So, out of curiosity, like every other conspiracy theorist, I googled “How to boost your immune system”. I was expecting to find plenty of tips from our beloved, clap worthy NHS, and The World Health Organization. There was, however no articles, or tips from any of them on the first two pages of the search result. The closest I got to anything “reliable” was this article from April by the trustworthy BBC, who always have your best interest in mind. Here they attempted to debunk the idea that you can boost your immune system. Funny how, before the pandemic, it was a well known fact that good nutrition, sleep, rest, managing stress, regular exercise, and even sunshine boosted your immune system. They may not protect your from every virus, 100% of the time, but they increase your chance of beating it or getting away with minor symptoms.
Now, if you google “Vaccines”, NHS and WHO jump to the top of your results, all promoting vaccination. Don’t get me wrong, I am not questioning effectiveness of vaccines. I have never really thought about them. I just assumed they were part of life. What I am questioning in this post is that you’d expect NHS and WHO to be your top results when you’re asking how to naturally stay healthy. Instead, they just tell you to take more pills and vaccines.
Another interesting fact is, if you use another search engine (I use duckduckgo.com whenever I want to find unfiltered results), and search for “vaccines” you don’t get bombarded with NHS and WHO sites. Instead, you get a variety of results, including articles on side effects, and pros and cons of vaccines. The first WHO page appears as number 60 in the results, comparing to number 3 when you use Google. When you use duckduckgo.com and search how to boost your immune system, the results are similar to Google, with no NHS or WHO mentions.
Are drugs the only way to keep us healthy? Why searching for exactly the same words gives different results when using different search engines? Even if you search for “pros and cons of vaccines”, Google will give you slightly different results, bringing the “pros” to the top of your results, while duckduckgo gives you a variety to look through.
Regardless of what you think about vaccines, don’t you think people should know their pros and cons, and be able to find them using any search engine? All I am saying is, it’s funny how all the ancient wisdom of immune system seems to have died of COVID19 this year. Now you are just told to stay inside, avoid people, avoid sun, wash your hands, wear a mask and stay put while they work on the magic elixir that will make you healthy. That is all you need.
Some lockdown restrictions are back in parts of Northern England, and as I read through the news article about it, I realised something. I realised how the word “Household” quickly replaced words like “Family” and “Friends”.
If you convince us we are nothing but households, it’s easy to convince us you can put restrictions on us. After all, we are not people, persons, and definitely not families. Just households. Your mom is no longer your mom, but someone in a different household. It’s easier to dictate to households what they can and cannot do, than it is to dictate to parents and their children or boyfriend and girlfriend who want to see each other. But if you reduce us to households and get rid of our relationships, it is easy to convince us you can allow or disallow our interaction.
What is reducing us to households if not an attempt to weaken ties with our family and friends so we don’t rebel against these restrictions? Just turn us into brainless TV consuming, not questioning anything obedient members of society, where family is just some word you hear in old movies. We have Zoom, we can tell Alexa to turn on our TV, and our Amazon parcel is only 6 stops away. Who needs distractions like a family, friends, and the sense of belonging?
In the mid 1990’s, four out of a thousand American children had nut allergy. So, schools started banning nuts and everything related to nuts including foods produced alongside nuts. Some schools with less pupils might have never even had anyone allergic to nuts, but still banned them. This meant parents were instructed not to let their kids bring these foods to school. Not that school simply stopped serving them at lunch. I think it’s a little overreaction. Preventing all kids from having nuts just in case one (hypothetical) student may be allergic. This is what we have done to our economy, in my opinion. A very small percentage of cases resulted in death (almost exclusively of people in the high risk category) and we stopped the entire country and have taken baby steps to restart it and surprise, surprise, you will never be allowed to bring your metaphorical nuts to school ever again.
In the proceeding paragraphs I will attempt to argue that we should be allowed to keep our peanuts. That is our jobs, our businesses, our education, our future plans and dreams and human interaction, and we can’t or shouldn’t be forced to give them up in case someone somewhere might get a reaction. I won’t argue that lives don’t matter. Of course, they do. I will simply express my opinion why saving the economy should have been our goal given the COVID19 death rate looks a lot like the 1990’s nut allergy.
The fall of High Street
I went into my local shopping centre the other day. I bumped into a friend of mine who is a cleaner there. He is from Algeria. His nametag reads Mark, but this is just a familiar name he goes by at work. That’s also the name I know him by. We followed the arrows towards the escalator where we parted ways. During our short conversation he pinched his orange uniform with Intu Centres logo on it and disregarded it as irrelevant.
‘This uniform, we wear just for show. The company, Intu, it’s finished, gone!’, he said and explained that the Intu staff are no longer employed by Intu. He added that if nobody saves them in the next few months, the centres will get closed down. ‘I’m going back to my country, there is nothing for me here’ he said just before we headed off in separate directions.
Later that day I checked what exactly he had meant. Turned out the Intu Centres had gone into administration. The one in Watford, previously known as and still referred to as The Harlequin by the locals, had just had an enormous upgrade. They had spent a couple of years expanding, renovating and adding new retailers to their newly built space. This investment cost them a whooping £180mln and resulted in 1.4ml square ft of retail and leisure space and this was meant to be the next chapter into an exciting future of The Harlequin and Watford.
Cineworld, Hollywood Bowl and Debenhams all cut their ribbons less than 2 years ago. Debenhams spread across three huge floors and hosted numerous brands selling anything from beauty products, fashion to home. They recently announced that some of their branches would not be reopening and would get closed down permanently. Their new-born baby, the Watford branch didn’t make the cut. It will not reopen. Now, Debenhams had been in trouble before lockdown, but it looks to me like it sealed their fate. It is said the closure of their branches will cost thousands of jobs. This would include their staff, various brands which had their booths and kiosks on their shop floor, possibly warehouse staff and anyone working for other companies that do any kind of work with Debenhams. Currier companies for example might not need as many delivery drivers now that Debenhams and many other retailers closed their doors permanently.
The Harlequin’s 30 years of existence might be coming to and end
And now Intu Watford is stuck with an empty unit that won’t be easy to fill. There already are M&S and Primark in the centre and both are spread across three and two floors, respectively. John Lewis have just announced that a number of their stores will not reopen, including the one in Watford. The store has been part of Watford town centre for thirty years and as the locals know it today, it’s spread across, I believe four enormous floors selling everything from birthday cards to furniture and big screen televisions. But John Lewis Watford is no more. The Harlequin welcomed their first customers in the early 1990’s. Their recent investment and extension were meant to rebrand the town to a new shopping destination for people in surrounding area. This dream made other businesses see Watford in a new light and it resulted in numerous cafes and restaurants introducing themselves to the people of Watford. Will the closure of Debenhams and John Lewis mean the end of Intu Watford and will it destroy other businesses who have come here searching for the big success?
With over a hundred stores, the centre provides work for thousands of people and now whether they realize it or not, they are all facing an uncertain future. I used to work at one of these stores. We had a team of less than twenty people. There are of course bigger stores with a lot more employees Boots or Sports Direct. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had close to a hundred staff members. The closure of the Harlequin could, in my opinion indirectly cause loss of jobs in other unrelated areas of economy. Take bus drivers for example. No shopping centre means less people coming to Watford, both as customers and employees. Some hard decisions will have to be made in not only in bus companies but many others. And this is just one of the shopping centres in the Intu empire.
Take Rob for example. Rob has been working for TNT curriers for fifteen years. He complains about his job sometimes, but he likes it. He likes driving his orange truck delivering pallets upon pallets of cartons filled with stock to retail shops. He likes interacting with the stockroom staff who greet him with a smile every morning. He knows every one of them by name. You never see Rob wear trousers, always shorts. “Cause when it rains, the trousers get all wet and if you wear shorts you can just dry your legs and you’re good to go.” It kind of makes sense. “Even in Winter.”. He’d never let you struggle with your delivery all by yourself. He’d always give you a hand. This job pays good enough money for him and his family of two children live comfortably and never worry about the future. Until now. Now Rob’s future at TNT is uncertain. Sure, if it comes to it, they might transfer him to another department, maybe have him do home deliveries instead, but this just means others, like Rob will lose their jobs. Or maybe it will be more cost effective in the long run to let Rob go and keep those who are on a lower wage instead? I sure hope Rob’s fate is not sealed.
Chances are, Intu Centres are not going to be saved. Who would want to invest in shopping centres right now when the government can order them to close whenever they think the risk of keeping them open is too great? Nobody will want to invest. The government can enforce a local lockdown anywhere and anytime like they have done with Leicester. What is going to happen instead, is these shops are going to close, jobs are going to be lost and the whole retail space will be abandoned, and its value is going to go down dramatically. Only then will it be bought and transformed into something different. Blocks of flats or modern apartments is my guess. Maybe Amazon warehouse? Who knows? All other retailers around will give in too and the High Street will no longer be where you go to buy clothes and trainers.
Andy is a store manager. He is in his late twenties and he has spent over ten years working his way up the retail ladder. He’s had his eyes set on becoming an area manager and he has been working hard to get there and it seemed like it would happen for him soon. The shop he has spent all his career at is facing closure because it is located inside Intu Watford. Andy picked up this shop when it was in pieces and turned it into a fun and challenging workplace for all staff. He has made sacrifices not many of us would even dream of. He has been recognized as a manager of the year and he’s always kept his eyes on the ball. Now, if retail goes extinct, what can someone, who’s spent over ten years building a career in it, do? Sure, we learn various useful skills in any job, and we can take them with us to the next one, but something tells me the job market will not look the same after coronavirus. Many businesses will fail to make profit as they adapt to the new rules and measures. Many jobs will become a thing of the past as machines become more reliable, productive and can’t get sick.
Can hard work save the High Street or is that just wishful thinking? (Getty images)
Economy is such a dirty word, baby!
Economy has become a dirty word. People who want to save it, don’t mean to sacrifice innocent lives. They understand the importance of healthy population being able to carry the economy on their shoulders, and they understand the importance of protecting the vulnerable people from the virus. Others think we shouldn’t care about the economy. When they say economy, they think about the greed of capitalism, the sins of corporations and their executives. But the economy is made of us and our jobs. And most people think their job is waiting for them on the other side but as I have shown above, the future is uncertain for all of us. Hopefully, I have made a compelling case why we should be allowed to keep our nuts (our jobs, business and livelihoods) and not have them taken away to protect hypothetical people with allergies.
The government has imposed the lockdown and has kept us on house arrest for nearly four months as if this pandemic were the next Spanish Flu, which it is not. If it were, I would be writing a completely different article. The death rate is extremely low (even though the numbers have been boosted by false death certificates and wild guesses of the medical staff), and as harsh as it may sound, the vast majority of deaths was people who died because their time had come. The elderly who survived last year’s flu season fell ill in the last few months and their weak immune system couldn’t fight it this time. Others had other serious life-threatening conditions that would have killed them in the next few months. So, the lockdown hasn’t saved lives. It has postponed some deaths while making living all about staying alive. It has taken away the fun and joy of living life to the fullest and making the most of the time we have left, which is what living should be all about, Most of us think we have many years left in our life’s calendar. Unlimited number of days, birthdays, holidays and countless hours with our loved ones. Some people don’t have that luxury and the house arrest might have kept them alive but deprived them of the very reason for being alive. I am not trying to suggest we should let the vulnerable die. I am saying we cannot cheat death and we cannot keep everyone safe forever. What I am saying is that it is more than likely the people who died in the last few months, would have died if they had caught another virus. We can all try to keep peanuts away from our vulnerable loved ones, but we can’t keep them from peanuts. At least not all the time and not indefinitely. And we definitely can’t forbid everyone from opening a bag of M&Ms just because someone may or may not have an allergic reaction. In the end we are all responsible for ourselves and no government intervention is going to make us care about hypothetical people who may or may not get sick and may or may not die from it, when our lives and lives of our immediate family are at stake. This also means providing food, protection and a sense of security.
Flu directly kills thousands if not millions of people worldwide while COVID19 seems to be just finishing the job of the underlying conditions sick people have and still managed to kill less people than seasonal Influenza. By all means, let’s try to keep our vulnerable loved ones alive. Let’s provide them with help and support they need to stay alive and to live their final years the way they see fit. The rest of us should have never been kept locked inside our homes. We should have been allowed to work and make a living while the vulnerable are protected if they so wish. If you have a loved one who is high risk then by all means, do whatever you believe is necessary to keep them healthy but in the end we are wired to care about our immediate family first and makes sure they are healthy and live with dignity. We can’t be forced to give up our nuts, the only way to feed our loved ones, because someone, somewhere might have an allergic reaction.
Economy is important. It is important for you and for me. For the healthy and the sick. If you have a job, you can buy medicine for your child. If you buy a pair of jeans, someone else will put food on their table. It is a never-ending cycle. We are all in this together. We all support each other with our purchases, but we are all individually responsible for ourselves. We can’t expect the world to stop to accommodate us. We can’t expect the system to slow down so we can catch up. We can’t expect the whole town to get shut down because grandad is sick. We need to keep going but it seems like this option is being taken away from us.
Do you agree? Do you think I am wrong to think we should have thought about the economy? Do you think High Street will survive this massive blow? Are you going to be affected by any of this? What is your plan looking ahead? Let me know
Do you ever text your friend and suggest you should get together and they say “Yeah, when things go back to normal, we should go to the pub or something!”? Do you ever scroll through your social media feed and see people making holiday plans for when things go back to normal? Do you ever visit dating sites and see people looking to date after the lockdown? I bet you have come across at least one of these people. Or maybe you are one yourself. Making plans for when we are given thumbs up to get on with our lives. What if planning and arranging your life from now on will never be the same? What if things don’t go back to normal? What if lockdown ending is not what we should be anticipating but what comes after?
Are we in control? Are we truly in control of our lives? Are we the authors of our story or are we just narrating it? Are we making the decisions or are we just choosing between the options provided for us? Maybe we are all enslaved by the algorithm that advertises careers, products, lifestyle choices and romantic partners to us and we stick to choosing between the options provided. The endless chain of choices creates the illusion of freedom while be become dependent on the state or corporations to give us what we think we want and need.
We never needed Netflix. Nobody needs Netflix. Think about it. I am sure a lot of you can relate. You want to watch a movie but now you are bombarded with choices and none of them seem to scratch that itch. You scroll through recently added and the most popular. Then you move on to comedies and then maybe you check another category only to find nothing. You’ve just spent twenty minutes deciding or rather choosing between the options provided by somebody else. More often than not, it’s too late now, you have to be up early and if you started watching something now, you’d not get enough sleep. Sometimes you might settle for something just for the sake of it. Either way, your time has been wasted and you are not satisfied. Do you think people who run Netflix, waste their time on watching movies or lose sleep to watch entire series overnight? Isn’t it ironic that the more options you have, the less happy you become? The options are almost limitless. You know you can watch a certain movie any time and unlimited number of times and yet for this very reason you are restricted. Back in the day, when I was younger, we were restricted by the number of options. We had to go to the video store and rent VHS tapes. We had less options but enjoyed more freedom. More isn’t necessarily better.
But I digress.
Do you think fast food chains are ran by unhealthy and obese CEOs or that cigarette manufacturers by heavy smokers who are on the brick of getting lung cancer? No. For the same reason why a drug dealer is not a junkie himself. They want you to buy and use their product. Time, money and health are their resources and they won’t waste them like they want you to. They need you to rely on them while their mind is clear and they continue to make money because you are willing to waste your resources – money, time and health on useless subscriptions, alcohol, cigarettes, unhealthy food, drugs, trainers and expensive clothes. You submit to their rules. They don’t live by them. I’m not saying they are all evil. I am saying that a CEO or a founder of a clothing company, doesn’t spend countless hours walking around shopping for trainers and jeans. Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t spend his days scrolling through Instagram seeing what other people are doing with their life. He has a whole team of spies to do it for him. But seriously, these people spend every waking hour trying to improve their product, their company, their life and to find ways to make more money off you. In a way they don’t care that you are wasting your money on their products or life on their platforms. Just know that they don’t. They think of more ways to get to you. To get to know you. To advertise to you. They live by different rules. They’ve earned it or sold their souls to the Devil to get there. You choose.
We have seen the proof with our own eyes as soon as shops re – opened. People queuing to buy, to browse, to consume to enslave themselves and submit to the will of the elite. This is what we have become. Defeated and braindead. Crawling through the High Street abandoning our purpose in life for a new pair of Nikes believing they will help us walk into happiness. They don’t realize that happiness is going to pass them by as they are distracted and seduced by a temporary fix. They are even willing to accept the New Normal and sacrifice their sanity by waiting for the security guy to let them in. Public toilets are now guarded too. Can’t have too many people using the facilities now, can we? The town is full of arrows and footprints that must be followed and there are people in uniforms enforcing the one-way pedestrian system which drives me mad. Police walk around enforcing it too and making sure people don’t gather in groups while shopping. I could not go through it just to get a new pair of jeans.
But the New Normal has arrived. It seems to be here to stay. Don’t make the mistake of assuming this New Reality is everyone’s reality. No. Just like the founders of Netflix don’t waste time endlessly browsing through it, the people who introduce this reality are not the ones who will live in it. Your politicians don’t go shopping. They have assistants doing it for them. I know someone who does it for a living. She works as a personal assistant of a wealthy family and up until recently she worked for an Arsenal player. She does the bills, food shopping, walking the dog and everything else in between that distracts the rich and successful from making money. Nothing wrong with that but just remember, they live in a different world and pay others to do the dirty work in the real world while they focus on their careers and expanding their wealth.
Politicians are no different. They are creating a world for us, not themselves. People think things are going back to normal, but they are not. Try going to your favourite pub when it opens. Try to get a haircut on the 4th July. Try to have a wedding or arrange a funeral. Everything that you used to take for granted is gone or changed forever. Modified to fit the New Reality. The reality of the common man and woman. While we adapt to the world with no handshakes, no affection, no singing at weddings, no socialising in pubs, the life of the elites will, for the most part, remain the same. Like I said earlier with Mark Zuckerberg. He doesn’t check his phone all the time for a new Facebook comment, Instagram like or Whatsapp message. He cares that you do. He is in business of making you waste your time seeking approval of others on his platforms. And while the world changes before your eyes, the rich, powerful and famous people will carry on as normal. Some of them might have spent the last few months on a yacht surrounded by supermodels and don’t even know that 99.99% of the world population were absolutely not affected by some Chinese virus.
I was just reminded of Dark City, a great movie I recommend everyone to watch. It tells a story of a man who finds himself in a city ran by powerful entities who rearrange the city and the lives of its citizens when they sleep. Every morning they wake up not remembering who they were the day before. They have a new family, new house, new job and don’t even know it. He discovers the truth. The entities he is up against create new reality every night. New rules that don’t affect them in any way. They execute their plan and the people of the dark city are just subjects of their experiment. Have we just woken up in The Dark City? Some of us act like we barely remember our life before the quarantine. Others act like they never want things to go back to the way they were. Yet others live in denial and think this is still only temporary. A handful of us are awake and try to take on the powerful entities who are ruling over us and are rearranging our lives with an illusion of our consent.
Are powerful entities in control of your lives?
On the bright side though…
Football is back, isn’t it? The excitement and passion are back… well, not quite. You can’t go to a match. Are you ever going to be able to? At least the way it was before? Shoulder to shoulder with the fans of your team. Jumping, singing and celebrating together? Are you ever going to be able to go to a game without being treated like a big bag of germs? Probably not. So, this aspect of your life is gone. Sure, you might try it for a while but eventually you will get sick of it. Just like we all are of queuing everywhere and being reminded that we are all murderers if we don’t wash out hands or cover our face with a mask or a cloth (they both seem to be equally useless but while they cover your mouth, they signal your virtue). While your employment is still a big question mark, football players are back to work. Kicking the ball and getting paid millions. Not much has changed for them then. Empty stadiums are nothing new in football either. But even when fans are allowed back in (in reduced numbers to observe social distancing), most players will not notice the number of supporters and they probably won’t care what you had to go through to get to your seat. They play, you watch. They don’t queue. They play while their assistants are queuing for their groceries and after the game you will have to queue for yours.
Is there room for this in the New Normal?
Movie production is probably going to resume soon too. Do you think we will see the new normal there? I doubt it. Movies will remain normal and will ask for your money and won’t care how dreadful your trip to the cinema is. I realized this when I watched Dave Chapelle’s most recent stand up. It was filmed a few weeks ago in America. It was outside. He was on stage, doing exactly what he did before. The audience’s experience was different. The seats were spread. I assume they could only sit together if they arrived together and they all wore face masks. Not just any face masks. They had Chapelle logo on them but that’s beside the point. I think Dave Chapelle is a great comedian and this has nothing to do with him. The point I’m trying to make is that stand ups, musicians and other live performers will at some point resume their lives. The key word is resume because they won’t be affected by the new normal. Not that much anyway. For the past few months, they have been in their mansions with their lives paused. They’ve earned it so I’m not having a go at them. What I am saying is that soon they will all be back performing while who knows what their audience have to go through to see their shows.
The movie industry will return in the new normal too. Are we going to see social distanced Hollywood productions? Or will the movies look like nothing ever happened? While you and I walk around our High Street following arrows and avoiding eye contact with strangers, avoiding conversation and touch with them as they are all potential asymptomatic murderers spreading the deadly disease with their breath, cough and hands, the movies will continue as if there is no pandemic. The fantasy world will be here to entertain you while you live in this nightmare and walk through a maze everywhere you go. Their convincing trailers with explosions, car chases will trigger emotions in you and Hollywood stars will invite you to go to the cinema and contribute to their lavish lifestyles while your life is a living hell and you a ticking time bomb. You will pay the same price or more for your ticket as you did before you even knew you could put “social” and “distancing” together and it would make sense. In other words, your cinema experience will not be the same. You will queue, walk through a maze, queue to go to the toilet (if going to the toilet will be at all possible during a movie, given you will have to be in a close proximity with other germ carriers when leaving your seat). Saying that, going to the toilet during the show might actually be banned. What about leaving the room after the movie? Will you be able to just walk out or will everyone have to walk out in some kind of sequence. What if you have an emergency and you have to leave halfway through? Can you see what I mean? Your experience will be sabotaged while the whole movie crew gets paid and carries on as normal. They won’t care how you get to the cinema and what your experience is like. As long as you tap your card and buy that ticket. Somehow, I can’t see cinemas lowering the prices because of your inconveniences.
When things go back to normal…. What? Like going to the pub and not being able to interact with strangers? Like going to the pub and not being able to stand at the bar? Like waiting for an appointment with your hairdresser only to find out they aren’t allowed to talk to “control the virus”? Like not being able to sing at weddings or fathers being banned from walking the brides to the altar? Like having to follow arrows anywhere and being followed by people with job titles that didn’t exist a month ago? You know, those who enforce the social distancing and one-way walking system? Do you think it’s going away? When? When we’ve flattened the curve? When we’ve saved the NHS? When we’ve made sure there is not a single patient at any hospital? When we’ve protected every single elderly from dying?
No more singing comrade!
I suggest you make your own rules at your own wedding!
I know what you’re thinking. “No singing at the weddings? Nobody is going to follow that!”, or “No small talk with your hairdresser? I’d like to see them enforce that!”. Of course, nobody will follow these stupid rules. The point is, we shouldn’t have to be intimidated into thinking that singing at a wedding is against the rules, but we will do it anyway. We shouldn’t have to question the morality of it and fear that the antiterrorists will crash our wedding or that the Thought Police will arrest you and your barber halfway through the haircut because he or she asked you if you have any holiday planned. We shouldn’t have to sneak out. So, the point isn’t breaking the rules. The point is these rules being there in the first place and the only way to have some kind of normality is breaking. Rules which again, will not apply to those making them. And in case you aren’t aware of what The New Normal has in store for us, then all of the above paragraph are genuine headlines I’ve seen in recent weeks leading up to July 4th. Another one that caught my attention read Experts say women should cut their hair short to prevent the spread of COVID19. If you’ve ever shamed anyone for not wearing a mask or not social distancing, then I wonder if you would cut your hair short or advise women in your life to do so – for humanity’s sake.
Are you ready to enter The New Normal in style?
The media is trying to convince us that The New Normal is inevitable and we need to adapt. But you know what? I think the New Normal is faulty and I’d like to see the manager!
Mike Tyson is planning his return to the ring too. How exciting! He will make his millions along with organizers and promoters no matter how you experience his return. While you have to social distance yourself from everyone you love, boxers and other contact sport athletes will continue exchanging punches, sweat and blood. This kind of reminds me of The Hunger Games. Regular people lived in awful conditions while the elite enjoyed the luxuries of The Capital. This is the difference between us and the elite – the celebrities, politicians and billionaires. All of them like to tell us how we should live, they make rules and virtue signal all the time, desperately trying to stay relevant and say the right thing. All from the comfort from their mansions guarded by armed security while we have to live under the regime of their false virtue. In the movie, the difference between us and them was extreme. The Capital was glamourous while the districts were filled with hunger and poverty. Back in the real world The Capital is not a physical place. It’s a state of mind combined of the number of social media followers and big bank account status, power and influence. We, living in the District, are the consumers of their existence, subjects of their power and influence. They do not live in the world they are building for us. We have seen this during Black Lives Matter riots. Number of celebrities bailed out the looters and rioters when they got arrested and many Instagram personalities voiced their support of burning buildings, destroying livelihoods and communities in the name of BLM. It’s all fun and games when it is not your house that’s on fire. It’s all fun and games when you’re rich and famous and live hundreds of miles away. These people don’t have to live with consequences of their words and actions.
The Capital – detached from reality, yet full of wisdom how to live in it
Politicians are no different. Do you really think they care if social distancing is doing more harm than good in the long run? Their kids go to private school.
When things go back to normal you will have all the fun in the world, won’t you? You will get your life back. You will get that body of your dreams. You will go for that career you’ve been dreaming about. Unless you live in Leicester. You will have to wait a few more weeks. See, the lockdown is never going to finish. It is no longer about “flattening the curve”. Now whenever the government decide, they can put a single city on a lockdown and then all your plans and dreams have to be put on hold as well. If you have a business, you will have to close again. Maybe for good this time. If you are self – employed, then you may need to consider applying for a permanent job at Tesco. In Melbourne, an entire building block has been put on a local lockdown or a house arrest. Can you see it? This is not going away.
You can forget about being spontaneous. More and more gyms and pubs are introducing booking systems which means you won’t just be able to walk into a pub or gym whenever you feel like it. You will have to book your slot and I bet that won’t be easy.
Let me leave you with this final thought.
Arnold Schwarzenegger used to be constantly told he wouldn’t be successful in Hollywood because of his accent and his size. He was told they were his disadvantages. He used them to his advantage and his accent gave us the Terminator. He also took English lessons, speech lessons, accent removal lessons and even lost some muscle mass for one of his early roles in a record time. He took control of what he could. I know. He was up against his own accent and muscles, not against billionaire elites who use their resources to put you in a Skinner box and control your behaviour. I know it’s hard to be optimistic if you don’t have a safety net, if you live alone and have bills, rent, mortgage and other things to pay. I know but maybe we can all come out of this lockdown better than when we were dragged into it. It’s not too late to give up a bad habit, start reading or listening to audiobooks, listening to podcasts, find an online course and get qualified. It may feel like we have lost control. It may feel like we never had it, but there are still aspects of our lives which we CAN control. We can control what we learn. If you don’t want to wait for your country to turn into China, learn a language and a skill that will let you live somewhere else. Let’s not wait for them to do it to us. They are all just people who’ve read books. One thing I’m going to research when I finish this post, is what part of the economy, what jobs are likely to never return or change forever in the coming months or years. I work in the fitness industry but if there is good reason to believe this sector will suffer, then I’d like to be ahead and prepare myself. I am not suggesting joining them if we can’t beat them. I am saying we should take control of what we can and continue to fight for what we believe. The New Normal is here, we need to resist and push back against it as hard as it pushes against us. Defeat is not an option, but it is a possibility we should be prepared for.
What do you think? Tell me how you are coping with the new normal. Do you need someone to talk to? You are not alone. Get in touch
There is this really old Polish movie called Seksmisja (Sex mission). It came out forty years ago and takes place in a post – apocalyptic world. From what I can remember there was some sort of virus or toxic air that forced people to live underground. Almost all of the survivors are women and they live in some sort of underground facility that protects them from the deadly virus. There are two men in the building, but the society is exclusively ran by women and they intend to keep it that way so they make sure all babies are made in a lab and are all female. Everyone wears the same uniform. There is no relationships, friendships and fun. Everyone knows the outside world is contaminated and dangerous. They’ve been told so by the leader. One day the guys decide to question the reality of it and venture outside. They find that the facility they have called home, is directly under a nice suburban house which belongs to the leader. She lives there, surrounded by art, paintings, wood and books while everyone in her “basement” knows only cold and unfriendly steel and glass. They also find out that the outside isn’t toxic. It’s full of life, houses, cars and people. Turns out they have been lied to and have been part of some kind of experiment.
1984 Polish movie “Seksmisja”
What follows might be bollox, so be warned.
We are now in the middle of a health crisis. The outside is dangerous and everyone is a suspect. Thousands of people are dying. The world is scared. Even though there have been fewer total deaths so far than by this time last year, people are scared. Even though as we speak, new information emerges suggesting that this Coronavirus might have come to the West long before it was first assumed, which would mean there have been more total cases of people who had it and recovered. They say the virus might have been around since November 2019 and we only started counting the cases in March 2020. If more months equals more cases, then this would make the mortality rate even smaller than what it already is. And it is tiny for a virus that causes all countries on the planet to shut down and take away our liberties. It is even possible that most of us have had it and thought it was a common cold or flu. We recovered, or we were asymptomatic like most healthy people are anyway. If it is true, then this virus is responsible for hardly any deaths in comparison to other diseases and yet here we are, on house arrest, waiting for a magic elixir that will let us go back to normal.
The elixir which is of course the vaccine. The World Health Organization has been responsible for a lot of misinformation about the virus, but they are telling us the vaccine will set us free. They were the ones, back in January or February who told us it couldn’t transmit between humans. And now that Sweden has successfully stood up to the threat and stayed open, they praise Sweden for their tactic while their biggest player who stands to gain the most from the vaccine, Bill Gates, is aggressively spreading the agenda, telling us we might not go back to normal until there is a vaccine, not a cure, a vaccine. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would say WHO misinformed us on purpose to help the virus spread across the world quicker. A friendly billionaire then swoops in with his expertise and tells us exactly what we need but fear not, his men are already working on it day and night.
I should point out that I am not anti-vaccines. I never really gave it any thought. I understand how important they have been in making us immune to some diseases in the past but I definitely don’t think they should be mandatory. I understand that vaccination of the population builds herd immunity and can help those who can’t be vaccinated, like infants for example or people with weak immune system, like the elderly. It is also obvious that our immune system does that already. The virus transmits, small number of people die while the rest become immune to it.
The media has done a great job at spreading The World Health Organization’s message around the globe too. Bill Gates has had a chance to appear on TV in his pastel coloured sweaters quite a few times telling the government leaders and the populace exactly what’s in store for us. I am not a conspiracy theorist but when you watch his interviews, you can’t help but notice his awkward smirk when he talks about the vaccine, it’s possible side effects or that our lives may never be the same. The last one suggests he is quite enjoying this crisis and wants to see how it plays out because it clearly doesn’t affect him. It’s our lives that are at stake and he is enjoying being the spectator. That’s how detached he is from the real world. Most rich and famous are though.
We can sit here and try to figure out his intentions all day long. Is he really trying to save the world? Is he just trying to make lots of money? Is he trying to gain more power, build an empire? Who knows? I just find it strange that the media is not interviewing anyone who has alternative solutions or actively speaks out against the measures taken by our governments. Many experts have raised their concerns and the mainstream media are not interested. And they are experts from many fields of medicine and science and they are not given a platform to speak. Instead we get Mr. Gates, who despite being a well accomplished philanthropist, well read businessman, husband and a father, he is not a medical expert, not a virologist and not a scientist. His opinion on what’s right and what isn’t in this situation is worth as much as Elon Musk’s who is constantly ridiculed for his strong anti – lockdown stance. I’m just saying, they are two billionaires. One makes cars and wants to go to Mars and the other made fortune making computer software. That’s it. They hold opposing opinions but only one is highlighted. Maybe it’s because of the Gates’ foundation which goes around vaccinating the 3rd world countries, so this makes Bill Gates an authority even though his actions in those countries are questionable to say the least. Musk might of course be purely motivated by self interest because he wants to make and sell cars, so he needs his business to open. I might be wrong about either or both of them and their intentions but nevertheless, they can have their opinions but they should remain opinions and not government policies.
Social Media platforms have been working around the clock to stop the spread of “misinformation” about the coronavirus. They have been banning everything that goes against the WHO advice. Advice that let’s not forget has changed many times. Experts in many fields have been keeping Facebook, Twitter and Instagram quite busy over the last few weeks. They have been trying to reach out to us and tell us things are not what they seem.
Is this a hero or a villain?
After hours of interviews and listening to podcasts, it is clear to me that the World Health Organization and Gates Foundation are the business of health in a tube. They are not interested in teaching people about boosting our immune system to never catch a virus in the first place or recover quickly from one. Strong immune system doesn’t make them any money, does it?
The WHO, mainstream media and social media are not telling us what we need to know. I would argue they are telling us exactly the opposite of what we should do. They are telling us to stay at home, depriving us of vitamin D and exercise, which is good for general health as well as mental health. They are not telling us about the importance of good nutrition, vitamin C and Zink all of which can boost immune system for when any virus comes around. This information is hidden from us because of course this doesn’t create revenue.
This reminds me of the movie I mentioned at the beginning. We have been told not to go outside because it is dangerous. Many experts have since confirmed that a virus is less likely to spread outside and that vitamin D, which we can get plenty of from the Sun, boosts out immune system and the response to a virus. It doesn’t kill it but it is a factor when encountering one and battling it. Staying alert is not enough. We have been told to stay inside. Many people are really enjoying themselves right now. They have big gardens, they live with their parents and never had to worry about rent or food and they aren’t going to start now. The majority of people however, live in conditions close to those in the movie. Cold and unfriendly walls in compressed spaces and with no access to Sun or grass. These are the people who’s livelihoods, pride and purpose have been taken away and wellbeing neglected because of the international house arrest.
Let’s not forget about herd immunity. There is a channel on You Tube called UnHerd, which you can go and check out. They ever so eloquently explain this concept. Better than I ever could. In short, to defeat any virus, we must first let it spread by going about our lives.
This reminds me of a 1998 movie “Fallen”. A serial killer is being executed. His spirit leaves his body and lands on the nearest attendee of his execution and takes over their body. From then on, he can transmit from one person to another through touch and stalks the detective who had put him in prison – John Hobbes. The killer has one weakness. He can only travel a certain distance before he dies. He needs a host to live on. The killer starts to commit murders again using his hosts and when Hobbes realises what’s going on he has to find a way to stop the killer once and for all. He travels to a cabin in a remote location knowing the killer will come for him. The detective lights a poisoned cigarette with intent to poison himself so when the killer takes control of his body, he will die before he can transmit to someone else. This in my view, is a good enough picture of what herd immunity is. First a great number of population gets the virus, some are just asymptomatic carriers and some get really ill, while a small number die because of weak immune system or underlying conditions. Those who live, become immune to it which then corners the virus and it has nowhere to go and dies. John Hobbes did exactly that, he defeated the evil spirit by making it impossible for it to infect anyone else. The woods around the cabin represents the herd immunity.
Another thing we are not talking about is the psychological effects of the lockdown and prolonged isolation. Why aren’t we hearing from psychologists and their expertise? Our social brain has, just like immune system, developed over millions of years to tackle the challenges our species face. From being a productive member of a tribe or community, which leads to protection, survival and having children to fighting various diseases. This doesn’t just turn off in a face of a crisis. If anything crisis highlights our tribal instincts and our brain rewards us for being social, for seeking respect, partnership and relationships, all of which increase chances of survival. Immune system also doesn’t just turn off now that we have had vaccines for about a hundred years. Guess what happens if we deprive our brain of human contact? It suffers. Loneliness is suffering. It’s not suffering that can be seen immediately. It’s the kind of suffering that makes everything else feel miserable. You get angry and sad over nothing and you don’t know why. You can’t link it to the lack of human contact and isolation. Human contact is like a nutrient to your body. If you don’t eat right, you might not be hungry, but you might be constantly tired. You don’t know why because after all, you are eating enough. The brain is the same. It won’t tell you what the problem is but will make everything else seem like an issue. I shall explore this further in one of my next articles on the harm of social distancing.
Social distancing – used for good or evil?
To summarize my thoughts on this subject, and they are just my thoughts and I suggest you make your own mind, I’d like to go back to that old Polish film I mentioned in the beginning. So, what if the outside world isn’t as dangerous as we are told? What if we do need Vitamin D now more than ever? What if what we are told is either wrong or a lie? Shouldn’t we consider all options before we completely change the way we live?
Deserts of Mars 