INTRODUCTION TO
“I Couldn’t Look Away For Four Entire Days”
July 31, 2021

I’m creating a book The Covid Diaries, from posts I ve written since March 2020.

It’s powerful stuff, but the erratic, unpredictable nature of the pandemic, has reflected in the material.
Some chapters are written as a stand-alone essay.
Some as part of an official series “the C Diaries”.
And some jotted down in a Facebook box, I think because I hoped that way I would keep them short.
Only to find out the majority of them is so long, they deserve their own post.

“I Couldn’t Look Away For Four Entire Days” is one of those posts that were originally on Facebook.

It’s not very long; I could have posted it with other diary entries.
But the one written before this was an entire essay,
2021 04 11  Emphatic* Thoughts On Why You Should Take The Vaccine
– the post you re about to read starts the day after writing that!-
that’s why I have chosen to post this separately.

If you’re lost, you can always check the project page
https://laurenharteveld.com/the-covid-diaries/
That is where all chapters will be posted, after I ve reviewed them.

An interesting thing, is that the “billion dollar sideshow of commercial testing” I write about here, is currently still costing a million euros a day, and it is hardly used.

Illustrated with an image of Pennywise from the movie It, this is what the post from April 17, 2021, said:

.

I COULDN’T LOOK AWAY IN HORROR FOR FOUR ENTIRE DAYS
17 April 2021

I don’t even remember what my mood was Monday, but I assume it was a transition day.
A day where I realized that yes, Sunday’s meaty, passionate piece on why you might want to consider vaccination, had taken more time than I intended, and was definitely not the energy giving weekend activity ones hopes to have;
But that it had all been worth it.

That the fact that I did not do anything creative on Monday, and felt spent, was compensated by knowing I made a valuable contribution to the Covid vaccination discussion.

I really wrote something that acknowledged, and honored, basically every viewpoint on the topic of vaccination, and that came with a narrative that was acceptable if not inspiring, to all.

So Monday was kind of written off, but on Tuesday I started to slide, and for four days I have basically wasted every free hour, hour? minute!, reading my TL on Twitter, and my news feed, in absolute horror.
Every night I went to bed, making the resolution to just disconnect from all media and become in the moment, and in the real world.
There were so much better things to do than to bear witness to the pandemic and financial downfall of the country I was living in!

Because really, either the madness would not be stopped;
Madness meaning government hinting at entirely random dates to open shops and terraces, going from one vaccination cluster f to the next, pausing vaccination programs all.the.time,
setting up a billion dollar sideshow of commercial testing that will determine the fate of us all in our Brave New World to come.

Or it would be stopped.

And I knew that I, personally, was powerless to stop it.

The future of the Netherlands was no longer my business.
Even if we’d all get vaccinated, and who knows maybe the words I had written last Sunday would inspire more people to go if the invitation finally was for them;
Even then the country would go bankrupt on the billion dollar testing organisation for which a law was being built.

A law was, is, being built so that in order to access a restaurant, a cinema or other non-essential place, you would first go through testing in the commercial testing street which was largely funded by the government but still required a €7,50 fee per test;
And then if you tested negative, your result cleared you for 24-40 hours.
The time window had not been decided on.

It was for everybody, whether you had been vaccinated or not, and supposedly it was a temporary measure that only applied to times when it otherwise would not have been possible to have these facilities open to the public.
Read between lines: official, preventative testing to do normal things, is never going to leave.

Especially not because now there will be a monstrous testing organization that sucks the government dry for billions.
It will demand to be fed.
And the law will provide for its needs.

One minister can spend 1.6 billion dollars on commercial testing streets and organizing exclusive, highly dangerous, uncontrolled parties for a few thousand people, before there even is a law.

These events have been going on for days, and will be going on for the upcomings days, weeks.
It’s absolute maddening to even think about it.
Some are festivals with 10.000 people!!!!
AT THE HEIGHT OF THIS PANDEMIC!
They have been tested beforehand, but the test afterwards is voluntary;
No research or measurable results will come from these fieldlab experiments, as they are called.

Maybe it is forgivable that I spent 4 days to watch the destruction of the country I live in, but it feels like I ve been watching a horror movie, with an uncontrollable train with 18 million peoples railing into a ravine.

In last Sunday’s piece I said that it was up to you, not to make individual choices, but to stay connected with what the people around you needed from you.
Stand by your people, whatever that means for you.
And however big or small your tribe might be.

But with the absolute madness I ve seen since the vision-less press conference last Tuesday, the financial destruction of 1.6 billion and contagion mayhem of the fieldlab pilot events that are happening daily;
I have little hope something as simplistic as love and loyalty is going to save us.

I feel, that evil is among us.

 ~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

I Couldn’t Look Away For Four Entire Days
is part of The Covid Diaries