Resisting the "New Normal" and Irrational Covid Policies
Covid is not the only threat people face. . . . Life should not be dominated by efforts to prevent the transmission of covid, and we are unwise to myopically focus on “slowing the spread.”
I really wanted to refrain from posting much more about covid, naively hoping that normal life would resume when everyone who wanted a vaccine had the opportunity to receive one. But then I continue to read articles like the one below, and it becomes ever more clear that some envision a world that will never return to normal. Consider this stunning paragraph from a recent Atlantic article:
“On the Fourth of July, Ashish Jha wants to host a barbecue at his house in Newton, Massachusetts. By then, the state expects to have rolled out COVID-19 vaccines to anyone who wants one. The process will be bumpy, but Jha is hopeful. He thinks that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus will still be spreading within the U.S., but at a simmer rather than this winter’s calamitous boil. He expects to keep all his guests outside, where the risk of transmission is substantially lower. If it starts raining, they could come indoors after putting on masks. “It won’t be normal, but it won’t be like Fourth of July 2020,” says Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. “I think that’s when it’ll start to feel like we’re no longer in a pandemic.”"
I call this paragraph “stunning” because it is amazing to me what is subtly but still very clearly being communicated here. Listen carefully: Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, believes that everyone who wants a covid vaccine will have had the opportunity to receive a vaccine by early July. It’s at this point he says it will “start to feel like we’re no longer in a pandemic.” Nevertheless, he explains that life “won’t be normal,” noting that if it starts raining at his barbecue, he and his guests “could come indoors after putting on masks.”
Genuine, sincere, and very serious question: If life cannot return to normal after everyone has had a vaccine who wants one, when *can* it return to normal? This seems to be the ultimate example of “moving the goalposts,” as they have now been moved so far that we can never reach them.
To be clear, I understand that “normal” changes as the world changes, as technology advances, and so on. When I was in college, no one had an iPhone (it had not yet been invented), and not many years before that, no one even had a cell phone. But the “new normal” that is being proposed with continued “social distancing,” reduced capacity in many venues, business and school closings, and ongoing mask-wearing is not a new normal I will accept. I will fight against it as hard as I can, not simply because I don’t like it, but because these measures are causing a tremendous amount of harm to both children and adults. As for children in particular, this “new normal” is harming them in ways and to a degree that we cannot yet fully understand. I plan to post more on this soon as the Lord wills.
As I’ve said before, covid is not the only threat people face; there are many, many more ways people can be harmed (and have been harmed) over the past 10 months. This is why life should not be dominated by efforts to prevent the transmission of covid and why we are unwise to myopically focus on “slowing the spread.” MANY renowned epidemiologists and medical professionals have made this point repeatedly and better than I ever could. Nevertheless, in the coming days and weeks I hope to do what I can to show how these other harms have been continually neglected and ignored and to bring to light more covid-related facts that have also been largely ignored or suppressed.
Here’s the link to the article again:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/12/pandemic-year-two/617528/