Party Like It's 1699

 It feels like there are three realities out there. It's not just three separate groups of people, because lots of people straddle a couple or even all these realities. 

One reality is full of facts and figures. Climate change is being exacerbated by continued fossil fuel use and beef farming. The pandemic is still here, and it's affecting more children this year, and an increasing amount, likely from children being infected over and over. There's a clear upward trajectory of dangers to our lives that require an urgent response. 

Excess deaths from disease in the U.S. relative to the 2015-2019 average as baseline.

Then there's a marked counter reality sometimes full of facts and figures from dubious sites (or govenment officials) completely at odds with what the majority of high quality, peer-reviewed papers are reporting. In this version of reality, Covid is long over despite the overflow in hospitals and lack of ambulances available. Vaccines will kill you, and N95s either don't work at all or will suffocate you. Kids are sicker now because of immunity debt from a lockdown that happened before some of them were born. Things that have been shown to work irrefutably for decades are suddenly being scoffed at.  

And then there's a daily reality of rule followers. Most people appear to be living like it's 2019, unbothered by a few people coughing or sniffing nearby. I'm not convinced that the vast majority of them believe the anti-science claims. I think it's more likely that they're waiting for further instruction. They're in Kierkegaard's ethical realm, wanting to do the right thing, but unwilling to think about it or allow themselves to be guided by a consciences that feels that unwittingly spreading a virus that could cause death or disability to others is a morally objectionable behaviour.

I'm getting better and better at recognizing that we're really living, and partying, like it's 1699, before all those vaccines and specialized lightweight respirators were ever invented. We knew about the importance of sanitation centuries earlier, but largely forgot those lessons. Life expectancy was in the 30s or 40s, mainly from children dying in infancy. The very wealthy and well-connected could expect to live longer if they lucked into the right precautions. 

We've come so far with science and technology, but we're living in the crosshairs between neoliberalism's Randian push towards individual rights over the survival of the community and a time in which we desperately need to wake up to the reality that we can't survive unless we all work for the benefit of the common good. I sometimes hope that something has to happen to resolve this ongoing tension. However, right now, I think it's just as likely that they'll torture those living in the first reality (like they did Ignaz Semmelweis) as it is that they'll censor the anti-science or mandate more policies that will lengthen the survival of our species. It's a toss up!

Dr. Sean Mullen wrote a bit about what the WHO is worried about right now: the pressing health threat of loneliness.

Loneliness is a perception. People with lots of friends in real life can feel alone. Conversely, loners with no friends can be quite content. Prior to the pandemic, loneliness was most prevalent in adults over 50. According to an AARP study, 35% of US adults 45+ felt alone. Another study found 43% of 60+. Marginalized groups are lonelier than non-marginalized (surprised?).  

Now add in an airborne virus that you can easily catch from anyone that can exacerbate existing chronic conditions, cause new ones, and send you to an early grave. Apparently WHO wants to solve loneliness but not the virus that has orphaned ~240K US children and killed the equivalent of 400 9/11s. The ‘king’ of viruses that makes everyone sound like their chest is gurgling in the acute phase and a lifelong smoker in later months, that robs them of their prior brainpower and immune system defenses, autonomic nervous system and vascular functioning, is free to run the world with no credit limit. But the WHO is worried about loneliness 🤔 - an increasing trend that now would seem to reflect more people with physical disability who are being discarded by society; and perhaps people who are fighting to keep what health and mobility they have left as the socialites run themselves into the ground. 

“All the lonely people Where do they all come from?”

Hannah Arendt said of loneliness:

"Loneliness is not solitude. Solitude requires being alone whereas loneliness shows itself most sharply in company with others. . . . As Epictetus sees it the lonely man finds himself surrounded by others with whom he cannot establish contact or to whose hostility he is exposed. . . . Solitude can become loneliness; this happens when all by myself I am deserted by my own self. Solitary men have always been in danger of loneliness, when they can no longer find the redeeming grace of companionship to save them from duality and equivocality and doubt. Historically, it seems as though this danger became sufficiently great to be noticed by others and recorded by history only in the nineteenth century. It showed itself clearly when philosophers, for whom alone solitude is a way of life and a condition of work, were no longer content with the fact that 'philosophy is only for the few' and began to insist that nobody 'understands' them. . . . conversely, there is always the chance that a lonely man finds himself and starts the thinking dialogue of solitude" (476-7). 

Maybe the term wasn't around until people lived long enough for enough of them to have time to contemplate and write about their loneliness!

Absolutely, loneliness isn't about being solitary, but about feeling unconnected to others. The deaths and disabilities caused by the pandemic have a massive effect on forcing many into a more solitary life, but also the choice of realities to inhabit have ripped people's friendships and families apart. Anyone living in one reality, and surrounded by people living in another, could easily feel lonely and alienated from the world at large. At this point, even if all leaders, in unison, shone a light on the better path to bring us all back together, it will just provoke people to dig in their heels, like I do anytime a political figure suggests that Covid is over and climate change won't affect us in our lifetime! 

We need another full on enlightenment.