Over the last year I have slowly come to the realization that the phrase “if it saves just one life” might just be one of the most selfish sayings ever.
We’ll likely never know if the forced shutdowns and closures actually saved people’s lives (from dying of covid19) or not. They may well have.
The problem is that at the same time that the closures may have prevented deaths from covid19, they caused deaths from other things.
Suicide rates are up across the country, especially in the child populations. And the mental health of the remainder has taken a hell of a hit.
The elderly and people living in community housing are suddenly dying of loneliness and depression as their contact with family and the outside world was cut off.
Reports of drug overdoses and deaths have also continued to rise, reports of domestic abuse and rape as well.
And we’ll likely never know what the long term medical side effects of the forced lack of “non-essential” medical care for an extended period did to the world-wide population.
Unemployment continues to climb, small businesses continue to fail at astronomical rates. The tolls of high unemployment on a population are well known, all by itself it means an increase in suicide rates, drug overdose, and domestic abuse. How many small businesses that had been around for generations have to close due to the shut downs for it to count? What do you think that has done to the mental health of those people, to watch their businesses fail?
Every business that fails, every now unemployed person, is that many fewer to pay taxes. And all those stimulus checks and payments have to come from somewhere. What happens when there’s fewer people paying taxes? I can guarantee that the various politicians won’t be taking pay cuts to make up the difference.
The food supply chain still isn’t back to normal. We’re damn close to a year out from the original forced shutdown here in the USA, but the grocery store shelves STILL aren’t back to where they were prior. Never mind the supply chains for so many other things.
And that’s all without getting into the political climate. Something close to half the country now believes that the corrupt run the country and nothing they can say or do (legally) is going to make a difference. Something close to the other half of the country is happily calling for the blood, forced unemployment and re-education, and even death, of the first half. Oh sure, it’s more involved than that, but as someone who’s had a front row seat to how both sides think, I think that pretty well sums it up.
All those people who suicided due to the shutdown. All those people who died from lack of medical care, or who will die due to lack of medical care, during the shutdown. All those people who’s lives are now in a downward spiral because of the shutdown. They all had as much a right to live as the folks the shutdown was supposed to protect. “If it saves one life” is fucking useless if it kills 2. Its selfish as hell is what it is.
All of this has been running through my brain for a while. It’s part of why I’ve stuck to memes so much. I’m not prone to depression, but god it’s depressing to look at the bigger picture.
In my mind, it is not about saving “one life” but not over-running medical resources. A lot of hospitals are at or above 100% capacity due to surges in Covid cases. What does that do to other emergency critical patients (heart attacks, strokes, car accident, burn victims etc) that could use ventilators (that are all in use in the Covid wards) or need staff that is in short supply because they are sick or because of the patient load?
If we can’t control those scenarios by limiting contact (because let’s face it, masks and social distancing aren’t working – for a variety of reasons), we start having to make those decisions that says – who is going to get care and who isn’t. Additionally, we have lost a lot of medical personnel due to the high stress in these times (both suicides and just getting out).
I don’t have any answers, and shutting down isn’t a good answer either, for the reasons you have provided. Unfortunately this is the proverbial rock and hard place.
Trying to shut things down is just pissing people off and making them not obey ANY of the mandates though.
More and more info is saying that most of the spread (at least here in NY state) is from social gatherings. And NOT social gatherings at the limited dining or shopping opportunities that there are. And yet they keep shutting down harder. Admittedly the massive cities like NYC are likely seeing much more random spread, just because you can’t avoid the close quarters with people, but just because you have to find a solution to slow spread in the massive cities doesn’t mean that you apply those rules in smaller towns and cities that don’t have that problem.
And states that aren’t enforcing shutdowns and mask mandates as hard as say Cali, aren’t actually seeing that much of a spike, per capita, in comparison to say Cali. And hell, its freaking flu (and other germs) season, of COURSE THERE’S A FREAKING SPIKE for fucks sake. The only reason we’re not seeing the normal spikes in flu or other things is cause people aren’t going out and when they do go out they’re wearing masks. (but the mask mandates aren’t working cause people aren’t wearing masks, I swear to god I’m going to lose it at someone one of these times someone throws that pairing of lines at me)
Which is safer: dining out with friends at a local restaurant that has separated the tables further, and is going overboard on cleaning? Or the home of one of the friends who probably just did their usual cleaning and all their kids and their kids’ friends, never mind all the adults and adult’s friends have been in and out and touched everything? The more you try to keep people from socializing in public, where there’s space to stay a bit more distant and things are more likely to be being OCD cleaned right now, the more likely they are to gather in private where they aren’t.
People keep complaining about other people not wearing masks in public, and how Biden’s mandate about masks in all Federal buildings is going to make SUCH a difference!11!!!
And I’m sitting here thinking how dumb can you get??
Upstate NY is pretty independant as such things go, we tend to hate big GOV, and politicians, and we (as a portion of the state) went HARD for Trump, not Biden. And I’m still seeing well over 90% mask wearing in my customers at work and when I’m out shopping (it seems higher cause the non-mask wearers tend to be assholes, but when you stand back and look there’s really not that many). Yes some of the with masks are barely covering the mouth, but even then they’re often pulling them up over noses when they get close to people. And yes, alot of the people wearing them in buildings are pulling them off as soon as they’re out the door, but they’re still wearing them in close quarters. ANd hell, at least two people yesterday at work, who came in to shop without masks, were attempting to cover their faces with their coats and happily took a freebie mask when I offered it to them.
And I can guarantee you that the non-mask wearing people are NOT a large percentage of the confirmed positive asymptomatic cases, cause the ones who refuse to wear masks aren’t getting tested unless they are forced or get really sick.
And then there’s the fact that the WHO just released a reporting telling everyone to turn down the sensitivity of their test cause yah, can you say false positives?? And according to reports prior that mandated reduction in sensitivity is going to reduce the asymptomatic positives by ALOT, some reports said by as much as 50%. But those were “conspiracy theories” so no one DARED pay attention to those in public.
This would be SO MUCH MORE manageable if the idiots in charge had stopped trying to force people to lose their incomes and sanity and actually put some thought into how to make things work. Mask mandates would have been FAR better accepted if they hadn’t shut for months and months. Hell, just limiting building capacities to say 50% along with mask mandates would have allowed most businesses to stay open and people would be MUCH more tolerant.
Instead all those people in charge took away everything that allowed people to stay sane, essentially locked people in their homes, attempted to terrify them to compliance, and now they can’t figure out why people keep rioting, why people are so pissy, why the Redditters got bored enough to go play with hedge funds! And I’m sitting here thinking duh, OF COURSE THEY DECIDED TO SCREW WITH YOU you freaking stupid idiot.
And I am so by god sick of the “essential business” designation. Oh sure, job security, its awesome, I get to keep a paycheck!!! Woot! Except that’s ALL it does. We spent the whole freaking shut down being told how brave we were for working with the public, how we were risking our lives right there with the nurses and doctors. And while I’m perfectly happy avoiding getting this vaccine that is not true for a large number of my co-workers. But oh, you’re just a retail employee, you don’t get special access to any of that. Vaccines, testing, eh, why should you get that? You’re the lowest of the low. Along with all the truck drivers who continued to move food and TP around during the shut downs. And somehow I highly doubt that the factory workers who worked their asses off trying to get cleaning supplies made up and shipped during the shutdown count any higher. And oh god, farmers? You know, the people who actually produce the raw food products that we all need to survive? If you think THEY’re getting any sort of special treatment here I want a shot of whatever you’re drinking.
I mean, us retail employees already knew that society thought we were the dregs, but I gotta say, this whole mess sure highlighted how freaking stupid society as a whole has become when it comes to making sure that things can keep running at a minimum level.
And that’s without looking at the whole political mess. The number of governors who are relaxing restrictions within a week of Biden being sworn in. The “shocked delight” at the sudden drop in positive cases. The “100,000,000 vaccinated people in 100 days!!!!!” goal that was ALREADY BEING HIT cause the vaccine distribution system under Trump had already hit 1,000,000 a day and 1,000,000 x 100 days = 100,000,000.
So anyway, now that I’ve typed a whole nother blog post rant in my comments section I’m going to go drink my coffee and go back to reading memes now.
I totally agree with you and don’t care that it’s not popular. “Popular” just means influenced by the junk on TV.