Preparedness, alternative health strategies to practice during the Covid-19 lockdown.
By Mark Anderson
The Covid-19-inspired stay-at-home orders and the resulting near-shutdown of the daily commute of the workforce, coupled with the closing of schools and various social outlets, have put many families back together in close proximity. Despite the stress that this can sometimes cause, there are many positive aspects.
This is especially important when elite-internationalist rags like The Atlantic and similar publications, as this writer documented in AFP’s issue 15 & 16, are trying to paint the people into a dark corner by proclaiming that “life will never be the same” and soon we’ll all need to have our bodily temperature taken at travel terminals and prove our suitability to engage in commerce, or even be among people, by carrying a Covid-19 “vaccination certificate.”
That bleak vision simply cannot be allowed to materialize. We can build our own paradigm, where “kitchen table” economics becomes the new norm and family-based and neighborhood-based projects that constitute grassroots self-government can be devised.
From a rural Ann Arbor-area Michigan family that mowed a large section of the back lawn to create a small baseball field for the grandkids, to a Ypsilanti, Mich. church that’s making improvements to its Unity Garden Initiative, many Americans are—and more should be—creatively using their extended home time to exercise, read, reflect, and enhance family activities. That includes growing food, free of glyphosate residues and other pesticides, free of genetic engineering, and fully ripe and loaded with nutrition come harvest time.
That’s a surefire way to cut back on junk food and nourish the body. That, in turn, strengthens the immune system since the standard American diet damages the good bacteria in the gut—the intestinal flora—that’s instrumental in upholding our immunity to illness.
Importantly, expanding gardening beyond the hobby mode, into the food-security and food-quality mode, involves creating the shortest possible supply chains in an age where our free-trade economists tell us nonstop that the global economy model has all the answers. Imagine a network of communities where several families create, for example, raised-bed gardens.
Because that type of garden can produce a lot of food in a relatively small space, participating families likely will grow more food than they can consume. Those who choose not to grow gardens still can share in the harvest as some families grow somewhat different vegetables, fruits and herbs than others, laying the groundwork for trading and other measures for helping one another.
If you add canning, dehydrating and freezing to the mix to carry families through the winter, with some of the fresh and preserved produce showing up at roadside stands and farmers’ markets, it becomes clear that expanding local agriculture could become a major part of an ongoing, post-Covid-19 safety net against any natural or manmade “disaster.” Moreover, friends and families getting together to tend the gardens means spending quality time outside and boosting immunity via vitamin D from solar exposure. And due to the sometimes-harmful electromagnetic fields associated with the “internet of things,” less cellphone and Wi-Fi activity would be another health dividend.
Thus, adopting such aspects of “self-government,” where self-sufficiency becomes the norm, would go a long way toward “backstopping” our food supply while forging a strong sense of community during these trying times.
Staying strong means reducing our dependency on large-scale monopolistic systems and institutions. Logically, that also includes a sharp increase in home-schooling, moving it from a temporary measure to a long-term commitment. Other pursuits could include learning or honing armed self-defense skills, natural healing and proper nutrition—and neighbors assembling to draw up grievances to present to local, state, and federal agencies.
In creating our own post-Covid-19 reality, we can reorient the world to the point where forced vaccinations and intense physical and social monitoring cannot take hold. Freedom and security, when the people take the lead, can co-exist.
Mark Anderson is AFP’s roving editor. Email him at [email protected].
