3-10-2020  12:17am

I am so sick of this stupid fucking COVID-19 response. It’s RIDICULOUS and WILL kill more people than it saves. It’s quarantine this and cancel that EVERY FUCKING DAY. I don’t give a shit about COVID-19. What I do give a shit about is how the people “fighting” or “preventing” it are interfering in my life. 

Is this random virus the next Ebola come to wipe out whole states at a time in a bloody gory mess? Or is it just a new illness that happens to be smarter that we are at the moment but is still being managed, for the most part, by modern medicine? Seriously. 

It’s the numbers that make me sick. (No not Donald Trump’s precious numbers).

There are 19 deaths in this country from COVID-19. (see WHO Situation dashboard for up to date numbers ) There is ONE, yes ONE, “presumptively” positive woman diagnosed in San Diego and ALL the town goes nuts! The VA shut itself down, declaring a Level 2 Infectious Disease protocol. UCSD made all its classes virtual for the Spring quarter. Everyone’s FREAKING OUT!

Besides just being annoying and totally interfering with my life and others, the actions and inactions the government is recommending are GOING to kill people. Think about it. When you isolate or “quarantine” people (or recommend that people quarantine themselves), PEOPLE GO CRAZY. In a society already suffering from depression, and anxiety and pathological loneliness, suicide rates should be set to spike. Pharmacies can only mail-deliver certain medications. What about the rest and the pharmacies that don’t? And what about the controlled substances that require us to go in to the doctor every month and for them to submit electronically? And what about the mailmen? The businesses that provide for communities are shutting down and the stores that are open are being raided. Caregivers who are isolating or quarantined are not caring for those who can’t care for themselves. What happens to them? Death. People don’t eat. Random swaths of children or teenagers just congregate wherever since school is out. Parents who aren’t even sick have to leave jobs, shutting down more businesses, to take care of children who aren’t sick but whose schools have been closed due to the panic. 

Even instructing people to wash their hands for 20 seconds at a time will push us closer to being back in a drought we just escaped. Or for people who prefer to “sanitize” their hands constantly, good luck on not having terribly dry hands, killing all the good bacteria, and totally messing with your body’s natural balance. Don’t get me started on the people making their own hand sanitizers. This is also a great public validation for all the people with contamination fears or harm obsessions as part of OCD. I can hear it now, “See? The world really IS a terrible place and I should wash my hands in bleach forever.” 

I was trying to figure out the other day why this disease response bothers me most. Then I realized it’s financial. My dad had Huntington’s Disease, what’s known as an Orphan Disease because there are so few patients with it that finding a cure is not fiscally responsible. There aren’t enough patients who would take the drug to pay for the development of the drug, even if they know it would work. This COVID-19 is a gold mine, a race to the cure for biotech companies who know that people and, presumably, governments around the world will buy their medication and possibly require their vaccine. Whoever gets there first wins. Safety requirements and timeframes will be waived because SO MANY people are affected or at risk. Me? I went to chicken pox parties as a child. I’m no fan of disease but I don’t think anyone should be separated from society or that big pharma profits should allow for the spreading of hysteria.

Think about it. What if we could have this kind of attention and serious concern for things we ACTUALLY deal with on a regular basis? This illness has killed 20 people in the US and people are going nuts. But according to the CDC, “34.1 million adults aged 18 years or older—or 13.0% of all US adults” have diabetes. That’s a disease we know how to treat and yet more than 80,000 die here of it each year. We lose 22 veterans per day to suicide alone. (You know the number is higher.) In California, someone dies by suicide every 2 hours. 1 in 5 Americans will experience a mental illness sometime in their life. 1 in 25 will experience a severe mental illness. The suicide rate for some mental illnesses is as high as 25%. We HAVE treatments that work, therapies that are proven to work yet it’s not profitable enough to freak out the public enough to convince them to pay for the treatment and engage them enough to follow through it. No. Toilet paper raids and mass hysteria sounds so much more productive. Grrrrrr…

I spend a lot of time helping people and this nonsense not only makes that more difficult but makes all of our lives worse. No one is addressing the high number of highly suggestible people who will develop purely somatic symptoms. I’ve seen anxiety addressed once in the news-frenzy but not the paranoia and delusions this is creating. I’m also very concerned about the push for people not to touch each other or be close. Touch is SO extremely important. What is the effect on the human body when we remove touch? It’s nasty. It’s worth the rant, even though I know it will change nothing. 

Michelle