Regular human contact, the touching kind, is essential for human survival. We know this instinctively. The human infant reaches for the comfort of a soothing touch from a caregiver. In his famous experiment of the 1950s, Harlow’s monkeys preferred the warmth of a terry-cloth covered wire mesh ‘mother’ to the one dispensing milk. We have evolved to prefer human contact over sustenance in certain circumstances. A dying person will want the comfort of a loved one’s hand before anything else. Yet now we are saying, governments are saying, that not only is human contact unnecessary for health but that it could be an act of egregious granny-killing selfishness. If enough people believe this for long enough, the consequences for our longer-term futures could be very bleak indeed. We must ask ourselves, what responsible, nay competent, government would mandate an absence of touch to its people on the basis of a virus that has a similar infection fatality rate to a bad flu? That even the grannies, the over 80s, for the most part recover? What is in the minds of those who, like the Canadian authorities, are now prosecuting people for such outrageous crimes as shaking hands with strangers in the street since it violates the two metre rule they themselves are violating as they hand people the ticket – presumably covered with the same microorganisms and potential granny-killing viruses from their own hands? Where is the logic? Where is the proportionality? The common sense? All of these checked out of the building some time ago.
Even if not touching another human being was the key to stopping this virus in its tracks, would the prize, given the positive outcomes for all but the very unlucky few be worth the penalty? Can human beings really afford not to touch? Can we afford not to speak to each other without the medium of technology? Does the dancing and singing need to end permanently? After all, if this is the default response to a new or not so new virus, at what point do we say enough is enough? Or do we? Is a long life lived in a permanently stressed, depressed, fearful state intrinsically better than a shorter one lived in joy, love, relaxation and connection? Is longevity all we want from life? Given that we have denied the elderly in care homes meaningful contact from another human being, let alone a loved one, and that many have reportedly expressed a desire to die as a result, it rather suggests that a lengthy amount of time respiring on the planet’s surface is not what concerns even the most very vulnerable of us at the end.
One is reminded of a League of Gentlemen sketch where the germophobic, toad loving and terminally unhinged Harvey Denton insists that the nephew he has locked into his house (sound familiar?) cleans all of the brushes and cloths with yet more colour-coded brushes and cloths in a bit to wage an ‘endless war against the microbe’, only to then clean those, ad infinitum. If we follow the logic, there is no end to this. Literally, no end. We used to laugh at the ridiculousness of characters like Denton. Now, the Dentons are the ones in office, or at least some of the ones pulling the strings behind the ones in office, and people are expected to nod along to the endless diktats that dominate the discourse, if you can call it that, between the government and the governed. Thanks to the bolstering of those ‘safety’ messages from an uncritical media, many many people have been terrified into doing the very things that will do them the most harm once you balance the risks for the average person, both in terms of mental and physical health. After all, the two are most intrinsically linked, in spite of the ‘treat the symptom, not the cause’ methodology of our current health system.
Never mind hand shaking. That is small-fry in contact terms compared to a hug. Since the government released official ‘public health’ advice as to how long and when we should be hugging ‘safely’, we need to counter the message that something as beneficial to our wellbeing as a hug could be a dangerous sport. Otherwise we get into the realms of Denton absurdism – that being alive and breathing at all is something so fraught with peril that the only way to enjoy a risk-free existence is to live in a hermetically sealed environment devoid of all meaningful human contact or experience. In the past year, there are people who have imbibed this message so completely that they have indeed become terrified of others. We have all seen them, if they have been brave enough to leave their own homes, the all-too familiar look of terror in their eyes (since the eyes are the only thing visible above the masks they wear outside) as you approach them along a narrow and busy city street. Our government has done this. Many, but thankfully not all, governments all over the world have done this to their people. They have done this to us. That we now either view each other as Typhoid Marys, or as people who view us as Typhoid Marys is a hideous thing to comprehend. Such psychological damage has quite possibly never been visited on a people before by its government, aided and abetted by a media hellbent on petrifying everyone into a constant state of background fear and mistrust of others.
I was lucky enough to be in attendance at three social events on the weekend many restrictions were lifted. The hugging protocols varied from place to place. The first one I hosted and I am not ashamed to say that there was hugging on such a scale as to have spilled over into group hugging. No grannies were killed. Degrees of separation? Perhaps one of us unwittingly took a hitherto unknown virus away and then hugged someone else who then hugged someone else who then shook someone’s hand who then touched a library book who then…etc etc. But until recently, we collectively understood that risk from infection for the average person in this manner was simply part of the human experience and that a life in pursuit of perpetual avoidance of the dreaded microscopic ‘bug’ would be a life not worth living, and indeed would be one lived so out of balance as to be readily diagnosable as a mental illness.
Besides, if it wasn’t a Covid virus particle, it will not matter to the government or many people in this country, since all other illnesses and/or deaths elicit scant sympathy these days. Only Covid counts. Never mind the fact that if human bodies were so delicate then I wouldn’t be here to write this, let alone inflict my devastating hugs on others, and you wouldn’t be here to read it. Never mind the fact that every single flu season ever has never given anyone any pause at Christmas time and New Year, peak respiratory infection time, where even us reserved Brits quaff enough alcohol to make us practically lick each other’s faces. Never mind that human beings are social creatures, designed to share our micro-organisms and viruses that we carry in their millions, and yet still manage to reach the average grand old age of 81 in this country. Never mind that actually, contrary to the advertisers of 99.9% bacteria and virus killing cleaning products, we are supposed to live with the millions of bacteria and viruses on our planet in order to be healthy both individually and as a community.
And yet, I attended another social event where hugging was viewed as a rare and risk-fraught activity akin to dropping a tab of acid because your mates are doing it. I saw one hug. There were quite a few of us. And it was brief and tentative. I didn’t partake partly because I didn’t know people very well and partly because I could smell the fear. You need to hug properly, for at least 30 seconds, to get that oxytocin flowing, the stress-relieving effects to really kick in and any subsequent boost to your immunity (yes, it is scientifically proven that lowered stress results in less illness or ‘dis-ease’) to take effect.
The last event was better. I didn’t know these people either but they were a huggier crowd. There were even kisses. Even so, there were plenty of pre-hug murmurs of ‘I’m allowed to hug you now’. Even for those who have done the quick risk-benefit analysis in their heads prior to human contact with an old friend and decided that probably no grannies would be killed, and that they might benefit far more from actually being able to re-establish some of the relationships with people they care about after this past traumatising 15 months. For those, the notion of ‘allowable’ human contact looms large, the spectre of the state and propagandised sledge-hammer messaging prominent in their minds as they lean in for comfort and connection.
I met up with my mother in an ‘allowed’ visit for the first time in six months recently. At the end we hugged for longer than 30 seconds. She said afterwards that no one had given her a hug like that since I did six months ago during our brief Christmas window. I immediately gave her a second, lengthy hug. I fervently believe that I did more for my mother’s health in those brief minutes than any pharmaceutical intervention could hope to. She is a granny. She is also not only alive after our egregious risk taking but no more wants to live in a world without hugs than I do.
This is what they have done to us and we must not allow it to happen again. To paraphrase, if we can make people believe absurdities, we can make them commit atrocities. I heard recently that someone said they would gladly take 30,000 deaths from other causes if it saved one life from Covid. I think that pretty much qualifies as entering the realms of the dangerously, atrociously, absurd. One cannot help feeling that this person probably needs a lot of hugs. Now more than ever, we all do. Perhaps then, we will collectively see beyond one illness and acknowledge that there is more to life than living in perpetual fear of that one illness. Perhaps then, we will see logic and reason, proportionality and common sense return to us once more. And perhaps then, we can have a proper conversation about public health, what it means to be healthy and what it means to live a good as well as a long life.
LoveTruthHonesty 