Yes, I know it's been awhile.
And then again, I don't have any idea how long it's been.
We have reached a point where time is just not even a real thing.
At the beginning (for me) it seemed like time had slowed to barely a crawl. Now it's just flying by. It will be Monday then BOOM Saturday. I have a lot more days where I have to look at a calendar to see what the actual day of the week is. It's crazy.
So let's see, where are we...
We have completely made the virus a political issue. Which, it always has trended that way in the US, but we are fully there now. Wearing a mask is the latest party/virtue signal.
The CDC started out the pandemic saying, don't wear a mask, it won't protect you. Then they changed to hey, wear a mask, it actually stops the spread FROM you to others. That's the way science works. When you get new information recommendations change. So now the recommendation is wear a mask, not to protect you, but to protect others.
But the president won't wear one. So his base doesn't want to wear them either.
We are also at the reopening stages from shutting the country down to prevent the spread and flatten the curve.
Except most of the country didn't actually do what it should have in that shut down time.
The shut down was to prevent an overwhelmed healthcare system and to get testing and the ability to quarantine and contact trace in place. That didn't happen. We just shut things down and now are opening them back up.
We took two different ways of handling the virus outbreak (isolating and herd immunity) and combined them into the worst of both.
Really.
By shutting things down the economy crashed. And since we are Americans dammit, we didn't want to protect workers by paying them to not go to work. Or to actually protect small businesses from having to close. We did the minimum. Other countries paid workers 80% of their salaries while they stayed home. Sure, it's not everything, but it's enough not to starve. We didn't do that. So we crashed the economy. Which is bad. We are going to have a lot of smaller businesses that just aren't going to make it. Which is bad. We have a handful of larger companies that aren't making it either.
Though you have to wonder why with the big ones. I mean they have been the recipient of massive tax cuts and regulation relaxation which were supposed to be super beneficial to them and they couldn't handle a month worth of slow down. It's almost like they didn't really handle that extra money in a way that was growing the company or protecting its workers and was just a way to give big bonuses to their execs or stock dividends to their shareholders...hunh.
Anyway...so we did the isolation thing without the protections so we crashed the economy and now we are reopening everything without the extra testing and contact tracing that would be needed to do it responsibly.
We are basically doing what we were doing in March before it was decided that we needed to shut down. We are letting people just go out in the world where the virus is still running unchecked and spreading it again. There won't be a vaccine until next year sometime, and if you think everyone is going to rush right out and get it you haven't been paying attention to the anti-vaxxers who won't get any vaccines and the fringers who believe that the vaccine is just an excuse for Bill Gates to put a tracker in your body. You know instead of just checking your phone locations...
And because we've turned it into a political test we aren't even all consistently following the basics that would keep the spread low. Wear a mask to keep the virus with you if you have it. Which you can have it and not know. Either because you are an asymptomatic carrier (which a percentage of the population seems to be, but without randomized testing we don't really know what that percent is) or because you've just recently gotten infected and aren't showing the signs yet. Which is standard with most viruses. You started shedding the virus (are contagious) before you even know you are sick.
Wear your mask to protect others.
Wash your hands to protect yourself.
Keep up with social distancing and isolating to stop the spread.
Those are the basics.
But as I was worried about at the beginning of May (which for those of you keeping track happened either yesterday or three years ago) the loudest assholes got their way and the country is not only opening but opening recklessly. Crowds at bars and restaurants. Pool parties with crowds drinking and partying together. Churches swearing that there is no way God can hear them pray unless they are able to pass a collection plate (I MEAN unless they are all crammed together in one location). So keep yourself safe because the powers that be are not going to work in that direction.
Wear your mask to protect others.
Wash your hands to protect yourself.
Maintain that distancing as much as you can to stop the spread.
We're lucky. Christopher's office has decided to work from home until September (though he's already had it so he should be safe). Brent's company is going to slowly roll out coming back in to the office and he's not in the first or even second wave of those going back. I'm still able to get out to run any errands we need run with a system of my own that I think helps keep the possibility of getting infected and spreading the virus to others at a minimum.
I expect to be infected at some point in time. The vaccine isn't coming for awhile. We are in a rush to get reopened and the people who are refusing to wear masks (which AGAIN you wear to stop yourself from spreading the virus) are also the people who want to GO EVERYWHERE and DO EVERYTHING and think this whole thing is overblown and some sort of world wide plot against Trump and so they are going to get infected and spread it to a lot of people. The more points of contact they have, the longer they are in contact with people, the bigger the spread. So yeah, I expect to catch it. I just hope I don't spread it.
So here we are at the end of May.
Wear your mask.
Wash your hands.
Take care of each other because we really need more of that.
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