Lockdown Redux?

10/21/2020

Back in March I received an email from the Austrian university where I work part-time. The email informed me that the institution had basically locked its doors and that I was to continue my classes in a purely online format until further notice. A week later I received a similar message from the Hungarian university where I hold a full-time position. I ended up teaching the rest of the semester online for both of my jobs.

In September I was allowed to physically return to work in Austria and Hungary and have been teaching most of my classes "live" since then. Anyway, this afternoon the Austrian university sent me a notification that all instruction was being reverted back online for the remainder of the semester.

The email did not surprise me much, but I do consider it ominous. I suspect I will receive a similar communication from my Hungarian employer in the coming week. Moreover, I very much doubt these new measures will be limited to institutions of higher education, which means Austria and Hungary might be teetering on the edge of another round of hard national lockdowns.

Hey, why not? Just yesterday Ireland declared it was locking down for a minimum of six weeks.

The worse I had anticipated earlier this week has arrived much sooner than I expected.

At this point, all I can say is 'bring it.'

8 Comments

bruce charlton

10/21/2020 23:26:53

Some self-gratifying national stereotypes of tough independence (Australia) and ungovernable eccentricity (Ireland) are taking a battering. Turns-out everybody is - pretty much - actually as a bad as the traditionally boring, effete, docile, obedient English - or slighly worse.

One world. Nowhere to hide.

That aside - I am somewhat more optimistic about the spiritual health of the world than I was six months ago - there has undoubtedly been an increase in independence of thinking, rather than the reverse. Modest, and among a small minority - but surely it is significant that things have not gone the other way (as might have been expected).

Ingemar

10/22/2020 01:26:44

Frank,

The notion I get from people around the world is that they are not going to take a second lockdown sitting down. It is perhaps just a minority that will raise a stink about the whole thing, but in any major social upheavals, the mindless masses matter not.

I'm in a "resistance" group myself and we've been discussing legal means of opposing these restrictions. But if all else fails, I'd sooner go to jail than give assent to the Lie. Period.

Jacob Gittes

10/22/2020 17:01:37

Things are heating up in the USA, too. "Cases" are shooting up! But of course, because they are testing, tracking and tracing with their testing armies.

In the US, there is resistance based on state and region. Trump himself (not advocating the Trumpster, just pointing out what he's saying) is holding huge rallies with people crowded cheek-by-jowl, and is basically showing via action and words that it is not rational to impose a prison-like lockdown on everyone. I watched a bit of his rally yesterday. They aren't really my thing, but he seems to be animated by a healthy kind of animal spirits to resist.
On the bad side of the ledger, people I know have attacked me for being a dissener in very hurtful, personal terms.
Whatever is happening, the charge on the societal capacitor is going up in voltage, and my burn through the insulator and really smoke and spark. Will it wreck the machinery of society altogether? We shall see!

10/22/2020 21:36:41

Concur. I was in a rally last week in Beverly Hills with crowds of hundreds--if not a thousand. This, in a a state that has been a easy win for the Democrats for over a generation now.

I am skeptical of Trump and I suspect he will repay his base for a second term win by stabbing the lot of them in the back. Besides being glib on television, his accomplishments have largely been a phantasy.

Nevertheless I do share some common cause with these Trumpers because we oppose these lockdowns.

Andrew

10/23/2020 04:15:42

Jacob, I’m reminded of Christ’s words that He would be a source if division in families.

My parents stated they will Never Again see their grandkids until everyone has their Vaccines. Which means never, unless I’m physically forced by state violence. Very sad nonsense.

10/23/2020 17:27:35

Andrew,

Your comment made me think about how every liberal revolution has resulted in a state of tyranny worse than the sort that liberals claimed to oppose.

The State in these days has more claim to a person's time, attention, goods, works and obedience than the Catholic Church ever did (which, while giving supreme power to the Roman Pontiff, as a jurisprudential matter stuck to the principle of subsidiarity). Today, you don't even have a right to bodily autonomy, even as the feminists used that argument to justify in-utero infanticide.

I used to scoff at the notion that public education was a strategic pillar of the Marxist revolution. But now that we are brainwashing children to fear people who show their God-given faces, I no longer doubt it.

10/23/2020 17:54:35

Andrew, I should not be shocked by anything, but really? Your parents will never choose to see their grandchildren again unless they get vaxxed? Even if they get exposed to the virus and have antibodies, and it's not a threat? Even though young people almost always recover, and are unlikely to spread it?

Your parents seem to be more concerned with a tiny risk than with an emotional and physical connection to their grandchildren. That seems to verge on real evil in terms of spiritual outlook.

10/26/2020 04:00:19

Years ago my parents gave up any independent thought or belief in God, and replaced it with TV. They obsessively watch the news and various sitcoms, but after years of Church shopping for the most liberal one possible, eventually just stopped going at all (even before Covid). I think a lot of Boomers replaces God with TV.

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Lockdown Redux?

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