— from Tom Eversole —

We humans crave certainty, however nature, disease and health don’t work that way. CDC recommendations change with new information, and medicos work from the best information they have at the time. Long term, it is not helpful to frame safety guidance changes for political advantage. Short term it can mobilize a conservative (as in: when in doubt, retain the status quo type conservative) base. 

Such tactics, previously reserved for third word, authoritarian states, are now a staple in US politics. Negotiating with a pandemic viral pathogen is an impotent approach, and you cannot fool RNA with lies. This virus will continue to infect human hosts until it encounters 60 – 80% immunity acquired through surviving the disease or via successful vaccination. The natural path to that end includes reducing the planet’s population through disease, starvation, wars, etc. to reach a new, sustainable equilibrium or homeostasis. Humans can choose how to reach the planet’s new status quo: either humanely or through death, loss and destruction.

Perhaps there is a rational opportunity for the US to select a new social, health and economic path forward, if it is brought to its knees as Europe was following the first two world wars. That may be what it takes to break the stranglehold of our current win/lose economic and health systems, yet I hope we can find a more humane way to reach a sustainable solution. In a democracy, how do we get safely to that end?

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