What Happens When Lockdowns Drag On Through the Summer — and Beyond?

The vast majority of America continues to follow a zero-risk policy re: coronavirus. This means: “Not even the slightest risk of catching this is permissible. All life must stop until we have a cure.” This morning on Fox Business, everyone is rejoicing because they believe a vaccine for the virus is imminent. I surely hope so. But I also know vaccines for viruses have eluded medical science for centuries. And if President Trump ends up endorsing this potential vaccine, it will be dead on arrival in most of the states who have politicized medicine, so what good will it be?

Watch the weather. In much of the country we’re still in early spring. As the weather gets nicer, people will yearn to go out more. It’s already happening, of course, in southern California and Florida. In conventional dictatorships — Nazi, Communist, you name it — people are allowed to go outside, smell the roses, walk by the lake or the beach, and gather with a few friends, or even smile at strangers. Even these simple pleasures are now illegal in our health-based, zero-risk totalitarian regime. At some point, human psychology and reality will clash.

Our career politicians are, at best, narcissists; and, at worst, sociopaths. They lack empathy. They live in a bubble. To become career politicians in the first place, something must have been wrong with them. Now we turn to them for empathy, sympathy and understanding in a hope for leadership. All we can expect is more clamping down. As Governor Cuomo told a New Yorker begging for his job back, “Get a job as an essential worker.” He literally sneered. In California, the governor has basically said, “Go out on the beach? I’ll extend the lockdown.” The Michigan governor has literally said, “Protest? Challenge me? I’ll lock you down even longer.” In Delaware and other mid-Atlantic/northeast regions, we’re hearing the same. Delaware, a beach economy state, has gone so far as to cancel July 4 fireworks and take up the boardwalk benches. We’re getting the message that the beach is off limits, maybe for the rest of the year. Who knows how much longer? The small businesses in the area will not survive. Multiply this throughout most of the other 50 states.

It’s not sustainable — psychologically. Governors and other tyrants who lack empathy, and who live in a bubble where all that matters are public perception and optics, will learn something about basic human psychology in the coming weeks and months. And, I suspect, the citizens are going to learn a lot more about the people they entrusted with high office.

Of course: I blame the people most of all. Not the brave minority challenging the lockdowns and the underlying zero-risk mentality openly. But the majority who still choose to live in fear rather than take even one tiny risk.

Zero-risk is not living. It’s a living death. You might not die biologically from staying inside your house forever. But the most important parts of you will surely die.

 

 

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