I’m hoping fear of infection drives folks to do what I want of them in these venues, sit still, unmoving, and in perfect silence for two hours so I can enjoy the entertainment.

Must be a personal or hereditary choice- I inherited from my father either by genes or by teaching the idea that there should not be talking in the theatre. Now that he’s old he developed the impulse to talk a bit more and I always just give him the look. He grins.

So I’ve been dismayed by just how much some kind of libertarian mentality has driven ‘conservative’ responses in the US and Canada in the past two months. We’re well short of totalitarianism here, or indeed any dictatorship.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t criticisms. If cops are harassing you as a healthy person walking on the street 6 ft from anyone else as much as possible, jogging in the empty parks, or grocery stores insisting on you wearing low protection-value masks when they have none to sell you if you have none, or officious busybody citizens are harassing you at any time, there’s room for aggressive retort. It is also possible that any specific aspect of government measures is wrong. All fine.

But too many people have been complaining that cops enforcing lockdown are preventing them from doing some trivial unnecessary thing that they would normally do. Self-government is just that- self government requires self-discipline as well as enjoyment of freedom. I feel like Canadians or Americans a few generations ago knew all that already.

I’m not sure myself where this is going. I’m 49, overweight, diabetic [not too badly], have hypertension [not too badly], have had pneumonia nearly 20 years ago, was briefly and I think wrongly diagnosed asthmatic [I think it was more likely something environmental hit me overseas and took a couple years to work its way out of my lungs] 10 years ago. The DB and BP are well medicated. I have not quite seen details on whether or not it being controlled is beneficial or makes no diff.

All that to say, I’ve got several identified or formerly-identified possible comorbidities. The ones I have, especially at the modest level I have them, are shared with truly huge numbers of Canadians and Americans, not all of whom yet know they have these conditions. Some, not all, public discussion seems not always aware of how many people in North America are not healthy by the standards apparently required to shake off COVID19 as mere trifle.

I’ve been teleworking through this but also obliged to go to the office 3 days/week, in theory just afternoons but in practice longer. Buses here are on relaxed schedules, run fairly empty, and I have taken them, but now weather mostly permits me to take the 3 km walk each way every time. This, and doing similar walks on other days, is improving my health and habits and my chances of being within 6 feet of anyone at work or on the street for very long or often is low. So I haven’t been much bothered.

OTOH, I am thinking seriously about how to operate once lockdown ends and people flood the streets again, the buses get crowded, work fills up again, and so on. Or as next winter comes and we still have no vaccine or sure treatment, and maybe this time COVID starts when it’s far too cold and or snowy/icy here to walk 6 k a day, so I’m on those buses.

I’ve always been fairly rigid in my habits of public behaviour so I don’t expect of others what I can’t deliver myself. But next winter the first person who coughs in my direction or spits phlegm anywhere near me, practices I already loathe, is going to get an earful of my wishes for their grisly death.

That said, I’m actually sympathetic to the serious arguments- the economic ones. Very sympathetic. This is not something the modern, information driven, hyperlinked, financial-services dominated economy has really had to deal with, and we’re seeing how robust it is, or isn’t. The small business side, I can’t say. Such businesses have always existed and dominated the economy, and probably went under in some past pandemics too, without any bailouts to hand. In the past they probably benefited from more community support and forbearance, and were more necessary as the only alternative for their customers. And their customers didn’t know as much about how infection works, and had higher risk tolerance. So a different picture.

OTOH, we do have some better idea of infectious disease, and greater expectation of avoiding it and not dying from it by going about our business. Perhaps a mixed blessing, but I’m in favour of medical improvement and safer living in this area. So we don’t go shopping as much.

I don’t know what the answer is, but for all those reasons and probably others, our economy is wildly more fragile than it once was. I get it for individuals or families without income, or small businesses seeing the last of custom drain off to Amazon. But when I first heard arguments that ‘the economy’ writ large could not survive, or even rebound, from a couple of months lockdown, my only possible reaction was to think that a) it should be able to do that and b) if it can’t, it’s built wrong.

This won’t be the last pandemic. And there will be other such challenges. Whether you think the solution is carbon reduction [the left version] or the implementation of new and better technologies that preserve Western economic power [more of the right version] or even if you are of the view that climate change is entirely natural and not of our doing, we’re going to be building new equipment, new industries, moving industries around, altering or bolstering the built environment, and controlling water movements on a large scale in the next century. There’d better be some fresh attention to robustness in the marketplace. And less ‘stock market freaks out on Day 1 of Crisis!’.

I appreciate your various forbearances on this rant. I’ve been away a couple weeks.

China’s numbers were not credible when their epidemic was raging in January and February; they were not credible when they reported flat 0 new cases for weeks on end in March and April; and they are not credible now.

And even assuming there were a scintilla of truth to a comparison between China numbers and other countries, they would have to account for the number of tests done in each country, and the criteria for classifying a death as coronavirus-related.

We are an open society, and despite our obvious flaws, the hysteria generated by the media being one of them, we are far superior to deeply regimented and conformist societies like China. If you feel that China is more your speed, you are welcome to apply for citizenship and build a new life there.

The problem now becomes rescuing the economy and the mental stability of half the population that bought into the hysteria, and shutting down sociopathic governors like Cuomo and Newsom and their dictatorial mandates. The cure was, and is, most certainly worse than the disease.

The remainder are misunderstood or misconstrued to lead to a moral panic.

Stay away from the dihydrogen monoxide. That stuff’ll kill you.

So, which country is totally FUBAR? Which government is a total failure? Which country takes care of its people? Which country has a crashed stock market? Which country has 30% unemployment?

The US is plainly undergoing a sociological, economic, political, and military collapse. Russia and China need to do nothing. Just sit by, enjoy the spectacle, and pick up whatever pieces they want.