Yesterday I became aware first-hand that the insane Scamdemic response destroyed volunteer jobs, and not just paying jobs and businesses.
In my former adopted hometown in Vermont, I volunteered at the town library as a way of giving something to my new community. I started out by shelving books, and eventually became the chief volunteer, installing and managing the open source circulation and cataloging server software, cataloging new books, maintaining the in-house computers, doing minor carpentry and repair tasks, serving as substitute librarian, etc. I kept working there during the Scamdemic, avoiding the new crazy rules about masks and distancing and sanitizing by only entering the building outside of normal business hours.
Now that I live in a little mountain town in Crazyfornia, I decided to visit the nearest library (part of a county-wide library system) to get a library card and find out if the library needed volunteers. The librarian told me that the county had stopped using volunteers at the start of the Scamdemic and hadn’t resumed the practice. This shocked me, because I had thought that even Branch Covidians had given up on the fear campaign (except for a few die-hards). But then, librarians seemed to be the craziest of the crazy during the Scamdemic, so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised.
I hadn’t thought much about this before, but volunteers contribute to the wealth of a community by investing their time, if not their money. So the Scamdemic destroyed some of that wealth, along with the more visible wealth in the form of paying jobs and small businesses.
Even the fine Branch Covidians at NPR noticed the loss of volunteerism in an article from last year. Of course, as with all articles of this type, the authors blame the societal destruction on the Scary Virus, rather than on the true source of the problem, which is the insane and unscientific response to the Scary Virus.
In any case, this was yet another depressing reminder that the Scamdemic is still not over. Maybe I should ask about volunteer positions each time I visit the library, just to keep a little bit of pressure on the insanity. Who knows? Maybe by the time I’m dead the library system might change its policy.