Survival of the fittest doesn't mean the strongest survive, it means whomever can best adapt to the conditions of life will survive.
Adapting doesn't mean tolerating what's happening and ignoring it; it means changing when the conditions of life change. So, in a pandemic, it means changing the way we live in order to avoid getting this virus as much as possible. A super easy way to adapt is to wear an N95 whenever leaving the house. With climate, we can adapt by slowing the system, like by cycling or taking the bus instead of driving a car.
Unfortunately policy creators have other plans. According to Dr. Jennifer Grant of the BC CDC,
"We should commit that our children will go to school come hell or high water."
She also said,
"We have to prepare people not only for the harsh environments on earth, but we're even suggesting we might be sending people out into space to live."
The full 48 min. video is here.
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| For the life of me, I can't find the origins of this quote. |
So... schools in space is a thing that's on the horizon??
That's not what adaptation looks like. Forcing sick kids to go to school to infect other kids, all of them without masks, in buildings without well-filtered air, won't make them get used to the harsh conditions and better able to survive or somehow evolve features to beat this pandemic right in front of our eyes. It will make them sickly. When there's a fire, you don't try to get used to it, you move away from it, instinctively. We need to listen to these instincts to avoid the virus as well.
And here's a little common sense from Themme Fatale (6 min.) She explains that we're socially influenced, but if you're out at a public event full of people, you're not going to be surrounded by people who are knowledgable about this virus - they're going to be where it's safe. So the partiers keep other partiers partying. The other faction of society, the compromised and the early adaptors, will be home.
"They're going to be staying home often because they are forced to because at no point did any of the public health information say that it was going to be safe for everybody. There was always an understanding that the vulnerable -- the medically vulnerable, the immune compromised, those with preexisting conditions -- Covid still presented a huge danger for those people. Even people who are out there partying every weekend, who don't give a shit about Covid, are generally willing to admit that much.
And I bring this up for a number of reasons. . . . Taking on this rhetoric has fucked with your own capacity at self-preservation. You have been repeatedly told that there is a group of people that Covid is not safe for, that they are medically vulnerable to it, and they may die, be disabled, or be stuck in their home indefinitely. But you've also been told that that's okay and that you need to live your life.
That kind of messaging is gonna do a couple of things: First of all, it's going to eat away at your compassion for those people because now they are kind the thing standing in the way of you getting to have a good time. You get to either have your life OR look after those people. And it also distances them from you in your own mind, right, because your life is important, your life is worthy of protection. If this were really a problem they'd tell you, so those people, they must not be very important, they must be other, they must be something else. You've got this growing distance in your mind. . . .
Eventually those people, that can be you. We have a fucking mountain of evidence these days that Covid damages immune systems and that damage is cumulative. Not only can it damage every single organ system in the body, but particularly we're seeing immune damage after Covid infection, even mild infection. And we have this deeply ironic situation where we have more and more of the 'Covid's over woo don't care' group into the medically compromised, vulnerable, immune compromised group, but they don't know it because they're so used to subtly dehumanizing this group that they couldn't imagine that could possibly be them."
Her big question; If you're in the "Covid is over because it only affects the immune compromised" group, what happens if you become immune compromised???
"Do you think that this group of people that you are surrounded by at the moment are going to suddenly change their minds about this group, or will you just become another disposable person to them? If all you have is self-preservation, just know that the care for disabled people that you set up today, that's the net that's going to catch you eventually. . . . It's a vascular illness. You don't have nerves where it's hurting you. . . . Look for feeling run down, getting sick more often and staying sick for longer."
And she makes a comparison I've made over and over and over to try to convince people that it's possible to legislate giving-a-shit type behaviour:
"We don't let people drive drink these days because of the risk to others on the road. And we don't smoke indoors at restaurants or bars. You're expected to wear a seatbelt. There are all kinds of ways that we have accepted modifying our behaviour to take care of all of us. We have the tools to get ourselves out of this; all that's lacking now is the political will."
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Well-fitting N95s reduce transmission by about 95% - even higher if everyone wears them; cleaning the air helps by about 30%, and vaccines reduces hospitalization by 60%. Put together, we could ALL be 99.999% protected from this mess and more! We don't have to get sick every winter; it's a choice.
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