How to Escape from our COVID-19 Prison: The Plan
Updated: Jan 27, 2021
How to open up our borders and return our country back to business and usual.
How to learn to live with this and other viruses.
How to improve the health of all, especially the elderly, the immune-compromised and those living in poverty.
How to get out of this mess without costing a single extra life.
This plan is about how to save lives and how to save our economy.
Preamble
You will gather from this article here, that my job used to be taking "heady" information that goes round and round at closed talk-fests (conferences for health professionals) and turning it into intelligible packages that became national campaigns for change. I reckon I was pretty good at it. The record speaks for itself.
The first lockdown had my support despite the enormous disruption and cost of doing so. We needed a little time out to gather our thoughts and to figure out just what we were dealing with and to devise a plan. Despite all that we now know, the plan that we are being told to keep to is deeply flawed: quarantine New Zealand from the rest of the world, more lockdowns and wait for the "Magic Bullet". It is a plan with no end date. It is a plan that will destroy our economy and forever alter our way of life, plunging many of us into poverty and removing freedoms that we have always taken for granted. It's a bad plan. It is what it is, but does that mean we must accept it? Aren't there better alternatives?
Like most of us, I've been closely following the research as it flows in, as well as taking careful note of what is said by doctors and other experts who are working at the coal-face of the pandemic. I feel particularly privileged because I get to speak and correspond with a wide range of health professionals as part of my daily work. We now know more than enough to be able to introduce a workable escape plan.
There is no need to delay making our escape. More delays will cost us on a scale that is almost incomprehensible. Our free and open society is being replaced by repression and fear and swathes of our people face financial doom. Yes - seriously! We'll have a better idea once the election is over. That is when the really bad news will begin to be carefully filtered our way.
There are those who argue that we need more and better studies. They are arguing for perfection which is never possible. Perfectionists are people who never achieve much in life. They are the people who dither. They are the people who are too afraid to hit the "Send Button". They are the people I will not give a job to because they will take forever and a day, by which time it is too late. Yes, we do need more studies so we can keep refining and adjusting our Escape Plan, but that does not mean that we do not act now with what we know.
At least 80% of deaths associated with COVID19 are avoidable, if we were to put into place what is now known.
Our Escape Plan has numerous benefits for individuals and the country as a whole, such as fewer heart attacks, less obesity, less tooth decay, less diabetes, fewer cancers, less dementia, less arthritis and less anxiety and depression. It has no downsides for health - only upsides. It is dirt cheap, just a few dollars a day per person, if that, compared to the current plan which is costing us billions and billions. Is it not a no-brainer to get it in place without delay?
This plan relies on our politicians and bureaucrats showing confidence in our health professionals. They have to step back and get out of the clinic where they don't belong and they have to stop telling clinicians how to do their jobs. They need to give health professionals permission to do what they consider is best for their patients and their job is to provide the resources and coordinate their efforts.
Please read my previous posts on this topic before proceeding:
Part one:
https://www.garymoller.com/post/how-to-escape-from-our-covid19-prison
and Part two:
https://www.garymoller.com/post/how-to-escape-from-our-covid19-prison-pt-2
Part three: