World Woke Three - A call for courage!

By Dr Parag Shah

Having spent much of 2020, helping battle Covid 19 on the top floor of an East London ICU, I’ve been fortunate to enjoy a London skyline view. How it has changed since it was bombed in World War II? In 1940, along with several other metropolitan areas of the UK, Londoners found themselves ordered to hunker down in their homes, hushed up, hoping and waiting. Well, not even a single century has passed since then and here we are again! Isolated in our homes, hoping and waiting.

 Back then it was the Blitz, an act of invasion, which triggered a collective courage, the Blitz spirit. Certain particularly vulnerable select groups, such as very young children, were evacuated to the countryside. The rest remained in blacked out homes. Why was it courageous of them to remain in their homes? Well, it was raining bombs all around their neighbourhood. The wait was for bomber planes to pass and for bombs to miss. It was a courageous waiting. Would you have been so courageous?

 Now, let’s not glorify that warring period of human history too much. For humanity to descend into a state of global warfare, not just once but twice within a few decades, must be seen for what it was. On the spectrum of collective human behaviour the world wars have to have been at the extreme of one end; the lunacy of extreme aggression which, emboldened by technology, knew no limit at all.

 Today, however, we find ourselves holed up in our homes for precisely the opposite of courage. Instead of bombs there is a virus; and to avoid the virus hitting you, the advice is for everybody to stay at home! Instead of finding astute ways to identify and protect the most vulnerable, the entire population is being required to cower in waiting for a saviour vaccine, despite the vast majority having perfectly fit and strong immune systems. Against the opinions of thousands of eminent doctors and scientists around the world, our government’s advisory body SAGE, has unilaterally declared it impossible to segregate the vulnerable. Really? Surely, this is a logistical exercise, not a scientific one. Its feasibility is best judged not by academic experts but by those with a can-do attitude, practical doers and entrepreneurial, inventive types.

 For our political leaders to advocate that the fit majority should cower in fear, while livelihoods get decimated, makes for lily-livered and timorous nonsense. It is nothing less than a Shakespearean tragedy for our mainstream media to perpetuate this political lead, by coercing any voices of dissent to walk the plank of shame. The pendulum has swung. We are living through the lunacy of the extreme at the other ‘soft’ end of the human behaviour spectrum. Yes, it is possible to be too soft. The pendulum has swung all the way from unbridled aggression to the opposite of extreme risk aversion. Such imposed extreme caution is a form of selfishness, not high mindedness.

 The ancient Chinese have language for the swing of the pendulum along such a spectrum. The aggression of world wars was extreme Yang. Today we are living through an extreme Yin. It is dark and toxic. I call it ‘dark softness’.

 Over the last two thousand years, the collective human immune system has faced a barage of plagues and pandemics. And guess what? Our collective immune system has got us through all of them. Yes, we survived! We are here to tell the tale. Survivals outstripped deaths. If you don’t believe me, pinch yourself. You are alive! Yes you are. The immune system of the human species is truly one of the wonders of the natural world. Indeed, today there are over 7 billion of us human beings swarming the planet. What a phenomenal job our collective immune system is doing. Yet, so-called experts and the media fail to celebrate this! Why? Why does historical data not trumpet the survivors! Instead, plagues are documented with an almost zestful focus on death rates. Furthermore, Covid 19 death rates are dwarfed by past plagues.

 The Antonine plague in 165AD took 5 million lives, the Plague of Justinian in 541AD took up to 50 million lives, the Bubonic plague of the year 1347 took 200 million. There are the 1st and 2nd great plagues of the 17th and 18th centuries (3-4 million lives), the Third plague of 1855 (12 million lives) as well as all the flu pandemics of the last two hundred years, Spanish flu (50 million lives) Asian flu, Russian flu, Swine flu. Let’s not forget HIV, which has taken 40 million lives and still lacks a vaccine and the so called ‘exotic’ viruses: yellow fever, Ebola, SARS, MERS. On it goes, with a morbid laser focus on death rates feeding a frenzy of fear.

 It is beyond question that on the personal level, each and every lost soul is heart-breaking, deserving the most fulsome compassion. We remember, we say our prayers and we take time to grieve; but unlike former generations, today’s society no longer has much of a wholesome collective approach for accepting and coping with death. It is by accepting the fact of death, that our species has been able to reap rewards through the ages by facing countless dangers. One of those rewards has been a powerful collective immune system, which has kept our species from dying out.

 Our collective immune system must be allowed to meet and greet a nasty bug and then have the opportunity to beat it. Think! If you depend on a calculator then your mental arithmetic will get rusty. Use it or lose it. If you depend on satnav then your map-reading skills will get rusty. Use it or lose it. So too, for our collective immune system. Use it or lose it.

 Through the ages, exposure to bugs has been an essential factor in ensuring the community immunity of our species remains shipshape and strong. Yes you read that right – ‘community immunity’. It sounds good doesn’t it? The word ‘community’ is in there. Yes, community immunity enables us to get collectively stronger together. Who’d be against that? Well, guess what? Community immunity is just a more acceptable phrase for nothing other than ‘herd immunity’.

 The trouble is that today’s mass lunacy of softness has caused a collective hysteria over the word ‘herd’. Instead of the intended scientific meaning of ‘community immunity’, the mass lunacy has taken a bizarre alternative high drama interpretation that ‘herd’ means we are all sheep-like animals, ear-marked for the abattoir by our heartless masters. Cue the endless squawking of dark softness since March.

 At the macro level, to focus excessively on deaths without a balancing regard for the survival rate is perverse. It precludes any thought of deliberately allowing, if not encouraging (but of course, not forcing) those sub-groups with strong immune systems to take turns to go and get infected. Yet a focus on deaths is precisely what our political leaders are doing as they too, ad lib their part in the high drama, hungry for applause from the squawking voices of dark softness. For our leaders to use such a narrow distorting lens to steer thinking for determining national policy is sheer lunacy. It is a lunacy of this fashionable dark and toxic softness, equal and opposite to the lunacy of world war. We are living through nanny state at its extreme peak. An upcoming bulletin will trace how this dark softness is rooted in something called ‘woke culture’ and its rise. Perhaps you have heard the term?

 Welcome to World Woke Three!

 © Copyright 2020, Parag Shah All Rights Reserved.