Lockdown started here in California in mid-march and for the entire time, where I live, in San Francisco, has been under strict guidelines. When most of the rest of California opened up for a minute into phase 2, we barely opened up the first part of phase 2, along with 5 other Bay Area Counties and here we are, with Mayor Breed having just issued a statement on Friday, July 31, reported as follows by NBC:

San Francisco Mayor London Breed on Friday said the city is pausing its reopening plans indefinitely due to a surge in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations. The decision comes as San Francisco has been added to the state’s watch list. Updates here.

Indefinitely.

Let that sink in because that’s a whole lot of unknown and certainly is not how one ensures their business is successful. Of course, I’ve been judged as non-essential and while I get marginalized as a second class citizen whose rights are unimportant, apparently, in deference to who even knows what, I’m left sitting here prohibited from opening my school’s doors to students since March 17 and at this point can’t even begin to consider opening it’s door again because of the tyranny of our unmasked overlords. Even if Governor Newsom somehow relaxed his authoritarian grip, let us not forget that Mayor Breed issued orders to close bars before Newsom did and she has been exercising her authoritarian control oppressively ever since. I’m not sure which one of them is worse!

As the news continues to report the end to Covid-19 is years away, if at all,  some of us are left struggling to deal with this. Months ago it was clear to me the impact of this lockdown was more far reaching than simply to “flatten the curve” and it was obvious to me — perhaps because I’m a small business owner — that the economic impact would be devastating to just as many people, if not more, than the virus itself. Lo and behold, to the shock of no one who was actually thinking about this thing with any amount of equanimity and connection to reason, here we are watching the economics unfold in slow motion like a multi-million person car wreck from which we can’t look away.

And yet, we’ve initiated marginalizing practices that separate the population into those who are deemed essential and those who are not. We have said some people are needed and others are not. Because somehow it’s okay to go buy cigarettes but it’s not okay to take a dance class with social distancing built right into it.

After engaging on social media with people around Covid, at this point, I have no space for anything but my own anger and grief as I watch my business of 18.5 years crumble before me while so called friends label me in all sorts of ways for pointing out facts. Here’s my rant about the things they say to me in response to my posts.

You’re insensitive

I have been presenting facts about Covid from the get go. The most stunning one to consider from my perspective is the fact that a mere 0.008% of the world population has been killed by this so called “deadly” virus and that in the midst of a pandemic, we are gaining people by the thousands, daily. Gaining world population in a pandemic. Something upon which to ruminate.

Of course I share these facts and I’m told you’re insensitive or you’re cold. 

Counterpoint: anyone who views facts in this way is overly sensitive, fearful and uncaring.

Let me explain. #SorryNotSorry for a list of things:

This name calling isn’t an isolated incident and this isn’t about one person. This has been happening repeatedly and my theory is because I’m more equanimous about my death than most people around me seem to be, or at least the people commenting on social media with retorts that point out how “shitty” pointing out facts is. 🙄

Since when is pointing out facts insensitive? How can we have a rational conversation about things without discussing reality? How can we ever understand anyone else if we are not starting with what’s so, or at least what’s so as they see it? I’m being insensitive for sharing that information? Really? Well then, pray tell, what are all of you being as you watch my business of 18.5 years — my passion, my life’s work, and my legacy — being undermined and destroyed because of your fear? You don’t care about that but I’m the insensitive one? Mirror mirror. . . 

You Care More About The Economy Than People

When I point out the situation with my job and talk about reopening the economy and allowing people to work so we don’t completely fall into economic despair, I’m then told, “You care more about the economy than people.”

What a dumb statement that is to me. It shows no forethought whatsoever.

I’m no economics major, that’s for sure, and I wouldn’t even say economics is a strong suit for me. But what is abundantly clear for anyone who has engaged in what the kids call adulting these days is that we need a means to support ourselves if we are to live healthy, happy lives. This means supporting our Maslow 1 needs: food, water, shelter and clothing. None of those things guarantee happiness, but some amount of all of those things are required for the healthy part.

While the economy bounced back in small ways in the middle of Q2, The New York Times reports the collapse in Q2 as having “wiped out 5 years of growth with no bounce in sight.”  Reports indicate something between 30-50 million people filed unemployment claims since this started. Sure, some amount of them might have reported claims anyway, but we certainly were not on pace to reach those numbers had the economy continued operating normally.

2020CDCUnderlyingCovidFlatten the curve never actually meant stop Covid-19 and yet we continue, well after the curve has been flattened, to prevent people from engaging in activities that sustain their lives and well being. Gyms, dance studios and other such businesses designed to help fight the underlying conditions the CDC reports have impacted 76% of those who died from Covid are prohibited from opening. It begs the question: why are we preventing people from engaging in the activities that can help boost their health and save their lives if they are so inclined to do these things?

This isn’t a choice between the economy and people which has always been a fallacious argument. It has always been about people versus people. Sure, we’re trying to protect some unknown quantity of people from potentially getting exposed to this virus which is why we have these mandates in place. However, the consequence is affecting millions more people than have died and we know it. I just read about how they are now predicting there will be 1.4 million additional deaths from tuberculosis this year because of the lockdown measures that are preventing people from being able to get tested and or treatment. These are actual deaths not so called little things like, you know, ruining people’s businesses like what’s happening to me.

2020CDCMedianCovidAnd none of these things have addressed the very real underlying problems that are happening for humans in isolation. California reports an increase in suicides since the shelter in place has started, domestic violence incidents have also gone up, and, look around at the increase in stress and it’s overall impact on health and happiness for your fellow citizens. To suggest I care more about the economy than people is to fail to understand that the economy sustains the people — including the 76% of those who died with underlying conditions. This marginalizing mandates gives preference to those with underlying conditions and the elderly — which is interesting considering  the median age of the people dying from covid is 78 years old — which happens to match up with the average age of death for a USA citizen in 2017.

Yet none of these mandates begins to address the very real needs of humans disallowed to work that threatens the supply chain, undermines their sense of meaning created by contributing, and most certainly doesn’t address the lack of dignity when one is disallowed to be self-sufficient and no longer has the ability to meet their own basic needs.

You Don’t Care

The other week a burner friend told another burner friend to not bother sharing death rate data with me because, she said, “Isa doesn’t care.”

That isn’t precisely accurate. To not care occurs to me as the opposite of caring when, in reality, I neither care nor do not care. In contrast, I am equanimous about the situation. Knowing that death is the natural outcome of all of our lives and is happening literally from the moment of birth, I am in acceptance of that outcome without judgment one way or the other. My equanimity should not be seen as a lack of caring but rather, a practical adaptation of an attitude that best serves the reality of living.

Disease is a normal, a natural part of life and it has been through all of history. We are living in the period of time where we have the least disease of all time which is the only reason in my opinion people are looking at this with such an entitled view. For perspective, today in the USA the average age of citizen is just under 40 which happens to be about the same as what was considered to be life expectancy 500 years ago in England. Most of human history happened prior to 500 years ago and life expectancy has only gotten longer, not shorter. Which means for almost all of history, most of us would already be dead in this country.

The truth is, we are entitled to nothing. Life owes us nothing including the opportunity for living. Life (based on all of history so far), does, however, guarantee us death. That’s about it.

Frankly, since we’ve abated war so much, disease is the largest way that we’re going to cull the population with impactful efficiency at this point. Especially so the more we revel in the wonders of modern medicine since less disease will take us resulting in continued population growth.

There are billions of people on this planet and the population of this planet has more than doubled in my lifetime. Let’s face it: we’re nowhere close to culling the population at this point from Covid. Not by a long shot. From a species level, this isn’t even a blip on our population radar thus far because we are still gaining more life by the day than we are loosing even in the midst of a pandemic.

For reasons unknown to me, I keep pointing out this fact and people want to yeah but me about it as if anything they will say changes that fact.

This is not meant to trivialize any deaths. Surely they are very personal and painful for those experiencing it directly and the loved ones who are left to pick up the pieces after the fact.

What I’ve realized is it seems like I don’t relate to death like most people do, or at least not the people with whom I’m communicating. I accept it is the natural order to life and it is the natural conclusion that we will all face at one point in time or another. If C19 is to be my demise, it doesn’t strike me as worse than, say, cancer. To be clear, when my bestie and I were both hacking up our lungs and thought we were sick with Covid, we were making jokes about it. Literally. Laughing at our own potential demise. Because that’s life. And if you can’t laugh about it, geez, what’s the point and where’s the fun? 🤷‍♀️

What About Chronic Injury?

Invariably as these dialogs persist online, even if I can’t get people past the fact that less than a fraction of a percent of the population has died from this illness thus far, they fall back on the question, “what about chronic injury?”

As someone who has been living with chronic pain caused by injuries I sustained through tendinitis I developed from playing piano for 25 years (ultimately causing me to give up piano back in 1998 because of these injuries) that have never fully healed, it seems to me that chronic injury is a normal part of life. Is it a pleasant part of life? No, I don’t think it necessarily is, but lots of things in life are unpleasant. I have been living most of my adult life with it, and, based on all the information I have, anticipate I will live with it until I die. This seems like a normal aspect of living to me rather than something that should be looked at as a excuse to initiate authoritarian control of other citizens.

You’re a Murderer

My favorite attack was being called a murderer. 13,280,375 people have survived at the time of this writing. As the survivor count rises, calling me a murderer becomes increasingly ludicrous, especially if something like 40% of the population is asymptomatic (which means the survival rate is substantially higher since they haven’t all been tested). It demonstrates the utter lack of civility and sanity around us for someone to allege someone else is a murderer for not wearing a mask when there’s no evidence not wearing the mask is the exposure from which the other person acquired the virus and even if it was, we know for a fact exposure doesn’t mean death in almost all cases.

Death will come for all of us yet it seems to me in many ways we’ve stopped living because we fear the thing that’s going to happen anyway. Covid happens to have presented a new  means of extinguishing a life which probably feels more immediate for most people but death has always been the outcome for every single one of our lives as far as we know so far.

For months now I’ve been saying I suspect people are not in right relationship with their death and I think were more people in that mindset, we would likely have less collective desire to destroy things upon which we’ve built our lives, society, and country. Maybe people need some emotional support dealing with their own impending death. I don’t know. I credit my equanimity to the work I’ve done having been confronted with my own mortality in the past and looking down the barrel of a gun in my face and thinking I was going to go off a bridge into the Hudson.

Life ends every day. Nothing is any different now than it was six months ago. Just like then, you could drop dead at any point in time. There’s no guarantee you will live a long healthy life. Same as it’s always been.