Whenever there’s a lot of hysteria around dangers to “public health” (a phrase invented to control people), you see escalating calls for more and more dehumanizing mandates. You have to stop at some point and ask, why are people destroying all the things that make life good? What do they hope to achieve?
Every single human being will die. There is no escape from that. If you could reduce your odds of dying younger than average by a few fractions of a percent – or even a few percent – by locking yourself away and living a fearful, pathetic existence, would it be worth it? Of course not. Which is why people get in cars and drive every day. It’s not worth it because life is not measured just in minutes lived, and increasing the statistical probability of more of them. That’s not life, that’s death.
Life is about the quality of minutes lived, not just the quantity. Quality takes work, risk, ups, downs, unknowns, challenges overcome and battles won. It cannot be had with fearful avoidance.
People who wish to impose quality destroying restrictions on themselves and their fellow humans claim it’s in the name of preventing some tiny percentage increase in the odds of death. They are partly right at least. It is in the name of death. Death is their god, fearful and terrible, and they will sacrifice anything and everything at its feet. Public health fear-mongers are trapped in a death-cult without knowing it.
Most of these health concerns are completely overblown if not fabricated entirely. But even when they are not, they ought not lead us into death-cultism. The only way to be free is to step back and find meaning deeper than a maximization of minutes lived and a slavish fear of death.