Why You Should Listen to an Introvert About Lockdowns

We have the least to gain from going back to ‘normal’

Photo by Ahmed Nishaath on Unsplash

August 11 2020

Time for some honest self-assessment: I have sure complained a lot about locking down society for COVID for someone who loves a lockdown.

I’ve had a go at inflated death counts, I’ve ragged on the testing, I’ve whinged about censorship, I’ve been blatantly passive aggressive about mask wearing, I’ve taken the side of a Doctor warning us about demon sperm and alien DNA because of Hydroxychloroquine, I’ve been outraged about our inability to question the official narrative, and I’ve ranted against the entire western medical and science establishments — all while being more than happy to have an excuse to stay home.

I can do this complaining, which I like to think is directed at subjects worth complaining about, because I spend the vast majority of my spare time sitting on my computer and on my phone, often at work, digging into the various Coronavirus conspiracies that have been circulating on the outskirts of our collective conscious.

I can do this, because it’s what I like to do. I am, perhaps often to the point of caricature, an introvert.

I can also do this because I have, for my own mental health and well-being, gradually removed myself from the world that most people are still imbedded within.

I thus have no skin in the game if the whole thing turns out to be some massive mistake, misunderstanding or malicious prank pulled on the world — any or all of which would force massive reckonings with key assumptions underpinning this world.

I guess you could say I am able to be more objective about this.

This is one reason why you should listen to an introvert about COVID, but it isn’t the only one.

(Just to clarify, I’m not suggesting you listen just to introverts, obviously. Take in a broad range of opinions both within and outside of establishment mouth pieces to form your own educated opinions about this pandemic. Some of these may also be introverts, although I imagine it is hard to be a health professional whilst being an introvert. If you are such a person, you have my immense respect.)

But back to the point. I think there is one overlooked fact that allows introverts to have a unique perspective to offer to the overall discourse: we are acting against our own self-interest when we question the need for lockdowns.

I am more than happy to say that I loved the first lockdown, and I would love another one. I can’t put it any other way.

I loved how the first lockdown normalised my close to ideal lifestyle, basically dragging me out of my former hectic schedule and into this new way of living that I forgot was what I had been searching for.

I loved that I suddenly had my house to myself.

I loved that my old favourite yoga studio was suddenly fully online.

I loved that our geographically-disparate family was prompted in to having zoom calls once a week.

I loved that I rediscovered jigsaw puzzles, and love that I am closer to rediscovering video games, even if my lizard brain still tries to tell me they are a waste of time.

My life is still, in almost every significant way, congruent with a lockdown, albeit with a better balance between my desire to just be at home digging and my desire to be of genuine tangible service in the community.

But just one more sneaky lockdown before this whole house of cards folds in on itself? I’d probably even cop wearing the mask to the shops once a week for it, even if it makes me a cuck or bootlicker.

I would love my weekends back — not that getting paid to chill all Saturday and Sunday with teenagers at a boarding school is close the worst way to spend them. But I would like them back, even if I would probably just end up chilling by myself at home for most of them.

I’ve got enough savings (probably for one of the first times in my life) to get through a month or so, even two, without work. That’s if the government doesn’t give me money for free, like it did last time.

But I don’t deserve any more free money (not that I wouldn’t still take it). I shouldn’t get my weekends back, at least not until school holidays. I shouldn’t need to work out what type of designer mask would hit the right balance between compassion and a middle finger.

Because I believe without any residual hesitation that we should be done with this.

We should draw the line at disrupting our lives and living in a state of perpetual fear of nature and each other over what we now know about this virus. That the infection fatality rate is now cemented below 1% by all ‘reputable’ sources. That we know it isn’t dangerous to children, that it poses little threat compared to other causes of death for any age bracket except the elderly. That the projection of the virus given to us by media and government has been consistently skewed in the direction of fear.

We should learn from success stories around the world about how to protect at-risk individuals, and particularly make sure there are no more horrendous fuck-ups in nursing homes.

We should embrace safe, cheap and by all evidence effective medicines being used around the world in countries that are going back to their own normality.

We should start deconstructing the secular saviour complex we have created for a new, rushed and improperly tested vaccine.

We should give proper weight to the risk and benefits of both sides of the equation: to lost jobs and livelihoods; to domestic abuse, mental health and suicide; to the world we are conditioning young people to.

We should accept that our attempts to prevent people from dying from this virus is now doing more harm than good.

If we do all these things, we can find a level of normality that so many of us truly do desire: one that leaves behind the pre-pandemic normality that I doubt anyone was overly happy with, and find a new one — our own one — that incorporates all the lemonade we have made out of these top-down imposed extra-sour pandemic lemons.

Then we can get serious.

We can open our minds to potential health risk factors in our lifestyles and environments that we refuse to take seriously: injecting ourselves with microdoses of heavy metals and lab-concocted genetic material; rolling out new electromagnetic technologies that have not being safety tested at a population level; flocking towards crowded urban environments that strip away fresh air, nature and mental serenity.

We can re-prioritise health promoting factors like a hydrating alkaline diet, the radical act of being outdoors for extended periods of time, and the most basic act of self-care that is meditation; we can finally embrace natural therapies; we can make full use of the magical medicinal plant that is Cannabis.

We can re-normalise hugging, high fives and innocently brushing past people in public spaces. Or re-normalise anything in public spaces.

I believe we can do all these things, once we get our senses back. Once we, sorry you take back your divine right to be an extrovert… or at least someone who enjoys being outside their house more than me.

Leave the perennial lockdowns to the people who desire and choose this form of existence.

You aren’t like us, and you don’t have to be anymore.

Take it from the introvert on this one.