AIER >> Daily Economy >> History >> Healthcare >> Crisis
I was sitting in the green room in a Manhattan television studio on the day that the storm seemed to hit. It was Thursday, March 12, 2020, and I was waiting anxiously for a TV appearance, hoping that the trains wouldn’t shut down before I could leave the city. The trains never did shut but half of everything else did.
On this day, everyone knew what was coming. There was disease panic in the air, fomented mostly by the media and political figures. A month earlier, the idea of lockdown was unthinkable, but now it seemed like it could happen, at any moment.
A thin, wise-looking bearded man with Freud-style glasses sat down across from me, having just left the studio. He was there to catch his breath following his interview but he looked deeply troubled.
“There is fear in the air,” I said, breaking the silence.
“Madness is all around us. The public is adopting a personality disorder I’ve been treating my whole career.”
“What is it that you do?” I asked.
“I’m a practicing psychiatrist who specializes in anxiety disorders, paranoid delusions, and irrational fear. I’ve been treating this in individuals as a specialist. It’s hard enough-- excerpt, rest at link above --
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
Eventually, people have and do come to their senses, but it is as Mackay said: people “go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
One has to wonder how much damage will be done by the time enough people recover their sense, one by one.....
“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent people.” ― George Orwell
The most extreme examples of Portland and Seattle will be prolonged as the local authorities are actively encouraging it.
In places that do not, like most places here in Texas, the madness is dampened - just look at the shooting in Austin as an example of 'discouragement' in rioting or illegal protests.
Snowflakes have as yet to realize there are consequences of placing oneself in harm's way. The results can be painful and more aware people already know this, which is why only idiots march.
My own answer is no. Guidance is fine. Voluntary self-isolation is fine, and strongly advisable for the more vulnerable. Most of them will do it by choice. But coercion is not fine. There is no moral or principled justification for it. Lord Sumpton
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
"Madness" is a human "thing". At times demagogues in government or media fan the flames but Covid-19 is just the current obsession. There were obsessions before Covid and there will be more after Covid.
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Mon Jul 27, 2020 2:22 pm
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