Auntie Cipation
Context Matters.
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2018
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I must disagree. While living in a 'closed' society is clearly difficult for many socially-active people, and I do recognize that negative mental health outcomes will occur for some subset of people, it is by no means a given that such people "can't survive" a stretch of limited activity.Unfortunately these people will all be labeled "virus deniers" by many. The reality is that people who live active social lives, outside of the home, can't survive a ten month (and counting) stretch in a closed society. Our Governor (in AZ) talks about the collateral damage from lock downs, such as depression, suicide, drug abuse, domestic violence, etc. I wish he would also talk about the positive aspects of being open. Dinners in a restaurant, a trip to a casino, sitting on a bar stool watching a game, enjoying live music, attending or hosting parties, etc. All of these things are extremely important to many people's daily lives, yet some places deny that completely.
For generations there have been people with illnesses that confined them to home, if not to bed, for a year or more. (My own father experienced such as a youth. I think it was rheumatic fever although I'm not certain).
There have been countless incidents of natural disasters that dramatically altered daily life for entire communities for months if not years.
And what about life during the world wars -- certainly there were geographical regions where daily social activities were severely curtailed if not absent completely for months at a time.
The difference I see is that in those various events of the past, the restriction was either enforced by mother nature or imposed by authorities that were trusted.
Somehow we now are in a situation where people no longer trust authorities such as the public health offices, and instead persist in claiming that the restrictions are not necessary (in spite of experts asserting otherwise) and are instead merely a political tool.
Somehow enough people decided that because their daily life was normally safe and comfortable, that such safety and comfort were somehow guaranteed, and that if it was recommended that their lifestyle needed to change for a time to respond to a threat, that such a threat must be of political origin, rather than recognizing that we are all subject to the laws of nature and of biology.
If people had trusted their health authorities from the start, there would have been IMO a reasonable chance of halting the spread of covid-19 nearly a year ago. The vaccines could be arriving now to protect a population who appreciated the protection even though it wasn't in the midst of medical service crises across the world.
Sadly, because of how contagious and easily transmissible this virus happens to be, it only took a segment of people refusing to follow the advice given by the public health authorities to allow the virus to run rampant across the entire globe.