Are you inessential?

Nearly every form of human activity is connected to someone's livelihood. When we breathe, drink water, cook a meal, take a walk, visit a park or spend money there is invariably someone paid to enable, safeguard or regulate our action. To say that the corona restrictions taught us that we can live without certain human activities, such as visiting a cinema, theater, concert, restaurant or sporting event, is to diminish the meaningfulness of the lives connected to these actions. In many cases, it's a display of atavistic superiority within the human species. A university professor would never consider his or her own profession to be inessential, but that of an athlete or musician might be brushed aside as no great loss if covid-19 gets in the way. Any kind of covid restriction, even a "considerate" mask requirement, can drastically reduce the ability of many people to earn a living, and only unthinking or inhuman beings would impose it without being damn certain of the necessity.