Very annoying for everyone. I am not an exception here. I have sworn several times I will not write anything about it ever again. So, here is another piece. Well, I couldn't help myself. The topic is so interesting. Good for any occasion. So full of stupidity, you can't just walk by.
Virus.
He did not go away. So far, there is no end to this and the second wave is coming.
The economy is shattered. People are losing their jobs. Life, so simple and normal, is changing. We have new guidelines, restrictions, prohibitions and good advice. You cannot do parties, visit your parents, go to the gym or go on holiday. You can't even go and see your GP. Many of us work in places where social distancing exists only on paper and we have to choke wearing those ridiculous masks. Well, when it comes to masks, this is probably the only good thing the virus has given us. Thanks to them, the world has clearly become a more beautiful place.
Quite recently I’ve heard from one of my friends, a english native, that in the UK two professional groups have gained significantly because of the virus.
The first is the NHS. "These are clever", I heard. “Heroes. The whole country was looking at them, children drew pictures in schools. You could see “protect the NHS” written everywhere. They were all so proud, fighting the plague with sacrifice, and what were they doing so special? Their job, actually. What they get paid for. A fireman fighting fires every day, puts himself in danger all the time and no one goes out every Thursday to clap for him. And now what? They have isolated themselves from the rest of the world.”
There is some truth in it. It's hard to get to the GP now. You can't just call and book the visit, because they don't want to see anyone at all. They call back and the whole visit is done by phone. In extreme cases, they may wish you to show them your throat over a video call. You get this feeling they are very unhappy and treat you like an intruder. Not much happens in hospitals, but they are not very welcoming as well. A friend of mine broke his collarbone not so long ago. The bone had shifted and it was sticking out a little, though the skin had not been pierced. They told him to come back next week as they are very busy. He managed to get a private consultation, because nothing had changed here. Privately everything can be done quickly and everyone is very nice to you. It turned out he needed surgery and a steel splint that he would wear for a year and they just told him to "come back in a week's time". This is very common these days, and even those suffering from serious chronic conditions quite often do not receive the help they need.
From a more personal experience, I developed a stomach problem. I was seriously ill. The doctor questioned me on the phone and decided that it was gastroenteritis. It will go on its own, he said, I may be weak for some time, but nothing to worry about and generally I have to drink plenty of fluids so I won’t get dehydrated. I have private insurance, so I asked to be referred to a specialist. They made an appointment quickly and after a week I saw the gastroenterologist. This one got a little worried. Completely different approach from the GP. He did not think that fainting was completely natural with gastroenteritis. He ordered me to have an abdominal scan and a gastroscopy. It turned out that the scan was simple, but the gastroscopy was not. Very distant dates. I had to wait over a month, “because of Covid, these are our procedures now”. In addition, five days before the test you are required to get tested for Covid and you must isolate yourself until the procedure. Even from your family. You should be sitting in a separate room and if you want to go to the bathroom, you should alert others with loud screaming. After you are finished, you should thoroughly disinfect everything, and in fact it would be the best not to leave your room at all. Nobody is interested in how complicated your life is going to be, who will take your children to school, how your wife will handle the situation, who will do the shopping, and whether your employer will even agree for you to play this game for a few days. You have to agree or you cannot have the procedure. If you cheat, it means that you have consciously broken the rules and put others at risk. Cheating in this case is a criminal offence.
The second group that many believe has significantly benefited from the virus are teachers. "They are morons", complained the same friend. “They carry the torch of education with dedication, and how they screamed, because they didn't want to come back to work. It was comfortable to sit at home when the parents had to do all home schooling. How can be, they moaned, so many children kept locked up together in such small spaces, it's unhealthy, it's dangerous. Everyone will get infected. And they didn't care that children go crazy without school and without discipline, that all routines are shattered and parents can’t cope. Somehow, they did not care that thousands of people were frying on the beaches on hot days, others going to stores like IKEA to do "essential shopping", rubbing against each other and many of them morons without masks.
There is something in it, too. The children have returned to school and are kept in smaller groups to be easily isolated. Parents are not allowed to enter the school grounds, but when they are collecting, there is a crowd at the gate, people are laughing and talking in groups. Strange stories proliferate. In one school someone coughed and an entire class was isolated. In another, someone vomited and all Year 3 classes were sent to compulsory quarantine. The culprit brought negative test results two days later, but the school didn’t call the quarantine off. In many cases, siblings attend the same school. Parents walk both children to school, one enters and the other returns home with the parent. What do parents do in such situations? How are they dealing with it? I don't even want to think about it. It's not better at universities and colleges either. All online classes. Sometimes they offer live seminars and exams but in many cases you have to write an essay for your exam. Lectures are recorded, so you don't even need to come to your virtual class, because you can watch it whenever you want. Parents pay £ 10K for college so that their kids stay at home, play games, sleep until noon and learn via the computer. If a kid took a student loan, it's also funny, because his studies will not be much different than searching Wikipedia himself. In Poland it used to be called "part-time studies". Now it's just studies.
There is one good point in both these examples. Those, who are comfortable with it, will do everything to make this situation last. Doctors do like the quiet work and the small number of patients. They all charge much higher rates for a private visit anyway. Teachers are also more comfortable when they shift some of their duties to the parents, set up classes on Google or Teams, and check all the homework drinking tea at home. And what savings for universities! You don't have to hire so many lecturers, and why? A few professors will take care of everything, and once recorded, lecture modules will serve for years. The student has to pay no matter what, just like all of us who have to pay contributions to the National Health Service, nodding our heads politely, as we all know we have to "come back in a week". Cui bono, says the old maxim. In common opinion, doctors are lazy and elusive bastards, and teachers are fools and losers. Personally, I do not entirely agree with this. I have met many good and nice doctors, although I have also met a lot of ignorant fools. Those googling the symptoms of the disease in front of the patient, those saying that everything will go away by itself or telling you to drink a lot of Sprite. Recently, there is another hit: an advice to eat lots of crisps, because a child's chronic headache is obviously caused by a lack of salt. Well, I also had to deal with teachers who would not be allowed near to any child in any sane society, with drunks and illiterates, but I did come across some very good ones, doing their jobs because they believed in it and didn’t want to do anything else. Of course, both doctors and teachers are comfortable in the Age of the Virus, but we will hardly believe that the medical-teaching conspiracy is responsible for the pandemic that continues to haunt us. They are just trying to take advantage of it. Same way as those selling face masks and disinfectants at the dawn of the pandemia for the ridiculously high prices. It has always been so. What is a tragedy for some, will be an opportunity for others.
Cui prodest? When it comes down to it, it's either about money, power, or hiding something in the way. Who would be rewarded with all this, ruining the world’s economy, turning it upside down? How big would a thing have to be if it would pay off to hide it at such a cost? And would someone pay that price? It seems not, but remember Hiroshima, where the bomb was dropped in order to scare someone and also learn how it really works... For some people the cost doesn't matter.
There are already thousands of conspiracy theories about Covid. In every country people try to hide various swindles and other crap under the cloak of the plague. Various, strange deals are brought to light and weird laws are signed, laws that would be looked at much more closely at other times. I also want to make a story out of it.
What would you say to this...
Trump will win the election. Or maybe not, maybe it will be the other one, funny, old guy, it doesn't matter that much anyway. The point is, the world has to find the responsible for all the fuss. The hatred towards China is growing all over, because ‘they started it all’. People spit on everything that is Chinese, the Western world administers various blockades and embargoes, and customs duties on goods imported from China make importing simply unprofitable. Big companies are starting to think about gradually relocating production back to their home countries. Of course, it will take time, but there was supposed to be a recession anyway. Business must go on and it will cope, quickly. China will get screwed, it will cease to be a business center of the world, it will cease to earn money, and we will have the industry that we got rid of so long ago again, and therefore, new jobs. Everything made "here" will be much more expensive, we know that. No one will buy a £300 TV anymore, or a 50p dinner plate. Plate will be £5 or more. And we will pay. Satisfied, because the economy will be booming again, and in a few years no one will remember what it was like in the world “before Covid”.
What we really lost on a mass production from the east is quality, so maybe we will regain it this way? The English are very proud that something is "British". Poles still have to learn it. To be proud, that something is "made in Poland". I wonder if the Chinese are proud of the fact that they flooded the whole world with rubbish, or we are just making fools of ourselves, because we let big business and corporations tell us what to do, think and buy... Because Covid is a big cover, unfortunately one of the many. Ordinary people do not know what goes on behind the closed doors of the ruling elite's salons. The truth about Covid may never see the light of day, besides, in a year's time no one will be interested in it any more. Something new will appear. Surprising is the ease with which new restrictions can be introduced and how quickly they become law, all in the name of a better and safer tomorrow, or possibly "less evil here and now".
People are easier to manipulate when they are intimidated. This is nothing new. A common enemy is a method that always works. Let's face it. The NHS will work a bit differently from now on. It is much easier and more cost-effective to conduct online studies, record lectures and examine via Microsoft Teams. The real point is, it always works to bully the society.
Those who believe in global conspiracies soiling their pants right now. For example, the upcoming vaccine is worth mentioning. Personally, I don't believe in such big conspiracies and I'm not very afraid of the vaccine. Unless, by some strange coincidence, it becomes mandatory. Then I would be afraid. Not even what it can do to me, but what it can do to my children's children. So far, I still think that Covid is something much smaller, that accidentally got out of control and messed up, some kind of typical CIA operation like from the good 80’s movie. Everyone is using it now and it’s trending. For me this thing was never as dangerous as we were told from the beginning, but we all did our homework. There will be new "covids", because they always appear. It doesn't matter if the next one is a cometh or a war (the terrorists are no longer useful). All this will be just an excuse to find a remedy, to improve or introduce something, so that our life is safer and maybe less comfortable, but as we know, it’s all for the good cause. One thing is certain.
We are all going to lose on this.
PS I.
Tomorrow England will enter a second lockdown. According to preliminary assumptions, it will last until the beginning of December. Some people are already prophesying that Boris doesn't want to scare us, but it will really last until Christmas. This time, however, is a bit different. Schools remain open. It amazes absolutely everyone.
PS II.
The fact that teachers will work does not mean that they have not had their fingers in a worldwide conspiracy. Maybe they just miscalculated this time.
PS III.
Jeff Bezos earns the most from all of this anyway.
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