Coronavirus (COVID-19): Will Social Distancing Be Permanent?

[Card Slinger J]

"Human lives are worth more than anything else, we must never put anything above the saving of one human life." It's a commonly expressed feeling and I absolutely agree with the principle. Who couldn't agree with it If someone you love needs treatment which will cost a trillion dollars a day, you would rightly demand that the treatment be provided and down the cost. I would. But If you spend a trillion dollars a day saving Mr. X's wife or Mrs. Wise's husband or their two-year old child Zed they'll likely be nothing left to pay for any other health services. Hospitals will have to shut operations, cease, and there will be no medicines available for millions of people will die unnecessarily and that's the dilemma. Health care sources are finite and doctors always have to make decisions about how best to allocate those limited resources that's what triage is all about. In an army surgical unit doctors assess the incoming wounded and decide who gets to be treated first.

When the Coronavirus (COVID-19) first appeared, mathematical modelers looked at the small amounts of evidence available and concluded that millions of people were going to die. In Britain the mathematical model has concluded that 8 million people would be hospitalized and 500,000 would die. Showing all the skills of life insurance salesmen they sold this theory to the politicians and convinced them that their projections were accurate. Curiously the normally skeptical politicians needed very little persuading. The mathematical modelers were wrong of course but the politicians accepted what they were told and life changed. How the devil could they have all got everything so wrong? It was obvious back in February 2020 that the Coronavirus (COVID-19) wasn't going to kill us all. In mid-March I was vilified for recording a YouTube video in which I called the whole Coronavirus (COVID-19) Crisis the hoax of the century. I thought it was pretty obvious that the mathematicians were wrong.

The wise will at this point wonder whether politicians leapt on the nonsense because they saw an opportunity or whether the politicians were looking for an opportunity and waiting for the nonsense to be served up for them. The suspicions of the wise will be strengthened by the fact that this bizarre error was repeated all over the world and duly endorsed and encouraged by eager politicians and so the hysteria and the panic became global even though the bug was officially downgraded to flu level back in March 2020. Politicians and compliant journalists ignored this inconvenient truth because they didn't want their plans damaged. The next stage in this lunacy was for politicians, advisors, and health care chiefs to decide that the threat from the virus was so great that the health services should be devoted in their entirety to the care of patients with this one disease. They decided to clear the wards' cancel operations and build new hospitals.

Patients with cancer, heart disease, and other serious illnesses were shunted aside so that doctors and nurses could be ready to deal with the flood of coronavirus (COVID-19) patients. Suddenly the coronavirus (COVID-19) was the only thing that mattered. Patients with cancer were actually pushed aside to be ignored and forgotten. Doctors and nurses obediently cleared the wards and prepared themselves. The nation came to a halt, schools were closed, factories were shut, and shops were closed too. Even dentists and opticians were told to lock their doors and help keep the virus at bay. The panic was institutionalized and as a result there would be 28 million people on waiting lists for surgery by autumn of 2020. Many of them will die waiting for treatment that would have saved their lives. This abrogation of duty by healthcare bosses appalls and enrages me. The death rate has already started to rise in most countries not because of the coronavirus but because people are being denied medical care as hospitals and gp's struggle to cope with social distancing rules.

Nevertheless despite this there are already suggestions that social distancing will be permanent. In the U.K. the government and the supine media none more supine than the treacherous BBC (British Broadcasting Company) have raised the fear to terror and when Boris Johnson's government elected to slightly soften the lockdown in England the majority of the population reacted in horror and insisted on checking the doors, locking the windows, drawing the curtains, and crawling under their beds. Governments everywhere have boosted the fear by talking of a second wave of infection and having promoted the idea of a vaccine as the only savior confessing that there may never be one available. Politicians want to control us and they're doing very well. It's difficult to see how we're all going to escape from this fake crisis. Of course If this wasn't a conspiracy to turn us all into subdued apprehensive and obedient zombies they could announce that they'd made a bit of a mistake and that the coronavirus (COVID-19) is no worse than the flu (common cold).

Whoops sorry pardon the mathematicians meant well but they got their sums upside down. They're not going to say that ever. They could say that the coronavirus (COVID-19) has become less dangerous or they could say that their brilliant lockdown and social distancing policies have worked brilliantly and have saved us all so it's now safe to come out from under the bed. But they don't want to do that because they want to keep the threat of a second wave available to scare us with If we start getting cocky and comfortable and they don't want to get rid of social distancing because it's social distancing which give the politicians a massive amount of power. It's social distancing which is ruining our lives and which will weaken us as individuals. It's social distancing which will result in millions of job losses. It's social distancing which will wreck education for millions and most important it's social distancing which is wrecking health care in which will result in huge numbers of people dying unnecessarily.

Governments will enthusiastically promote social distancing as the only way to keep us safe but unless we stand up and fight and tell the truth, social distancing will be with us for years possibly forever and as a result our lives will be ruined in every conceivable way.

[motleyslayer]

While I don't want to say everything that has been required during this pandemic will become permanent, I think some aspects of this will become permanent.

Social distancing is probably one thing that I can see becoming the norm, even if it isn't necessarily 6 feet back from the person in front of/behind you. The reason why I say this is because Covid has shown us that some people may be carriers for diseases, even if they don't show symptoms of the disease themselves.

I can also see a limit on large gatherings/social functions, as people should be more aware/cautious of how close they are to other people or how many people are in an area. In some areas this may be harder, such as in NYC/Toronto/similar sized cities but not as hard in smaller cities.

Another idea that might be worth considering more is requiring basic hygiene standards be followed before being able to attend events/enter areas with large amounts of people. This would allow people to feel safer about the spread of diseases/give a bit of security to know that there aren't too many people who haven't been following good hygiene practices

[Card Slinger J]

It's no secret that microbial threats like coronaviruses will inevitably move from the bottom to the top of public-health priority lists. Just as the threat of domestic terror looms like what the United States experienced on 9/11 and the Boston Marathon Bombings the same goes for infectious diseases like COVID-19 in our collective conscious. It has to If we have any hope of avoiding further drastic lockdowns and forever changing the way we interact with each other.

Just to dispel any false rumors, the Chinese Government didn't create the virus when it was on the North American and European Governments who allowed this virus to get so out of hand unchecked. I don't think anyone would want to go through another round of social distancing and quarantine given the tremendous cost it's had on the global economy and our way of life. We also need to have plans in place to minimize the death toll of the next possible pandemic going forward.