We are headed into uncharted territory. Life has never come to a screeching halt in this manner before.
We’ve had to make adjustments. The days and weeks after 9/11 required a huge shift in our way of life, as new regulations went into effect on traveling. But the biggest adjustment we had to make was mental, as we had to come to grips with the reality that there were people out there who wanted to kill us, and that our government was not always going to be able to protect us from them.
We’ve also had to make accommodations because of the weather. There have been blizzards, or hurricanes, where all activity has ceased so we could ride the storm out.
We’ve all gone grocery shopping in the days before a predicted storm and seen the people stocking up on bread, milk, eggs and other essentials. And while we all made fun of them, such survivalist preparedness was and is understandable. If you’re stuck inside the house with a two-day case of cabin fever, at least you can eat well.
But with the massive cancellation of, well, everything in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re sailing into dangerous waters. And there is no precedent for how to handle it.
Schools are closed, ostensibly for two weeks. But just about every district sees that as lasting longer. Professional and college sports have shut down at a time of the year when their confluence provides us with a joyous glut of them.
More heartbreaking, with the closure of schools comes the curtailment of all extracurricular activities, such as sports, drama competitions, science fairs, and other things toward which students have been working all year long.
One of the reasons these waters are so treacherous is because people just can’t, or won’t, accept the repeated warnings from health professionals to stay out of harm’s way. They know better. They’re not going to let the government tell them what they should and shouldn’t do. The health professionals are overreacting. It’s a Communist plot to take over our minds, and Putin’s in the middle of it.
Another reason we’re heading into the unknown is the number of people who have the opposite reaction. They’re panicking beyond belief.
Bread and milk during a blizzard? Forget that. We need 10 cases of water, all the pasta the carriage can hold (except the whole wheat stuff, for some reason) and all the meat and produce we can scrounge up.
And whatever comes out of this, WE’RE GOING TO NEED A TON OF TOILET PAPER!
So the first request I have, then, if you’re one of the aforementioned, is to ask yourself if you’re being just a little selfish — one way or the other. Either way, it says here you’re being tremendously self-absorbed to the point where you could be a menace to everybody else.
How do you know you’re not hosting this virus? How do you know who, or how many, end up infected because you’re an idiot who cannot heed a simple warning from a recognized expert?
Stay home.
And if you’re walking out of the store with 10 cases of water and six large bundles of toilet paper, I hope the dog gets into the tissue, chews it up, and leaves it for you to clean. It would serve you right.
Give someone else a chance, would you? Don’t be such a pig.
What we need right now is rationality — and a heaping dose of it. We need people to start listening — even if they have to be hit over the head with a 2×4 to get their attention — to the medical experts. Stop looking around and blaming Trump. Or Obama. I’m pretty sure they didn’t incubate this thing and then let it loose on the world. Whether the president didn’t react in timely enough fashion is certainly subject to debate. But it doesn’t change anything we can do in our effort not to infect everybody.
We need people to stay home. This is going to be a huge issue, and I can sympathize. I made the decision, quite on my own, to pretty much shelter in place and work from home. It was only Monday, and I wanted to go out. You know how it is. I need things at the store. I have to get some prescriptions refilled. Every one of these forays that we used to take for granted is now an opportunity for this virus to transfer itself onto me … or from me to someone else.
The sooner we grow up to the fact that we all owe it to each other to be as careful as we can, maybe the full force of this thing will miss us and we’ll get that much more of a glancing blow.
If you’re still not sure you believe all this stuff, Google “Italy.” And don’t be like the guy I know who proclaimed that “we’re not as dysfunctional as Italy is.”
Really? You want to bet money on that?