It’s Time to Hunker Down

I am both excited and terrified.

 

I've resigned myself to the selfishness of Americans making this something we live with for years. At least until it kills enough holdouts that their numbers don't matter anymore. I can only hope it just kills them.

I've been distancing since March 11th. Granted, I can do that easily. I already worked remotely, and my wife easily adjusted. Our kids go to a great school that put together a remote school package by the end of that month that we continue to this day; we never seriously considered sending them back to school because we could afford to tag team education during the day. That is not a reality for 99% of people.

Until the government pays people to stay home and businesses to survive, we're gonna be fucked. Super fucked. People have to get out to work and to live; why stay home if there's no incentive to do so?

Those of you who live in red states where this is still a problem, get in the ear of your city hall, your council members, people at the local level. Calling Senators is a fool's errand at this point - everyone is inflexible to the degree they're in their party and they agree with the doctrine that their party believes. Change is only going to happen at the local spectrum, and if enough folks who have been holdouts get on the fucking train, we might have a shot at living normal lives before the end of 2021. Maybe.

I'm not optimistic. We shut down a fair portion of the country in March, when 247 people had the virus. Now we have 1000x that may people who have died from it, and we don't bat an eye. This is the price of living in a failed state, with people who don't believe in government. This is the end result of 40 years of failed policies and hollowing out of every good function a shared society has. Every member of the GOP AND every corporatist Dem who believes the free market is the answer is part of the same disease that is murdering us in broad daylight, and we should eradicate them from every office from POTUS to dogcatcher and make them ashamed of their stances until there is no more breath in their lungs.

My dad is a physician. Their podunk Midwest hospital in BFE is overrun with COVID cases. Four people died in a single day yesterday. They used to count months without having a hospital casualty, and now it's happening hourly. How long can our providers hold up a system that was already broken? How long until they break themselves? How long until so many of THEM die that there are no caregivers for COVID or every other thing that is slaughtering Americans (heart disease, cancer, labor and delivery) and we're just a nation of people with wooden planks to bite on and bonesaws to deal with the pain? How close are we to that point already?

I have young kids. I am grateful for the time with them. I am furious that their grandparents, who are otherwise healthy and full of love, cannot see them through milestones - birthdays, holidays, lost teeth, movie nights, childhood rights of passage that should be shared with those you care about most and are now done on a fucking Zoom. What will that do to my children, who, again, have it better than most? What does it do to the kids without a safety net, two parents, a stable structure? How does that affect the person they would have become? Why are we failing our future selves?

I will never forgive those in charge who let this happen. Those in our government, at all levels, who are content to let the people on the ground soldier on and accept any losses as collateral damage because their lives have not changed one iota. The collective blood of the dead is on all their hands, and they should never know a moment's peace as long as they live, until the God I hope exists sends them straight to hell to be destroyed over and over by the ghosts of the people they thought weren't important enough to live.

I am so tired, and sad, and I just don't see when or how this gets better until the right people leave office or die. I'll take either one.

 

It’s very easy to say Donald Trump failed this on all fronts, but when you dissect the rationale it’s even more frustrating.

If you are going to tout vaccine progress and bank on the vaccine, then you embrace masks and distancing UNTIL you get a vaccine because it will limit the number of deaths. He wanted to keep places open, so if he continues, then champion masks like you champion yourself, which is all the f’ing time.

Instead, he politicized masks. It’s inconsistent with vaccine promotion as it assumes there is not an alternative to accepting 200K+ deaths.

There is zero good rationale or explanation for his approach to this. It’s all about him and we should all remain extremely vigilent the next 2 months.