Do you know where you’re ending up if you get hurt while protesting corona measures?

At the hospital.

Do you know where I got treated when diagnosed breast cancer?

At the hospital.

Where is your father going for heart surgery?

The hospital.

Where did they save your aunt’s life, who got ill with covid-19?

Hospital.

WHEN SHIT HITS THE FAN, WE ALL DEPEND ON HOSPITALS, not pranic healers. And this is coming from a person who receives pranic healings herself, so hear me out.

The health system is not something that can expand indefinitely. Doctors + nurses specialized in covid-19 & IC care are not commodified goods you can order from Amazon. It takes YEARS to train them. You cannot have GP’s or ophthalmologists treating covid patients. Therefore, if you have more covid patients at an IC unit than you have specialized staff to diagnose + practice state-of-the-art medicine, you have a serious problem. I’m talking basic math here.

But there’s more. If you have too many covid-patients lying on IC’s beds at the same time, you simply need to lower the standard of care each one receives. Which is not something you want to do with patients who are already in complete isolation and strain. Covid is an unbelievably time and resource consuming illness to treat. You need to put a full space suit on before even approaching a patient. You need very expensive medical equipment. Every time you turn a critically ill patient in bed to aid with oxygen levels (proning,) you need up to seven health care workers at the same time to perform the move. Just these simple facts should be enough to make people understand that this disease is unlike any other in terms of resources, especially in terms of specialized medical teams which you cannot “import” from anywhere, like you do with your japa malas and incense sticks, because every country is dealing with the same shit. We’re in a state of emergency, if you haven’t noticed. Do you think it’s on the Dutch government interest to close the economy? Really?! A country whose trademark is on excelling on business, trade and profit?! Think again.

Seriously: we don’t have time to make a Netflix documentary especially for you, “independent thinker”, to understand. We’re in the middle of an unprecedented catastrophe. And no, I’m not a corrupt politician, and no, the “deep state” is not paying me to say this. Positive thinking and mindful meditation do not stop the spread of the virus. Manifesting does not magically double ventilators and medical staff. Stop invoking “sources of information” that you can’t even specify. You may think it’s your “intuition” that is telling you not to wear a mask and to break curfew, but sorry darling, it’s plain ignorance of science and facts. That you feel entitled to raise your voice louder than any scientist or doctor working at the frontline, that has studied for almost a decade to do their job, is the type of arrogance that will never cease to amaze me.

We all know too darn well that, in case you (god forbid) get covid (or a broken arm, or cancer,) its not your pranic healer you’ll run to. And rightly so, because each one has their competences and their place. Shamans don’t manage public health crisis the same way that intensivists don’t perform reiki sessions. Preventative care can do ZERO to get a pandemic under control, aka stop a potentially deadly virus from spreading. Vitamin C and sunlight and hugs will not prevent the health system from collapsing if Covid numbers keep rising. Basic science. That your friend has such a great immune system that he barely had Covid symptoms, doesn’t mean others will not end up on a IC bed, or in a coffin. Stop waiting for it to affect you personally in order to take the common good seriously.

Only a collective agreement to temporarily abdicate from certain non-essential personal freedoms like say, getting shitfaced with your friends, can spare lives. I said T E M P O R A R I L Y because, contrary to your rhetoric of doom, WE ARE GONNA GET TO THE OTHER SIDE, although not all of us, unfortunately.

Final request: don’t forget to do “your own freakin’ research.” And when you realize that white supremacist groups are the source of many of the misinformation you are parroting, don’t come crying, asking for repentance, claiming “we’re not all the same” and you didn’t know.

******

Below, some doctors + scientists doing some remarkable work of public education on their Instagram platforms – translating a very dense information in simple language for everyone to understand:

Infectious disease researcher: Laurel Bristow (check videos on her highlights and link in bio)

NHS Surgical Doctor: dr Joshua Wolrich (check his IGTV – videos)

Anaesthetic Doctor and Photographer: dr J D Williamson (check his photography + captions)

Critical care physician: Gustavo Carona (for the Portuguese speaking of my followers)