I’m angry today, really angry. Here we are are, Day 100 of Covid-19 (since CA Lock-down began), and a lot of people seem surprised that the rate of Corona cases keeps climbing since the state reopened. Why? Why the surprise? Nothing has changed about this virus, or at least nothing good. There are mutations we are learning about, so the bloody thing will just continue to get more interesting and scary as the mutations reveal themselves. At least for the foreseeable future, there is no end in sight. Like the Energizer Bunny, Covid-19 just keeps going and going.
I’m angry about a lot of things, not least of which is the virus itself. The virus, however, is not a person, so what I am mad about–make that furious–are the decisions that have been made (by people) in response to the damn thing. First, whose dumb idea was it to open up the state in time for the “Holiday weekend” at the end of May? Of course, reopening on Memorial Day is a great idea! It is a work of sheer genius to let millions of people finally leave the dark caves of the their homes so they can pretend life is normal again. In addition to going to work, that way they can meet with family and friends and then PARTAY! Are you kidding me? Didn’t anyone, even mild-mannered Sharon from the virtual office, pause to think, “Hey, maybe a holiday weekend isn’t the smartest time (or way) to reopen?” Actually, Sharon did pause to think, but nobody noticed. Oops. Couldn’t we at least avoid the crush of the holiday weekend? How much might that one change alone (opening after the holiday) have slowed down the rate of increase? Not enough to stop the pending hell this virus is going to continue to wreak on us, but it might have helped– at least a little bit. Flatten the curve and all that.
If people had just listened to sweet, mousy Sharon, mightn’t they also have questioned the wisdom of doing all of it, opening the whole state at once? (Let alone almost the entire country). Shouldn’t we have at least dipped our toe in the water a little before going full bore? (Or is that “fool boar?”). It’s rhetorical: of course we should have dipped the toe, not the entire person. The little piggy instead of the whole corpse.
Okay, since we knew we were going to open (which we were and still are doing in this complicated stage/phase thing), why didn’t we just start out with Orange County, since they were so very eager. Why not open just there only, give them a couple weeks…and see what happens? The petri dish of OC would then have revealed what most people could predict: more person-to-person interaction would lead to more cases of Covid-19. Of course it would–and it did. Had we opened that way, slowly, slowly, we could have had just a SMALL testing group limited to one county. (It didn’t have to be Orange County; it was only pretend. I just wanted to say “OC”). Now the California test results have come back in, and the results are not good. (Neither are the national ones. I don’t even want to discuss Florida; it seems almost cruel).
We could have had our own little State of CA experiment where we just peeped out a little, sort of like small children in a bad school play, peeking behind the stage curtain looking for their Moms and Dads. “Oh, look, boys and girls! Your Moms and Dads are right there!” The little pretend kids could peek out from behind the curtain, and see their Moms and Dads…except in this case, the Moms and Dads are the virus, not real people, and they are, indeed, right there. Right here.
There is absolutely no good Mom or Dad on the planet who would miss their kids’ school play, if they could help it. (Secretly, they might want to, but they try not to). Good Moms and Dads (or grandparents, etc.) try to do what they can to see their little ones in the latest play. Because we love our kids, we suck it up and go watch them in “Wizard of Oz,” “Grease Junior,” or “Breezy and the Buckets,” even though we know it will be awful. It will also be sort of adorable and precious and we might be glad that we scheduled that extended “lunch meeting” so we could go be part of the audience. (To my knowledge, there is no such thing as “Breezy and the Buckets;” it just felt right).
Even the kids fall asleep in “Breezy.
Instead of all the good Moms and Dads, though, what we are talking about is just one little kid, peeping through the curtain to see if Mom is in the audience, and, by golly she sure is. Except in this case, Mom is the Virus, and contrary to all fire codes, there is no emergency exit door. In this metaphor, this particular Mom is digging in her heels, demanding to be seen and heard, stealing the spotlight from her little tyke, screaming at the top of her lungs: “YOU WILL NOTICE ME!!!” (Mom sounds sort of like a demon at this point, which she is.) But I lied, because it’s not just one Mom in the theatre admiring her little star; it’s hundreds of Moms (aka the virus). Nope, scratch that, thousands of them. Nope, millions of them. They multiply that fast.
So, yes, I’m angry. I’m angry because the entire state opened all at once (Stages be damned. Whether it’s fast or slow, that’s a lot of opening). I’m angry because people all over our country (and much of the world) are acting like there really isn’t a lot wrong anymore. We are desensitized, partly because the numbers of cases have been so steadily climbing, the death tolls so continually growing, and every day there are more of us who have it. I’m angry because this “new normal” has led a lot people to have this sort of disconnected cruelty/coping method. Now deaths to Covid 19 are just to be expected, the “price we pay.” The idea of preventing these cases and deaths is almost shrugged off. “Well, we can’t stay home forever.” I know this is true; I just wish we hadn’t reopened so carelessly and foolishly. We could have been smarter.
Finally, I’m angry because we did reopen the state carelessly and foolishly, ignoring Sharon’s well-mannered, “Hey, guys? Um, don’t you think that maybe we should do this a little more slowly, a little more carefully?” Ah, but we didn’t listen to Sharon, did we? We wanted our Starbucks, our Applebees, and our “In-and-outs.” Further, we wanted to see people we care about and love, so on Memorial Day weekend we jumped in with both feet. Now we are drowning, the stage curtains are open, and we can wave at our Moms and Dads in the audience. Except remember, in this metaphor, the Moms and Dads are the virus. And the virus is just like the Energizer Bunny. It keeps going and going and going and…
