A group of adult female giraffes with their calves is called a tower. By contrast,  the male giraffe remains mostly solitary and travels from herd to herd looking for a mate. When necessary — in combat — he uses his neck as a weapon. Comically, this behaviour is called necking. 

Today, I am going to mimic the male giraffe and stick my neck out — not to be combative, or find a mate, but simply to express my personal opinion on the hot topic of the day, one that I hear discussed every morning on my health-related podcasts.

Mainstream doctors and experts — the world-over — all agree that the only smart way to tackle this COVID-19 pandemic is with lockdowns, self-isolation, reduced activities and social distancing. 

(I don’t understand why they use this descriptor since we are actually only physically distancing, as a quick look at the ever-growing social media posts can confirm.)

Nevertheless, we must all stay physically away from each other — especially if we are over 70, or 65, or 60 or … whatever the latest number is. We must absolutely self-isolate to protect both ourselves and others from this deadly virus; we must avoid all but essential activities; we must stay inside and do our share/our duty to flatten the curve.

We must use two counter-tops to treat our essential grocery purchases, disinfecting everything, including fruits and vegetables, before we put our items away, and wash our hands every step of the way, and preferably, wear a mask, … or not.

We are surrounded by rules that take away our freedom to act as we see fit. What happened to our rights to use our own logic?

There are, thankfully, very intelligent and questioning dissenters out there who have a different narrative. I find it very refreshing to eaves-drop on these intelligent interviews and discussions by such open-minded scientists. They are experts in their field and know how to have professional debates on challenging topics — and even disagree — without the ubiquitous ad hominem attacks. For sure, they aren’t all on the same page, and that’s okay because they have respectful open dialogue and share their well-thought-out and well-referenced view-points in such a way that we can form our own opinions knowing the facts they present.

Indeed,  with careful and judicious selection from the podcast- and YouTube-world we can find those who speak with a different perspective — with a wisdom that we never hear on television where, at any time of any day, or any week it’s the same old repetition of the same old: wash your hands, stay home, respect the social-distancing rules, don’t ask questions, …. Sadly, their facts consist of the ever-increasing rambling numbers of cases and deaths that they throw out there to continue to terrify us into compliance!

It is so very tiring! And I really wonder this: is it working?

So what’s my take-away? Well, sadly, I obviously don’t have all the answers either. I’m a simple retired English teacher/greeting card designer — not a scientist.

I do, however, have a good degree of critical-thinking abilities, and having listened to, and read dozens of articles on these issues, I too have become a bit of a dissenter. And there are many things that I question:

— If we never allow the children (who are least vulnerable to this virus) to get out into the living world and play with their friends, and get exposure to microbes of all kinds, how will we ever get an elevated degree of herd immunity to resist this virus?

— With nothing close to 85% herd immunity, how can we possibly avoid a second wave of lockdowns, social distancing, manic hand-washing, illogical grocery routines, etc. ?

— How many more people will suffer even more ill health and then die a prolonged and much more miserable death because of the continuing lockdowns?

– Why don’t governments pre-emptively spend the enormous offers of hand-out money to fix the obesity, diabetes, heart, kidney, auto-immune, etc. diseases; and the horrendous social problems of addiction and homelessness, etc. so that people can be healthy enough to hardily face any and all novel, unexpected and unimaginable biological forces of nature?

— Why don’t we instead get sunshine/ vitamin D exposure, fresh air, exercise, sleep, peace of mind, … and good vibes from our neighbours and loved ones?

–— Why don’t we look at this as a challenge to build up our health, to tower above, and to become very, very bad hosts to this virus?

For an even more sobering read see this Off-Guardian article from April 17.

And Part 2 is here