Thoughts on Covid, masks, life and death on this Halloween

Samhain, better known to most people around the world as Halloween, is the time to contemplate life beyond life, to remember the ancestors and to let go of old attachments and things that often hold us back. I won’t go into the details of the various celebrations around the world or the spiritual and psychological aspects of the original celebrations of Samhain, as that is subject enough for an entry of its own, but I will say for many of us it’s a particularly intense Samhain this year. For those who believe that Halloween is a time to venerate death or that it has anything to do with Satanism or the Devil, I will go ahead and say that is a huge misconception, although Satanists also celebrate Samhain and/or Halloween if they want to, just like any other person who either wants to celebrate the lives of those who have passed on, or merely enjoy dressing up and have a fun night in costume (the kind of costume is entirely up to each individual taste, just like with any other cultural group). Halloween is normally seeped in bloody imagery, with death-motifs and creepy elements such as spiders and goblins, because it originates from a celebration of the opening of the door into the afterlife, sometimes known as the opening of the veil, through which our dear departed ones could cross over to partake in our celebration of their life, and in some areas it was said in legend and myth that the fae could cross over too, either for good or mischief. A lot of what we know now of Halloween as a gore-fest has more to do with the Christian and Catholic interpretations of the old Celtic, Saxon, Nordic and Greek myths, as well as some Latin American traditions, specifically twisted to make the indigenous people’s traditions seem like malignant beliefs and to facilitate the instalment of their own beliefs in their new settlement.

All of the above has been but a brief explanation of what Halloween and Samhain are, just to provide a clear context to what I will fully launch into now: why is it that this particular Samhain is a lot more intense for many Pagans than it has been before. As some areas of the world are still being extremely affected by Covid-19, many of us who celebrate the lives of our beloveds and would normally partake in beautiful ceremonies to bless them on their journey or to give ourselves a little spiritual help to let go of things that are holding us back, are also reeling from the extremely counteractive response of thousands of people which have cost even more thousands of lives and livelihoods in the name of “freedom”. Some of us have watched aghast as here in the UK, in the US, and in several other places of the world (some incredibly unlikely countries too), ordinary people have stood side by side with Alt-right groups, in some cases even defending the right of literal Nazis to be there, all to proudly defend their right to not put a piece of cloth over their mouths. To these people, the symbolism of covering their mouths have become a deluded reality as they can’t even realise that they are actively screaming that they are being silenced by the very media they claim is trying to silence them. Oh, the irony of me using that very same media to point it out, right? Those individuals that I’m referring to seem to be terrified of control over their lives to the point of actually believing that microchips can be put into our bodies via injections, or that 5G airwaves are strong enough to create a literal organism in our bodies, that the literal organism that’s travelling around the world via air doesn’t actually exist and it’s all a plan from the “ones at the top” to control us all (even though economies all around the world are crashing, funny that the ones at the top did not take their precious money into consideration, eh?), or that it’s all a hoax, or that we create the virus in our bodies by having negative thoughts and living in fear. Sometimes all at once. And I know I missed a few. These are people who know nothing about biology, nothing about engineering, nothing about economy, and nothing about history – even though they seem to exemplify their beliefs with all areas I just mentioned and give nothing but twisted theories to back their oh-so-precious beliefs.

Having a background on translating Biology papers and reports and doing research for a private Mental Health clinic, as well as a BA in International Relations, I can very much vouch for the importance of guiding our decisions, actions and opinions on what the experts on different fields say, which is why some of the top experts in the fields in question have appealed to our attention, and some social media sites have made the harsh but much needed decision to purge false and ultimately dangerous news from their privately-owned sites. Of course, with Covid-19 some innocent researchers have been caught in the crossfire, such as the case of the many doctors who initially spoke about the importance of anti-inflammatories to aid in the treatment and recovery of patients, as well as to mitigate the spread (by keeping the symptoms milder than otherwise could have been and thus reducing the actual coughing), and the well-intentioned medical and laboratory experts who tried to warn people about the wrong use of masks before it got mistranslated into the “masks will kill you”-type slogan that many oblivious people seem to have adopted. At this point I would find it impossible that anyone didn’t know what I’m talking about. What I don’t understand, is how it is possible that many communities went from “We’re all in this together” to essentially “I will hate you if you wear a mask”, in the course of just a few months. I don’t understand it because as I recall, even the “I don’t believe in Covid” brigade seemed to be legitimately concerned about the mental health of people being affected by lockdowns and regulations, and to their credit, many that I know genuinely believe that this is all manufactured by the government precisely because here in the UK the government has been playing fast and loose with people’s lives for decades now and actively gaslighting the population on enough issues to give anyone a serious doubt about the validity of anything they say. That’s a subject for another entry, to be honest, but I just have to say that some of those people, I certainly don’t blame them for not knowing what’s real and what isn’t. What I do deeply wish is that all of those people had also had enough common sense to stick to lockdown and wear masks even before the government put either in motion, because, regardless of who said what first, lockdown and masks are the best action to control a rapidly-spreading virus in a place such as the UK, with a deliberately run-down health service and most social services almost as (if not more) starved of funding as the NHS. Again, the amount of manipulation and gaslighting that the UK government has done over the decades has had one of its unfortunate end-goals, to have their residents second-guessing everything and everyone around them because they don’t know left from right anymore (and when it comes to politics that can be taken in a very literal sense in the UK!), so as much as I wish the general population had had common sense from the beginning, I also wish there was a way we could hold the government responsible for their current mishandling of the crisis and also for their previous actions which led millions of people to fall prey to their current malignant deliberate manipulation of the crisis for their own gain. To give you an example of the kind of people we’re dealing with in Parliament at the moment, they take classes in Eton College that teach them how to make the most profit out from a crisis. That is actually part of their curriculum. Not how to handle a crisis so that people stay safe while the economy also survives, which is what most people think that those classes represent; not how to make profit even if things are going bad around you, as most people who instantly defend them think it means, but actually how to make the MOST profit WHILST in the crisis, which actively means, WHILST people are suffering, and judging by the actions they take and the motions they make in Parliament, one can go as far as to say that such classes mean: how to make the most profit OUT of the suffering of the people, because that is what has been actively happening for decades. As I said above, the whole Politics subject will have to be a matter of another entry, as it is long enough on its own and I want to keep the focus now on other very specific subjects, but it was important to explain all of the above to be able to make the following connection: unfortunately, even though a lot of them have believed that they are doing a great and brave act of rebellion by not abiding to lockdown and refusing to wear masks, the so-called rebels have inadvertently aided the government in their intended stripping away of social services (by using the already overwhelmed NHS and care homes as scapegoats and blaming them for the fast spread of the virus) and they have also allowed the government to take away real rights by inflicting more half-baked measures which have prevented the majority of self-employed and artistic small businesses to recover from the first lockdown (which was bad enough as it was because there was no real preparation and the harsh jump into the freezing water had already left many small businesses and self-employed unprotected and likely in danger of folding, while at the same time actively refusing all of the medical, technical and financial help that the UK were still entitled to from the UK all in the name of the also half-baked BREXIT, and ultimately in favour of lining their own and their mates’ pockets with taxpayers’ money – OUR money, for any UK resident who still hasn’t processed that “taxpayer’s money” actually means “our money”, cos believe you me, some of them are still defending these politicians and their business-people friends saying that it’s all right that they get paid all of that money because they earned it. Sigh.)

That was a long parenthesis and I apologise. Once again, it was much needed information for me to lead on to the next link: a great many people who I’ve heard and/or read claiming that they are rebelling because they are the only ones brave enough to fight for our freedom, even if we so-called sheeple don’t appreciate their commitment to our freedom, are downright proving that they are just as selfish and self-serving as the politicians that they claim they are freeing us from, as not only are they actively ignoring that masks are one of the safest ways to reduce the spread of the virus, but the majority are also speaking as if they are better and more enlightened than the rest of us because, they tell us, they don’t fear death. Now, not fearing death in and of itself is perfectly fine and healthy – hooray for anyone who has genuinely got there and are living their best lives! – but, not fearing death does not give anyone the right to put others at danger, nor to mock them for actually fearing death. As a matter of fact, mocking others for fearing death is a completely un-enlightened thing to do. Seriously, look it up: being enlightened gives you empathy, compassion, a sense of self-awareness and a deep desire to help others. If you hold the absolute key to the loss of fear of death, then laughing at others for fearing death doesn’t make you enlightened, it make you a jerk. That’s one, and some of us have seen our fair share of it where I live, in Glastonbury, where it’s supposed to be the most enlightened place in the world (and where every single one of us know people in so many countries that you’d think people would be aware that this is a worldwide issue, too). You would seriously doubt it, if you were to judge by the number of mocking, bullying, and actual spitting in people’s mouths that go on here just in the High Street. Now, fortunately we also have one of the tightest and most empathetic communities I have ever lived in (and I have lived in multiple countries in the world, and in several counties of two of those countries), and for the most part we defend each other and lift each other up as much as we can: our businesses, our projects, our spiritual paths, out emotional states, in general terms, Glastonbury is the best. The unfortunate thing is that we have made the news several times over the past few months on account of the so-called rebels, and considering that one of the first big news of the so-called protests against lockdown back in April included someone literally laughing in someone’s face asking them if they though they had contracted the virus and if they thought they were going to die. I genuinely struggle to understand why the fear of death is worthy of mockery and demeaning comments. Human beings are literally programmed to want to survive. That’s why we’ve got survival instincts. That’s also kind of why we’ve actually managed to survive so much over several millennia, including but not restricted to, several pandemics which we can very well determine that will continue happening every hundred years or so because that’s what will happen with viruses of that kind when they mutate into their next reiteration, with some epidemics thrown in every few decades because variations of the viruses will find ways to mutate in their own time, yay? All of this information was nothing that was being kept hidden from us, as many conspiracy theorists seem to unquestionably believe, but rather findings about this have been modified as new findings come through research – actual research not the one which seems to give all-superior answers on YouTube. Don’t get me wrong, YouTube has become a fantastic way to provide actual knowledge in terms of social sciences, psychology, religion and cultural phenomena, as more and more legitimately knowledgeable people choose to go into self-employment and opt to be paid by advert revenue and patrons for delivering good-quality introspective or critical-thinking videos, from History to Pop Culture, passing through genuine well-being and psychology advice, but it is not exactly the forum for virologists and medical experts to release their findings or to get their necessary peer-reviews from. Although no one should look down on someone having a Communications degree and using that platform to help others understand the actual findings of legitimate processes, that’s a whole other subject, because someone trained in Communications would also know the dangers of putting false information out there, as the responsibility of the reactions of the people who receive said information falls upon their shoulders, so anyone putting out false news which may lead to someone else being harmed will be held accountable by law, and private platforms such as Google and Facebook have every right to opt to not allow said falsehoods to be showcased under their banners (most likely as a self-serving act rather than out of true concern for the safety of their customers, but still a right for them to choose).

In any case, mocking others for their actual – and entirely human – fear of dying is stupid to say the least. I do wonder if any of those people who laugh at others for “living in fear” have actually realised that many people actual like living? I mean, living is actually kind of nice, isn’t it? The whole, doing things, you kind of get used to it. Enjoy it, even… It’s somehow an alien concept to some people… which confuses me because so far I had been assuming that those people had also been living all this time, so maybe I’ve been acting on wrong assumptions, my bad! Again, I did assume it because many of them have actually said that they’ve lived long enough, that they don’t care if they die, so who can blame me for thinking that they have also been living all this time, just like we so-called sheeple have been?

Yeah, I’ve gone into sarcastic mode. Defence mechanism left over from years of trying to survive before I was able to actually live – and enjoy – my life. Truly, I don’t want to die. It took me long enough to get to where I am and it’s unfair of anyone to judge me on the basis of actually wanting to live so I can continue enjoying this life that I proactively put together. And that goes for everyone who literally just wants to live! Which makes me want to point out: did you notice that I quoted people saying that they have lived long enough or that they don’t care whether they die or not? For people claiming that they are doing this incredibly selfless act of brave rebellion for the benefit of those suffering with mental health, they sure like the idea of suicide! Yes, you read right. Making the choice of actively putting yourself at danger, without regard of whether you die or not, qualifies as being suicidal, the very thing that they claim to be trying to prevent. Note how almost all of them quote suicide rate numbers. Note how many of them go as far as stealing the pro-choice slogan of “My body, my choice” to supposedly strengthen their claim as freedom fighters. Note how terrifying the repercussions of that are.

The thing is, we should all actively strive to prevent suicide rates from rising – it’s the human, decent thing to do: to care about each other, to keep each other safe and sane, which, in all honesty, every single person I know who advocates for masks and community collaboration, has actively campaigned for at one point or another in their lives, if they are not actively doing so now as well. Direct reports from the health services ask us, beg us, to use our common sense and take care of each other, and that genuinely includes the use of masks and the temporary keeping to the restrictions, just so that fewer people are affected each passing week and we can all return to normality sooner. But no, according to the so-called rebels, their freedom is more important than working as a community to prevent something that many countries have already shown could have been preventable from the start.

However these people don’t only talk about suicide rates, but also bring up bogus and carefully doctored facts such as that the flu kills more people a year, that more people die of cancer a month or that more people die in car accidents each week, or whatever the combination of disease-to-mortality rate they’re choosing to misinterpret that day. The thing with this, is, why do these people want MORE people do die from this virus before they consider it worthy of stopping. If that’s what they’re pointing out, then they’re admitting that we have the ability of making this virus even less of a threat than the flu or cancer - so why don’t they just let scientists and medical experts get on with it so that can be made a reality? Not to mention that the three examples given, plus suicide, have been under the microscope for decades precisely to make it so that there are FEWER deaths from that as well! Regarding the flu I don’t have enough knowledge to say much, but the other three have been under constant research for ages, and endless campaigns to bring awareness of one or the other have been an ongoing project for companies all around the world. The issue with car accidents is that more often than not they still happen so often because of people not following the rules (either literal road rules or the rule of not driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs), so why do anti-maskers even use that example as a thing? In road accidents the likelihood of a death happening because of someone not following the rules is higher than a death from anything else like an issue with the car or a health condition in the person, so under that logic, more deaths from Covid-19 are bound to happen due to people not following the rules and putting others at risk of infection. The triggery bit here for many conspiracy theorists is the part where someone says “the rules”, though, which, once again, proves how little an act of real rebellion that is and how self-serving many of these people are, considering that in this case the rules are literally put there to protect others! Never mind that this self-serving government originally *didn’t* want to put said rules in place, and they fought tooth and nail not to, in the hope that they could force an unregulated herd immunity and in the Prime Minister’s own words, if many people died “so be it”. The fact that a lot of people still shrug it off by saying that it’s *only* the elderly or those with specific conditions who are dying frankly leaves me cold. Who are these people who care so little about human lives that they will claim they’re not wearing a mask to courageously rebel for *our* freedom, whilst laughing in the face of those who dare to show their very human quality of not actually wanting to die, and at the same time saying that it doesn’t matter if some of the older or already sicker people die? Where did they even came from? Because I swear, before this, people actually did their best to keep people around them safe. I remember, I was there.

Now, I started this by talking about Halloween and Samhain, so I’ll come full circle and come back to it: during this time, some of us Pagans celebrate the lives of those who have gone before us, and honour their place in our lives, as well as their passing. It tends to be, in general, a beautiful ceremony which uplifts the spirit and cradles you in your beautiful memories of your beloveds. This year, however, has already been different for many. To begin with, just like with most religious ceremonies, there has been little chance of doing things in person with the groups that many of us tend to celebrate. That in and of itself isn’t a great deal. We can adapt, next year we’ll be able to celebrate properly again, we’ll survive. It’s the other aspect of it that has left many of us reeling: the realisation that for many of our beloved who have gone, they can be fully counted as preventable deaths. That is a lot more traumatizing than many people are willing to understand. For many people there will always hang the question: what if things had been done differently? Faster? Sooner? For many people that’s a pain that they will have to live with for the rest of their lives. For many people there will be the added issue of knowing that the people around them cared so little about them, their loved ones of their livelihoods that they opted to rebel against one or both of the two things that could have actively decreased the chances of their grandfather, or their husband, or their daughter catching it, and that’s a pretty big what if. I think all we are asking for is more empathy, because those who have had it are actively trying to raise awareness of it (just like with every other big illness), and those who work on health services are actively trying to get people to be reasonable, and because even those who might have had it without knowing, or who might never have it, will have still lost something about their lives: maybe their job, maybe their hopes at building something better for their family, maybe someone they love, all because their neighbour refused to wear a mask.

What the world needs now is more empathy, and I dearly hope there’s still enough of that to go around and keep us all, everyone, safe and hopefully back to sanity.

PS. If you don’t wear a mask because of a legitimate reason, then you really should know by now that none of the worries stated here about self-serving attitudes apply to you. If you are triggered by any of this then I would advise that you look into why it triggers you, because that could actually be an issue that you haven’t realised. And, if anyone says to you that if you are sick enough to not be able to wear a mask in the middle of a worldwide pandemic then you should stay at home, please know that it’s probably being said to you out of genuine concern because of the magnitude of the situation, and that there is nothing shameful about feeling that concern.

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Thank you for reading this article. I have made an edit to allow you to read more about my specific difficulties during the pandemic as an immigrant in the UK here. Another piece of political reflection can be found here.