VIRUS#26: Chapter 7 Was reopening premature?

Chapter 7 “was reopening premature?”

From a medical perspective re-opening the economy repeatedly during the COVIDs was an error of huge magnitude. So much emphasis was placed on “flattening the curve” it blinded a reality check that as effective as social distancing was it simply insulated millions temporarily from being infected.

Out of the protective cocoon they simply became easy meat for the COVIDs. And it was too late to crawl back in the cocoon. Social distancing was fated to fail and its only success was enabling hospitals to deal with serious COVID cases and its biggest failure was social distancing itself as setting up the world for a big fall.

Now I am a medico so my job is to protect lives and social distancing as a mantra initially made good sense to me. But after several months of the first wave as for social distancing anyone could see it was a dilatory tactic as opposed to a long-term effective management tool. So I became more of a proponent of economic realities and their psychological effect of the millions that lost their jobs. The stress and anxiety of job losses took a huge mental toll but as we physicians know all too well stress and anxiety is a killer. There was a dramatic increase in domestic abuse, suicide, substance abuse and a general decline in physical health and therefore to immunity.

Of course there was political expediency in getting the economy running again. Governments were running out of money to financially support the unemployed and failing businesses. Social unrest was growing. Hungry and stressed-out people are a very dangerous political force as we shall see later.

So tossing caution to the wind, as it was becoming unaffordable, we opened up the gates to a decimating second wave of COVID-19. Decimating as it was it did help establish herd immunity rendering the third and fourth waves of COVID-19 very weak.

The propaganda machines particularly the government and their medicos endlessly shoving social distancing down everyone’s throat realized the governments of the world could no longer afford social distancing so the new mantra was a “cure”. That cure never arrived but a partially effective vaccine did sickening thousands along the way with its side effects that sometimes took many month to manifest themselves.