Tuesday, March 31, 2020

breathless

No one can remain breathless forever.

The shock and gloom and fear and frazzled shows on the persona of the national newscasters. Capped teeth and perfect smiles wear thin fast. The tits and teeth don't inject needed oxygen.

There is sickness, there is death, the economy is tanking, but the news stays pretty much the same ... gloom, and ... repeat as necessary.

Like others, I am in a lockdown that is more or less self-imposed. Future death rates in the U.S. are put at a potential 200,000, a number that seems enormous at the moment.

The fear is fed by the fear is fed by the fear.....

My sister Revan sent along this New Yorker cover in honor of my birthday a while back.
The news programming is so keyed by Donald Trump's herding and insults that they are lost in minutiae that are understandable and bite-sized. Trump himself has been relegated to back-burner status. He simply is not credible or useful. The TV listens to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The TV listens to Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York. These are credible men, or at any rate more credible than Donald Trump.

Everywhere, workaday hospitals are cropping up. Everywhere there are shortages of equipment and personnel. Everywhere, death tolls mount. Italy is in lockdown. Everywhere, the silence reigns serene as a plump cat. Everywhere people wonder if there is an actual "when" in "when I wake up."

The election for president is scheduled in November. The election ballyhoo that presaged this moment is left hanging forlorn on some distant branch. Bernie Sanders, whose 'socialism' once guided the wind, is ...well, I have no idea where he is.

Yesterday, I told my younger son to be aware of where his pistol might be. People who confiscate weapons have a way of aiming those weapons at the people who surrendered them.

Today I sent a note to my daughter saying it might be a good time to learn another language -- Spanish, possibly, at the easy end; Chinese at the other end of the easy spectrum. One word per day.

PS: Civil liberties.

1 comment:

  1. By now Intelligent Americans Should be looking beyond Trump & Company's Evening Gaslighting.

    "A team of infectious disease experts at Imperial College London this week predicted that without intervention the disease could lead to 510,000 deaths in Britain and 2.2 million in the United States."

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/a-chilling-scientific-paper-helped-upend-us-and-uk-coronavirus-strategies/2020/03/17/aaa84116-6851-11ea-b199-3a9799c54512_story.html

    Stay Safe. Stay at home.

    ReplyDelete