You are a Statistic: Public vs Individual Healthcare

Originally published on RootsToSky.com in October 2021

You are a statistic. In a pandemic, what governments are concerned with are statistical trends — not individuals. Community. When looking at a crisis from a public health infectious disease lens (read: community health, which a pandemic is), lives trump personal freedoms. To expect anything otherwise from any government, is to expect an apple to be an orange. They aren’t concerned with your (often hyper-privileged western libertarian) needs.

Wikipedia begins its discussion of eugenics with “Eugenics is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or promoting those judged to be superior.”

So while some may have rationalized the pandemic as “survival of the fittest”/natural selection aka “natural immunity”, it is arguably purely eugenics. What I instead see is a failure to recognize that third world countries are begging for vaccines meanwhile first world countries are stockpiling them because they work. Which is inherently classist/racist. Because as medical professionals repeat: “natural immunity = deaths”… and someone else’s death is not your choice.

I’m all too aware that death is a part of life and maybe — just maybe humanity itself needs a natural population culling because we are killing the planet via overconsumption — but this boils down to capitalist exploitation rather than pure population growth [references incoming]. We not superior to the forces of nature.

These pandemic rationalizations do not factor that:
i) with our inherently top-down society, this results in absolutely disproportionate deaths that favour the ruling class (yep — complaining about freedoms — while wearing clothes made by someone paid pennies by a multinational conglomerate because of built in supra-governmental regulatory tax evasion aka capitalist neoliberal “globalization”)… (I just wanted to say all that, it felt good); and
ii) we are evolving as a society where we have effective tools to prevent needless deaths and by not distributing them evenly at what point do we call this economic genocide?

The question we are attempting to answer is: do public health mandates encourage more mass vaccinations and thus reduced ICU occupancy: yes or no? If yes then regardless it is in the public’s best interest as a whole to proceed with them, even if they tread into individual freedoms. Because you are a statistic, not a unique snowflake. Not in a global pandemic. You will be squeezed. We all will be. We are a human community, this is a fact. And only time will give us this answer, in hindsight.

So yes absolutely, full support that our system can do better — scream, protest, raise our voicez so that just as much public government funding goes into better antivirals, ventilation, TCM research trials, supplements trials/send free Vitamin D (?) to every home, anything proven to work and reduce ICU admissions to take the burden off the hospitals.

But keep in mind — whether in TCM or orthomolecular (supplemental) medicine — literally nothing can prevent a global pandemic with a specifically identified, genetically sequenced single causal factor: a virus — the only, isolated cause of the COVID-19 disease and public health crisis… like a vaccine.

This is modern biomedicine at its absolute best: extraordinarily powerful in finding a single identifiable pathogenic cause of disease to prevent public death trends. While “Eastern” medicine looks after the complex, wholistic ecosystem within the individual.

I’ve dedicated my life to helping others from both approaches… and the vaccine is the most evidenced-based, fastest, easiest way to prevent my friends and their families from drowning in the hospital.

Community.

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/998843

Yes, if our stubborn elder family members refuse a vaccine that is their choice. But keep in mind that certainly the medications they are likely currently taking are causing far worse side effects than any vaccine ever would. And it’s not just about them — it’s about who they might also have been in contact with — depending on their age group, taking down a nursing home. High triglycerides are not contagious. What happens if it was you who were the one to be the one who infected them — and subsequently killed them? Can you not feel that?

And then our century of modern healthcare workers bettering our species, enabling others who may have died, to thrive — who may then go on to do great things because smallpox or polio didn’t destroy everyone they love so ruthlessly, so discompassionately, so cold, so effective.

Taking all this into consideration, this is unfortunate and complex but keeping in mind that:

1. This is a pandemic with an end/normalization point (herd immunity/stabilized endemic infectious rates), almost certainly due to wide vaccine acceptance.
2. People complained about smoking banned from indoors but then quickly adapted — in contrast this is a temporary division.
3. At least we aren’t being drafted. This is a minor inconvenience civic (public) duty whereas many of our grandparents had literally no choice but to go to a freakin war. How infringing on individual rights is that? But again, it was to protect the greater social good — which means the sacrifice of individual freedoms. But get this! This just in: the draft and the war ended!

In other words: This is our generation’s draft — and many I see are draft-dodgers, piggy-backing on the freedoms won by the rest of us. The convoy/antivax crowd are not the Vietnam/Iraq War Resistors they may think they are. History is already not looking kindly.

Y’all have too many unquestioned privileges to be whining this much about masks and vaccines. We live in an era thanks to modern science where we have the option of an incredibly safe vaccine and freedoms won by our grandparents’ deaths. And so many Canadians — especially friends I know, just soaked up those (socialized) CRB paycheques. Some for valid reasons — others, because they could.

Be humble, take it down a notch… If you think you are tired of all this, imagine our nurses. Honour the vast majority who are protecting you — but don’t expect to be given special privilege, this is pure arrogance. In a public health crisis, we all have to do our part, and if getting vaccinated isn’t yours, then respect the restrictions placed by the professionals who’s literal training and job this is to reduce case… and body counts.

So please don’t flip the script on who exactly, are the arrogant ones.

… And accept that your part… is sacrifice. As all ours is. We sacrificed and got vaccinated. And based on global public health research (stop thinking that North America is the centre of the world), then it has been shown that with proven reduced transmission and above all reduced ICU admissions, then as less of a burden, those who opted to get vaccinated are afforded more access to public experiences.

What really is your reason for not getting a vaccine? Fear? That can be quelled by asking questions. Or maybe it’s just on some vague libertarian (ugh) principle? As always — dear libertarian — look into mutual aid.

What Exactly Is Mutual Aid? How to Get Involved (thecut.com)

I argue in a public health crisis, we must stop thinking we, as individuals, are special. That’s the self-centred hyper individualist *problem* and it’s worth repeating, a pandemic is a public health crisis, and we are all statistics. What matters is math: if sweeping social restrictions can be shown to reduce transmission then it is by-definition the correct course of action for a government, who is beholden to the majority, to implement them.

Seatbelts: Would we assume someone is rude if they refused to buckle up? If someone lit up a cigarette next to us in a restaurant?

Until desperation forced our hand on measures — we wouldn’t know what worked and what didn’t, until we tried.

So, let’s refocus the narrative on the nurses, doctors, and vast majority of truckers who have worked themselves to the bone to keep the food on our tables and will be there for those who flaunt public health policy and wind up in ICU.

Because the rest of us… are masked, vaccinated, have moved on and couldn’t care less about tantrums.