Don’t Throw Away Those Masks

Pandemic Surges Again in Many Parts of the World, Fueled by Variants

“We are working to make a balance,” Mr. Nasir said, “between lives and livelihoods.”

There is something structurally wrong with a world that subscribes to this belief, that livelihoods are equal to lives, that a person who is not able to economically contribute is worth nothing, making it morally acceptable to sacrifice humans lives for livelihoods. This completes humanity’s transformation into nothing more than a dollar sign.

This isn’t just Bangladesh. This isn’t just a third-world country issue. This is US. This is the West. This is the world that we have created where people must work under the threat of dying, or not work (quarantine) and die from lack of basic human necessities, like food, water, and shelter.

This is a vicious, vicious world we inhabit, but it is the one we have created, that all of us tacitly support by our silence and acquiescence to these attitudes and beliefs. This set of values — dog-eat-dog — is a choice we all have made, collectively, by inaction or ignorance or simple belief in the status quo.

Nobody wants to rock the boat.

We’ll just throw the dead overboard and blame their death on them.

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