Covid is Doing Things

(1) Covid: Christmas flights cancelled and new curbs amid Omicron spread

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-59780318

(2) COVID-19 outbreak claims another Premier League match

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-soccer-sports-health-europe-aa74c6347269432da4070201ab91d2ef

(3) COVID-19 makes Biden’s 1st White House Christmas less merry

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-joe-biden-lifestyle-health-jill-biden-21f41f34fada8372b64944c097d400e8

These three news items have at least one thing in common: They all begin with the indicative string “Covid” and thereby they all tell us that Covid is doing something.

You have been reading news items like this since November 2019, so much so that you could fill a notebook with real or imagined headlines of what Covid has done so far:-

(1) Covid drives up prices of plywood (bread, strawberries, medicine, air, soil, ...)

(2) Covid closes schools (libraries, restaurants, gyms, clouds, rivers ...)

(3) Covid drives up unemployment rates (interest, shipping, wind speeds, gravity...)

(4) Covid causes shortage of cars (staff, containers, grass, garden gnomes, ....)

If you have doubts, key in the phrases above to your favorite search engine. You will be surprised.

Now Here is an Item of Real News

“Covid” is the name given to a virus, and a virus is essentially a string of RNA (ribonucleic acid). RNA is sometimes called “messenger RNA” and in the simplest sense, RNA is something that carries a message as DNA does its work. DNA, as you well know, is at the heart of almost every living cell. Every one of the billions of cells in your brain contains DNA, and RNA is the humble servant of DNA.

Your brain has no thought or memory but that it comes from and through a brain cell, and that brain cell contains DNA, and RNA serves the DNA as a messenger.

Now think of two co-operative medieval kings fighting a common foe. One king on a hill calls to a peasant “Carry a message for me”, and the illiterate peasant, who is very good with horses, springs to his steed and gallops to the king on the other hill with the message “We attack at dawn”. Both kings have the power to order hundreds of men into battle. The messenger? Good at horses, really good, but illiterate and incompetent at strategy and tactics.

Covid is RNA, The messenger. The peasant on horseback.

Covid is NOT a cell, let alone a brain cell, so in human terms (and humans are reading the news reports), Covid can not and does not make any kind of thought nor can it issue a command. Covid is RNA and it can not order hundreds of men into battle. Nor can it issue a command to shut down a restaurant, or to shut down all the schools in a city or a province or a nation.

Covid can replicate, and it does it very well. Covid can mutate during replication, and two years is enough time to prove the truth of that statement. But Covid can not and does not order humans to do things.

Only politicians can do that, be they elected federal members of parliament, provincial members of parliament, or municipal councilors, or even just community spirit and common but informal agreement.

Covid can not cancel Christmas flights, Covid can not stifle another Premier League match’ Covid can not make Biden’s first White House Christmas less merry

Only humans can implement those decisions.

It follows then that whatever misery is in the world today “because of Covid” is not, and never can be misery caused by Covid.

It is misery that comes as a result of decisions made by humans. Mainly politicians who are programmed to issue statements whenever a microphone is thrust in their face, and microphones are thrust by interviewers who are trying to maximize sales by publishing attention-grabbing scary headlines.

Sit quietly and contemplate these things:-

(a) Suppose we had not suffered mandatory house arrest, closure of businesses and so on. How would YOU prove that we would have had more deaths “due to Covid” than we have had?

(b) Suppose that we had NOT worn masks, but treated the outbreak of Covid as we have treated annual outbreaks of “regular influenza” year after year? Yes, vulnerable folks would have died, as they have died every year, from ‘flu or the common cold, but would there have been measurably more deaths?

(c) How many lives have been irrevocably changed by political/human decisions that have laid off people, bankrupted business, caused the loss of many hours of investment in people’s future and thrown those futures on the rocks? These decisions based on lack of knowledge (please refer to (a) above)

(d) With hindsight we find it easy to sit back and say “Well, if we had done it differently, embraced Covid and continued to live as we normally would instead of shutting everything down ...”. When the next major virus arrives, as I guarantee that it will, will YOU stand back and say “No! This time let us protect the vulnerable, and let the rest of us protect the human race by dealing with the effects of the virus”

(e) Above all, who do YOU think has the greater intelligence, politicians or a virus? And of those two groups, who do you think is going to win the next battle?

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