The Real Reason Why Lockdowns are Opposed

I want to talk about the so-called controversy between lockdowns as a strategy to deal with covid19 and personal freedom. I think this is 100% a phony issue. Let me explain. Why everyone in the business of medical care, every epidemiologist, every specialist in viruses tells us: the same thing that the greatest danger in the kind of virus that the coronavirus is has to do with transmission the passage of the disease from someone infected with it to the rest of the population. And that, therefore the best way to deal with this disease once it strikes is to do two things. Number one. Care for the person affected, but even more important is number two, prevent that person from infecting others. And the way you do that is to stop as totally as you can the interaction between the infected person and anyone else they might otherwise come in contact with. That’s what the word quarantine means. You’re to not go to the store, to church, to the concert, to the whatever. The personal party, the family get together, the thanksgiving dinner. It doesn’t matter, because that’s the issue: transmissibility. Okay.

Therefore, the solution that worked in Wuhan, China, where this all began and in all the other countries that have achieved greater success than the United States, what they did, the key to their success was locking down. Stopping the restaurants, the spas, the concert halls, the athletic get-togethers and so on. That’s what does the trick. But, of course, one of the things that gets locked down is the workplace where people gather. As in a restaurant, as in a concert, as in workplaces of various kinds, unless you can set up costly expensive safety measures, social distancing, masks. Everywhere air that is regularly cleaned and circulated and so on. The problem with lockdowns is that they hurt businesses. They hurt the employer because he can’t make money. Because the business is closed. And it hurts the workers, those who depend on wages and salaries from their work. So here’s the solution. Logically, medically appropriate by all means lock downs work.

It’s what’s necessary, but you have to compensate the people who lose their income, the wage earners, the salary earners, and perhaps also the employers if you want to give them a way to get through this experience. And how would you do that?  The answer is simple. You go to where the accumulated wealth is. It’s like any village, that existed through the thousands of years of human history. If you have a flood, if you have a drought, if you have a problem, you go to the storehouses that you’ve set aside as a community and use what you’ve accumulated to get you through the difficult time. That’s exactly what we would do. You use the wealth of society, that which it has accumulated, and distribute it to all the people who’ve lost their income because of the lockdown. Since, the lockdown has been shown to work, and work well, that’s what the Chinese experience shows us. But also in New Zealand, in South Korea, in Taiwan, Cuba, Vietnam. Lockdowns work.

So what then is the opposition? Here we go. The opposition is, that we don’t accumulate wealth in a rational, equitable, appropriate way. We allow some people to have absurd amounts of personal accumulated wealth. Jeffrey Bezos, head of Amazon until recently, 200 billion dollars, you and me wondering how many hundred dollars maybe is still in the savings account. So, if we’re going to do what every community needs to do to save itself, we have to go and get the wealth from where it is. And that’s in the hands of a tiny part of our population. Okay, they’ve enjoyed a really good run accumulating it, and not letting us do that, but now we’re in a life-or-death viral struggle. They have to part with what they’ve already enjoyed for a long time in the name of social survival, but, of course, they don’t want to. They don’t want to give up a nickel. And so, they have to invent an other argument to try to prevent the society from doing what all societies have always done and here’s the made belief argument. “It infringes on our freedom. You shouldn’t lock anything down because it infringes on our freedom. We have to be free to run our business.” What? Think with me for a minute. We deprive people of all kinds of freedoms to help society. If you go through an intersection in your automobile, you must, you are forced to observe the traffic signal. If you go through a red light, a policeman will arrest you or give you a ticket. That’s right. You’re not free to go through that intersection how, when, and where you want. You have to observe the rules, because that’s how we all stay alive in the millions of intersections in our society every day. Right. You know that we likewise force food and drug companies to maintain clean facilities so that what we put into our bodies in the way of food and medicine is safe. Isn’t going to hurt us, our families our children and so on. They’re not free to run their business just any way they want. And if they said they wanted that freedom, the looks we would give them would wilt a flower so that’s what it’s worth. This “you’re abridging my freedom if i can’t go to a restaurant.” That’s a fake, phony argument. It’s a screen behind which is the real reason. Those who have accumulated in their hands or wildly disproportionate concentration of wealth are very worried. Adopt the rational medical appropriate response which would make their wealth carry us through, so that we have an income and can survive to go on with our lives after this disease is over. Don’t be fooled!