Reflections

I have before posted the lines, that it’s not my job to decide strategies for pandemic fighting, and I’m glad I don’t have that job. What I wrote and didn’t post was the following, if I in some weird timeline was forced to take those decisions I would chose lockdowns. However, that’s not saying that I in theory doesn’t like the thought we should trust the people to do the right thing and save the violence monopoly till worse chrises. We are citizens not subject. Plus I would listen to the experts and not close schools for kids under 15, and I would allow children to play sports. Letting kids be kids has a value of it own. One time I watched a press conference with Public health agency and actually felt proud was when they said children can play football. Things like that is so important we are willing to take that minimal risk. One wonder how it is for children to live in a country that want to isolate even the young? And that’s of course why I also wrote a poem named Longstocking not lockdown. (If you don’t think schools are safe, I say, if you want kids as safe as possible, ban cars don’t ban schools. General speaking car accidents kills children, covid-19 don’t kills children and education is an human right, cars isn’t an human right.)

Sorry but I have to write one thing more about this. Some US based science page posted this.
 






I find it weird to post that, since, just like in Europe, including Sweden, the number of deaths and the number of patients at hospitals is going down in the US. Isn’t that the important number? More testing means more diagnoses and that’s a good thing.

I had one distant relative who a long time ago was arrested for stealing toilet paper. True story, he worked at a paper mill and packed a lorry full of toilet paper that he drow to Stockholm there he sold it to a store. The point being, remember in the start of this when people all over the world suddenly started to hoard toilet paper. (We here didn’t needed to hoard it, apparently a country that’s 70 % forest is self sufficient on toilet paper, who would have thought?) Back then in the toilet paper era, we also talked about “flatten the curve” and it wasn’t clear that so many countries should abandon the old plans of social distancing and hand washing. Sure I was worried then, but I thought life should be more normal when we were at the other end of the curve, when the number of death and sickness starts going down again. And there we are now, plus we in the west have had a flat curve. It didn’t turned out more normal. At least the one who post things like that thinks we still should be scared. Posible more scared. 

For better or worse, so much seems to have changed. What back in like Mars was desperate, often useless, last ditch metodes, namly lockdowns and face masks, have in many places become the only show in town. I can read articles from back then arguing that the bunker mentality of lockdowns risked creating a dream world for the far right. In the US the far right protested the lockdown and the left embrace it. Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong, but what I can see the US left likes to share pics like the above. We all hate the Trump regime, the question is if it is good to scare people? If, yes IF, it turns out that the pandemic isn’t as bad as the American left think, can that make them lose votes in November? If, again IF, the death keeps going down, Trump will have a great excuse to call you “fake news”.

This will be about how crazy brains are

So when I was sixteen I read a comic named Assar. Characters in the comic included talking sausages, a king whose hobby was to clean manure spreader, politicians who solved unemployment by letting the unemployed move to the forest and become trolls, and a superhero named Bimbo fighting a supervillain named Rassor. The normal stuff. (If you thought Bimbo sounded like a female superhero, I’m sorry to say that Bimbo was male.) The comic was back then popular enough that someone in Stockholm opened a cafe themed after the comic and at least in one election more than one voter voted for Rassor.

Here’s the thing. I have not read the comic in a long time. I never visit the Assar themed cafe and I assume that cafe is long gone. But the other night I dreamed I visit the Assar cafe. How crazy is our brains. Some random thing from my teens just shows up like that, in a dream.

About someone voting for character from some comic. This country has a tradition of votes for the Donald Duck party, showing up every election. If you going to protest vote, you can at least vote for Donald Duck. My guess is that the Rassor votes was inspired by the Donald Duck votes.