Time to stop messing around

Stop messing around.

If I had one message to send to all these supposed "experts" and policymakers concerning the Coronavirus 2019 Disease (COVID-19), it would be that.

I'd put it on a billboard and post it all over the world if I could.

No matter where we stand on the pandemic and the responses to it, I do believe if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that.

Stop messing around.

Nothing else to say, really.

As much as I grant that there's still a lot of things about COVID-19 that are unknown- including how it spreads- that doesn't mean that policymakers should get a pass for not knowing how to handle it.

That's because there's only two ways to treat this pandemic:

1) This is a super dangerous disease upon which we must do everything we can to contain it, and not relent until it's gone

Or

2) This is a disease that, while still serious, is one that we, as a society, can live with and manage. Meaning we "go back to normal", with minimally intrusive adjustments needed to manage the disease.

That's it. There is no "middle ground". There's no "we have this deadly disease going around, but please go back to work and go back to going to the shops and visiting our hotels" that our policymakers seem to have going on.

Because, if it's deadly, then do all you can to get rid of it. Meaning a three-month or a four-month or however long of a lockdown (with the appropriate bailout to the population) is needed just to get the case count to "0" and keep it to a point where you can be confident it's not spreading in your area.

If it's not deadly, and we can live with the disease circulating- as seems to be the case in North America- then we need to find a way to make every business- and I mean every business, including the festivals, live sports, bars, nightclubs, places of worship, conventions, etc.- work and minimize the risk as much as possible while minimizing the disruption to their operation.

Because this can be done, since we've done it many times before with diseases far worse than this one.

I mean, during the height of the Spanish flu, someone snapped a picture of a packed football stadium where everyone was wearing a mask. Tell me why we can't do that today.

...and, before I close, let me state that we have to get COVID-19 under control soon, meaning a matter of months. Not years.

Not just because we, as the public, have lost just about all the patience that the policymakers keep telling us to have. Especially considering there are many of us who have also lost a lot of money due to the jobs policymakers- who are, in contrast, still in their jobs- prohibited them from doing.

Mainly, it's because it's time for policymakers to put up or shut up. Ever since the start of the pandemic, it's been a cavalcade of ever-shifting positions and ever-changing decisions, many of which were contradictory and illogical. As much as I respect that information about COVID-19 evolves and evolves rapidly, it's still no excuse for the constant flip-flopping and haphazard nonsense that has constituted "the pandemic response".

Pick a strategy and get on with it. No more "let's try this and hope it works". No more "tempering our expectations". No more hemming and hawing and throwing up their hands and saying "we don't know how this disease works", only being said in a pathetic attempt to deflect from their own mishandling.

Oh, and no more outrages over some random crowd at a beach or a park. It's clear why you're doing it, politicos- because it's easier to blame us, the public, than to admit to your own mistakes.

We're no longer fooled, policymakers.

So, pick a strategy, stick to it and get us out of this mess as soon as possible. Because if the policymakers want us to keep on paying them, they need to do the job that we pay them for.

-Daniel Arnold