We are not at war

  I am writing this post to make people aware of the changes that happen around them because of the Covid pandemic. How easy was it for them to pop up and how many of these "extraordinary measures" will stick with us after we get rid of the virus? 

  I wake up and turn on BBC News. First reporting of the day is the mass graves in the US. Yeah, I was surprised, too... but just a little bit. Mass graves? Aren't those things that happen when people want to kill a whole bunch of other people? Like conflict or ethnic cleansing or whatever the euphemism of the day is for war? And in the US? Home of the brave, the free, the rich and the apathetic? Apparently New York has had a special little island close by to use as the dumping ground for dead people that don't have money or relatives or names. It's been a human garbage bin for 150 years!

  Then I open up YouTube and watch this video that is unrelated to the virus, but at the beginning of the video they talk about "the virus that we cannot name". Apparently YouTube has rules to protect "the truth" by censoring free speech. And yes, it's not the government, it's a private company that pretty much can do whatever it freaking wants, and what it wants if for you to not speak some specific words. Facebook does it, your search engine does it, TV stations do it. I open a news site and I see an article about a conspiracy theorist who was "allowed" to speak on BBC about his dumbass ideas. Ofcom, the media regulator in the UK also has rules about what people can say or not on TV. Next article is about a movie about xenophobes in an elevator picking on an Asian woman who dares cough. The whole idea of the article was to wonder if the film was "unethical" or if it is too soon for Covid movies. Who gets to decide what is true or not, hurtful or not. This is an older question, but now it's come into contrast.

  I go out and I see a military police car, all armored, with a gun rack on top, police stopping cars passing by to check the papers of the drivers. Every minute or so a patrol car would pass, blinking lights on. And the new rules. We are now at the eighth iteration of a military ordnance telling civilians what to do. Governments have instantly given themselves as much power as possible, some using it to further their own agenda, like the prime minister of Hungary moving quickly to pick on gay people. And yes, Israelis laugh at the world going all brisly about these rules that most believe a bit extreme, regardless of how necessary, because in Israel they have these kind of rules into their regular constitution. This did not stop Netanyahu to get even more power and use it immediately when he could. And this without mentioning Trump. There was a scene in the American TV series Homeland where it is asked "What do weak presidents do to appear strong?" "They go to war". But we are not in war.

  How did this happen? How did we reach a point in which the military is telling everybody what to do, corporations and pundits and social pressure tells us what to say and governments get extra judicial power that they use however they see fit in a time of peace?

  When this whole thing started, the first thing I googled (again, Google) was what to do in case you are infected. And all the pages that came about were about Covid and the official recommendation from both politicians and doctors: stay in, wash your hands, leave masks to the medical professionals, don't self medicate, report immediately if you have symptoms. So I repeated the query, now with -covid so that I see what people were saying about what to do when you get a virus *before* all of this started. And lo' and behold, the advice was completely different: hand washing (or waving) doesn't really do much, do self medicate with anti inflammatory drugs to avoid a cytokine storm, take vitamin D (or generate it by being in the sun) and zinc, vitamins C and E also help, masks help with both sick and healthy and, most of all, keep hydrated by drinking lots of liquids, preferably warm, like soups. Slowly, the "expert view" is changing back to what people in the field were saying from before the declaration of the pandemic.

  This is also important: the definition of pandemic is a disease that is prevalent over a country or the entire world. Practically it became a pandemic from the moment the World Health Organization declared it so. Our belief in the terms that are vehiculated gives them power. I am not saying that Covid is not prevalent over the world, or that you should not take it seriously, but things only began to move when enough people were convinced that it was real. Before action, an ideological pandemic has to happen. The brutal decisions that are being taken in your name right now are based on your belief in various narratives that may be correct or not. BTW, if I search now on Google on the same thing a search page dedicated to Covid-19 appears. 

  The question is not of truth, but of utility. If it is not useful, who cares it is true? is the old adage. But then the question becomes: useful to whom? At first they wanted you to come to the hospital, so that they can have as much information and control as possible and to isolate you, then get all the people you came into contact with and do the same to them. It is good for us all as a community, but not particularly for the sick person who is now confined in haste, perhaps with other people that are infected so they can swap strains and being taken care of in medical systems unfit for that job. Wearing masks doesn't do much if you are in an infected place, but it can protect both you and others in more relaxed environments, like public transportation or on the street, not to mention that it's a simple way to remind you not to touch your face. But they were way more useful to medical personnel and so they spun this story where you should not use them unless you know you are sick. When the number of masks and the number of sick increased, the narrative changed to use masks, but don't come to the hospital.

  I've said it before and I will repeat it at nauseam because it is true, it is important and it is verifiable: the only reason the very deadly pandemic in 1918 was called The Spanish Flu was that Spain was neutral and therefore free to report on people getting sick and dying of a disease. All the other countries were caught in their little World War that killed way less people, but that put the military in power to enact censorship. It is also the reason why most of people today haven't even heard of the 1918 influenza pandemic. We are not in a declared war right now, but the reaction of authorities all over the world is kind of the same. It's impossible to hide things in this world of social media and non stop global TV networks, right? Wrong. There were news outlets in 1918, too, and they all declared themselves independent. There are a billion films and books and plays about the heroes of WWI. Where are the ones about a virus that killed so many people? Things don't have to be hidden from you, just depicted a little differently than reality in a consistent way. Doesn't the current situation appear similar? And we are not in a war.

  Ask yourself this: what narrative is being spun around you and who does it benefit? Have you looked at the problems you have and actively searched for solutions that were not pushed towards you by others? The truth is out there, but you have to actually look for it. Yes, we need to find a solution to the virus that has spread around the world and kills people, but we are not at war. We have a problem and we have to solve it, that is it. So the next time some solemn guy with a grave face tells you what to do, ask yourself, why the hell is he wearing an uniform? We are not at war.