A Journal of the Plague Year

Suddenly, in Toronto, it is summer weather—t-shit weather. It was snowing two weeks ago. After the long winter, and the long lockdown, it is futile to try to enforce quarantine. Last weekend, apparently people were cheek-by-jowl in Trinity-Bellwoods Park, without masks. The washrooms were still closed, so people were urinating at random. Similar scenes are reported from the US.

It has all gone on too long.

Grocery shopping, people were less inclined than ever to maintain distancing. There was little if any pretense. Fewer were wearing masks.

We may as a result see a sudden spike in new cases and deaths—disaster. We may not. I have long thought the virus is likely to recede for the summer, from sunlight and warm weather. There has been no spike in Georgia or Florida, which ended their lockdowns weeks ago.

I think the authorities are being unwise in maintaining the lockdowns. It would be better to end them, while stressing the need for masks and distancing. That way, they would maintain some credibility, and get some compliance.

Scott Adams has reported the interesting fact that Costa Rica has a local drug industry that manufactures hydroxychloraquine. As a result, they have been prescribing it at first symptoms. I do not know if this is with or without zinc. But Costa Rica also seems to have had a notably lower death and infection rate so far than other nearby countries.

If hydroxychloroquine really does turn out to be of significant value, a lot of people will have a lot of blood on their hands for ignoring or even trying to discount it. Why is it that, at this late date, we still have no properly controlled study looking at its use at first symptoms in combination with zinc, the situation in which, clinically, is has been reported to work?

This pandemic has, it seems to me, been an education in how corrupt and self-serving the people in charge most often are.

I think many others are coming to this conclusion as well.