These are times unlike any we, as a world, can remember seeing. A pandemic is ravaging the world and creating situations and challenges many have never even considered. Public health and safety is paramount, yet those given the responsibility for oversight in that realm are in large part sailing uncharted waters.
On many fronts one encounters fear, uncertainty and change but I am here to reassure you. It is abundantly clear that to navigate our current crisis we should go to the place where the information is cutting edge, those dispensing it are as woke AF and they possess not one ounce of bias or prejudice. That’s right…go to your Facebook friends, your Twitter feed, and for the truly informed may I suggest the chiropractor in the East delivering medical advice via YouTube with a backdrop that appears to be manufactured for Zoom meetings and available for purchase online.
The arrogance of the American people is simultaneously the best of us and the worst of us. On the positive side it is evidenced by American ingenuity, a never-say-die spirit and a collective mentality that is always striving to “build a better mousetrap”. On the flip side, this arrogance also leads many to completely discount the facts that this pandemic has affected citizens of over 200 countries because if it isn’t in the US it doesn’t count, right?
The theories are that Covid-19 is a plot hatched by (insert name here, I’ll give you a few suggestions). Democrats, Republicans, Bill Gates, socialists, pro-vaxxers, those wishing to permanently take our liberty, ad nauseum. I have heard that the first-hand accounts from first responders, doctors and nurses, of their daily struggles are paid for by the government. These are but a handful of ‘fascinating’ theories developed by people that wish to pretend that other populations of other races, creeds and religions are not suffering from and dying from this exact same virus…some before it came to the US. Or are they simply collateral damage to the master plans of Nancy Pelosi or Donald Trump? All I know is it makes me wish I had planned ahead and purchased stock in any or all of the companies producing aluminum foil so I could make a killing when y’all start making your tin foil hats.
Make no mistake, the politicians will ‘politick’. It’s what they do, it’s mother’s milk and it is as necessary to them as breathing. They are not above using this extraordinary time in history to further their own ambitions and hatreds…how could we believe otherwise?
I also completely understand the drive to return to normalcy, go to work, and stop the bleeding metaphorically speaking. But as my grandmother often told me, wishing doesn’t make it so. We can’t wish away the pandemic and those that want to believe it’s no big deal are, in my opinion, driven by fear. They are afraid to entertain the idea that it IS a big deal, or could be if we don’t meet if head on, and they practice a little self-soothing by playing the all-American blame game.
There will be a day that where this came from; lab, bat, pangolin, terrorists, is unearthed. That who reacted badly, slowly, too quickly, along party lines, WHATEVER, matters. But it doesn’t matter now. while you climb the walls in your house and lament your lack of freedom there are those that simply wish they were free to be with their loved one at their death, to not be intubated and hooked to a machine…alone. They would love to be in their house and I’m sure would be happy to spend any amount of time there at this point. Tell me the numbers are small, but if you lose a loved one that is the only number that matters. Tell me it’s an overreaction, but we won’t know for years what the total of casualties would have been without the reaction that happened.
I have stepped away from social media and any regular mainstream news. I stop in to check on family and friends briefly each day, and I read daily news articles in moderation, but there is no desire to immerse myself in the insanity. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, as I am to mine, and no one opinion is more important than any other. But as many beat themselves against the porch light screaming how ‘right’ they are, like it matters, I hope you can listen to yourselves, really listen, and ask yourself if you are helping or adding to the problem. I will save my thoughts for family members working in law enforcement and in the local ER’s and wish for their safety, as well as that of my other family and friends.
As one who writes for many reasons, one of which is to work out things weighing on my mind, I would hope my words could cause people to stop and think; not to agree, just to consider other points of view. Predictably, I believe that is too ambitious in a world where anger is the emotion of choice.