Covid-19

 

        Things are happening fast.  Panic has gripped the country.  Stock markets are crashing, people are fighting over goods.  A madness has spread like a virus, a social madness the likes of which I have never seen on this good Earth.  Thousands are flocking to the stores, buying up everything they can, stocking up for what you'd think was the end of the world.  I have seen people in masks, shopping carts full of one item (bottled water, Monster drinks, paper towels, canned soup), parking lots empty that would normally be full, traffic nonexistant on a Wednesday commute.  If you thought Snowmageddon was bad, this is worse, far worse.

   A day after the World Health Organization deemed the coronavirus a pandemic, the president finally announced a national emergency.  Far too late, if you ask me.  The first victims to test positive here should have been quarantined immediately, by federal troops.  If that is not a matter of national security I don't know what is.  I believe the president's mistake will be the most critical of his insane career, a career that is every bit as turbulent as the country's mood right now.  If the people of a country are reflected by its leader, it certainly rings true today.  First there was denial, passivity, the refusal to listen to nature and the facts; then there was confusion, panic and submission, an ugly confrontation with this ghost of reality that haunts us.  

    Can you believe that up until Monday I heard people calling this fake news, thinking it was just a normal flu?  The next day, sports leagues started cancelling their seasons and Tom Hanks tested positive, a cultural icon we all know and love, who could verify the virus actually exists.  After that, a domino effect occurred where many private institutions cancelled events or closed operations, taking into their hands what the government should have been doing all along.  I wonder if that evidence finally convinced these people how serious the situation was.

   Imagine how much worse the reaction would have been if the virus were lethal on a much larger scale, like Ebola or Marberg.  I've just started reading The Stand again, Stephen King's nightmare vision of a world where 99% of humans die as a result of an influenza outbreak.  What happens in the book is more realistic than I feared- complete chaos and selfishness.  I feel so sorry or all the retail workers who are out there putting their lives at risk so people can buy up everything on the shelves, not leaving any for those less fortunate, those who are more at risk than they are.  For them to have to deal with impatient hoarders is beyond heroic- it requires a certain release of dignity that only those who've shed their ego can know.

    I pray for Julie, Jay Honda, Ray, my old trivia friend, and Mix, my new one.  They are all over 60 and have underlying conditions.  Even mom, who doesn't seem to be worried at all.  She had breathing problems last year, and was a smoker for about 15 years.  I worry that if she caught the virus, her pneumonia would be fatal.  I worry most for my boss Jay, who not only has a heart condition but extremely poor lungs.  He coughs more than anyone I know.  May God be with them.  In The Stand, He wasn't.  It was only until after the pandemic that he leant His hand.

    Here we are, at the heart of it all.  It's a crucial junction in the spread of this disease.  If the curve is not flattened now, many millions will die.  It's out of control in Italy.  Most of the other major European countries are facing a similar trend, just like us- we the most advanced country in the world, who would close our borders to imaginary terrorists but not a real threat that would kill a great many of the elderly who voted for our leader.  He is irresponsible, he is unsympathetic; he can't keep us calm in a time of crisis.  It's a tragic ending to the monstrous story that is Donald Trump, a story even scarier than The Stand.

    The only good to come of it may be that for once the two parties that divide this country will come together in agreement.  It's already happened with legislation passed yesterday to combat the virus.  I said in the past that only a crisis could truly bring us together; perhaps it's finally happening.