Now More Than Ever? Covid Unmasked.


The UK reports that, at the end of March, one in thirteen Brits had active Covid infections. One in 13 down with Covid. At the same time, a new strain of the Omicron variant is spreading. Yet governments insist on scrapping even the most basic precautions, particularly masking.

George Monbiot writes that, from Covid to climate catastrophe, governments are now abandoning us to our fate.

We have a new term for doing nothing: “learning to live with”. Learning to live with Covid means abandoning testing, isolation and wearing masks in public places. Living with it, dying from it, what’s the difference? The same applies to climate breakdown. It’s not just that countries like the UK have failed to play their part in preventing this catastrophe. They have also failed to prepare for it.

While our primary effort should still be to decarbonise our economies, to prevent even worse impacts, we also need to brace ourselves for the heating that’s now unavoidable. But, as the government’s climate change committee points out, adaptation in the UK is “under-resourced, underfunded and often ignored”. The head of the committee has spoken of a “wilful reluctance” to include adaptation in policymaking.

There is no learning involved in “learning to live with”. It tends to mean an inability to adapt to new realities, and in some cases looks like a total retreat into abstraction. In 2020, the US conservative commentator Ben Shapiro claimed that 10 feet of sea level rise wouldn’t be a problem, because people could just “sell their homes and move”. Sell them to mermaids, presumably. A few days ago, a senior executive at the Institute of Economic Affairs suggested that instead of preventing climate breakdown, we could simply “build sea walls”. It is not just denial we’re up against. It’s a belief in magic.


Comments

  1. LorneApril 7, 2022 at 12:11 PM

    Governments know their main audiences, Mound. Rather than lead, they now pander to the lowest common denominators in our society. This is abundantly evident here in Ontario, where Doug Ford and his coterie insist that they have the hospital capacity to deal with anything Covid might bring, conveniently ignoring the fact that more and more hospital personnel are off work with the virus. And apparently our Chief Medical Officer, Kieran Moore, who Ford says is free to speak whenever he wants, has disappeared into some form of witness protection.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Disaffected LibApril 7, 2022 at 1:02 PM

    Alberta fired their CMO, Lorne. My daughter and son-in-law are staying with my ex in her condo while they wait to take possession of their new house. My ex came down with Covid and now my daughter has it. The son-in-law will probably be next.

    I fear Monbiot is right. Whether it's a public health threat, global warming, pretty much anything, we're on our own.

    ReplyDelete
  3. TrailblazerApril 7, 2022 at 5:22 PM

    The Brit's have a habit of hiding and ignoring things

    https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/smog-kills-thousands-in-england#:~:text=Heavy%20smog%20begins%20to%20hover,of%20at%20least%204%2C000%20people.

    Pollution, Covid or climate change; if it' interrupts the market economy then it's, I can't hear you , I can't hear you !!
    It's the market economy that hs to be challenged.

    TB

    ReplyDelete

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