As the pandemic spread across the world, unprecedented lockdowns followed. Now, as many of those countries are in the early weeks of lifting restrictions, we see signs of what may be the start of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. And we cannot rule out a second wave of lockdowns.
The spread of the viral pandemic resulted in one country after another beginning the process of shutting down its society. It began in Asia, spread to Europe, then to North America and across much of the rest of the world. By early April, half of humanity was living under lockdown.
The lockdowns were incredibly controversial. This time period will be seared into the collective human memory for as long as we all live. Its significance to our societies, our economies, our political systems and our own individual experiences cannot be overstated.
People have grown tired of the lockdowns, and understandably so. But business leaders and politicians feel worried about the economy most of all, and want to reopen in order to revive the economy.
Countries in Asia began the process of lifting the lockdowns last month. With the earliest cases of the pandemic and some of the more effective means of handling it, everyone was keeping a close eye on these countries as they emerged from restrictions.
South Korea marked the ending of the most strict social distancing measures last week. Within days, numbers of the infected began to spike. The spike in South Korea’s numbers resulted entirely from one man’s night out going to clubs. South Korean President Moon Jae-in warned Koreans to “brace for the pandemic’s second wave.”
The Chinese province of Wuhan, where the COVID19 outbreak first began and where the lockdown ended the previous month, experienced its first cluster of new infections.
Iran – one of the early epicentres of the epidemic – had lifted its lockdown. But on May 10, Iran put a region of the country under a second lockdown after a sharp increase of cases in the province.
Lebanon, after emerging from the virus and the restrictions nearly two weeks ago, has put the entire country again under a lockdown as infections started to spike. Just ten days after reopening, Lebanon announced a four-day lockdown of the country, prompting grocery stores to once again be quickly emptied of essential items. This is all taking place in the midst of the country experiencing a brutal economic and financial crisis, one which began prior to the pandemic, and resulted in massive protests and social unrest that began late last year and continued even in the midst of the pandemic, as hunger and desperation spread. (Meanwhile, many Americans were protesting because they want haircuts, to go golfing, and for their favourite restaurants to be opened again.)
Europe followed Asia’s example in the lifting of restrictions and ending of lockdowns. This is a slow process that looks different in different countries. Ultimately, however, it follows the same course of slowly removing restrictions and opening public spaces, schools, businesses and borders, and incrementally easing social distancing measures.
At the start of April, virtually all of Europe except for Sweden was under lockdown. By the second week of May, most of the continent had started easing restrictions. The United Kingdom was the only large European country to not be easing (as it was one of the last to impose a lockdown).
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned about proceeding “extremely carefully” in seeking to emerge from the lockdowns in order to avoid another spike in infections.
“The risk of returning to lockdown remains very real if countries do not manage the transition extremely carefully and in a planned approach.” – WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
“If lockdown measures are lifted too quickly, the virus can take off.” – Maria Ban Kerkhove, WHO epidemiologist
Within days of Germany starting the process of easing restrictions, cases began to spike. Not only the largest country in Europe (by population, economic weight and political power), Germany is also one of the more successful models of countries in dealing with the pandemic. Despite its size, deaths from the virus in Germany were fractions of those witnessed in Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and France. Thus, with German infection rates starting to increase, fears grow of a second wave.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned, “We always have to be aware that we are still at the beginning of the pandemic… And there’s still a long way in dealing with this virus in front of us.”
The United States, with the most known cases of COVID19 in the world, has witnessed many individual states begin to reopen their societies in the past weeks. As businesses opened and people started to go to public places, infection rates began to spike in multiple U.S. states. The actual effects of reopening will take weeks to know, however. Though various official models suggest that we can expect a spike in cases and deaths over the coming weeks as a result.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of the leading experts in the fight against COVID19 in the United States, warned on May 12 that if U.S. states reopened too quickly and ignored guidelines from public health authorities, “you will trigger an outbreak that you might not be able to control,” which would lead “to some suffering and death that could be avoided.” But, he added, “that could even set you back on the road to try to get economic recovery.” Doing so, he added, “could almost turn the clock back rather than going forward.”
A research paper from a Harvard economist examined the past Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, looking at the various successes and failures of lockdowns and openings. He concluded that an assortment of restrictions and lockdowns failed to save as many lives in the past because the duration of the lockdowns was for too short a period: four weeks (one month), on average. The lesson from this, he concluded, was that restrictions and lockdowns “have to be maintained for substantially longer than a few weeks. Most likely, 12 weeks work much better than 4-6 weeks.”
People have entered into a state of mental lockdown. Many have shut down to the overconsumption of information and simply grasp onto the hope that things seem to be opening and that, therefore, the worst is behind us and the future is simply a slow decline from present extremes. This is a very hopeful – and one might say naive – perspective. It is fine to hope for miracles, or even to wish them into being, but misguided to plan for them.
Instead, we should mentally prepare ourselves for a second wave of the pandemic and the potential for future lockdowns as a result. South Korea and Germany are among the most successful and advanced nations in dealing with the pandemic, and when their leaders are saying to “brace for the pandemic’s second wave” and that “we are still at the beginning,” we should take these claims seriously.
We are still in the early stages and months of this pandemic and in understanding the virus itself, so nothing can be said of the near and medium-term future with any certainty. Well, except for one thing: the virus is here now.
“Exactly how long remains to be seen… It’s going to be a matter of managing it over months to a couple of years. It’s not a matter of getting past the peak, as some people seem to believe.” – Marc Lipsitch, infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health
One wave of lockdowns and social distancing is not going to be enough in the long term. Thus, it is important to manage our expectations and understandings. The virus comes in waves and so we must become like liquid, more able to adapt to the contours of the wave and outlast its peaks and crashes.
Our societies must also become more adaptive. This means that we will need to be more willing to spend and support large segments of the population for extended durations of time. If our politicians and leaders do not meet these standards, widespread (unnecessary) suffering will result. But we can and we must adapt to the necessities and realities of the pandemic.
The pandemic does not have to be hopeless. We can and will get through this. But it is a test of our society and our civilization as to how we get through it. Do we prioritize reopening economies or do we prioritize keeping people safe? If we maintain or return to lockdowns, how do we address and meet the needs of the population confined to their homes? How do we meet the needs of those who don’t have the option to stay home?
There is hope in how we answer these questions and how we move forward through the pandemic and emerge from it. But it is important to not waste our hope on the empty notions that this is over or near its end. We are still in the beginning. There is more to come. Prepare yourselves mentally, arm yourselves intellectually, and plan accordingly.
Put your hope in the right places. But plan according to reality. Yes, we all want haircuts and to spend time with our friends and go out for a drink (or ten). But if the cost of that is to see tens of thousands more infections and thousands more deaths, I can make peace with some out-of-control hair. This “sacrifice” is nothing compared to the lives that will be sacrificed from reopening too early.
This is still the beginning. Plan accordingly.
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Here is a kicker for you regarding the phrase “conspiracy theory:”
“If we remove all political or emotional connotations from the word, “conspiracy’ and remove all legal definitions aside, “conspiracy ” is just a convoluted way of saying, “planning” to do something.
And a conspiracy by that definition includes just one person planning something and then getting others on board, so “conspiracies” are literally happening all the time by this very, VERY loose definition.”
Does that clear up the confusion regarding what a conspiracy is now? It is just a plan, that is it. Planning for exercises is by this loose definition a plan. The government’s “plan” to vaccinate everyone regardless of the safety of these vaccines, and to mandate mass-masking is a “plan,” the ‘plan’ to downplay the flu and influenza is a ‘plan’, ahem, ‘conspiracy.’ The sequence of both natural and man-made events are all ‘plans’ – albeit with a little chaos and unpredictability in there for good measure.
So ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’ by this definition include anyone who studied historical, political, and economic events – including yourself. You are conspiracy theorist – just the type the government and corporations would love to hire and work with, since you buy their official narrative, hook, line and sinker.
It’s funny how all your conspiracy theorists are so full of accusations about me personally, and all assume you know what my views and understandings are. As you all always seem to repeat each other like parrots, claiming that I “buy their official narrative, hook, like and sinker.”
It’s kind of a sad, deluded world you all live in where there is no room for using actual legitimate, official and otherwise respected resources to gather information which – when collected and analyzed critically – can come to conclusions and observations that are far from the “official narrative.”
For example, in studying the world of economic and financial diplomacy and governance, I heavily read the financial press, the business press, and the main international newspapers. I know you conspiracy theorists think this means that I am being duped (or complicit) with the evil alien lizard conspirators (or whatever mystical form they take this week), but when I gather all the info I come to radically different conclusions than the typical ideology found in the pages of those papers.
That’s actually how research is done. You collect data, information, evidence; you review and analyze, and then you come to conclusions and observations based upon all the data and information.
It’s actually quite a useful process. And every different from the conspiracy theorist version, which begins with pretending they already know the truth of any and all events and issues everywhere and anytime (hot tip: it’s all “a conspiracy”, the end), and then instead of using any legitimate sources, they simply google or youtube things that support their pre-determined ideological vision of reality. And then when they find Joe Blo’s blog and Jane Blowhard’s youtube channel who simply repeat things they’ve heard (or made up) somewhere, reaffirming whatever conspiratorial worldview you have, then you all are comfortably able to reject any and all other sources of information.
It’s as if you all are so mentally fragile that if you read a source of information that didn’t automatically adhere to your warped religious views, then you could immediately be brainwashed and turned into sheep (as if you all already aren’t the conspiracy theory sheeple).
So instead you accuse me of being brainwashed or of only adhering to the elite view of everything simply because I know how to do actual research, and because I read newspapers and official sources and documents instead of making shit up.
Listen, I know how this all works. Remember, I used to be trapped in the conspiracy theory mindset and worldview (when I was in my late teens and was not fully mentally developed), and so I know that when I wrote something about an issue (didn’t matter if I actually had any real knowledge of it or not), but if I took a controversial, contrarian, conspiratorial line about a subject, it really didn’t matter where the information came from, if I completely made up, if my interpretation was completely wrong, so long as you blame “the globalists” or mention “new world order” or something like this, then all sorts of people are gonna believe any shit you say. Doesn’t matter. Conspiracy theorists, while always making claims of “do your research” or “open your mind” are the most closed-minded and research-incapable people I have come across.
And it’s funny, because the more I have learned and gained in knowledge, the more I get rejected and attacked by conspiracy theorists.
What does it say about your cult that you attack people who seek knowledge that doesn’t simply support your extremist religious/belief system?
It’s sad, and scary.
And hey, as we’ve seen on this blog’s comments, whenever confronted with challenges to your belief system, you can always start making up your own definitions to words (as now “conspiracy theory” according to you simply means anything you want it to mean: research, planning, thinking, whatever you want that suits your purposes of your belief system), or, you can simply pretend that you are too enlightened to be bogged down with things like facts, evidence and sources. Instead, just lecture me about “symbols” and “intuition.”
Listen, I am not opposed to using intuition or creative thinking when it comes to assessing and understanding information and the world. They are actually quite useful. But that’s not what you conspiracy theorists do when you lecture me on these things. For intuition or instinct and imagination to be useful, they actually have to be built on solid foundations.
For example, I would find a speculative discussion by epidemiologists on the pandemic to be quite fascinating. They could discuss where they think things will go, how they view the pandemic as having affected their profession, to discuss things beyond the science itself and focus more on their own beliefs and sense of meaning, etc.
But if Joe YouTube tells me that I should hold his “instincts” about the pandemic in high esteem, even though he has zero knowledge about science, epidemiology, pandemics, and anything, really, what value do his “instincts” have? None.
Even good creative writing and fiction is built on stronger foundations of reality. Whether it’s science fiction or fantasy or whatever, there are elements of truths, of reflections on human nature, on society, on real things(!), from which the intuitive, creative and speculative processes flow.
So, if instinct, creativity and intuition are to be useful in assessing the world and reality, you can’t just jump to these processes from nothing, you actually need to build a knowledge foundation (based in reality, not your fantasy world), and then your insights are more informed, your instincts have grounding, your creative insights are more guided.
Otherwise, if you do what all y’all seem to be doing, you just make up whatever you want, denounce any and everyone else for not having as low standards as you, and then expecting to be taken seriously when you just make up your version of reality on the fly, and then say things like, “you’re just trapped in the intellectualism religion of elite opinion that has brainwashed the masses by refusing to acknowledge the occult symbolism of the great conspiracy that rules us all.”
Okay, yeah, religious zealotry is a lot of fun.
And all of you also throw back the religious term at me. But the thing is, I am attached to a process, not an ideology or belief system. I adhere to a process of research, of a wide collection and organization of newspapers, academic journals, declassified documents, official reports, books, memoirs, histories, etc., and then I go through, analyze, document, develop a proper timeline of events, key players, etc., then I am able to draw conclusions and come up with a coherent analysis.
Conspiracy theorists (and I know this because I used to be one) begin with a conclusion and then seek out any “sources” (no matter how illegitimate) to support their belief system. And as a bonus they then demonize any and all other sources and viewpoints as being part of the conspiracy, or duped by the conspiracy. This way, they can feel comfortable in their delusions, continue to refuse to actually ever learn anything or have to challenge their belief system, and continue to rely upon illegitimate sources.
It’s funny how when I was deep in the conspiracy theory world, back about a decade ago or so, it was still common to at least have an original basis in documented fact or legitimate sources. Like, it was still a newspaper article, a government document or some other source that would provide the initial evidence for the conspiracy theory to take off, or at least around which a different conspiratorial interpretation could be made. But now, apparently, you can’t even have an original source (because all actual legitimate sources are considered unusable and are demonized). So now it’s basically just pure imagination and made up fantasy land nonsense.
And I’m the one being told to “open my mind” to other views. Funny how I am ideologically opposed to virtually every newspaper I read, yet I don’t end up being brainwashed. So that means every time I read an article in the Financial Times, or the Wall Street Journal, I don’t share the same worldview, or priorities as the authors or publisher, but I can still use the information they provide (without their ideological slant). Because when you collect enough information from enough sources, the overall picture changes, the collected information rarely adds up to the common ideology or belief system found in the sources themselves.
But that’s called research, I wouldn’t expect any of you to understand. After all, you all already know everything, right?
Me? I challenge my worldview every time I read a newspaper or source. I’ve read thousands upon thousands of government documents covering decades of foreign and economic policy by the US. I may not agree with the worldview or priorities of those who wrote or were quoted in those documents, but I use them as valuable resources, as proof of what the ruling class actually does think and do (because they very often say it! it’s not such a grand conspiratorial secret, it’s a systemic thing).
I’d much prefer to use Henry Kissinger’s own words to use against him, rather than referring to some obscure blog or conspiratorial interpretation where I prattle on about “Kissinger wants world government UN troops to kill you and vaccinate your babies with microchips blah blah”. No, sorry, but the documented record is actually very damning, very revealing, and much more useful to challenge power with their own words rather than just making up whatever you want and resorting to demonization and vilification.
The documented record has so much of use and so much insight, but you all wouldn’t know that because you just demonize without actual investigation, and then sit assured in your own self-deluded confidence.
I don’t need to rely on resources that adhere to my belief system or worldview. I know what my belief system is, as it evolves, because it evolves from my wider understanding of the world built upon years of dedicated research, investigation and study.
I’m sorry that I don’t take five minute of each day to just make up reality in a way that suits my belief system, and then only seek out resources that adhere to my predetermined worldview.
I challenge my views with every resource I read. Conspiracy theorists simply demonize all resources that don’t adhere to their worldview and belief system. And when this is pointed out they simply reject the very concept of research, of reason, of logic, I’m sure soon they will even demonize reading itself.
Right. And I’m supposed to take that seriously.
Good luck.
Andrew:
“…my entire youth and young adult life shaped by transformative geopolitical events from 9/11, to the global financial crisis, to the global uprisings of 2011, to the coronavirus pandemic,…” -from your response regarding where your funding came from and other ‘accusations.’
If the events of the last two decades do not reek of insanity, and you refuse to examine 9/11, the ultimate geopolitical and tectonic event that shaped the last two decades, then you obviously have not been paying attention. The 9/11 event was the start button for everything else you listed thereafter. Without the 9/11 event, and an appreciation of every aspect of the event, whether political, economic, financial, environmental, esoteric, and especially synchronous, one is missing huge and significant gaps in understanding the insanity that is unfolding right now at this moment.
Without an in-depth understanding of the real perpetrators of 9/11 who left their signatures all over the event in many HIDDEN ways, you will be digging a deeper pit of insanity and madness for yourself via purely intellectual endeavours. There are too many coincidences regarding the 9/11 event, many which I will not go into until you take some initiative in the matter to at least, as a start – answer the questions posed by the readers regarding 9/11.
You admitted that 9/11 and thereafter are life-changing and life-altering events. Perhaps it is time to do a serious, non-discriminant, non-prejudicial analysis of the entire situation, including the many coincidences, especially those of numeric and occult significance. Remember, the “Age of Reason” brought us the 9/11 event, so you need to seriously study it with no prejudice towards where the evidence leads. Start with the ‘scientific’ analysis if you will, then go into the occult and hidden aspect of 9/11 which are riddled throughout the entire WTC complex, its surrounding areas of Manhattan, and its timing of its construction, and its eventual demolition and every little detail.
Once you understood the insanity that is 9/11, only then will you appreciate why this coronavirus pandemic is put into serious doubt and mistrust from other analysts (‘conspiracy theorists’ as you like to call them, to easily dismiss their evidence, even if trivial, to YOU, not to those who in charge of the game-plan, who pull the puppet’s strings).