Surgeon General's creepy new report on isolation

This week, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released an “Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community,” in which his office warns of the epidemic of loneliness and isolation facing our country.

https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/1653353795189973000

Loneliness has “destructive impacts on our collective health,” warned the SG. But fortunately, his office has discovered the “extraordinary healing power of our relationships.”

Did I really need to pay taxes for someone to tell me these things?

It appears the agency spent a pretty penny on a fancy website to expand upon these groundbreaking revelations. The site includes insights such as, “Social connection is like a garden, nurturing your connections can improve your garden’s health!”

The key takeaways from the advisory are as follows. One, “Humans are wired for social connection, but we’ve become more isolated over time.” I wonder how THAT happened, Jan. Maybe when you guys shutdown society and arrested people who went to the beach or tried to have Thanksgiving dinner with their families?

Two, “Social connection significantly improves the health and well-being of all individuals.” I mean, quite obviously?

Three, “Social connection is vital to community health and success.” Beware anytime you hear the word “community” or “public health” from leftists, you’re about to be sold some Marxism.

And lastly, “Together, we can advance social connection and improve our nation’s public health.”

Look, loneliness is a massive problem in our society. It’s also part of the human condition. No matter your marital status, whether or not you opt-in to having kids, or how popular you are, there will be times when you will be lonely. You can even be lonely while with other people.

So part of the problem is that people are raised with the expectation of never being lonely, and they will take on all kinds of adverse habits and activities to avoid the feeling rather than being taught to accept it and make the most out of times when you are alone. There is a mental conditioning happening here that is coddling people to the point of not being able to function.

But there is a difference in feeling lonely and actual isolation—and the effects of the latter over time are quite detrimental. As the SG’s advisory points out, isolation can increase one’s risk of heart disease, anxiety, high blood pressure, dementia, depression, and diabetes. (And yet we continue to use this torture tactic on non-violent prisoners around the world).

In fact, the lack of connection with others is so dire to one’s health that it can increase the risk of premature death at levels similar to someone who smokes a pack a day.

So to be clear, I don’t object to the SG warning of these risks. I’m more so annoyed at the amount of taxpayer dollars we spend developing studies that point out common sense, and at the fact that the same people who are responsible for a sizable part of the social isolation problem now want to get on a high horse and preach about it to the rest of us.

This was entirely predictable, and everyone with a lick of discernment warned how bad the outcomes would be when the Left first shut down the country.

https://twitter.com/mkibbe/status/1653849133969448960

But Murthy supported those measures, and he wasn’t all that concerned with these predictable results back then. In fact, his first advisory he issued in his capacity as SG warned of COVID “misinformation” that might make Americans turn against the machinery of COVID, Inc.

But aside from the overt hypocrisy reeking from this agency is their even worse suggestions on how to counter the loneliness epidemic in the country.

Is this a community and individual level problem where people should be made aware of the risk and encouraged to build better social engagement? Is this a reckoning of the ways divisive politics, cancel culture, and intrusive big government policies make people less trustful of one another and drive hostility in the culture, leading to a weaker social fabric? Sweeties, don’t make me laugh. Of course not! This is a problem for Big Government to the Rescue!™

Among the SG’s recommendations for addressing this problem are items such as requiring data transparency from online companies (is everything about taking control of social media these days?), expanding public health surveillance and interventions (they aren’t spying on us enough?), adopting a “Connection-In-All-Policies” approach for lawmaking, developing and coordinating a national research agenda (we need more funding to report on this issue?), accelerated research funding (naturally, gotta keep themselves employed), and expanded conversations on social connection in schools, workplaces, and communities (here comes Diversity Trainings 2.0!).

This? This is hogwash. And it’s frankly insulting to the intelligence of every American. We don’t need the government to fix our social interactions, nor could it. But this isn’t even about that. Per usual, this is nothing more than their typical power grab to expand their own power and resources, caged in the performance of caring about our well-being.

Frankly, I don’t even have the opportunity to be lonely with these government creeps constantly poking around in my life. Isolation from government bureaucrats sounds pretty darn good at the moment.

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