You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy
The Pandemic.
Are you sick of it?
Are you tired of it?
Are you sick of the numbers? Whose dead, whose recovered, whose tested, whose not?
Do you hate the News? Do you trust their message? Where do they get that message? What filter are they using to vomit that message into the ether?
Do you hate people wearing masks in public?
Do you hate people not wearing masks in public?
Are you tired of people looking afraid when you approach, measuring you with their eyes as if they can accurately project bubbles of six foot sanctity around you.
I’m tired of it all too. I’m tired of the reality and I’m tired of the perception.
I WANT TO LIVE MY LIFE FREE AND WITHOUT FEAR.
I’m so sick and tired of so many aspects of the Corona Virus, it’s hard to know where to start.
In no particular order, I am sick of drive by birthday parties. I’m tired of hundreds of cars driving through a neighborhood and people honking horns. I am no longer tickled or touched by clumps of people feigning social distancing on front lawns and sidewalks in the name of entertainment. “We just wanted to get out,” they say.
I’m tired of the Corona Police calling me at the TV station to complain about every violation of social distancing and mask-less encounter they have had.
I’m tired of TV reporters wearing masks on television. Every newscast looks like a Bank Robbery starring Billy the Kid. Are the reporters wearing the masks because they want to? Are they wearing the masks because it is mandated by their employer? Is it a plain surgical mask? A high demand N95 mask? Is it a mask with your favorite Power Ranger or Football team? Are we now facially chic wearing the appropriate face covering.
“Oh I love your mask!”
STFU!
And what is the message the mask represents to the viewer? Does it make the audience feel comfortable that the reporter is taking precautions? Or does it subtract from the message of the story and make you stare at his mask, reminding you that something’s wrong, and we should be afraid?
Information dissemination?
Or perpetuation of some enigmatic global agenda that has sent us inside away from the light?
Depends on whom you ask, doesn’t it?
I for one hate the mask idea. Not that I don’t believe that a mask could be a preventative measure to reduce inhalation of foreign substances.
BUT ….
THE MESSAGE WAS DISTORTED FROM THE BEGINING.
We were told not to wear masks initially.
THEN WHEN PUBLIC PERCEPTION BEGAN TO FLUCTUATE, THE MESSAGE BECAME WEAR A MASK.
With the perception of a misconception began a rift in the belief. Those who did and those who don’t. The obfuscated message began to gravitate politically and geographically.
While the goal posts continually shift on what’s safe and what’s vogue, one thing is clear.
People don’t know how to wear a mask.
I see masks over noses, under noses, under chins, and resting on lips.
If RULE 1 IS WASH YOUR HANDS, then
RULE 2 IS DON’T TOUCH YOUR FACE.
I suppose if you are diligent with Rule 1. It makes violations of Rule 2 more yielding.
But I see gross violations of face touching every day, everywhere.
When people wear a mask, it promotes face touching. Mask on. Mask off. Mask adjustment. Itch over the mask. Itch under the mask. Move the mask to talk. Reapply the mask to listen.
That’s a lot of unwarranted face touching.
The question is, where have your hands been? Did they touch the grocery cart? The door knob? Did you wash your hands from the last time you used the commode?
How many of those masks are sanitary? How many of those masks that you’ve worn every day since the pandemic started, are no cleaner than a ball hugging jock strap worn during an NFL football game in the sweat stained stench of Summer?
I’m tired of skype and facetime and zoom.
I’m tired of the tin hollow sound of people talking over an ether net of failing bandwidth.
I’m tired of looking up people’s nostrils in bad lighting. I’m tired of wondering if you are wearing pants?
I’m tired of looking at the pictures behind you. I’m tired of the Brady Bunch boxes we all now reside within.
Is this the new normal?
And I hate that term; New Normal.
Shut Up. Don’t say it. It’s new, but it’s not normal. It’s foul and insulting to me as a human.
It’s disingenuous to our species and I will never let what’s happening now become anything close to normal.
I’m SO sick of Corona Virus.
I’m sick of the deaths, I’m saddened by the deaths.
I cheer the recoveries and the success stories.
And I am very concerned about the other pandemic.
The death blow to our economy.
I still don’t personally know anyone who has died of Corona Virus, but I know everyone who has been affected by the economic disruption it has perpetrated on our society.
I was approached by a neighbor this past Friday.
She stopped her walk, removed her ear buds, measured six feet of sidewalk between us and then said; “Mike lost his job the other day. After 24 years with the company they laid him off because of the Virus.”
Before I could say that’s terrible, she added, “yeah and my son John lost his job as well.”
What do you say to that?
One woman, 2 lost jobs in the same 24 time span.
I guess it’s better than dying.
I talked to my aunt the other day. She tells me that my uncle has now refrained from going to the doctor, delaying his cancer prostate check for 90 days.
The paradox is he could die from a preventable disease that he opted not to prevent because he was too busy preventing the spread of the corona virus, which he does not have.
If he dies, I wonder if that would be considered a Corona Virus related death?
Which brings me to another point.
The numbers? Just how accurate are the numbers?
2+2=4.
But the cause of death is not that simple.
Every day in Tennessee the State Department of Health puts out new numbers. Sometimes they fluctuate because cities and counties quantify corona deaths differently.
Makes me seriously wonder just whose doing all the math here?
When I cover an overdose death, I am careful not to say that heroin killed the person. Though I highly suspect Heroin killed the man, I phrase it succinctly and appropriately, framing the narrative as precisely as possible to let the viewer know that the person died, and the person is suspected of using heroin. They are connected but also different. One indicator probably affects the other, but doesn’t necessarily mean they are inextricably linked. It is possible the man did heroin, but fell and hit his head, or had a heart attack, or was murdered. You don’t know what you don’t know. And it only becomes official when the medical examiner rules on the case. Because toxicology results take weeks, reporting the accurate and precise cause of death is often delayed.
But every single day, I am told about more Corona Virus deaths. Every day a Governor or Mayor gets on a bad bandwidth and reports new numbers of death with great assurance using loosey goosey verbiage to frame their narrative. Sentences like corona virus with underlying conditions has become so natural that we don’t hear the UNDERLYING CONDITIONS. All we hear is Corona Virus Deaths are up by so many and nobody ever thinks to look back.
WTF?
What’s an underlying condition? Cancer? A 2 pack a day habit? God punching your eternal time clock in the sky?
Numbers can lie, and in this case, I’m not so sure they aren’t being used to keep us docile and afraid.
I see it in people’s eyes, that last exposed trace of human expression, lurking over the top of a soiled mask. I can see their pupils dart from side to side, nervously scanning the supermarket aisle for toilet paper that no longer exists.
They are afraid. They are uncomfortable. They are agitated.
People will believe whatever they are told about a virus that literally we know very little about.
We still can’t cure the common cold, and in 90 days, we have quarantined a planet over a disease that is still in a petri-dish, under a microscope, being dissected by people who really know very little.
SIX FEET?
Who the hell mandated that? That was announced almost immediately.
SIX FEET? GET REAL? WHO THE HELL KNOWS IF THAT’S SAFE OR NOT?
People use that definitive 6 foot measurement as if it is the unequivocal safe zone.
Who knows? How do they really know? Six feet? Nice round figure, don’t ya think?
The angle of an equilateral triangle? I know that. It’s precise. 60 degrees. No more. No less.
The height of a basketball hoop? 10 feet. No more. No less. That’s an easy one.
Feet in a mile? 5,280. Exactly. No guess work here.
Yet something as serious as possible life and death has come down to a guess.
SOCIAL DISTANCING. 6 FEET.
Thank You everyone. Don’t forget to tip your bartenders and waitresses on the way out. Oh wait, they are home suffocating with the blinds pulled tight.
SIX FEET? What if I am a spray talker? Is 6 feet the Hot Zone? Why not 8 feet? What about 9 Feet? How about 4.7 feet?
Was six feet chosen because 10 feet anywhere is almost impossible and impossible means nobody will socially distance and if we don’t socially distance there will be anarchy and perhaps more death, but certainly less control of the masses.
Hmmmm?
What came first the chicken of the egg?
The virus or the need for people to be herded mindlessly like sheep?
I’m sick of the Corona Virus. I respect that people are dying. I also understand that the byproduct of social distancing and slitting the throat of our economy is killing many more of us.
We talk about reopening, but that is not going to happen. It’s words.
In some cases there is nothing to reopen. A life time of struggling to maintain the American Dream is gone. The Virus was a trap door on the gallows. When the government put the noose around small business owner’s necks, and then sprung the trap, the life of the American Dream was extinguished.
SNAP!
Small business is the scene in every movie where the noose tightens, the rope snaps, and the feet twitch under the gallows.
That’s us now.
And even if we do open the country again, slowly and safely and all that other BS I’m also so sick of hearing about; what then?
Are you really going to pack into a bar? Are you going to sit next to a fat sweaty guy in a crowded airline seat for 2 hours on your way to Dallas?
Not me.
I’m not all that comfortable walking in my grocery store. And there’s no meat to buy anyway.
Perception is reality.
I’m sick of the Corona Virus, but I have to admit, I’m also still a little bit afraid that I may catch your Corona cooties.
In the back of my head, I fear the invisible plague, and I will continue to wash my hands, and disinfect my phone and stay away from most of you because you could be a toxic waste zone of disease.
I’m afraid of Corona Virus like a child fears the monster under his bed.
Like that child, I need my mom to come in, sit beside me, stroke my hair, and tell me that everything will be alright.
In some ways, the government is now our parents, and we are that child laying in that bed afraid. And we won’t be able to get a good night’s rest until some public official that we trust tells us that is ok not to be afraid anymore.
SHEEP.
Humans are born.
And from that moment, we begin dying.
Throughout time, we have found an infinite number of ways to die.
When it comes to killing ourselves we our some creative Mo-Fo’s.
We’ve fallen out of planes, died in nuclear explosions, exploded in space and slipped onto the third rail.
You name a way to die, and people have died that way. And now you can add CORONA VIRUS-UNDERLYING CONDITIONS TO THE M.E.’s report.
And when it comes to dying, a tried and true method of death is the good old fashioned interstate. Dying in an automobile has worked for years and it’s still happening right now as I type these words.
In my state, more people have still died on the interstate than have died from the Corona Virus. Apparently nobody has told motorists not to social distance, or even slow down. In fact, with less people on the roads, the death toll has remained constant. You know why? Because people are born to die. Somewhere on the great calendar in the sky, your ticket is punched, and no matter what you do, you will meet that ultimate demise. How you do it may vary, but the end result of nothingness is still the same.
Though it’s crass, I believe this to be true. We are use to people dying on the interstate. Humans have been dying in car crashes since humans learned to press the accelerator down and then not pay attention to rules of the road. The moment people could crash into something immovable at a high rate of speed we started to do that. I’m doing 80mph on this windy road at night in a thunder storm, but now is a great time to check this text message from At&T about lower rates. It’s just who we are as a species.
And because it’s normal for people to die in car crashes, we don’t shut down the economy and file for bankruptcy. We just accept it’s one way that the universe thins the heard and we move on.
I’ve heard people say that the virus spreads quickly from human to human contact. That may be true. So to does a mini van of choir members smashing into a tour bus of old folks going to Atlantic City to gamble away their retirement checks.
Who said life was fair or even made any sense.
So I give you the latest version of man’s great enigma.
The Corona Virus.
A few years from now, it will be another foot note in a long history of human evolution of things that tried to kill.
I suspect that out there in the planetary phlegm, circling a neutron star of decaying proportions, there is a chunk of cold, icy rock, just preparing to sling shot through the void and crush our little planet like a walnut under a sledge hammer.
Why not?
Can ten million dinosaurs be wrong?
My advise. Be smart. Be cautious. Wear your mask if you want and stay six feet apart if you desire. Wash your hands and don’t cough on an old person. Above all else, don’t be afraid. Don’t be a sheep. Life is always trying to kill you, and this is just the latest greatest fear that we are facing.
There’s always something else, and it’s looming just around the corner, hiding under your bed. It’s swirling like a 100 mile wide asteroid on a collision course with humanity, and we just don’t know we should be afraid of it yet.
But when it is time to be afraid, yet again, I’m sure someone smarter than us will tell us to be afraid.
I wonder if 6 feet will work when that asteroid crashes into us?
Live your life.
And always remember, Life’s Crazy.