Sometimes I hate being the Devil’s Advocate… heh heh heh.

Concerning the Corona Virus… what’s more important, lives or livelihoods? That seems to depend on who you ask.

As the corona smoke slowly begins to settle, as the US covid death count passes 200,000 and begins to slow down and taper off, as the data on the number of permanently closed, family owned and operated Main Street and corporate businesses trickles in and what that reality means to our families and our communities, we find ourselves now entering the next chapter in the ongoing Corona Chaos where we reflect and ask ourselves, which is more important in the “saving” hierarchy, in the greater scheme of things… a family member or the family business? To keep a loved one safe and alive or to save the family business that took 30 years of blood, sweat and love to build? Lord, I feel a conundrum coming on!!

Perhaps by temperament, perhaps by having a boss and being an employee with access to temporary unemployment benefits, or perhaps it’s from being a self-employed business owner/sole-proprietor with “skin in the game” in our neo-liberal, capitalist economy who are now unexpectedly dependent on rainy day emergency savings and government assistance to survive the corona lock down… to save lives or to save livelihoods, everybody’s perspective, everybody’s answer is different. The sudden, indefinite mandated closure of all “non-essential” businesses… please to define “non-essential”. If the uninterrupted operation of my business is absolutely “essential” to the livelihood of myself and my family, who is a health or government official you to say it isn’t? In the greater scheme of things, what’s fair? Whose “self interest” supersedes whose? It seems it’s hard to be objective, let alone fair, with such a subjectively sensitive subject. Welcome to the Corona Conundrum.

And then there is the concurrent, equally important debate… when does the state’s authority, and in some cases, can the state’s authority, supersede our personal, constitutionally guaranteed liberties? And lastly, there is the issue of the health authorities influence, power and credibility, especially the WHO and the global CDC network with their often conflicting corona “guidance”, reliance on faulty Ferguson/Empire College virus modeling and the exposure of their financial conflicts of interest… ties to Big-Pharma, Bill and Melinda, etc, having tainted the trust global society expects from these entities. Is this erring on the side of caution or erring on the side of proprietary pharmaceutical profits? And since when does erring on the side of caution justify the excessive, fear driven over reaction that leads to possible economic calamity for many? We are not even given the option to have that discussion. Instead the decision is forced on us with subliminal “get used to it” messaging. This is unprecedented, as well as “novel”. Only time and investigation will tell as the covid damaged businesses and corporations still standing lawyer up in the aftermath and come looking for blood. And perhaps this writing on the wall is why the WHO recently advised against further economic shut downs despite the rise in covid cases around the globe.

As this is written, 204,000 deaths in the USA have been attributed to covid 19, and according to Yelp, as of August 31st 163,735 businesses have closed due to coronavirus restrictions and 97,966 have indicated they are permanently closed, as in dead, because of covid… a number that is steadily growing since the closures began six months ago. What Yelp’s data does not show is the average number of employees, including owners, of these permanently closed businesses. If I was to venture a not so wild guess leaning toward the low side, let’s go with an average of four persons per dead business, which means 381,864 owners and their employees currently out of work, currently experiencing some form of financial hardship and possibly financial destitution, most likely taking their families along for the stress inducing ride. This early estimate is approaching a 2:1 ratio of livelihoods to lives. What will that ratio look like in January if the unemployment benefits are not continued and the landlords, mortgage lenders and finance companies start demanding payment? Here’s a hint from the Oct. 1st Associated Press, “the number of laid-off workers who say their jobs are gone for good rose from 3.4 million to 3.8 million”, figures they obtained from the just released US Labor Department’s Jobs Report. Sorry for my gallow’s math but that seems to work out to about 18.7 jobs “gone for good” for every covid person gone for good. That’s a lot of livelihoods per life.

And then there’s the effects of stress on our behavior. What’s most interesting is that so many see this as either or, often resorting to conniption fit “shaming” or challenging those who don’t agree and have absolutely no sympathy or compassion for the other’s equally valid, and often fear induced choice. Equally valid choice? For those unconvinced, this will make much more sense as the hard data and reliable numbers on businesses/livelihood’s lost in relation to covid deaths and consensus (?) on virus reality start coming in around early 2021, when we start to see the actual in your face impact on our local communities, maybe even within your family. Ho Ho Ho!… just in time for the Holidays, staring Governor Gavin as Ebenezer Scrooge. That’s when it will really start to get personal… the bankruptcies, the suicides, the evictions, the addiction, the depression and the increasing stress in part due to the corporate media’s 24/7 “deadly disease” fear mongering reminders. 

And for a few others, the economists and social scientists and the insurance entities, it’s about finding that elusive Faustian balance between acceptable cost/benefit casualties without incurring an unacceptable economic disruption to society that only winds up unintentionally escalating the peripheral casualties, both lives and livelihoods, and before you know it, it’s spiraling over the edge we go. Don’t forget, this ain’t over yet. We’re just shifting gears. The speculators, the economists, the insurance companies, the forecasters are all over the place on which direction the corona economic aftermath will go… and the duration. A done deal by the end of 2021 or sometime in 2025? Any subscibers to Seeking Alpha out there? This spontaneous (or perhaps premeditated… next post!) exercise in social engineering has just begun. The Big Data, Big Tech and Big Pharma/Medical Industrial Complex appear to have pulled off a coup of sorts, right out of Naomi’s Shock Doctrine playbook, and are currently calling the shots, at least for the foreseeable future. They seized the the moment they had been patiently planning and waiting for and have temporarily taken over control of sovereign nations through their unwitting health and elected official proxies as they slowly drain the piggy banks of WHO member nations now committed to fund the search/research for the Savior Vaccination that conflicted interests ($$$) such as Bill Gates insists will save us all. Right. Gotta love government funded, fear mongered, “make work”! Fortunately, with the building blowback of righteous indignation due to loss of livelihoods, businesses now forever closed, life as we knew it severely disrupted… their days may be numbered due to (anticipated) civil unrest, legislated transparency and enforced accountability, especially of non-profit, “philanthropic” entities. It might be time to start revoking some corporate charters.

Our current Corona Conundrum really illustrates the need to reconsider the combined power our health and elected officials can have on our lives, seemingly making life changing decisions by the seat of their pants. We now see how easily they can be influenced by constantly changing health “guidance” and political pressure from above. We now see just how little they know about fiscal/economic policies and how they are perhaps insensitive to the economic repercussions their health directives and enforcement have on society at large due to their “save all lives at any cost, damn the economic/social consequences!” bias. Erring on the side of caution is all well and good but there has to be a balance between lives and livelihoods relative to the actual severity, not the anticipated computer “modeled” severity, of a contagious disease. This ain’t Ebola and this was known from the very begining of the pandemic. And it certainly didn’t help that the Trump mis-administration defunded the health agencies responsible for making those decisions. Yes, absolutely, people are dying from contagious covid 19 and will continue to do so… but in cold sober perspective, heart disease, cancer and iatrogenic deaths due to medical errors (something the AMA and CDC would rather not discuss, let alone monitor, as they do other causes of death), as of now, continue to be just a little more “deadly” than shut the economy corona despite America’s fractured response. Yet, we don’t hear a word from the the corporate medical fear media about these even deadlier killers. It seems fear sells a lot of masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, toilet paper and, hate to say it, most likely misplaced hope on a Savior Vaccine. Please to note the abundance of “short” positions placed by speculators who are now losing faith on the vax manufacturers to deliver any time soon.

Health officials are not trained to be concerned about the far reaching consequences of their actions. They are not trained, nor are they paid to have economic foresight. Yet they are suddenly given the authority to recommend and enforce Title 42 super power shut down decisions on local businesses with very little (if any) consideration of the economic repercussions. Human health professionals with contagious disease experience such as those in Taiwan, who has successfully managed several assorted corona outbreaks and did not shut down it’s economy despite it’s proximity to covid origin China (as China continues to keep Taiwan out of the WHO and recently insisted it not have a seat at the WHO C19 advisory table!) have infinitely better human based forecasting ability than any current computer model, period! That Neil Ferguson/Empire College fear monger modeling I will never stop mentioning… GRRR! The bigger picture must be taken into consideration from the very beginning.

Just in! The Economist explores how the pandemic of economic shut downs has increased global poverty, “From Plague to Penury” 9/26 issue… as the wealthiest of the wealthy just keep getting wealthier. How’s that for an exploitive economic model?

As for my self-reliant, critically thinking, vintage flea market community, the flea market economy seems to be rebounding nicely considering the very limited re-openings. While some attendees are being mindful of social distancing and all are wearing mandatory face masks to events, interestingly, most shoppers and vendors seem to favor our pre covid, human hard wired, socializing instincts and are slowly sensing a certain cognitive dissonance, most likely due to the fact that the constant “deadly disease” reminders are getting really old and, for most everyone, not manifesting as the actual on the street reality, i.e., people do not seem to be dropping dead all around us as the Big-Pharma and Communist Chinese propaganda campaigns insisted would happen in order to justify the sudden lock downs… and perhaps manipulate the population into good old Big Data tracking, panic purchasing, etc. How about that sudden slow down of Hong Kong protests just as corona hit China? Coincidental? An exercise in “Surveillance Capitalism” while we’re at it? Why not! Six months into this reactions range from “opps, over reaction” to “WTF, blatant Conspiracy Theory!!”, and less and less, “but, people are dying!” from contagious covid. Yes, they undeniably are… at what looks to be about three times the death rate of a really bad US flu season so far (projection), but far, far from the two million dead the faulty Ferguson model originally forecast for America. How about that. But most importantly, for many, it kinda dings the credibility of these worst case scenario forecasters. And the early hysteria about all those hospital “body bags” (Tedros/WHO, the fear monger in chief?) piled high in every big US/global city… again, cognitive dissonance to the rescue… not quite as commonplace as originally anticipated. Sometimes “opps!” is good.

Consequently, all this questioning about our health authorities credibility seems to be having a slow blowback effect (mentioned above) as more and more people are coming to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe the health authorities and government officials, the “experts”, over reacted by shutting down “non-essential” businesses, by shutting down our normal day our day lives, by shutting down the friggin world… with barely a warning and with the implied, somewhat reassuring sub-messaging that this inconvenience would only be for a month, maybe two. Opps again. We’re now at month six with at least two more to go before this hopefully shows hints of being behind us. Maybe. “Santa Cancels Christmas due to Deadly Disease and Ebenezer Newsom!”? Perhaps… and now that the cracks in the American health care system are blatantly exposed for all the world to see (interesting, my fellow Americans opposed to Single Payer still don’t friggin get it!) as well as Tdump’s awesome incompetence (karmic retribution sure is interesting)… maybe this is the wake up call we need to finally get the for profit, health insurance middleman off our backs and throw the manipulative, exploitive, self-serving and often just plain evil, Medical Industrial Complex down the toilet while we’re at it.

And don’t forget… if Covid don’t kill ya, something else will, guaranteed! We really need to come to realistic terms about the inevitability of death. If I’m not mistaken, we are still mortal beings and Savior Tech with it’s severely limited binary solutions is not going to be changing that anytime soon. Neither will Big-Pharma and neither will the Medical Indusrial Complex who prefer to place profits before people. So why not give death it’s due respect… “death as an ally” as Don Juan/Castaneda would suggest, periodically reminding ourselves of the uncomfortable fact that the Universe (God, Source, Atman etc) does not stop everything, does not shut down the cosmos just to save one life, let alone entire civilizations. Yes, we can manage death, but we can’t stop it. To enjoy and to celebrate the life we’ve been given, as well as the right to die with some dignity in the company of loved ones… count your blessings! Death, just like birth, is the natural state of human affairs. You did read the “Terms and Conditions” just before you were born, yes?

As a reminder, the FME mission… to help create a world that is economically just for all, where greed and exploitation are abolished from “the market”, and just added… where “the Fear Industrial Complex” is legislated to “Fuck Off!” and wiped off the face of Mother Earth. I mean, exploiting a socities hopes and fears for profit, it really doesn’t get much lower than that. Unfortunately, this means the long overdue rethinking of the First Amendment/Free Speech, especially in light of the propaganda and abuse enabled by social media, FaceButt, Twitter, etc. Yes! The long awaited revisions to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that allow these social media giants to escape publisher legal liabity for blatant libelous lies the way their print newspaper peers must. Hmmm, the separation of commercial “corporate person” speech from public citizen speech?… A Glass Steagall Act to separate incendiary speech from “call to action” free speech, no matter the source or the medium it is “published” in?!! Tricky territory indeed. What do you think dear reader, would you like to live in a world like that? Good! And what are you doing to make that a reality? Each and every one of us must do our part. The future is up to us.

“Dismal Dave” Lancon All Rights Reserved Copyright October 2020