Burn the ships.
A phrase born of the tale of Cortés in the year 1519. It’s a story of determination, bravery, and a little bit of mutiny. And one that I’d like to reflect on at a time when we need to drastically reshape our covid response.
First, a little history.
In the year 1519, Hernán Cortés set anchor at the coast of Mexico, eager to explore new terrain. But plans abruptly changed as he was ordered to turn his ships around. Defiant, he scuttled his ships to leave his anxious crew with no other option but to follow inland.
There was no *actual* burning involved, just destruction. And to be clear, I’m not suggesting anyone go out and burn or destroy ANYTHING. No. It’s a metaphor. Text as imagery, and so forth.
So how can we apply this metaphor to our shifting landscape of covid policy?
Our policy makers maintain unwavering trust in a long list of interventions: closed schools, mask mandates, vaccine passports, restricted gatherings, and so forth. These are the ships…so comfortable and familiar to those in charge. They’ve settled in, and it’s so hard to leave their ships behind.
It’s time to burn the metaphorical ships.
To make sure we never close schools again
To never again exclude anyone from society
To never again leave hospital patients to suffer alone
To never again force people to hide their faces
To never again cheer the demonization of our neighbors
To never again deprive us from our fundamental need for human interaction
To never again imprison the elderly in their final years
To never again deny the necessity of informed consent
To never again lock children at home all day with their abusers
To never again silence those brave enough to ask dangerous questions
And on, and on…it’s a long list. We’re all familiar.
It’s October 2022. We are trudging through our third year now with politicians and unelected zealots *still* threatening to impose mandates rooted in imprecise mathematical models, inflated death counts, and political loyalism. There’s no convincing evidence that these restrictions carry a meaningful benefit. But even if they could—any intervention must demonstrate a sustainable benefit strong enough to outweigh its resulting harms and potential costs. Covid interventions fail that test. They merely offer an illusion of safety, at the high cost of coercion, learning loss, financial strain, emotional stress, societal division, abuse, and psychological trauma. So many of us warned that these harms would happen, and they DID happen. The damage is very, very dark.
And don’t miss the elephant in the room—the massive elephant teetering down the plank of an already burning ship—representing the casualty of our collective loss of trust. Trust in public health is an essential currency to have in place for whatever the next crisis may be. Those in charge gambled with our trust, fixating on one-size-fits-all rules, telling “noble” lies, declaring endless emergencies, and over-simplifying messages while simultaneously discrediting more nuanced focused protection strategies compelled by risk stratification. Our trust is gone.
The only viable path to restoration is a hard pivot. Walk away from mandates, and never turn back. Those at the helm must now surrender their addiction to power. Surrender their own paralyzing fears. No more chasing the false idol of safetyism. No more senseless harm under the guise of moral civic righteousness. Never again.
Burn the ships.
And don’t look back.
This post was expanded from a Twitter thread I wrote many months ago. I wish it were no longer relevant today…