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Circles of In'flu'ence
Circles of In'flu'ence
Now begins the grand effort, on display in thousands of articles and news broadcasts daily, somehow to normalize the lockdown and all its destruction of the last two months. We didn't lock down almost the entire country in 1968/69, 1957, or 1949-1952, or even during 1918. But in a terrifying few days in March 2020, it happened to all of us, causing an avalanche of social, cultural, and economic destruction that will ring through the ages.
There was nothing normal about it all. We'll be trying to figure out what happened to us for decades hence.
How did a temporary plan to preserve hospital capacity turn into two-to-three months of near-universal house arrest that ended up causing worker furloughs at 256 hospitals, a stoppage of international travel, a 40 percent job loss among people earning less than $40,000 per year, devastation of every economic sector, mass confusion and demoralization, a complete ignoring of all fundamental rights and liberties, not to mention the mass confiscation of private property with forced closures of millions of businesses?
Comment: The effects of total lockdown, from the global population right down to the house we live in, was a decision encompassing more than health concerns. It stretched and contorted the boundaries of human tolerance by virtue of corrupt medical justifications and enforced social mandates...the ramifications of which will outlive the public and most certainly the virus.