The Inhumanity of the Official Doctors: Crushing our lives to save lives

The Official Doctors say they are just trying to save lives. The resulting economic devastation is not their concern. In politics and the media the issue is framed as lives versus money. Money always loses.

The real issue is lives and living. The Official Doctors’ prescription is to crush our lives. They show no interest in what they have done to our lives. They are inhumane.

We are social beings and ‘social distancing’ goes to the heart of our being and tries to stop it.

When restaurants and bars are closed any dismay is treated as frivolous. But that massive industry exists because restaurants and bars are so often where we get together. It is an easy target for lockdown, but we are not supposed just to move our social life into our homes. We are supposed to end it.

At full lockdown our condition is not far different from house arrest, a punishment. For many it is solitary confinement, widely considered a cruel and unusual punishment.

The whole texture of our lives, how we engage with people, meet new people, keep up with old acquaintance, work with people, build our lives, learn, address our common affairs, has been shredded.

Millions have died alone, their family and friends barred from comforting them and making their farewells. Grieving is suppressed along with the virus.

Laughing and singing are condemned. We have been drilled to steer clear of our fellows as if they might be rabid foxes.

We can Zoom and Skype and have FaceTime. Did the Official Doctors actually think “Gee. We can lock everyone down but they can get together virtually so that will be OK.”? Would they have acted differently if it were twenty-five years ago and the Web was in its infancy?

Those of us who have found some consolation in Zoom and the rest also know that it is not real life. As ersatz life it makes us long for the real thing.

For the Official Doctors we are so many lab specimens to be kept alive for observation and testing.

In politics, business and all organisations decisions are best made when people can thrash them out around a table. That is no longer possible. In the midst of a world crisis the quality of decision making has been degraded.

The suffering that has been imposed on us is ignored by the media. Covering it would be bad for morale. And each of us keeps quiet about our misery. We do not want to seem weak, or whiners. Asked how we are, we take it as a question of physical health and say we are well, as overwhelmingly we are despite the pandemic.

The massive suffering caused by the lockdown is only recognised indirectly as “mental health.” The mental health industry has been promoting itself vigorously for years and if the Official Doctors have depressed us all their mental health colleagues are keen to claim that they can help. But depression caused by the lockdown is not a mental health issue. It is a perfectly healthy reaction to having our lives crushed.

The evidence of our silent suffering is in ourselves and some we are in touch with, who, whatever their position on the pandemic and what must be done about it, share their feelings.

The impact of the lockdown is as various as our lives were before it hit. Those hardest hit, most isolated, are never heard from. Many are still working much as they did and carrying on only slightly constrained domestic lives.

Invidiously those in government and the media who tell us what is going on and what we are to do are the least affected by the lockdown. Like the Official Doctors they are having the time of their lives.

The death toll from COVID is impressive. What impression are we to take from it. COVID is serious. Yes. It is a once in a lifetime pandemic and disaster whose consequences were bound to be terrible.

Crushing our lives has not saved us. No one knows have many lives have been saved. Or how many deaths have simply been postponed from May to December. Everything that has been done to us in the name of saving lives has terrorised us to the point where most have a vastly exaggerated idea of the risks of the virus and the Official Doctors want it that way.

This is my model for Canada:

About thirty six million have lost on average two months of living.

That’s 6,000,000 years of living.

The worst case model said 300,000 would die. Say they would have lost five years of living. 1,500,000 years of living lost.
 

6,000,000/1,500,000 = Four times more living lost to the lockdown than might have been to the virus without it.

As vaccines are deployed we may be nearing the end of the crushing of our lives. Will we learn from the experience. Who will write the history? The victors? Will the Official Doctors claim victory?

There will be other virus. A frequent theme has been that we should have acted more swiftly and more severely. Anyone who remembers early March must know how foolish that claim is. But will that be taken as the lesson learned? Shall we lock down at the first word of every new virus?

Never again.