Thread by @EmpireinWinter

Sunday a.m.: that rare, dive into reflection h/t @TheRealSPK...
'Is the response to COVID19 a restriction on unnecessary travel, increased work from home, & masking up for the grocery store? Or...a massive economic reorganisation...'
docs.google.com/document/d/1xg…

'that accelerates environ. destruction, exacerbates global famine, causes unnecessary deaths, erodes human rights & labour protections, instigates community fracture, destroys stored wealth, rapidly advances the surveillance state, & sparks a prolonged globalised depression?'

'Fear is distorting our perception of this threat. This is dangerous for democracy. It always has been. In calmer times we seek rational, informed debate. Where fear prevails, we seek psychological and social comfort.'

'We achieve these comforts through compartmentalisation and tribalism. We block out things we don’t want to think about and we appeal to those around us who agree with us. And so this COVID19 debate has become compartmentalised to minutiae.'

'Does HCQ work? Did the virus start in China? Is it the flu or something else? Should we wear masks? How accurate is PCR testing? Are non-maskers dumb? We take comfort in resolving these tangentially important data points...'

'rallying our troops around our domain expertise w/o ever having to think about the bigger picture. Many absolve themselves of any responsibility for intellectual inquiry w/ definitive statements such as “listen to the experts,” or my current favorite, “I believe in science.''

Which scientific consensus?
'That there is a virus we have not studied before and now we are studying it? That it is a coronavirus? That it does things that viruses do?....We are being faced with a series of behavioural & structural changes across our planet'

'a remaking of the economic map, and the mass erasure of human and environmental rights. What scientific consensus is driving that? “I believe in science,” is a highly problematic proclamation. It’s like some magical banhammer that is supposed to end all debate.'

'Did scientific consensus mandate we close down borders and small shops, but fly in temporary workers from global COVID19 hotspots to build tar sands and fracking pipelines? While Canadian oil workers sit at home collecting CERB? And environmental regulations are put on hold?'

'Or was it a series of policy choices made by politicians and rolled out with a smirking tip-of-the-hat to science and health authorities?'

'In our scale of virus threats, the deadliest of all viruses, the fictitious Andromeda Strain - the sentient alien virus that kills everyone it touches - will represent the absolute extreme of what a deadly virus could be.'

'At the other end of our threat scale, let’s put beneficial phages – viruses that regulate bacteria in our bodies and actually keep us alive.'

'So if our virus threat scale extends from “intelligently seeks out, attacks, and kills everyone on the planet” to “lives inside us and keeps us from dying” we can start to locate where exactly SARS-COV2 fits along that continuum of threats.'

'If we want to be generous with our use of the term ‘scientific consensus’ in the context of this specific viral threat, then let’s grant that both science and public policy should, in the face of pandemic threats, adhere strongly to the precautionary principle.'

'That is, where the science is unsettled, public policy should assume the worst might happen. if Sars-Cov2 were in fact aerosol Ebola, and everyone on the planet caught it, and we had no immunity at all, and the strain was the most aggressive of the identified Ebola strains'

'and we ignored the fundamental rules of how viruses work, and how herd immunity forms, well then, 5.4 billion of us would likely die. This is as close to the Andromeda Strain as we can get - if we squint with intention.'

An excerpt from:
'There's a Poison Goin' On, by @TheRealSPK
docs.google.com/document/d/1xg…