Well, I started writing a couple of months ago about my thoughts/predictions regarding COVID 19. Here are blogs one, two, and three. Re-reading them now is so damn interesting! It’s so interesting to be a part of history like this! I wish I had kept it up and had written one new blog post per week.
On Friday, I’ll be recording a podcast with Matt Strauss – an MD. He argues against lockdowns, and I figured I should get my thoughts about COVID in order before we talk.
A quick update – I’m currently in Montréal now, not Calgary or Kelowna.
Currently on my mind right now is how the government should be fighting COVID-19 (if at all). A few videos have gotten me worried about governments.
One are these lectures (one, two, three) by former UK Supreme Court judge Jonathan Sumption. He argues that Parliament has shamefully abdicated their responsibility to check the government, which now rules by decree and has absurd justifications of the law. He thinks that lockdowns are unreasonable (as in the gvmt’s justifications have lost their weight). And in terms of practical resistance, he suggests that people simply disobey the government and go eat turkey dinner for Christmas, etc.
The second is this video from Viva Frei – a Montreal lawyer turned Vlawgger who I found recently and who I absolutely love! He recorded his interview with a CBC journalist. The journalist used just 30 seconds of the entire 11 minutes! The core issue here was that François Legault’s government “gave us” Dec. 24 – Dec. 27 to spend with each other. Many people argue that this is anti-semitic, as those celebrating Hanukkah are not given the same relief.
David Freihart just said a few sentences of how he thinks it’s ridiculous that in a free society, the government is telling us who we can invite into our homes or not, and my mind shifted to reconsider all of those anti-lockdown protesters.
The last thing is not a video, but an experience. A swimming pool 700 m away from my apartment in Montreal has opened for the neighbourhood. It’s free (!!!!) and I absolutely love every second in the water there. You walk in through the main doors into the men’s change room (which is now unisex – everyone changes into their bathing suits in the men’s change rooms), then you put your stuff by the swimming pool, and then you take your mask off only right before you’re ready to jump into the pool. Once you’re out of the pool, you go straight back to your stuff and put your mask back on. Then you go to the women’s change room (which is also now unisex) and you change back into your normal civilian clothes.
All of the showers have been taped off, but you’re able to change without the other gender seeing you in these small stalls (designed for this specific purpose). Unfortunately, one old man (65ish) gave 0 shits and decided to de-robe completely in the locker room, EVEN THOUGH there was a woman nearby! I heard him ask (in French) if she minded nudity, and she said no, and they made a joke about it. But what about the guys? We’re made more uncomfortable by it than the women.
One other thing which I’m having a hard time coming to an opinion on is the female’s swim times on Wednesday and Saturday. On those two days, only females are allowed to swim for one hour.
I don’t like this because of the underlying assumptions such a position holds about the nature of men, and of women. These assumptions, of course, are that women who don’t cover up before the eyes of men are dirty sluts, and that men are hungry predators who will stop at nothing to deflower and ravage women.
These assumptions irritate the hell out of me. They have more in common with Victorian England, Saudi Arabia, and India than with us in a free, clean, and progressive Liberal Democratic state. I would much rather prefer nude men and women in the same change room, making fun of our insecurities together, any day over not being able to swim beside women (or men) because of the latent sexual element. If there’s a lewd man leering at women (or another man, for that matter) he should be thrown out! I’ve never seen a lewd woman before, but if one were to be in the pool, she should also be thrown out. The extremes should not define what’s normal.
Anyway, this was a long meandering way to say that it’s idiotic for the government to open a swimming pool but not gyms. It’s non-sensical. And I think it’s stupid for the government to claim that they “don’t have control over COVID-19.” Nobody has control over it! It’s mother nature in tooth and claw! You’ll never have control over her! In the absence of this “control”, you get insecure leaders making their citizens do stupid things to prevent this. Things like opening up swimming pools (a place where you can LITERALLY SWIM IN BACTERIA AND VIRUSES!!!) but not opening up gyms. Things like giving Christians a holiday but not Jews. Things like letting big businesses open up but not small ones. Things like not letting old people visit and stay with their families, leading to some committing assisted suicide instead of go through the pain of loneliness.
These issues are bringing back arguments on centrally-planned vs free-market economies. A government cannot determine what the value is of every single commodity. A price, instead, reflects hundreds of decisions and conditions which no bureaucrat could ever take into complete consideration.
I think something similar should go for individuals. A government cannot determine which business is a necessity and which is not necessary. A government cannot determine whether the risk of getting COVID is not worth it for me. At most, I think it can (as it does) enforce mask wearing and staying at home for 14 days while you have COVID. But I do not think that it has the right to decide for me what risks I am willing to take. They’ve had 8 months to build new intensive care units and ventilators, and what has it gone to? Handouts (which I have received). I hope this is not a false dilemma, but it’s what I think: instead of giving money to people to weather COVID-related economic consequences (losing their job, etc), they should have been keeping things open so that people could continue to go to work + building ventilators with that money. They’ve spent 300 billion dollars – more than we spent in WWII, which lasted for 6 years. That sum can buy two new hospitals for every city and town in Canada. WHAT! And furthermore, who’s tallying the deaths caused by lockdowns? The spouses beaten, the alcohol abused, the marriages which implode, the kids who are beaten, the suicides committed, the overdoses to opiates (whose death #s outnumber COVID deaths, but nobody cares about jobless and depressed men of course), and the sicknesses which come on.
Government has taken too big of a role, a role which strong individuals and strong families should be occupying.
Anyway, this is a rough draft, and a very long, rambly one at that, but I’m going to publish anyway. Forgive my off-the-cuff mistakes.