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How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.
This week has me feeling a bit like I’ve fallen down a rabbit’s hole. Politics aside, the mixed messages on COVID are other worldly. More people seem to be out and about. There’s more traffic on the road, more cars in parking lots outside of restaurants and stores. More invites from friends to get together, with social distancing of course. Yet cases are on the rise, and The Presidents gets it which proves no one is immune. Then he gets an experimental cocktail and seems to indicate this is a cure and we should not be afraid. I guess he thinks it’s all over and It’s no big deal. Yet the cocktail contains stem cells, which will be interesting to see how that plays out with Pro-lifers who clearly will have to abstain right? And it’s experimental so not available to us. And the cost was tens of thousands, and we don’t know that he’s out of the woods yet. And contrast that with the video of the sobbing nurse who is furious at his indifference in social distancing because she has done chest compressions on hundreds of patients and knows this is not a joke for anyone else. Occasionally I pop on to one of the talk radio stations and am always amazed at the lies and vitriol that is allowed, and encouraged there. Having isolated and been so careful for so long to see the leader of our country speak and act with such indifference is another example of the parallel lives In other worlds some of my fellow Americans seem to be living in. Move over Peter, I guess I may be here awhile.
October 11, 2020
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What do you think history books will say about this time? In your view, what's most important for them to include?
Sadly, I've thought about this quite a bit and I am confident that this time period will be reduced to a paragraph in a text book. I think back to my high school US history teacher and how much history was "skimmed over" or distilled down to mere paragraphs. For example, I remember we spent about 2 days discussing the Civil War. At the time, I had little interest - it wasn't until my Dad took me to Lincoln's Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois that I became obsessed with the history - what caused it, who suffered, who lived, who died and how it foreshadowed coming wars. I learned none of that from my school. It was all self-learning - from many hours standing in Civil War battlefields, Presidential Libraries and museums. So, I feel quite confident that if a four year war was reduced to two days, then an 18 month endeavor like the coronavirus will be a mere paragraph. I can see it now - "there was a new virus that most likely came from China that caused mass panic for several months. It resulted in a minor recession and the first practice of a basic universal income. And there was a bit of unrest with people not wanting to wear masks. Oh and a new president was elected. THE END." Perhaps I'm wrong, I'd like to be. But I don't think it will be that much different. Guess we will need to wait about twenty years to find out.
September 1, 2021