Americans figured out a way to get a man on the moon, for chrissakes. Now we’re letting ourselves be told to cower in our homes because of a virus.
And if we dare to poke our heads out of our holes, we’re being scolded as sinners.
Governors, mayors, health officials, are thisclose to making you wear a scarlet letter.
What passes for innovation in the here and now is ways for us to snitch on each other if we’re not wearing a mask in line at the post office.
Our collective mental energy is being put to shaming each other, shaming the other political party, because that’s all anything is about anymore.
Who wins the next election.
We need the sense smacked back into us.
Our kids need to be back in school in the fall, and not two days a week, either.
It makes absolutely no sense to have them in school every other day, and then off at a day camp run by your local YMCA or Boys & Girls Club the other days, in the name of keeping them safe.
Are we pretending that having kids around more people in different places is somehow more safe, and not just satisfying the byzantine?
Normalcy needs to be the rule.
It’s going to take some give and take from us, of course.
There’s a virus circulating that picks off the most vulnerable, which is how viruses work.
The best way to reduce their lethality is for us to use common sense.
Hygiene, public cleanliness, staying home when we’re sick.
That last one is the toughest. Americans pride themselves on going to work sick.
They give out perfect attendance awards at school, at the office.
Sixty million of us get the flu each year, about one in five.
If we could change the American ethic to, don’t get other people sick, we can get those numbers down.
Same thing works for this new virus.
We also need to come to some sort of deal on the reality of this new virus.
COVID ain’t going anywhere.
We’re wrong when we think of a flu season that has a start and end.
At least 50 people die a week from flu or flu complications all year long just in Virginia.
Flu season is just when it gets worse.
We’re never going to crush COVID.
COVID is here with us, as the flu is, as the common cold is.
We’re going to have to learn to live with it, as we’ve learned to live with the cold and flu.
Enough with the shaming, the snitching, the forced seclusion.
Enough with throwing in the towel thinking we’ve been defeated.
The way we kick some virus ass is to put our mental energies into what we need to do to reclaim our way of life.
The sooner, the better.
Story by Chris Graham
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Chris Graham
