What in gods name will history have to say about the first half of the year 2020? That the world went insane over a pathogen with a 0.2% mortality rate, and governments panicked, bringing their nations to the bring of total destruction in a vain attempt to stop the spread of a virus?
I predict that the mass panic of 2020 will spawn entirely new fields of study and research. New frontiers in cultural psychology, mass psychology, will appear, and treatises will be penned on every aspect, as scholars rake through the rubble in order to ascertain just what the hell happened. Few people will care about the virus itself in the coming years; curious minds will want to understand the origin and transmission of such a destructive psychological contagion as engulfed the defenseless psyches of the year 2020.
Was it social media? Cable TV? There have been deadlier-than-average flu seasons in the past, but no mass hysteria. Individually, I’d say that we are getting smarter as the years go on. But collectively, we appear to be devolving.
Now that lockdowns of entire economies are beginning to lift, there is a feeling that a war is coming to an end. But a war against what? The shameful truth is that it has been a war waged against ourselves. Our government panicked and began firing their weapons wildly, and we were all caught in the crossfire. The homeowner uses dynamite in a vain attempt to kill the fly, which buzzes, still alive, around the wreckage after the smoke clears.
But the fact that most people willingly accepted the abrupt shuttering of their social world with no debate at all, is the most disturbing aspect. The total lockdowns were swift, and unleashed a true Hell on Earth for 30 million Americans. It should not have happened so easily. Future generations must learn the right lessons from this low point in the history of our species. We are not nearly as evolved as we fancy ourselves to be.
