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I wrote a post a little more than a month ago asking if you were prepared for what was to come. I think some of ya'll thought I was joking with the whole food prep thing. Needless to say, looking at the grocery stores, I wasn't.
Let me tell you what I was not prepared for. I was not prepared for the US government to all of a sudden decide that we need them to step in and control our lives. I was not prepared for mass shutdowns of transit, education, commerce, etc. I was not prepared to literally fight with people over a box of Pampers sensitive wipes to clean my son's massive blowouts.
I feel like a woman in a bad relationship. One minute I think I need your help and want you in my life and the next I invoke the spirit of George Washington and Sam Adams and wanna say GTFO of here with that nonsense. At what point does the decisions being made by our government and perpetuated as being absolutely necessary by our media cross over into the threshold of violating our civil liberties?
I am not trying to be callous. I don't want large numbers of people to die. Unfortunately, they do whether I want them to or not. They die by the flu; roughly 22-55,000 people in the United States since October, with vaccines AND Tamiflu. They die by drug overdoses; 70,000 people in 2017. Every day 30 people die in drunk driving accidents. This virus has been hanging around worldwide since at least December and WORLDWIDE 7,068 people have died. 72 of those deaths have been here in the United States. As of yesterday 42 of those deaths came from Washington State and 29 came from ONE nursing home. Perhaps instead of forcing businesses to shut down across the country, we could limit/prohibit interstate travel from cluster states/cities? I feel like there were a great number of steps that could have been taken between "Oh, we have our first case?" to "Mandatory social distancing, release all the inmates from jail and all restaurants, bars and public parks will be closed until 'we' say otherwise."
As I said before, I'm not trying to be insensitive to flattening the curve and social distancing. I am all for lightening the load on our healthcare system and its diligent workers. The part I'm not all for is selling our freedom in the process of doing so. I can go to eat at a restaurant and still keep my distance of 6ft of personal space; my RBF has been waiting for this moment....I don't need the government to say "I don't trust you to do what's best for you and yours, so I'm going to put your favorite local pizza place out of business."
Where is the happy medium, you ask? Well, sick folks can keep their butts at home and use social media to their advantage. Leave a post that says, "Hey, I'm sick with the corona, I need x, y z could anyone help me out?" And magically, Facebook will become Amazon and people will show up to your door with necessities and they don't get exposed to you, businesses can stay open and those of us who want some pizza & beer and are healthy and unexposed aren't mad at the government for trying to tell us and our favorite local businesses what to do.
Everyone keeps saying that we shouldn't make this political, but the unfortunate nature of our republic is that everything is political. More poignant and importantly, fascist governments are and have all been built on the fear of it's citizenry. Propaganda is their greatest tool and our media has become just that. Wash your hands, stay out of people's personal space, help your neighbors and shop local, small businesses. Buy gift cards, buy online, do what you can to keep your local economy above water and turn off the television.
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