(Trigger warning, if you’re an SJW you might not want to read this article...it contains reason) I’ll be honest, I initially was a bit hesitant to get into this. In the last month, social distancing has become like a religion. Anyone who even questions it automatically gets told that they’re “part of the problem”. And, YouTube actively takes down videos that don’t support the current narrative “social distancing is essential”.... so much for free speech But, I thought it was essential to give voice to reason and what most people are secretly thinking but too afraid to say... social distancing is going to do more harm then good Before, I explain why let me sum up the rationale behind social distancing so no one can accuse me of not understanding the issue “Social distancing slows down the rate of infection allowing the health care system to “catch up” and not get too overwhelmed” And I agree with this logic. Unlike most people who are critical of this, I DO NOT believe in any of the Corona conspiracies. In fact, I think they are even more retarded. One only needs to google image “wuhan wet market” to conceptualize how easy it is for novel viruses to evolve there. In fact, it’s a surprise that this didn’t happen earlier. As a side note, If you think we finally “had our wake up call” you are dead wrong. 18 years ago, SARS came from a Chinese wet market. After which, China promised to ban selling exotic animals as wet markets...which they did for a few years until everyone forgot and then they went right back it. And believe it or not, this time they’re not even waiting. They’re already back at it. (Partially because we are too busy shaming people for wanting to see their friends that we almost entirely forgot about how we got into this mess in the first place) Ok so if corona is real, then why is social distancing largely retarded? 1) It Trades Short Term Harm For Long Term Harm We all know that the world economy is crashing hard right now. Unemployment is likely to be higher then it was even during the Great Depression. Something like this won’t be fixed with a government bailout (that’s a small band aid) and even in the best case scenario it will take years to fix the economy. An extreme world wide economical depression isn’t going to just hit people’s wallets. It will actually kill people. Probably more then Corona ever could. Let’s start with the obvious, people in third world countries who don’t have a government safety net and need a functioning trade system to eat are largely fucked. Before corona made an appearance, about 9.1 million people in the world died JUST FROM HUNGER every year. That number is about to get much much bigger. For most of the people reading this, the worst case scenario with an economic depression, likely involves having to move back in with your parents or eating ramen noodles. For people in this world countries, it’s death Aside from hunger, there’s depression. And this is just as serious as corona, more so in my opinion. A sizable percentage of our country struggles with depression. Humans are by nature ultra social creatures and are designed to be at least somewhat social. Losing your job and having to stay at home all day will be the breaking point for a lot of people. Some will commit suicide. Some will overdose on drugs out of boredom or frustration. And a lot will just give up hope. Not good In addition, a lot of people will die from preventable health issues. For example, if a family who is living paycheck to paycheck suddenly finds themselves with a lot less money they are likely to forgo regular checkups at the doctors office and healthy (but more expensive) food. Basically, the long term effects of the severe economic depression we largely created ourselves through this extreme quarantine mandate are going to be very severe....and will kill A LOT of people. And trading long term consequences for short term relief is not the solution. 2) It Is Ineffective/ hypocritical I often hear politicians say “if everyone just followed the rules this whole thing would be over in two weeks”. That’s a load of horse shit. First of all, in 2020 that is impossible. There are cops, clerks at the grocery store, pharmacists, nurses, etc who need to interact with Hundreds of people every day as part of their job. And they need to go home to their families at the end of the day. Does it really make a difference if you’re exposed to several dozen people inside the store or in the long line outside? The way our modern society works even if every single person became an obedient robot, social isolation still wouldn’t “fix the problem” Secondly, social distancing goes against human nature. As I mentioned, earlier we are ultra social creatures. And you are not going to get people to go against thier nature through rules or shame. At this point you might be thinking, ok dude but it will still slow down the rate of infection and at least reduce the death rate.... and yes I agree with you. Social distancing will at least keep some people from dying .... but that’s never been our goal as a society If it was, then why don’t we ban cars? Every single year about 1.35 million people across the world are killed as a direct result of something car related. 1.35 million people dead every single year. That is much more then the 130,000 that have died from Covid 19. And unlike Corona, these could more or less be prevented. All we have to do is ban car manufacturers from making cars and levy huge fines on anyone who drives one Now you might be thinking, dude that’s retarded people need their cars. Yes, but they need social interaction more. Banning cars would fuck things up for sure, but not nearly as much as what we’re doing now. The reason we barely bat an eye at the 1.3 million people who die from car related deaths is because it’s not anything new. We expect it and we consider the positive benefits of having cars to justify 1.35 million lives a year. This sounds utilitarian, but explain to me what is the difference between someone dying from getting hit by a car and someone dying from a virus. Both are equally unfortunate, but one is actually much more preventable Ofcourse, cars account for only a fraction of the deaths that could totally be prevented. Alcohol, cigarettes, sugar, fast food, pollution, etc. We allow so much Shit that kills people because “people are free to make their own decisions” and “the pros outweigh the cons”. So why is this ANY different. If our goal is to just “help the healthcare system catch up” then why don’t we temporarily ban fast foods and anything unhealthy like cigarettes or alcohol. If people can’t eat Shitty food then their immune systems are going to be much stronger, which in turn will mean a lower risk of having to be hospitalized So why don’t we ban cars, cigarettes, alcohol, fast food, etc....that stuff is going to kill many more people then Covid 19 ever could and works against “flattening the curve”. If you think we should ban all those things then while I disagree with you, I give you credit for your intellectual consistency. But if you think that only social interactions should be banned, then your perspective is hypocritical 3) It Distracts Us From Other Solutions One big thing I’ve observed is that there is still an ample supply of healthy food at the grocery store. The vegetables are still there, but the Cheetos are sold out. This is ironic and very unfortunate. Personally, I’ve been eating a clean paleo diet for almost 10 years so for me not much change is required, but I would think now would be the time everyone would get serious about what they eat & drink in order to keep their immune system strong But that is not happening. In fact, you very rarely even hear the media talking about it. Social distancing is the new obsession and we’re focusing 100% of our attention on it while we completely disregard every other thing that would save lives. If the Only goal right now to save lives and help our healthcare system catch up then shouldn’t we stress the importance of diet, vitamins, sleep, immune boosting peptides, etc? So what would I do if It was up to me? This is as far away from my job as possible so I don’t have a concrete answer here. But, in my opinion a balanced common sense approach is what’s needed Education - Let’s start stressing the importance of a good diet and other healthy practices. Let’s stress that eating unhealthy at this point is really not a good idea. Let’s take part of the energy that we’re using to indoctrinate people about social distancing and apply to other essential things Incentives - Let’s put a temporary tax on anything unhealthy (maybe 10-20%), like fast food and cigarettes. And take that money and directly use it to temporarily subsidize the cost of healthy food. And let’s go one step further, let’s also subsidize the cost of certain scientifically proven immune boosting supplements like vitamin C and Zinc. Let’s teach make it insanely easy for anyone who is interested in minimizing thier corona risk to get this stuff. Mandate purell in every business - Yep, If a business wants to stay open during this crises they need to install free purell dispensers. Certain businesses & buildings are already doing this by choice, but a lot are not. This may sound a bit extreme, but I guarantee you every single business would GREATLY prefer this to bieng shut down Smart Distancing - Let’s find some practical middle ground between ignoring the issue and closing every single thing down & having cops fine law abiding citizens for being out past bedtime. For example, let’s take the gym. Why don’t we ask people to reserve a time slot online before coming in. The gym could levy an increase in membership on anyone who wants to workout whenever and use that money to give a discount to anyone who wants to work out in the off hours. Yes, it’s gonna be a pain in the ass. But it’ll still be a 100 times better then having no gym at all. And it will allow the gym owners and thier staff from losing thier livelihoods Let’s adopt this kind of smart approach to every type of business. For example at the barber shop, require having people to reserve a spot ahead of time and allow no more then one or two people in the waiting area. Extremes are never the right solution, the path of wisdom is almost always a smart middle ground Invest very heavily into research & medicine - While we do the previous four things to minimize infection rate and avoid a world economic collapse & everyone from going insane.... let’s heavily invest in our health care system and getting to a practical vaccine as fast as possible. You got like half the country going on unemployment, some of them could be quickly trained to temporarily provide assistance in areas where we need them the most instead of having them sit at home with no purpose. Reduce the likelihood of something like this happening again - We are currently almost entirely failing in this department right now. The media in thier politically correct motivation to avoid even mentioning that the cause of this whole disaster is already back is keeping people from focusing on how we actually got into this mess. And that means there is no pressure on politicians to address this either. The politicians Ofcourse mostly don’t give a shit either because they either have business interests in China or are lobbied by organizations who have business in China. And without that pressure nothing is going to be done and we will be in this mess again. So next time you‘re regurgitating the importance of social distancing, try to focus some of your energy on how we got into this mess in the first place. (Hint: it involved a country with a billion people who almost entirely doesn’t give a shit about their people or rest of the world) My biggest wish is that some politician would “steal my plan”: it would be great if we can use reason & common sense to dictate our actions rather then fear, group think, and extremes. But, I’ll settle for a few less hypocritical dipshits trying to shame anyone who doesn’t totally buy into the current propaganda