Can tech solve a health crisis?

During the Blitz in World War II; British cities were bombed relentlessly by the Luftwaffe in an attempt to destroy, kill and spread panic and fear. At least 40k people died in the city of London alone, which at the time had a population around 8M people living in it, meaning around 0.5% of the population died. Those numbers seem familiar and they harken back to today. As we descend deeper and deeper into chaos today, it’s useful to look at how we dealt with crisis in the past; the measures taken and the outcomes experienced. Have we gotten smarter, more organized, more resourceful, more resilient? Are we listening to the right people, and are the solutions that are emerging; those of locking down citizens, increasing surveillance and data collection and digitalizing healthcare going to work?

In spite of all the carnage during the Blitz, it did not shut down the city nor did it stop people from doing what they were doing and carrying on with their lives. People didn’t flee the cities for the countryside even though that could have saved thousands of lives in the short-run. 

Britain had a highly successful record of mobilizing the home front for the war effort, in terms of mobilizing the greatest proportion of potential workers, maximizing output, assigning the right skills to the right task, and maintaining the morale and spirit of the people. There was a nationalist spirit — something that people have come to despise today. It’s been replaced by this nonsensical notion of international solidarity, which proved very short lived at the first sign of crisis.

Some of the overly protectionist, nanny state measures we’re seeing fits in well with the general coddling of our minds that we’ve seen so much in the past decade. In a way, the stay-at-home idea is making one big safe space of the entire world. The idea that we don’t need an economy, that some universal basic income confetti money will help us go back to normal if we just stay home and watch Netflix for long enough, that is just as indicative of the fairytales we have come to believe in. Nevermind that an enormous proportion of the population, the younger ones, and the ones living outside the cities, could carry on with their lives as per normal without much risk or ramifications to the greater population. 

No, you see, all of us, young or old, urban or rural, have to sit this out while ol’ Bill Gates concocts a vaccine. It could take 18 months, could take 18 years, could never happen, but rest assured that halting the world economy indefinitely is the right move. Already, we are starting to hear mumblings of vaccine certificates and even chip implants tracking your medical profile.

By the way, when and why did Bill Gates become such an authority in health? He’s not a doctor. He’s certainly not an epidemiologist. The only virus he knows is Windows 95, and the only thing he does best is to ruthlessly seek profit, preferably by crushing the little guy. Let’s not forget that Gates led Microsoft straight into an antitrust situation, where Microsoft illegally maintained its monopoly position in the PC software market. The court found that Microsoft taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Linux, and others. Yes, that Bill Gates — the very same. The saint who’ll save the world through technology. Because, if you’re a technologist, you’ll come up with technological solutions — regardless of whether the problems themselves are technological in nature.

Anyway, if you dispute any of the received wisdom and the  official recommendations, say you advocate for taking vitamin-C, then the powers that be, such as YouTube, might well delete your video to silence you. Also, if you exercise your constitutional right to organize and protest the draconian lockdown measures, you may well find yourself arrested. If you are an American, you have freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to protest hardcoded in your Constitution. That’s not up to debate, it’s not negotiable, it’s not optional. But you are letting corporations such as Facebook suppress those rights on a daily basis.

The crisis and the response to the crisis typifies big government action perfectly. The all-in lockdown solution is what you get when you let a small cadre of specialists call the shots. What we are finding out, is that epidemiologists make for terrible economists. Only in a top-down big government hierarchy can you have a select specialist’s conviction shut down an entire economy. Only then can a small select group foist their beliefs on an entire economy of individual participants, and halt their livelihood against their will.

So, there will be protests, a lot of them. You’ll see the media suppress them (big tech are already thwarting events — on Facebook, it’s near impossible to organize protests). It’ll be interesting to watch big tech and the media try to squelch dissenting voices, but they’ll be there. This is why Trump is now letting the governors determine whether or not to open their economies. Give them the responsibility and have them preside over the backlash and the consequences. If they keep things shut down, they’ll have to deal with the protests and the political backlash. If the open up, it’s their responsibility for the continued spreading of the sickness.

I’d hate to end this on such a sour note, but rest assured there will also be much more criminality, riots, looting and this will happen regardless of whether or not the reopening happens. The damage is already done. Shortages are developing, unemployment is rising, and the disintegration of the social contract is beginning to show. 

It’s fascinating how the constitution and the bill of rights addresses all of the key issues we are now facing: protecting the personal liberty of citizens from intrusions by the government, protecting freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, protection from Unreasonable Searches and Seizures, etc. It’s almost as though the founders had figured quite a few things out; figured out what truly matters in a time of crisis! 

Very little has happened today that would warrant tearing up of these fundamental past principles. However we may need to update our existing laws and regulations, we don’t need to update them in the direction of suppressing existing liberties. We don’t need increased surveillance, more data collection, disarming the population. There’s nothing in our laws that allows for unelected billionaires to roll out worldwide health initiatives. You don’t need to support or participate in anything against your will — what matters is your individual choice and your voluntary action. It’s still a free world — barely.

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