Today in the UK we are experiencing a storm, storm Eunice. Apologies to my American friends but I can’t stand the naming of storms, a recent phenomenon, which we have borrowed from the US. This personification of weather, makes it more scary, as if we have made some weather God angry and it is now punishing us.
Anyway back to the storm. This was a powerful storm with winds up to 80-100mph and it was given a red weather warning.
There will be a lot of damage and hopefully nobody will die but empirically speaking, this is no different from the storms we get once every year or so. Even if it turns out that it is far worse, the points I am about to make still stand.
In previous years, if there was a storm, we all heard about it on the radio and arranged our lives accordingly. If I was going for a clifftop stroll, I would cancel it. If a tree surgeon had a tree to cut down, they would postpone it. The rest of life would go on as normal.
However, this time was noticeably different. The COVID hysteria that has been present over the last two years seeped into this emergency. The COVID-induced anxiety floating around had not found a place to settle recently, as the population grew weary and they were told to start living with the virus. But when you reduce people down to shriveling wrecks, that anxiety doesn’t dissipate, like a virus, it seeks another host. And this time it infected people’s perception of a storm.
It is sensible to close exposed bridges, for example. I am not saying to ignore the storm completely, but life is full of risks and we learn to live with them. A storm is a particularly small risk in the grand scheme of things.
Risks are becoming too much for people and micro-managing bureaucrats are seeking more and more areas of our lives in which to meddle. So today, in certain areas of the country, all trains were cancelled, most schools were closed, people were advised to work from home and the population, in general, was advised not to leave their homes unless absolutely essential. And the scariest part of it all was not the storm, it was that a lot of people complied.
You would expect this kind of response from a hurricane but not a storm.
Anecdotally, people said:
“Actually the storm wasn’t as bad as I thought but I’m staying at home because we’ve been told to.”
In schools that were open, some parents had trouble getting their petrified children into the classroom from fear of dying. Other parents had second thoughts and took their children home just after dropping them off.
Yesterday, even before the storm started, schools began closing. Like dominoes, once one closed, a chain reaction happened with parents messaging their schools saying:
“Why aren’t you closing and keeping my children safe?”
Once this started, other schools started closing to avoid this kind of moral dilemma. As with COVID, once the emotive topic of dying is raised (however small that chance may be), all debate is off and the irrationally loud voices win.
So once again, children’s lives have been disrupted for no reason. And not just educationally disrupted. For some, they have been sitting at home, terror-stricken that they or one of their friends or family members might die in the storm.
There have been rumours and theories for a while that the next lockdowns will be due to climate change.
And COVID lockdowns were shown to have, understandably, helped the environment.
But you don’t need a conspiracy to bring in climate lockdowns, you just need a highly malleable and terrified population, ready to jump whenever they are told. Ready to stay indoors for their safety and the greater good. Unable to rationally discuss the pros and cons of any micromanagement of their lives.
The longer this goes on and the more interference people have from bureaucratic micro-managers in bullshit jobs, the fewer people will be able to survive without being told what to do.