"There's gonna be some stuff you gonna see that's gonna make it hard to smile in the future. But through whatever you see, through all the rain and the pain, you gotta keep your sense of humor. You gotta be able to smile through all this." - Tupac Amaru Shakur
I have seen and heard numerous times over the past 36 hours people, close to me and otherwise, telling me that the virus was initially supposed to be terrible, hospitals overrun with intensive care patients on ventilators, widespread death and suffering with two million-plus people dead in our country, but now it’s not as bad as it was projected to be.
Do you know why that is? Because what we are doing is working. That by us staying home, social distancing, non-essential businesses staying closed, so on and so forth, is actually working like we were told it would. Now, a month and a half into this pandemic in the U.S., people are complaining about their “freedoms” and “liberties” being infringed upon, like we, the non-scientist people, know what’s best for us when facing down a virus that no living being has ever witnessed before. When infectious disease experts and public health officials are screaming at us to stay home, these people want to gather in masses to protest being told to stay at home. Why? The economy.
Stupid.
This is a public health emergency. Once-in-a-lifetime pandemic with no cure in sight. A virus that is becoming the leading cause of death in this country.
Viruses only spread when there’s a host to attach to. If there isn’t a host, the virus cannot spread. You learn that in middle school science class. Whether or not you chose to listen was up to you, but that is the science. If there are less people to spread to, the less likely it is for a virus to spread. This is the idea behind all of this, how do people not get it? If people go back to normal it will spread. Like a wildfire in a dry forest. Only it won’t be a forest, it will be all over this country. Small towns, large cities, wherever there is a person to infect.
Imagine the first week of “being open” again. How busy do you think bars and restaurants will be? Malls and department stores, gas stations, everything. Further out, Oktoberfest, concerts, any mass gathering. I’ll tell you what, I am not doing any of that until there is a vaccine. I don’t care, I am not risking my health, my wife, or my family’s health for anything. I barely want to go to the grocery store, we get pickup whenever we need to get groceries, pay at the pump if I need gas, anything to keep my distance from other people. I trust that I will do the right thing but it is becoming more and more obvious that other people are not. I don’t trust that other people will take precautions because it’s evident that a lot of people don’t care, they just want to “go out”. Fuck off with that bullshit. You’re going to get people killed.
Now is the time to stay home. You know what you don’t do? You don’t take your knee off the throat of the villain until the villain is dead. You don’t let the villain get up with a loaded gun when you’re unarmed. That’s stupid. What good is a knife going to do when you’re in a gunfight?
But, that is what you risk doing by wanting to move freely during the FIRST MONTH AND A HALF of this pandemic in America. This is going to last a long time, 6 months, maybe a year or more? No one knows. It only depends on people staying home, keeping their distance. The more you fight it, the longer it will last. The 1918 flu pandemic lasted a year, this could last as long if not longer. I don’t know, I’m not a scientist and neither are you. So listen to those who are actual scientists and experts, not the bullshit the President is saying in the bullshit pressers every day at 5pm Eastern. So you, a general worker with an office job or laborer, with an Associate’s or Bachelor’s Degree, probably don’t know as much as the experts do. And you know what? It’s ok not to know things. I do not understand why not knowing the answer to something complicated and nuanced is considered weak or stupid. You know, before the internet, a lot of people didn’t know the answer to a lot of things and the world moved along just fine.
In the next two weeks, you’re going to see a lot of shit. Good and bad. The people who gathered in Michigan and Ohio to protest their Governor’s order, I can guarantee you there’s going to be a spike in the people who attended that “rally”. What is surprising is that we haven’t seen a rise in cases in my county after the Wisconsin election last week Tuesday. Hopefully that holds, but who knows? I’m not a scientist and neither are you, so neither of us know.
I don’t know if you know anyone that was deemed “essential”, but I do. Multiple family members of mine work at hospitals, gas stations, nursing homes, medical laboratories. I value their lives more than the need to physically go into work, to shop at a department store, go to a sporting event. I work for a manufacturer that sells to retail and wholesale customers, and manufacturing has been shut down since Governor Evers enacted the Safer At Home order on March 25th. We’re still operating at basic minimum levels, but all manufacturing is shut down. We can’t make anything. People are furloughed and I just hope they can pay their bills. I can’t even go into my work facility, I have to work from my home office and it is not ideal. People are supposed to leave their house but this is an unprecedented event.
Everyone is sacrificing something, large or small, to keep moving. We’re all suffering, it’s not just you that feels cooped up, worried about where the money is going to come from. I may be on borrowed time being employed, same with my wife. My mom was laid off a few weeks ago as well. Now, imagine being the husband or wife of a nurse or doctor, or even just a health care worker in, say, finance, or if you work at a grocery store or gas station. I don’t know about you but it’s terrifying and I couldn’t do it without being stressed out and anxious 24/7. It’s stressful enough having my wife go into work every day, knowing she could come into contact with someone who tests positive.
Well, you know what? Fuck the economy right now. At this moment in time, the economy is the last thing I care about. It will bounce back, it always has — this is America, we always come back. People have always had little faith in the economy and freak out at the smallest downturn. Chill the hell out. Your money in banks and credit unions is federally insured, it’s not going anywhere. Since 1933, it’s been safe in the bank. Your retirement fund will come back to what it was before, just wait. I know that waiting is the hardest part but we never got anywhere by staring at the clock.
I want to live through this, which should supersede your desire to go gather in a group of people. I want my family, my wife, my friends to live through this, but you obviously don’t care about them. Somehow, in the middle of this, the pandemic has become a political issue that is dividing us even further at the very time we should be coming together as one. The people protesting, those who want to go back to normal, are the ones with the red hats waving the white man’s flag.
However, wouldn’t you think that a President, in an election year no less, would want to act fast and control the pandemic in this country with the threat being so large? One would certainly think so. At least that is how it likely would have played out in any other Presidency. Instead, we have this mess.
So, it’s difficult to understand why the President wants to get back to normal when we don’t even have widespread testing. We don’t even know who really has Covid-19 because so few people can actually get tested for it. Even the federal government stopped testing sites IN THE FIRST MONTH AND A HALF of this. If he cared so much about the economy, he would’ve acted so much quicker than he did. The lax response from the very beginning has got us in this position and now, before any of this is even remotely close to being under control, all these people have a freedom complex, saying their liberties are being infringed.
No one gave a shit about small businesses until we were told to stay home. Everyone says they like to buy local but in reality that is not the case, look at Wal-Mart, Home Depot, non-franchised fast-food chain restaurants, etc. Small businesses go under every day, chain stores stay forever. I mean shit, what ever happened to the idea of capitalism? If you can’t stay afloat, that’s your problem — you should’ve planned better, had more money in reserves, etc. Ron Swanson, the real libertarian, would hate the idea. Now you want to help them? That’s not how capitalism works, man. You cannot have it both ways.
The second paragraph of the first article in the Declaration of Independence contains the phrase “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”. There is nothing more sacred in this world than life. By protesting the safe-at-home orders, you are infringing upon my desire to live my life in the pursuit of happiness. You are still free. No one owns you, no one can tell you that you are not free to move within society. Not being able to go to Kohl’s or Best Buy isn’t infringing on your liberties, it is literally saving you from yourself. You can still see your mom and dad, your grandparents, your kids. It’s eating at me that I can’t go over to my dad’s on Sunday nights, or see my mom and have a few beers, or go to my grandpa’s house for Easter. We just ask that you stand at least six feet apart. Say hi from the driveway. Make a video chat on Zoom or Facebook Messenger. Literally, their lives depend on it. Be patient, it will all be worth it in the long run. It won’t be like it was before. It cannot go back to the way we used to be. It will be different, but how different it will be is all up to us.
