Just Wait Until They Lock Us Up

Berkeley now requires students not vaccinated against influenza to wear masks during influenza season!

At first sight, the so-called patients were in no way different from the healthy ones. But on closer inspection it turned out that they looked more decisive, more lively, less fit to be slaves. (Valery Tarsis: Ward 7) *

Early on, many believed Covid-19 was no more dangerous than influenza while others thought it was more like the Spanish Flu. Over time it turned out the mortality rate was a bit higher than with the flu, but the main difference was the already widespread existing immunity against the latter. Now, after the advent of the Omicron variant, it appears to be even milder.

On September 1st the Washington Examiner reported how The University of California, Berkeley, no more requires those unvaccinated against Covid-19 to wear masks. At first sight this might indicate that a weak ray of rationality has finally crept inside this bastion of higher education, which of course succumbed to madness over the past year or so; the madness has in fact been at its strongest exactly where we should have expected critical thinking to prevail, in universities.

However, Berkeley now requires students not vaccinated against influenza to wear masks during influenza season!

Many of us had started to believe the insane fear of the coronavirus was subsiding, that finally rational thinking was gaining the upper hand. But this indicates it may in fact be the other way around.

Why?

Here’s my suggestion: The fear of Covid-19 has subsided, even disappeared. But the anxiety itself, previously attached to it has not disappeared. It may even have grown deeper. Or why else would fear of the flu, until recently perceived as a minor inconvenience at least for young university students, now have been blown totally out of proportion? We simply have a new object of anxiety, even more irrational than the first. It is the flu now, next it might be common cold.

“Those people should be locked up in a madhouse” a friend said.

“Just wait until they lock us up” I replied.

—

* Valery Tarsis was a Soviet writer, locked up in a mental hospital for criticising the government. This was common in the Soviet-era. (The text is based on the Icelandic translation as I don’t have the original.)