“I didn’t recognize myself in their depiction of 70-year olds”, the poor victim on the radio show explains. “I felt offended. So it was my right to sue them.”
Them, in this case, being the Swedish Public Health Ministry (Folkhälsomyndigheten). Because according to the Ministry, 70-year olds should sequester themselves away from social interactions to prevent Covid-19 infection, seeing as the elderly are particularly sensitive to the effects and complications that the Wuhan Virus can cause.
According to this 70-year-plus old psychologist, the Public Health Ministry have discriminated against him and his peers. Stigmatized them. The internationally controversial Swedish Public Health Ministry, which has earned global ire for the country’s lax Covid restrictions and high number of deaths at elderly homes, have treated them unfairly.
Imagine the brass balls of privilege of this Boomer, to initiate legal action against the public agency whose job it is to keep him alive and healthy, for doing that very job. We have seen this sort of behaviour in the US, with violent protests against stay-at-home orders and mandatory masks. There, we have seen people take up arms and threaten violent insurrection just because the state doesn’t want them to die and spread a deadly and degenerative malady. We have even seen the US federal authority on infectious disease, Doctor Anthony Fauci, receive death threats, because he has prioritised fighting a deadly virus over pandering to malcontents with the cognitive capacity of angry muppets.
Naturally, the US is worse. Big surprise. But I did not expect to hear from this sort of querulant in placid, passive lil’ old Sweden.
I get disagreeing with restrictions. Or the lack thereof, as Sweden has been accosted for by neighbouring countries. I have also said my piece on the mandate of masks among the public. Fact is we won’t know the “right” way of dealing with Covid until we’re done with it. Probably not even then. By contrast, I also understand the introduction of restrictions on the market economy to avoid catastrophic spread. Depends on whether you value economic growth or human lives, really. It’s a matter of priority, and I know very well that some prefer their stock portfolio’s over the health of random schmucks. The 1%, and those that desperately want to belong to it, didn’t go away just because a plague erupted.
What I do not understand is how you can claim that statistically relevant biological information can be construed as discriminatory. What kind of ass-ward pageantry is that?! How can you argue with any sliver of intellectual honesty that doctors discriminate against you when you’re part of a demographic that suffers particularly from the new influenza strain? It is factual, statistical truth that the elderly suffer the worst. We saw that back in March and April. The intensive care units around the world were filled to the brim with people around the age of 70.
Imagine being so privileged, so belligerently entitled, that you think that the scientific field of epidemiology is assaulting you. Personally. With science and statistical analysis. It’s like a fat person seeking judicial arbitration against Newton for formalizing the theory of gravity. I’m not saying a Boomer is the only creature that in its natural habitat can accumulate this amount of egocentrism, but… ‘lo and behold. Now, most of the elderly that I’ve spoken to or observed following the restrictions either can’t mentally adjust to them, or blatantly don’t care whether they live or die. But as of yet, I hadn’t encountered anyone that would even conceive of screaming “unfair!” at the face of a pandemic response figures.
And yet, here we are. With the government agency tasked with safeguarding the citizenry and society in the face of a pervasive new bug. They labour without a national stockpile of protective equipment, against market forces that have hollowed out the healthcare industry to its bare skeletal structure, against a public that is desperate for things to go back to a normal that was intrinsically unstable. And whether they’ve been right or wrong in their labours, whether they’re failing or succeeding, I do not believe for a minute that the Swedish Public Health Ministry is “out to get” the elderly or infirm. Yet, they have to receive, react to, and handle egocentric complaints like this.
Speaking of “unfair”…
/Sebastian Lindberg 24/11-2020
WastedWords 