In August of 2020, I wrote the following in my post, The Ecology of Health:

“Lockdowns, mandatory masks, social distancing and mandatory vaccinations all have serious side effects on people’s physical and mental health, and these effects (e.g. increased depression from social isolation and job loss) are the collateral damage from a total war approach.  Instead of the germ warfare approach, why not improve people’s immune systems and their local environments so they can withstand viral infections much more easily?  This approach would help for any number of infectious diseases including influenza.  Germ warfare only solves one problem (eradicating the germ) at the expense of causing extensive collateral damage, while the environmental/immune system approach solves many problems all at the same time, though this approach will take longer to have an effect.

Another quote from The Way:  An Ecological World-View sums up the problems with the germ warfare approach succinctly:  ‘Unfortunately technological expedients [e.g. lockdowns, antivirals, vaccines, social distancing, etc.] only solve technological problems. They cannot reverse the disruption of natural systems [e.g. our immune systems and environments].  Alleviating the symptoms, they render the problems more tolerable and thus serve to perpetuate them.’ Consequently, this current infectious disease crisis could go on perpetually if the environmental health problems facing our society are never resolved.”

Now what happened in 2021? The experimental vaccines were rolled out which contributed to the mutation of the coronavirus into the Delta variant, which has spread across many countries including those that were heavily vaccinated. This is similar to the problem of overusing antibiotics over the past few decades leading to the mutation of bacteria into “superbugs” that resist antibiotic treatments. Indeed, it looks like the current crisis will continue on until we change course.

The chapter titled ‘The War on Germs’ in Charles Eisenstein’s book, The Ascent of Humanity, is even more eerily prescient of the current crisis as it was published over 14 years ago in 2007, here is an excerpt from it with emphasis by me:

“The new diseases of the modern era are of a different sort.  Cancer, arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease, Crohn’s Disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, AIDS, and so on defy the medicine of control, which has made almost no progress in curing them despite research outlays dwarfing those of the vaccine/antibiotic era.  Significantly, most if not all of these new diseases involve a dysfunction of the immune system.

Helpless against the diseases of the 21st century, we instead take ever more extreme measures against the microbial world.  One manifestation of the war on germs is the proliferation of antibacterial soaps, latex gloves for all food service workers, and strap-on mouthguards that appeared (and in some cases were legally mandated) during the Asian SARS ‘epidemic.’  These devices constitute a physical barrier between self and world, concretizing the psychological distance that separates us from each other and nature. Sometimes I have nightmare visions of a future where the very idea of breathing in each other’s unfiltered air is repulsive and illegal, where everyone wears a gas mask and all human contact is mediated through latex or computer terminals.

Equally frightening is the current hysteria about avian flu. Since it is supposedly spread by wild birds to poultry flocks, some officials are implementing new controls prohibiting chickens from ranging free. Yet it is the caged indoor hens with their debilitated immune systems that are the most susceptible, and it is factory methods of poultry production that actually spread the disease. A related proposal in the United States is the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), which would mandate that a digital tag be embedded under the skin of all livestock. Everywhere, the technologies of control are the same: separation, confinement, and the numbering of all things.

As long as their ideological underpinnings remain intact, none of these trends will abate. Already medical microchips are available that can be embedded under human skin to monitor various physiological states. In Asia during SARS, body temperature readings were taken as condition for entering certain public facilities. Potential epidemics offer a rationale for the quarantine of populations and control over their movements – an internal passport system justified on medical pretexts. All such measures make perfect sense from the mindset of separation and control.”

Replace the words ‘chickens’ and ‘livestock’ with “people” in the third paragraph of the excerpt above and what do you have going on here in the world in 2021? We have other options, we could be collectively embarking on a massive environmental restoration operation to improve people’s local environments and reduce the disruption and debilitation of their immune systems. Restoration of agricultural soils, growing more nutritious food, cleaning up toxic waste sites, reducing air pollution, removing cell towers from residential areas, etc. What is it going to take to get all that going instead of more and more control measures and coercion?