Is a Covid Safe Community Even Possible?

There are too many variables to predict an outcome

Photo by NASA Hubble Space Telescope on Unsplash

To establish a truly safe community, we would be faced with an unlimited number of factors that will make it impossible to predict an outcome.

Early on in the pandemic I saw, what was termed, the gold standard of pandemic control.

It included: limit incoming infections, make testing, tracing, and treatment widely available and free, adopt precautionary measures like masks, and enhanced air filtration, and provide accurate information about the dangers presented by the virus(es).

Since it’s now obvious that, as a society, we failed on every one of those tenets and opted, instead, for the “rusty chunk of metal standard” we’re now faced with the Sisyphean task of trying, desperately, to protect ourselves from the tsunami of ignorance that is everyday life in the modern world.

To apply the “gold standard” to a community, we would have to strictly enforce limits and standards on incoming members, we would have to have access to testing devices, the ability to trace the contacts and movements of all members, we would have to have treatment available for people who got sick, we would have to enforce masking, we would have to have access to air purification in indoor spaces, and the members would have to be willing to accept the known dangers and abide by the rules.

Doesn’t that sound like fun?

If we look around at the people that we interact with on a daily basis, we could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who would be likely candidates for our imaginary group.

We would have to tell people that one of the costs of admittance is to cut ties with family members, friends, and acquaintances who are not willing to adopt the protocol.

It would have to be extremely insular, and most likely self-reliant to avoid contact with the outside world, and then there would be the outside world.

The outside world would be antagonistic toward a community of this nature. They would not accept that we are trying to protect ourselves from them. They would most likely actively spread lies, misinformation, and hatred to turn others against us, and there is the very real danger of them attacking and trying to destroy the group.

The difficulty of starting any kind of group for whatever reason has been demonstrated many times in the last few years, and if you attempted to impose rules to prevent the spread of contagions, your efforts would be doomed. (don’t say the D word)

Naomi Klein said, in one of her books, that “We must imagine a future that doesn’t exist.”

The idea of a Covid safe community is imagining a future that can’t exist.

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