Time to Stop the Madness

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have reflected many times on what happened to my Uncle Tom. He had been imprisoned and treated harshly with fewer due process rights than those of a common criminal. His offense? Being poor and sickly looking on the streets of Atlanta.

But, compared to the wanton, unwarranted, cruel, and industrial-scale destruction of lives, jobs, livelihoods, and businesses being caused by today’s ongoing, ill-conceived, and utterly destructive societal lockdowns in states across America, the Pest House’s quarantine-the-sick public health strategy was enlightened, rational, and benign.

The mantra among the governors who continue to preside over the destruction of their states’ economies is that they are following “the science,” which purportedly requires that the lockdowns remain in place to prevent another wave of COVID-19 cases. They contend that the lockdowns must continue until the number of COVID-19 cases decreases to an acceptable level and their states have adequate testing facilities and “armies” of investigators to track and trace any future infections. As they say, they don’t want to give up the progress already achieved against COVID-19 by reopening too soon.

Well, if that’s their true goal, then the governors are on a fool’s errand. Why? Because no matter how long we shelter in place, there will be future major outbreaks of COVID-19. We know this because COVID-19 is caused by a coronavirus designated as SARS-CoV-2. Reasonably assuming that SARS-CoV-2 propagates like the coronaviruses that have caused seasonal influenzas, it will be with us for many years and will continue to infect and kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Quality of life should not be sacrificed for quantity — and that’s what they’re doing. A person in dying condition, cannot be saved by everybody else giving up their lives. The former have had theirs — and if they could speak, would not demand that the young sacrifice their lives for them.

That is the situation for most of those dying — that they’ve already had their chance at life, and making it all it can be. But at 80, they no longer have their most productive years ahead of them — which is why they’re in the acute longterm care center presently. That is less true of the nursing homes, but even in the independent living 55+ complexes where many have given up living and only wait to die. I lived in such a place and saw people dying routinely — because they smoke, drank, were obese and diabetic — and their doctors merely continued them in that condition, because they realized it was too hard to try to change them — and most did not want to. They would rather die.

Then the “politically correct” people would say that unlimited resources should go to see that even one of them should not die — and that a whole army of caregivers should be employed to see that that doesn’t occur — while they do nothing, or very little for themselves anymore. At that point, that life is no longer viable — and sacrificing the young and viable for those old, and incapable — is not the best employment of resources. That is the unfortunate and unsustainable trend we’ve been heading.

The solution is that we have to take better care of ourselves, and to “learn” how to take better care of ourselves, rather than getting sick — and be sustained in that condition for the rest of our lives. Then the measure of that society becomes more health care, more welfare, and guaranteed income for doing nothing productive anymore — which I assure you, will lead to even more sickness and vulnerability — rather than more invulnerable and productive people — which is the direction we need to head now.

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