2020 was a special year. It showed us that no government can be prepared for the tricks of nature, no matter how organised and planned it is. Even if we prepare ourselves to face the worst we can imagine, a new virus or disaster can appear and obstruct our way of life. Mankind can only try to be ready to “surf the next wave”, but we cannot always hope to avoid or prevent its coming.
However, some people do not understand this. It is common to hear so-called “scientists and specialists” blaming governments as if they were solely responsible for all the deaths from Covid-19, and not the virus itself. They want the authorities to close their countries, close the markets, prohibit human contact and punish those who do not follow the new rules. For them it was urgent to do anything and everything to save people from coronavirus – no matter how extreme, regardless of the consequences of their actions.
It is true that a coordinated answer by the governments could avoid some of the deaths, but it is certainly not possible to prevent all of them, and definitely not most of them. To avoid all the deaths caused by the virus, a series of insane actions would be needed, actions which would likely ultimately lead to more deaths.
For instance, if we take Brazil as an example, we see that prohibiting restaurants opening during the pandemic has caused a series of bankruptcies and further increased already worryingly high unemployment rates. The same is true for cinemas, shops, tourism companies and so on. Actions taken allegedly to save the nation from coronavirus are dooming it to an even more dangerous future.
The exaggeration of some politicians, reporters, “scientists” and young students – who are ready to kill an individual if it saves him from coronavirus – resembles that movement called “environmentalism.” Have you noticed how long we have not heard much from environmentalists recently? Coronavirus is the new flag of environmentalism.
Environmentalism and the exaggerated fight against coronavirus both have the same characteristics – be ready to kill humanity with a real and present danger if it might save it from a far-off possibility in the future. Moreover, both movements have an aura of “superior morality” as if an individual can feel “justified” because he is ready to make “sacrifices” to “save the planet/mankind”. It is vital to note that most of those who are so vocally willing to make the “sacrifices” are very much those with the least to lose, the well-off higher classes – the metropolitan elite.
In the past few months, we watched governments prohibiting people from living their social life, from earning the money they need to survive, from doing what humans have done since their creation – all to avoid a possible contamination by Covid-19. For them, it does not matter that there are skyrocketing anxiety rates, unemployment rates, numbers of bankruptcies, the months without study in schools and universities – all that matters for them is that they allegedly protected humankind from coronavirus, and even this cannot be really proven by them.
We are facing a new environmentalism. We should be aware and move to prevent it from growing and causing more damage to our countries.