Virtual Loneliness

The political gods have cruel punishments, dished out by non-humans and psychopath’s who hold onto their jobs and paychecks, along with their homes and lifestyles still in place, issuing daily punches to the crotch that you, but not them, must obey.

Tonight’s shitposting isn’t about washing your hands at every opportunity presented, or wearing a goddamn mask whenever you’re outside your prison cell, or staying six feet outside the touch of another human. It’s about the thing that hardly a soul is talking about: loneliness.

The hyena’s in the corporate media put on their plastic smiling faces and make jolly the boundless opportunities of the virtual connection, as if we weren’t doing that before this shit-show plandemic.

Porn Hub, the adult website, has seen a 12% growth amid the cornholio outbreak. I couldn’t find any numbers attesting to an uptick in body oil sales.

You see the loneliness, if you care to look, on the faces of frightened souls in the grocery store, whether they wear a mask or not. And the grocery store is the only place left by the demons where we might see another soul outside of those we’re living with, 24/7, day after day after day.

Virtual meetings, virtual yoga, virtual concerts, virtual entertainment, virtual sex…isn’t it grand to witness how “we’re all in this together” and are making the best of it?

Fuck that!

Very, very few are called to the hermitage. We are social beings. Our mental health, and thus our physical health depends upon our interactions with other heathens of our choice inside the six feet under guideline from these arseholes.

Loneliness has historically been associated with a few select groups of the population, most notably the poor, the uneducated, and those advanced in age. While these populations do seem to be more lonely than others, loneliness is a very diffuse issue.

You don’t have to look far to find a community riddled with loneliness. In fact, there’s research exploring the associations between loneliness and just about every population under the sun: older people, workers, young people, parents, married couples, military veterans, and students. People with chronic conditions most at-risk for loneliness include those with mental illnesses, intellectual and developmental disorders, people with specific vitamin deficiencies, autoimmune disease, metabolic disease, HIV, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, and cancer.

Many of the chronic diseases and disorders listed above already place ever-growing demand upon the healthcare system. Nearly half of all Americans have a chronic disease such as heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure, or cancer. The cost of chronic disease treatments in the United States is estimated to be near $3.7 trillion, accounting for roughly 20% of our gross domestic product. Between 2003 and 2014, the rate of hospitalizations for those with multiple chronic diseases grew from 63.5% to 78.1%. These chronic illnesses cause about 7 out of 10 deaths in America. Ninety-six percent of Medicare dollars are spent on chronic disease management. Chronic diseases also increase the risk of infection.

Perhaps the most surprising takeaway from this is that just like loneliness, virtually all of these diseases are preventable and reversible. If Americans were able to make even the most modest changes to our health behaviors, we could reduce healthcare spending and improve our overall quality of life.

Loneliness and social isolation have the same cardiovascular effects as smoking 15 cigarettes per day, but these factors also increase the risk of “all-cause morbidity,” in other words, dying from any cause. Loneliness increases the risk of developing dementia by 50% and stroke by 32% while increasing the morbidity risk of cancer by 25%.

Our doctors and nurses on the frontlines helping those with medical conditions exacerbated by loneliness, are often lonely themselves. This should come as no surprise considering loneliness results in more visits to the doctor’s office.

This isn’t exclusive to the United States, either. Research on the influence of loneliness on those with chronic diseases has been conducted all over the world, with several studies coming out of Europe (most notably in Switzerland and France), as well as from China,and Nigeria.The United Kingdom has found loneliness to be so concerning that, in 2018, their Prime Minister appointed a Minister for Loneliness to address the 40% of their population who felt impacted by the effects of loneliness.

It’s a plausible reality that loneliness is the most profound pandemic in history.

 by Tim Frie – “The Pandemic America Forgot About” – via medium.com

You have innocent’s or ignorant’s, take you pick, who are afraid to venture outside their jail cells, lest they be stopped by the local authorities. You have fear keeping people inside their homes, even afraid to go to the grocery store for the sustenance their immune systems need. And you have nutjobs, howling at the moon in solidarity to social distancing 

But we, collectively, continue to listen, and obey the psychopath’s orders. They continue to live their lives unencumbered by the daily shitfuckery they issue, while you are left to wallow in it.

They have us distancing ourselves from our brethren, wary of the innocent who coughs or sneezes, told we cannot see our loved ones in nursing homes, told we cannot shake the hand, kiss the cheek of those we might have held in our arms, if only for a brief few seconds just a couple of months ago.

We shame others who don’t comply to the insanity these psychopath’s offer up each day, and then shrug our shoulders, going back to take refuge into our jail cells, hoping it will all go away, thinking we’ve done our part.

It won’t. And only because we won’t take a stand and say…”NO”,  to the psychopath’s, followed by the strongest of “fuck you’s” we would ever utter.

Tis sadness beyond sadness, that we allow our lives and the lives of our loved ones to be dismantled in the most horrifying slow motion act of suicide that humankind has ever witnessed.

God, Mother Earth, or the committee of dolphins who provided this bounty for us all…weep.

The political gods laugh, knowing their required sacrifices of our lives and those whom we love, will be willingly relinquished, all because the apathetic’s and ignorant’s continued to be so.

And if you care to check in to…if you have a sliver of desire of finding truth – consider the following: (while it’s still allowed on Youtube)

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Tonight’s musical offering:

Photo by Kristina Tripkovic on Unsplash