freedom, to a larger palette of choices, and that the rest of us will not be stuck at home like them, like they CHOSE to do long before any of this happened.
And I think it goes even deeper than that. This is a focal fear, a fear around which many fears cluster. It is the fear which drives out other fears, and one which is manageable by very simple measures: you just wear your mask, socially distance, and yell at anyone who fails in doing these things. Do those things and the world becomes safe, sane, manageable.
But this is ludicrous, is it not? But ponder the background. We are seeing already AI deployed for common uses. We are seeing increasingly intelligent and capable robots. We have it drilled into our head that there is a “climate crisis”, even though none of the predictions made have been accurate, and even though the science was never very good. We have social division and collapse. Our public culture is decaying–rather, faltering under relentless, maniacal and obsessive attack.
Everywhere you look, the thoughtful person sees danger and uncertainty. It is hard to manage emotionally. What I want to propose is that this pandemic makes this fear much easier for weak minded people to deal with.
And perhaps I should not even say weak minded. This stuff really is objectively scary. None of us can really know where all this is going, or feel much faith in the people who have secretly (really, not so secretly any more) appointed themselves our guardians and the custodians of our future. Most of them seem to be amoral psychopaths who are quite willing to do unto us, but not themselves be affected in any way by the same things they are imposing.
And the longer you hide, the harder true awakening becomes. You are behind, and the whole thing, taken as a single dose, is utterly overwhelming. Part of the reason I write so much is to try and process all of this.
(I have, by the way, dozens of posts stored up, which I will make at some point; my own anxiety drives me to continual though).
But here is the question: WHEN we reopen, what then? What will be left? How can people who have suffered so much terror daily for a year now ever hope to return to the relative innocence of last year?
We have to do it, though. Sometimes you have to tear the bandage off. Each will deal with it in their own way.
I wonder every day if my destiny is to be murdered. That may be the case. And that frightens me. But as I have no doubt said often, losing my soul frightens me much more. I don’t really have a choice. If I am to live the life God made for me, I have to do my best to be bold.