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Tagged and Coded

Interesting video from CDC about what happened to America because of reckless spring breaks.  Earlier, I was listening a story on NPR about the current state of Shanghai where it is business as usual but the usual is no longer the same. People will get coded and quarantined as a matter of course. Everyone has a QR code on their phone that is scanned and based on associated movement data, the person is assigned a code of red, yellow or green. Rules follow the code. 

What struck me as most notable was the response of the person being interviewed - an American herself. She said she felt safer knowing there was a process in place to keep people safe. I pondered what that meant on a larger scale. This event will have us scared bad enough that we will do what it takes to not end up dead from a virus. If that means giving up freedom and privacy it will be a price we would be willing to pay. That definitely sounds like a dream come true for those who seek to have control over us. What better way to achieve their goals than to  have people gratefully opt-in to be tagged, coded and monitored at all times. 

The scale of the disaster is what it is because the support systems that are supposed to exist in society have never been stress tested and are now falling apart. Even code does not get promoted without testing for performance and somehow we all were okay with having our safety net completely untested. Faced with circumstances that can upend the rest of our lives, we are still not agitating to fix what is so badly broken. We have now been subdued to give up more and expect less. Something feels wrong about the whole situation. 

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