As we begin this covidious New Year, we should ponder certain questions with great care: Is “staying safe” really so important that we embrace slavery? If it is really a choice between safety or serfdom, which should we choose?
Generally speaking, I have avoided commenting publicly on the current pandemic and the political and cultural wars that it has engendered. There is a good reason for this. I have friends on both ends of the liberate versus lockdown spectrum and I’ve been trying not to cause offence. On the one side, I have friends who have serious health concerns and are fearful, reasonably enough, that contracting COVID could prove dangerous or even fatal. On the other side, I have friends who are completely blasé about the whole pandemic, feeling that any dangers, real or imagined, are far outweighed by the loss of political and religious liberty that the lockdown culture entails. This is also a reasonable enough position. The via media between these two extremes, if we might call either of these positions “extreme,” would have been a strategy of isolating or quarantining, on a voluntary basis, those with serious health issues, mobilizing the rest of the community to care for their needs. Such a scenario, should it have been adopted, would have enabled the healthy majority to continue with their lives, caring for their more vulnerable neighbours through government-assisted acts of charity, without the imposition of one-size-fits-all draconian measures by overbearing governments. This middle path has been the road less taken, or the road not taken.
On a personal level, the pandemic has impacted my life and work through the cancellation of almost all the speaking engagements on my calendar. Trips to England, Poland, Croatia and Argentina have been cancelled, in addition to numerous trips within the United States. I have happily accommodated those few, those happy few, who were determined to proceed, irrespective of the pandemic, travelling to upstate New York to lead a Shakespeare-themed retreat for a wonderful community of Dominican sisters and also to Oklahoma to give some talks to the equally wonderful community of Benedictine monks at Clear Creek Abbey.
Eventually, and perhaps inevitably, I contracted the virus, as I’d fully expected would be the case, sooner or later. I became sick on the day after Thanksgiving and felt really ill for fifteen days. I was never tested. What would be the point? It would have exposed other people unnecessarily to the virus and would have entailed getting myself somewhere at a time when I could barely get myself out of bed. I had all the classic symptoms, including a complete loss of the sense of smell, which has still not returned. My wife and son were both sick for a few days, whereas my daughter remained vivaciously asymptomatic, though it’s inconceivable that she had escaped infection. Since then, I have learned that several of our friends locally have also been sick with the virus this month, some of whom we haven’t seen for nine months because they’ve been ultra-cautious. All seem to have recovered.
I will confess a great sense of liberation at having let the wave hit me, and a great relief that the rest of my family has been hit by it also. We now have some natural protection from it and can presumably not put anyone else at risk, at least for a few months (nobody knows much about the longer-term consequences of having recovered from the virus).
For me, it’s always been about risk management. During the second world war, my parents’ generation “kept calm and carried on” during the Blitz, when Hitler’s Luftwaffe rained bombs on the civilian population, endeavouring to instill a reign of terror, presaging surrender. When I was a youth and young man, living in London during the 1970s, the terrorists of the IRA planted bombs in pubs and tube stations, targeting the civilian population. Nobody I knew let the fear of bombs prevent them from catching the tube in order to go to pubs.
There are of course differences between these situations and the present pandemic. In the case of the Blitz or the IRA’s bombing campaign, the decision to “keep calm and carry on” put the individual at risk, not anyone else, except perhaps the individual’s dependents. In the present situation, we are putting others at risk, as well as ourselves, whenever we venture into a public space. Does this justify the draconian measures imposed by governments? If it does, should we abandon our cherished political liberty every time a new globalist pandemic threatens our globalized world? Should we get used to doing what Big Brother tells us? Is freedom really necessary? Isn’t safety more important?
As we begin this covidious New Year, we should ponder these questions with great care. The so-called “great reset,” advocated by globalist Goliaths, such as the World Economic Forum, will lead to calls for greater globalist control over the freedom of nations and the lives of individuals, undermining national and personal sovereignty in the name of solving the global problems that globalism has itself created. Is “staying safe” really so important that we embrace slavery? If it is really a choice between safety or serfdom, which should we choose?
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Well said, Dr. Pearce
Interesting article without a conclusion. What say you sir — serfdom or freedom?
First, I’m glad to hear you’ve recovered or at least firmly along the way to recovery. Thank God. I’ve given your via media thought some consideration in the past. It’s been proposed before, and yes in theory that might have been the best approach. However, at the start of this we didn’t really know a lot of the details of the virus, who was vulnerable and who was not. That took time and by that time we had gone a stream. And each virus is going to be different if you’re looking toward the future. Who knows who is going to be vulnerable with the next virus. I don’t particularly think that the policies have been necessarily “draconian.” Asking people to wear masks in indoor gatherings and limit the number of people in buildings does not sound draconian to me. It’s actually less intrusive than what your parents/grandparents went through during WWII. Could we have isolated the vulnerable had we known that was the best policy? Someone would have to show me the details of how that would work because I can see that as being just as intrusive and liberty compromising as what we have now gone through.
By the way, I do find it a joke that Gov Andrew Cuomo in NY (my state), who did the very opposite and introduce people with the virus in institutions filled with the vulnerable, not only seems to shake off criticism but gets credit for doing a great job managing the Covid situation. But that’s Liberal media for you.
The general population wearing masks is ineffective at best. They were never intended to be used this way. Masks used by surgeons, which are more effective and used properly during surgery, are changed every two hours during the procedure. The surgeon never touches the mask. Why is this? The mask will get saturated with the surgeons flora and fauna allowing escape of the noxious excretions, possibly infecting the patient. Compare this with how the general population uses masks. It’s ridiculous. Ill fitting, used for extended periods of time, filled with garbage, taken on and off after touching every filthy thing around them(the virus does stick on objects), put back on, frequently adjusted. Rinse and repeat the next day with same mask. What do people do with them after taking them off? Gross! You get the idea. Another thing to keep in mind is that the virus is .06-.12 microns in size. Blue masks filter down to .03 microns. Do the math! Cloth masks are even worse. Why has Fauci vacillated on masks? First they work, then they don’t. Actual studies show them to be ineffective in a general population. So protect the most vulnerable. Let everyone everyone else go about their business and decide for themselves what to do. We’ve never done this for any other viral outbreak. Why now? The supposed cure s worse than the disease itself.There is a political agenda behind this that is evil and the globalists are using this to advance their agenda. Wake up people.
“Another thing to keep in mind is that the virus is .06-.12 microns in size. Blue masks filter down to .03 microns.” Then the blue masks would filter out the coronavirus, as .03 is smaller than .06.
I suspect Chris had meant to say 0.3 microns, not .03 (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/respirator-use-faq.html). Medical personnel need to undergo a personalized annual fit test in order to obtain a functional N95 effectiveness from their masks. N95 respirators for them are custom fitted. Very few of us walking around with masks, even those masks labelled as being N95, are achieving an effective barrier against expelling or inhaling virus particles.
These one-size-fits-all government mandates are exceptionally contrary to the concept of subsidiarity. They are just like these one-size-fits-all masks, ineffective and quite possibly even contribute to the spread of the virus by giving users a false sense of security and by having them touching their faces many more times per day than they normally would without a mask which is a very effective way to spread the virus.
As another commenter pointed out, at first we did not know the risks, but now we do. How about a return to common sense and personal responsibility. Serfdom or freedom? I vote for freedom.
Spot on, Professor Pearce! Hope to “see” you in class during the New Year. Blessings, Kelli
It seems to me that the Covid crisis is just one factor on the global battlefield. The CCP and other agencies like Big Media are determined to establish a New World Order making the world safe for them but dangerous for those who prize our hard won freedoms.
I couldn’t agree more. Let’s be aware of our surroundings, and particularly avoid close encounters in large gatherings. But I wouldn’t hesitate a minute in attending the big gathering in DC for Trump if I weren’t so far away..
That is because recent bouts of the pandemic have shown to be underwhelming like a cold.. I think the politicization of this pandemic has been ,and continues to be the most dangerous, besides the deaths, to our American Republic.
So to add my 2 cents, we have joined with our neighbors to keep each other informed so that we are all aware of any trends locally as to locations that are most impacted. We are all informed as to who has recovered and what the level of severity was. It is good to see the declining severity of those few cases we have had.
Fortunately this area has been blessed by the relative low level of cases with no deaths which can be attributed o the Covid.
Here in Australia we face the same attack on freedoms where a politician elected by just over the half the vote in a single elctorate can make ‘public health orders’ destroying the livelihoods of millions, undermining the education of millions of children, and destroying the social fabric. We are nowhere near as badly hit by Covid-19 as most other countries ( in fact island nations who closed their borders early, enforced quarantine on incoming travelers and have relatively young populations and/or low population densities have almost all fared pretty well. In Australia, 75% of deaths have been in aged care facilities, a third of deaths have been people over the age of 90 years, while children and people of working age have very very low death rates. Testing of people who may have been exposed has only had a 0.2% positive rate and we have only had 2 deaths since the end of October Despite this health ministers have imposed possibly illegal lock-downs on millions of healthy uninfected people at low risk of serious infection. We have known about the demographics of Covid-19 for at least the past six months, and my comparison between Australia and Sweden shows that in both cases, it is the elderly and those with chronic diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes and lung disorders, who are almost the only people at serious risk, as they are of any infection, not just Covid-19 Yet government hysteria and panic has seemed to rise with the reduction in the effects of this pandemic and ever more draconian rules are being put in place with no reasonable justification. The actions of governments world-wide have been an incredible assault on liberty and made a mockery of our supposed democracies where the population has no say in what restrictions are acceptable and no way of either challenging the restrictions or of removing the incompetent politicians imposing them. What this shows is that the ‘reset’ should be for democracy with greater limitations on government power and easier removal of incompetent politicians. At the moment what we have is ‘government of the people’ but not by or for the people and our democracies are simply authoritarian regimes where the slaves get to elect their masters. Winston Churchill once said that “Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time” -but he was wrong since we haven’t actually tried genuine democracy where politicians are accountable to the people and carry out the wishes of the people rather than their own agenda. In the West, we virtually need a pro-democracy movement to take back power!