Thread by @sunnshiiny

Whomever is promoting only 5 days of isolation is endangering public health. It isn’t safe. The virus is still shed after day 5.

From what I remember, CDC made those recommendations for healthcare workers so that healthcare wouldn’t collapse in on itself with absent sick staff.

https://twitter.com/bmj_latest/status/1482412374418206726

It wasn’t meant to be applied to all employment situations. Since healthcare is such a skill dependent service, absenteeism could collapse the system keeping people alive during an omicron outbreak.

Employers capitalized on this recommendation to expand it to all professions.

But grocery workers, truck drivers, utility workers, sanitation workers and most other essential positions can be more easily replaced during omicron infection and isolating staff.

The recommendation was never meant to cover all employment positions.

Why do bank tellers, food delivery drivers, restaurant servers or accountants need to return to work in 5 days?

The answer is they don’t.

For public health & safety it’s better to permit those who get ill to recover fully from their infection & ensure the virus is not shed.

But that impacts employers profits. So those employers exploited the specific CDC recommendations to permit still shedding Covid healthcare workers to return to work.

Politicians across the continent were lobbied to extend this policy to all infected workers.

And the disaster hoped to be avoided by making exceptions for healthcare workers with specialized skills taking years to develop is ensured to become our future.

Don’t let anyone tell you that wealthy employers don’t have a firm grip on policy makers by the throat.

It couldn’t be more obvious with this decision.

Even left progressive and centrist governments have changed their policies to fit the rich and powerful’s agenda. Focus on the economy.

People elected to protect the public’s wellbeing are kowtowing to demands for profits.

I hope this realization gets the public to start paying attention to politics and the people who make life and death decisions that impacts them directly.

Not one is willing to challenge whatever threats being made from big corporations whose only priority is making money.

Our healthcare system is in imminent collapse. As omicron infects more people, the available healthcare workers will deplete. Some will come back still sick. Some will quit in exhaustion. Many will develop PTSD and become mentally and physically overwhelmed.

All created by employers demanding their non medical workers return to work after a 5 day isolation and recovery period to continue to spread omicron amongst their coworkers and customers.

It’s not capitalism that creates people who don’t care who lives or dies as long as they continue to make money. It’s people without regard for fellow human beings.

Those people have always existed.

Whether it was Roman or Greek slave owners, Dark Ages warlords, Feudalist nobles and monarchs, or wealthy merchants and aristocrats; people without mercy for other human beings have forced the slaves, servants and employed to carry in despite danger to their health & safety.

To eliminate the problem with wealthy employers sacrificing public health for profits, only one two options are apparent.

We could continue to die and develop life long Covid complications until the population is depleted so much workers actually have the upper hand in wages.

This is what happened during the Black Death or Bubonic Plague of the Middle Ages. One third to one half of the European population succumbed to the Black Death. history.com/topics/middle-…

But it took a few hundred years to produce a middle class and a lot more suffering. Workers didn’t rally gain much ground until the late 19th/early 20th century with the labour movement. That’s 500 years before significant change was achieved.

lee.k12.nc.us/cms/lib03/NC01…

Or we could do away with industrial capitalists all together. Most of us dedicate 40-45 years of our life to making other people incredibly wealthy while we scrape by.

The powers that be want to assert dominance, control and wield all political, economic and social power.

Like it was before the Bubonic Plague. Funny that another global pestilence is once again the at the apex of change in our heavily biased system.

Do we deserve freedom and liberty? Not if we aren’t willing to put some effort into maintaining it.

Five days Omicron Covid isolation & recovery is insufficient.

The people in a democracy hold the power. Not the wealthy oligarchs. But only if they use their power as a united front.

Putting our petty differences aside allows us to demand adequate isolation and recovery.

We can be a discoordinated bunch of competing individualists (libertarians) or we can choose to push back on governments and employers who demand we put our children and ourselves at risk to make them wealthier & preserve the economy, at the expense of ourselves.

There is more at stake than paying your mortgage and car payments.

Subtle incremental insidious changes demanded by the wealth class have gradually moved the public from grateful interconnected and interdependent citizens to individualistic selfish, avaricious egoists.

Two years ago you wouldn’t have wished for the demise of anti vaxxers. But wishing death upon them has become a common rant on Twitter. Concern for human life, compassion and empathy have been removed. Exactly as described in documentation of the Bubonic Plague.

Families and communities divided. Self preservation at the forefront. Polarization of the commons like we have never experienced before in Canada. Abandonment of social and political norms, ethics and morals and adoption of utilitarian consequentialism.

That’s what happens when societies collapse. We do this to ourselves instead of uniting in purpose.

Yes there is a virus running havoc. But why is the virus running havoc? Because politicians are doing little to mitigate its consequences. Yes there has been economic assistance.

But it’s undermined by regional politicians who claw back benefits, compromise healthcare workers and endanger school children in the effort to preserve their sanity and mental health. Many of these kids are terrified attending school.

CBC announced today that children will develop Covid infections. The effort is to slow the rate at which that happens. Not prevent it from happening.

Are you ok with the fact govts are sacrificing our children’s health & wellbeing so their parents can work?

If you are not, what are you going to do about it. Because bitching about it on Twitter isn’t going to get leaders to change their minds.

Just like adopting a five day isolation and recovery period for children and adults is not going to help eliminate omicron Covid.

It’s only going to permit more infections and for people to physically and mentally exhaust themselves trying to return to work when they’re still too sick to do that safely.

We don’t need to obey commands to sacrifice our lives for the wealthiest’s profits.

We don’t. We can choose to say no. We will not send our children into certain contagion. We will not risk life and death to keep the wealthy in profits.

But I doubt we will.

This bargain has existed for millennia, not just centuries.

The commons is as dependent upon the wealthy for sustenance as much as they are for continued dominance.

It’s us who keeps them in place. We bitch and whine about the plight of life, but we do nothing to change it. We blindly obey commands to risk everything we love.

It is times like these that it becomes obvious how little we have strayed from herd animal status. Like a pack of wolves, or zebras we blindly obey the alpha. We put no thought into whether the alpha is deserving of loyalty or obedience. We haven’t escaped our herd instincts.

We continue to demonstrate over and over again that we will jump off cliffs like lemmings or run through crocodile infested rivers like water buffalo, when given the opportunity to choose otherwise is presented.

We could reject the leaders who demand our compliance to sacrifice ourselves and our children. But we don’t. Instead we comply. Complaining about the conditions, but making no effort to prevent cliff jumping or deaths of others to predators as we protect only ourselves.

Our social status as a herd member is keeping us from acting like evolved human beings and keeping us dwelling among the most foolish of mammals; pack mentality.

The world is dominated by entitled narcissistic wealthy men. It has been for millennia.

To move beyond that model of existence, we would need to act on our humanity and use the frontal lobe to develop a new way to form societies while also meeting our instinctual social needs.

It would be a lot of work.

We don’t organize to eradicate the power and control of toxic leaders because we prefer to be told what to do rather than working together to build a system beneficial to all. And I’m not talking about Marxism. Just a better social and economic system.

While zebras all look the same to us, each one has its own mind, body and personality. Do you think any of them charging through predator infested rivers think about the ones who die so their life is preserved? I don’t. Even if it’s their closest sibling.

They just keep running and relax when they get to the other side. There’s no thought process in survival. You just do what’s necessary to survive yourself. Grief is replaced with relief you’re still alive.

That’s the stage we are at in society.

We’ve devolved into individuals seeking self preservation, even if it means sacrificing others. Even others we love.

We are no better than zebras and other herd social mammals.

The people in power know how to trigger those responses. By continually putting our lives at threat.

We aren’t intelligent enough to be compared to wild herds.

We’re sheep herded by dogs (politicians) towards predetermined destinations. We line up for sheering or slaughter. Never once questioning why the barking and nippy dog is so pushy. We just follow the herd.

I’m tired of being a sheep. A domesticated herd animal exploited for wool and meat.

I prefer to think of myself as a human being smart enough to recognize slaughter isn’t worth any social status. I don’t care what I lose in status. I want my life and the ability to live it.

Stop obeying commands to sacrifice your life for wealthy profiteers.

Nothing will stop maniacal narcissists but the word “no.”

I will not put everyone I love at risk to maintain my social status. Use the frontal lobe and not the brain stem to make decisions.