Failing upwards: 5 ways governments couldn’t have handled the Covid-19 pandemic worse
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23
Whether it’s enforced isolation, risking the lives of the elderly, exercise prohibition, or PPE pollution, government responses to Covid-19 have been dim-witted at best, and many won’t hesitate to call them sadistic.
Last year, sadly, we witnessed a truly breathtaking level of government incompetence in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. Whether it was locking up elderly people in close quarters with virally infected individuals or issuing counterproductive health guidance, their responses often contributed quite a bit to the growing death toll.
A world of human guinea-pigs
From the beginning, entities like the World Economic Forum suggested that prolonged isolation would constitute the largest psychological experiment in history – especially with solitary confinement already banned as torture in many countries.
Even as President Donald Trump voiced a similar warning, declaring that continued isolation and forced unemployment would trigger an epidemic of substance abuse and suicides, most countries were quick to climb aboard the lockdown express — and fatally slow to get off. By the time the World Health Organization began speaking out against lockdowns in October, a huge amount of damage had already been done. Social ‘undesirables’ like addicts and the mentally ill were cast aside as mere collateral damage.
Cynically speaking, governments couldn’t have done a better job if they had tried to maximize suffering during the pandemic. Last year, establishment media was crawling with articles warning loneliness was as deadly as smoking cigarettes or obesity. While US federal data has showed that loneliness was a contributing factor in upwards of 13,200 dementia deaths during the pandemic, health officials have largely avoided confronting those statistics, insisting the only way to save Grandma is to avoid her like, well, the plague.
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Who needs nutrition when you’ve got hundreds of pounds of excess flesh to keep you company?
Similarly, medical tests conducted on individuals who contracted Covid-19 revealed that vitamin D levels could mean the difference between life and death. Perhaps it’s unsurprising, then, that government health officials demand citizens hide out in their homes where the sun’s healing rays can’t find them and pooh-pooh nutritional supplementation as mere quackery.
Nor have governments stopped at dismissing common-sense nutritional measures. Indeed, magazines like Cosmopolitan are trying harder than ever to convince their readers that fat is beautiful, healthy, and natural. It’s also one of the most common comorbidities for Covid-19, but who’s counting?
Nursing home catastrophes
New York and other Democrat-run states insisted they have placed the well-being of senior citizens above all – but merely praising oneself for supposedly keeping the state’s oldest inhabitants safe does not equate to actually saving lives. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo tacitly admitted his policies were doing more harm than good, acknowledging the coronavirus could spread through hospitals “like fire through dry grass” even as he continued to require hospitals to take in patients showing symptoms of Covid-19.
Cuomo finally deleted his executive order off the New York government website after efforts to blame care homes for not standing up to him went nowhere. But hospitals shriveled up and died with government guidance to avoid clogging up emergency rooms authorities had insisted were needed to treat the tidal wave of coronavirus patients who’d be showing up any day now. When the huge numbers failed to materialize, these facilities found themselves deep in the red, having cancelled elective surgeries and other lucrative procedures in order to “flatten the curve” and make way for patients who never arrived.
Building Back Worse
Meanwhile, climate change activists have hailed the economic shutdowns as a major step on the road to “building back better.” However, any gains in terms of lessening humanity’s carbon footprint were soon counterbalanced by the heaps of disposable masks and gloves that have piled up to damage wildlife habitats – and in many cases the wildlife themselves. That hasn’t stopped a certain German politician from calling for using the same “restrictions on personal freedom” deployed against Covid-19 to fight climate change.
No end in sight
While many thought the pandemic would unite countries and peoples in the fight against the virus, they were sorely mistaken. Even talismanic accessories like face masks have become politicized, devolving into a sort of cult symbol and a source of discord, especially after several studies suggest face coverings have no significant impact on viral transmission.
Unfortunately, the directive to obey orders no matter how absurd or counterproductive they might be seems likely to stick around long after the pandemic has passed. Prominent figures like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and US corona czar Anthony Fauci have warned even after the vaccine rollout, humanity will be masked up and locked down far into the future.
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