ONE FOR THE ROAD
James Deakin
As we slowly crawl out of our caves and begin to feel the first rays of normalcy in two years, many are now waking up to the sobering reality here, which is: the damage created by the pandemic response may turn out to be an even bigger killer than the actual pandemic. Yes, we may have finally flattened the curve, but at what cost?
Take a look around.
The global economy is in ruins. Global debt has spiraled out of control. Supply chains are broken. Monetary policy is a train wreck, and cost of doing business has increased thanks in part to unnecessary restrictions and largely because of inflation and difficulty in getting staff.
Mental health issues are even more alarming — especially among children. According to UNICEF, the impact of the Covid-19 mandates and lockdowns on children and young people’s mental health is the “tip of the iceberg,” with new analysis by the London School of Economics indicating that, “while the impact on children’s lives is incalculable, the lost contribution to economies due to mental disorders that lead to disability or death among young people is estimated at nearly $390 billion a year.”
Depression, anxiety, suicide, self harm and even speech problems are all on the rise, and social media, which once brought us all together, has evolved into a cesspool of hate and outrage.
Marriages have also taken a beating. The latest figures from the beginning of 2022 show that despite a decline in divorce rates in 2019 and 2020, 2021 has been particularly taxing on marriages, with some countries (The Maldives) setting a Guinness records for divorce.
Personally, I know couples in their sixties and seventies filing for divorce. Four of my closest friends have ended their marriages during this lockdown — two of who were over 25 years strong and one over 30 years. And yet as painful as those figures are, the truth is that there are many more that are just suffering in silence because of a lack of options.
I’m sure there are couples and families that have gotten closer over the pandemic, as well as businesses that have thrived, and that is awesome, but if you look at the numbers, it tells a very different story for the majority.
Institutional trust is also at an all time low, with people losing faith in media and government; even once revered and universally respected global institutions like the WHO and the CDC have lost their credibility.
Families have also been divided and fractured over belief systems in either lockdown protocols and/or vaccines and big tech has only driven an even deeper wedge in humanity by dividing them up by ideology and stigmatizing or censoring the side that goes against their narrative, creating an irreversible trust crisis.
So what do we do? How do we prevent this from ever happening again? While I’m no expert, with all due respect, I think we’ve seen the damage experts have already done here, so if you ask me, a humble global citizen, I believe the heart of this problem and the only way to avoid it is: decentralization.
We need to start redistributing the power back to the people and creating smaller, local communities that are given more freedom to govern themselves. It’s time to go back to basics. Think local. Protect your tribe. Only allow real stakeholders to vote on your shared future, not bureaucrats and corporations because only those who are directly affected by the decisions they make can truly decide what’s best for the community. You simply cannot have one country or institution, or a handful of experts, decide on the greater good of humanity from a bomb proof shelter on the other side of the globe. It simply doesn’t work for anyone else but the people who get to make those decisions and their cronies.
Globalism was a failed experiment. Yes we can get some good things out of it, but when it comes to decisions involving personal health and freedoms, allowing big governments to micro manage your emergencies remotely — whether its this health crisis, or mark my words, soon a climate crisis — is like treating a pimple with chemotherapy.