Category: Pandemic Life Issues

Outside, beyond the kitchen window, sun shines across a broad valley. Trees wave, shadows occasionally flit across ploughed fields not yet sprouted and in the meadow, oblivious sheep safely graze. Tinny music drifts from the speakers of the cheap laptop I write on; it is softly playing random selections from my music collection while I’m emailing friends and family. Lauridsen’s, ‘Sure on this Shining Night’, has begun to play, driving immediate thoughts away, all replaced by gentle, melodic memories flooding into my mind, bringing distant friends and music from Summer Choir School in Portugal two years ago.

Spontaneous laughter in a refectory full of happy, chattering choristers, filling themselves with food before afternoon rehearsal starts.
We sang Sure on this Shining Night as if we were a heavenly choir in the Last Days, descending to Har Megiddo. How portentous. Little did we know it would be our last choral summer school for the foreseeable future. Fortunately, there is a book I like to read from time to time, reminding me of happier pre-covid times. I shall have to replace it soon, it’s almost worn out. It is called, ‘Summers of Light, Hearts of Gold’, a whimsical memoire of choir school.
I miss those people and times very much and I’m one of the luckier ones. I don’t live in a city; a high rise flat or maisonette, with or without balcony. Out here in the countryside, the nightmare of Covid only intrudes when I yearn to join friends or my community.

No doubt about it, people are suffering and dying; medical friends have told me of their working lives, but I’ve still begun to question the wisdom and sanity of measures being taken to try to protect people from Covid. Why are people still catching the disease when we’re all doing our best to prevent the spread – locked into our own homes. Is it spreading because people are not observing lockdown? Breaking curfew? In mainstream media, there seem to be more voices calling for stronger measures of protection; better face-masks, further social distancing, one way systems in shops and supermarkets, limiting the numbers of people in one place. I read about a suggestion to close supermarkets because they enable the spread of the disease – but how, when we’re all taking the right steps to prevent it? All those people who tested positive for Covid have recovered and should have a natural immunity, we just don’t know for how long. Those people who have not had Covid yet are being offered, in most cases, a vaccine. How long will the vaccine, we are being told we need, protect us against Covid19? Covid20; Covid21, 22, 23 and all the other variants it will undoubtedly mutate into over the next few years, all needing tighter control measures while a virtual world is imposed on the Global population? Covid, whatever it turns out to be, is still here. In the future, will we have to have four injections a year? Or more? Even after vaccination we can be assymptomatic spreaders, so we’ll still have to stay locked in our homes, wearing PPE when necessity forces us out.

We follow advice and guidance from health and science experts, from our governments – to stop the spread. We are told to avoid going outside unless in great need. We are told to social distance – not physically distance, two metres apart – SOCIALLY distance. We are told to use a computer, live on the internet – a virtual world. We are told to use online banking; to shop for all our needs through our computers, to accept cookies and allow internet service providers to harvest every detail of our personal and intimate lives in order for them to build a personal profile they can sell to other companies. To make wealthy men even wealthier.

Could there be another, vindictively cruel way, to torment a social species than to force it into isolation with laws demanding antisocial behaviours? Where does preservation end and persecution begin?

I want a real life. I need to be able to smell clean fresh air, rich in oxygen exhaled by plants and trees, with the scents of countryside life in it; I want to imbine the beauty of nature in places devoid of human interference. I need to travel, to satisfy personal, animistic, energetic needs that a virtual life on the internet will never, ever be able to fulfil – the need to interact with other life forms in their every nuance. I need to be able to sing with like-minded souls. Yes, I do sing here at home. My fluency on the piano has improved a lot through being isolated from the life and friends I knew. And yet, I would not have chosen this way to develop the skill. I would have preferred a choice. Occasionally, a study is published in a newspaper or magazine, examining the ways in which choirs can sing together; virtual choirs by video conferencing. Or socially distanced, when we’re not allowed to travel, in a mask with three layers – Really? Do me a favour…

I like to think that all branches of medical science will develop new techniques to study different treatments for every disease and a better understanding of the human condition as a result of research into coronaviruses and use this knowledge to benefit the human species, not pharmaceutical companies and profits.

I want to live, not exist. Therefore I live in hope, because it is better than living in despair.

A term being heard on mainstream media, regularly, to describe a recurrence of symptoms from the Covid 19 virus. Symptoms vary, most commonly; fatigue, breathlessness, joint and muscle pain, listlessness, lethargy, fatigue, mental confusion, depression, memory loss. These symptoms are very similar to those suffered by people with myalgic encephalomyelitis; or as it’s commonly know, ME. Also, vitually all of the really painful auto-immune diseases inflicting many people for many years.

Can a respiratory virus be responsible for auto-immune diseases and infections, in our brain, kidneys, liver, skin, fat and hearts – all over our bodies? If a virus can do all this, is it a naturally occuring organism? Why hasn’t it raised its head in the past? Why now?

Genetic engineering has been marketed to the world as a solution to feed the world. But looks increasingly more like marketing for the production of a gene altering delivery system, to make profits for pharmacutical industries – a case of creating their own markets in which to treat symptoms, forever.

Transverse myelitis was one side-effect found to develop in volunteers given a trial vaccination for Covid19 in the Asto-Zeneca vaccine trials. The symptoms of which correlate with the above symptoms for Long Covid very well.

A successful genetically engineered organism would rewrite the codes of its host, to interrupt the hosts’ own survival mechanisms; immune, endocrine and nervous systems. A similar organism can also be engineered to rewrite sections of host DNA, to achieve the same results. In other words, genetic engineering can be a weaponised technology, for the reduction of humans on the planet, at the greatest profitability. A eugenicist cause for much rejoicing.

The Manhatton Project was sold to a general public on the promise of cheap electricity, for peaceful purposes, when weaponisation was the primary driver – producing plutonium for more atomic bombs.

The biggest casualty, the greatest damage across society and the whole of humanity, from the Covid viewpoint, is the destruction of Trust. This HAS to be the worst atrocity and the Greatest Crime in the Universe. Anti Life. Anti Love.

Restrictions brought in to control Covid 19 are returning the world to medieval conditions where people in one village didn’t know of the existence of people in the next village because people didn’t or couldn’t travel. Yes, we have the internet, they didn’t. They had the Church and a feudal system of feifdom. Same control, same censorship.

Since March 23rd 2020, when the Corona virus, Covid 19, was officially announced, mainstream news media have presented a view of Covid 19 spread in the global community; as an increasing total of infections confirmed by testing, followed by the accumulating number of deaths from Covid.
As population testing increased, so did the numbers of confirmed cases, obviously. We still have the numbers scrolled in front of us, every night, on the media news channels. 80% of positive tested people will have symptoms similar to those of a heavy cold or flu, mild to severe, meaning the period of illness will last on average, between two to six weeks. Underneath the death count is a qualifier statement, ‘Deaths for any reason 28 days after a positive covid-19 test’ – Deaths for any reason. Where can we find statistics for people who have tested positive for T-cells and antibodies to Covid? More, corroborated, evidence is being gradually revealed about deaths of people who have died WITH Covid, not FROM it – within 28 days of a positive Covid test. Why are these included in the statistics? How many of the deceased had recovered from Covid at the time of their death? How many died other causes?
The Covid Passport, currently being discussed, validating a persons vaccination for covid, will unlock society for those who have had it; holidays, flights, access to pubs, clubs, bars, cinema’s, restaurants, shops, banks – everything we once took for granted, now dependent on a vaccination. A privilege only enjoyed if we submit to an artificial, laboratory produced injection.
The simple act of living ones life, once accepted as a universal right, now a privilege.
Covid 19 is a nasty virus, one from which most of us will recover. But how will the survivors recover the life we enjoyed before that life became a privilege granted by vaccination? How will we be affected, perhaps for generations to come, by the mental effects induced by measures to control the virus? Effects on the 80% with immunity, whether natural or artificial. If we are an intelligent species, we have to think of less destructive means to improve the overall health of humanity, leading us to a better future in which we, as a species, can thrive.

Life. What do we do with it?

We think we live life, when the common reality is that life lives through us. Most people live by accident, believing we have little or no control over what happens to us. We accept the bad times, welcome the good times and do nothing to promote or evade either. Why this should be so, has fascinated me for a long time. A very long time ago, it occured to me to look at the world as if I were watching a television screen. Placing an imaginary frame around everything in view. Like driving a car or sitting on a bus, looking out of a window into a world beyond. Not part of it; separated, watching. At the time, television was black and white, colour TV’s hadn’t been invented, so as a child, watching these colour images happen right in front of me was an amazing revelation. It eventually dawned on me that what I was seeing was my life, my reality, being played out, right in front of my eyes; and I wasn’t in charge of any of it. Life just happened whether I wanted it to or not. So I decided to experiment; to see if there was any choice in what happened to me, to live purposefully, deliberately choosing experiences to have. Difficult at first, but we can do this. I soon became accustomed to doing what I wanted, when I wanted, when the expectations of others were absent. But then, I wasn’t fitting in with people around me. Friends would invite me to join them and sometimes I would. But more frequently, their choices were dull. Or I’d had the experience they were pursuing. I joined groups of people who were doing what I wanted to do, then leave for another group. Again and again, until I began pursuing my own dreams and agendas, alone.

Have you ever bought a lottery ticket? Do you dream about what you’d do with a big lottery win? What would you start with? How would you go about making your dreams come true? Throw money around? Buy bigger, more expensive toys? There are better ways to improve lives.

Chances are your desires already are within your reach. The greatest endowment a big lottery win will bestow is permission. Everyone you know – and don’t know, will expect you to change your life, and a big lottery win will allow you to do that by taking away any censure to stay in your place; keep your head down and get on, believe you’re better than your peers or get ideas above your station. Possession of obscene amounts of money allows all these things, but you don’t need it. You don’t need permission to be who you really are, or to live the life of Your choice. Seeking permission to do what you want, from anywhere, is to accept you’re only part of a larger group, a tribe whose consent is demanded; not an individual but part of a heirarchical collective, a myrmidon, a worker, a drone, maybe an artisan. Not confident enough to choose freely, any path or journey, experience or choice, without considering the thoughts and opinions our tribe, friends and peer groups might have of us. A functioning member of the society in which we live.

What do we actually need? Warmth, water, food and shelter? Security, companionship, health and imagination? The list can go on for as long as we can dream. Friendship beyond relationship, quantity beyond need and access to everything we can think of? When does need become want? The most successful entrepreneurs, business men and women, construct a machine – a business to make money or vacuum money out of society. Some of these machines have led to increasing wealth inequalities simply because their business model was so successful. But most of us already have what we need, inside, built in. In our emotional security; intellectual balance and sense of sufficiency. Is it sane and rational to pursue the accumulation of wealth for its own sake? Beyond reason? Beyond all reasonable need?

Security of self, knowing who we are, is our greatest strength. Secure, living in the universe we know to be our own, this single fact is seldom articulated because it’s so obvious, we don’t need to until we lose sight of our origins. Our Universe is aware of itself, we are an expression of it. One of many. If we can claim to be sentient, can we claim the Universe is also sentient? It has power, a positive and negative aspect; energy, direction and a purpose – like humanity. Self determining, just as we can choose to be.

We have to be wary of giving the power in our Universe a name, of calling it anything by which it can be identified, for the same reason different religions call ‘their’ deity by a single name. Even among the same religion, adherents use different names. Between religions, adherents claim their deity is the right one, the correct one, the only one and any other name is a different deity and therefore a minor deity. We have a Universe and all we know and are is from that same Universe. So is our Universe Prime Creator? Or, through our imaginations, are we?

Identified and named as a single entity, will we pile baggage onto the creative force in our universe, as has happened with our terrestrial religions? Will all human expectations be placed on this new deity – our universe? Blame attached when expectations are not met? More baggage, and because, by definition, it’s perfect and can’t be blamed, will we look at our fellows, judging them for reasons why our expectations have failed? Moderating our expectations, we plead for a better harvest. We’re asking in the wrong way. Develop a simple habit to ask for favour. When it doesn’t work, enhance the plea with a few obsequious phrases, observations; develop a ritual, ceremony, deification worship and rites. This is how dogma accrues. Other people want to help, so they ask the deity on behalf of others, becoming interlocutors and interpreters of the deity.

Poetry is written, recognising the deeds, favours and wonders ascribed to the diety, which are in fact, our own successes; words are set to music, sung as incantations and praise, intercession to get the deity’s attention before asking for favours. Occasionally, a small favour seems to be granted. Interdiction is accepted as a small price to curry favour, becoming control reducing the scope of life to that which is acceptable to the interlocutors – on the deity’s behalf. No. We’re on that path and we need to change direction away from where it’s taking us. The list of do’s and don’t’s from the interlocutors, becomes a wall. When a favour isn’t granted, nature damns us or life turns against us, more must be done to appease the deity for some unspecified wrong we’re doing. A ritual expanded; tributes increased, beg forgiveness for our weaknesses and accept our need for flagellation. The wall becomes two walls and still the deity isn’t listening to our pleas… until there are four walls and an edifice spreading like a cancer, stunting growth and limiting choices, reducing lives to humanity diminishing rituals. How we enslave ourselves.

We’re part of the universe we live in. A heirarchical structure based on frequencies and energies we’ve observed and measured. Even though we have the personal freedom to do whatever we choose while here, still part of a massive collective of one. That’s why we default to heirarchical structures; why we default to looking after other people, each other, and why we have lapsed into servitude to power, believing it to be acting in our best interests, without as much as a murmur of serious mass dissent.

From before the time we begin thinking and believing we know who we are, we know we belong here. This is our home for a while, in the human family, part of this Universe looking through the frame of human experience in its limited capacity of five senses.

Being an individual who is also part of a collective isn’t a contradiction. Human values allow our society to operate, to work in unison and harmony with each other. There have to be do’s and don’t’s. But when a group of people set themselves above others by force of arms or economic might and demand the right to be obeyed, they reinforce their own positions of individuality, often destroying every potential power block capable of rising against them. Even if this means reducing society to its core, individual components, by subverting societal cohesion.

I’m growing increasingly impatient with our leaders, local and global, for their vacillation about Covid. Newspapers, magazine, radio and television articles about the Covid virus have little scientific concensus about what the virus actually is. Various reports tell us it’s a virulent mutation of the usual flu virus, a combination of viruses from different animals, a completely new organism, possibly laboratory created, or a scam to bring about massive social change. Reported deaths, allegedly from the virus, tell us beforehand, the figures include the deaths of anyone who has tested positive for Covid 19, in the last 28 days. Reports in media occasionally ‘reveal’ that all deaths, not just from Covid, are included in those figures; that the global death rate has actually fallen, because people are not living ‘normal’ lives in which risk assessment is a major part – fewer people are getting their risk assessments wrong; all bacteria and viruses are not being transmitted as usual because of hygiene measure being taken by populations to ‘control the virus’. Then there are statements from politicians, medical professionals and science experts, reporters and the man in the pub telling us such tales are from ‘conspiracy theorists’ or simply disinformation spread by Covid denialists and ‘covidiots’.

Where is truth? What are we to believe from the cornucopia of differing views? Like religions, the tale of Covid can be tailored to our own pre-existing beliefs. We can no longer be tortured or burnt at the stake if we refuse to believe our high priests. We can live our ‘new normal’ according to which views we want to believe. Just as we can tune in to several different weather channels to pick a forecast we like.

Or can we? What happened to Serpico, Stanley Adams and Chelsea Manning? Where is Assange, Snowdon and Li Wenliang?

A few medical experts have challenged the validity of Covid. Some of our nurses and health-care workers have pointed out discrepancies between actual and reported activity in hospitals. One news article I read recently said our NHS has banned workers from posting their views of hospital life on social media. Are these people conspiracy theorists? Covid denialists or covidiots? A lot of these academics and health professionals have written serious academic papers, peer reviewed in esteemed journals, and have been in the health care profession or industry all their working lives.

A conspiracy theorist can also be labelled ‘differently informed’, ‘alternatively educated’ and challenging. The same as a denialist and covidiot. The pejorative use of such common language is easy to direct when it’s been read in bold type on the front of newspapers. But as Einstein said, ‘Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance’. When anyone criticizes someone for having a different view, are they basing their criticism on investigation, or something they read in the papers?

How are we to keep an open mind when so much information is vying for our allegiance? As one mainstream journalist said many years ago, ‘We must keep an open mind, but not so open that our brains fall out’.