Pandemic – a word we didn’t know becomes our life

It’s been about 6 weeks since I last posted and things have continued to remain interesting.

Here in Virginia, we’re still under a shelter-in-place order for everything but essential businesses; these include grocery stores, Walmart (sure), pharmacies, and liquor stores. (ABC is a state run monopoly.) Restaurants are unable to seat people but are attempting to remain afloat by offering curbside or delivered meals. (GrubHub and Uber Eats may be the only growth industries in this time.) The order that’s currently in place is until June 10^th, about five more weeks from today.

Gov. Northam

This past week, the governor (only one in the country who is a medical doctor by trade) started allowing surgery centers to perform elective surgeries again and allowed for dental offices to open, too. He also recommended people wear face masks or face coverings when out and about. This may explain the dental offices re-opening. You put on a mask, having never worn one, and you’ll know right away that you shouldn’t have skipped that last dental cleaning.

So, How’s it going?

I think it depends on who you ask. I’m very lucky as I still have my job that I can do from home. I’m on webex meetings about five or six hours a day and find myself working far more than I do when in the office. Evidently, being able to walk around and talk to people and meet in conference rooms instead of meeting virtually is less taxing. It is on me, anyway.

MB was furloughed about 5 weeks ago. She works for a non-profit and expected to be so it wasn’t a surprise. We’re fortunate enough to be okay financially, despite the loss of one paycheck, so she is spending a great deal of time working on crafts, baking bread, and cooking some amazing meals. She’s also a healthy cook so I have managed to keep any weight gain at bay.

For exercise, we walk every day. I’ve put my bike on the trainer and ride for an hour at least two days a week. I’ve also gone to the local tennis courts, which are closed, but I can hit balls against a wall for 30 minutes or so.

Others aren’t fairing as well. The last financial disaster, called the Great Recession 2008, took a huge toll on a lot of people but none more than the upper-middle class. That group took the worst of it and it’s taken the last decade to dig back out. I suspect that only about 70% of them have gotten back to where they were before it happened. That said, the upper middle class is doing much better this time around.

The lowest quartile of earners in this country are getting killed by this pandemic and the shutdown. They’re the least likely to have health insurance and were the first to be laid off or furloughed as so many consumer businesses closed. Most had no savings and are really struggling to make ends meet, now. Last week it was reported that over 30 million had filed for unemployment so far, which is about 20% of the working population and I imagine that close to one quarter of the working folks are out of work right now.

My greatest fear is the financial divide will have grown, again, after this is over. And that’s a recipe for disaster in our country.

We Want to Work! Set us Free!

Morons with the Right to Assemble

As a result of all the states closing businesses, people are beginning to get restless. Rallies are being staged in state capitals where “armed demonstrators” are showing up to make their point that they don’t care about the Coronavirus, they just want to get back to work.

My feeling is, if you show up at the legislature with weaponry, you’re not a demonstrator. You’re either a terrorist or an anarchist. You want to talk, you come with a brief case and dress appropriately. You come in body armor with an assault rifle, you’re not looking to have a discussion. You’re looking to make people do something they probably aren’t planning to do, with no dialog. Just orders.

Every picture I’ve seen of these groups they appear to be overwhelmingly white, and overwhelmingly male. We all know that white people have suffered horribly over the centuries, downtrodden by The Man, unable to stand upright. (Wait, that’s not the white people. My bad.)

What I’ve found interesting in these demonstrations is that no one gets shot. I suspect that’s because it’s a bunch of white guys. You put a couple hundred people of color out there, give ‘em guns, and someone is going to take a bullet. (Talk about downtrodden.)

I think what pisses me off the most is what a bunch of enabled, entitled bunch these guys are. A couple of generations ago, entire countries gave up nearly all their freedom to come together and defeat actual dictators. These clowns are ticked off that they’ve had to watch Netflix for six weeks. Beer has been plentiful and the only big shortages have been toilet paper and bread. In WW2, coffee was RATIONED! Now you’re pissed that Starbucks only does curbside. In WW2, shoes were RATIONED! The only difficulty with getting shoes, right now, is having to wait for Amazon or Nike or Zappos to ship them slower than they normally do. I mean, come on!

Of course, the Chief of Entitlement is on the side of these folks (because they voted for his dumb ass) while telling everyone they really shouldn’t get too close to each other, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. The same Moron in Chief also thinks that he’s smarter than all the scientists because he came up with the idea of UV light and Disinfectants in the body as a way to defeat the “silent killer.”

Fauci: "JFC this guy is stupid!"

(Someone in the future is going to read that last paragraph and say, “No, not really!” I hope the history books are kept up to date because future generations are never going to believe this shit.)

Tough Decisions

Look, I know that the governors are struggling with Crappy Option A vs Crappy Option B when it comes to re-opening businesses. It’s going to be hard to open things up without really good data (and far more testing) and if doing so causes a return of the virus it’s going to be even harder to shut down again. That’s why we elected these people – to lead! I wish them foresight, wisdom, and as much luck as they can get!

My company, which is in the health care distribution field, is being extremely conservative and safety oriented. We’ve lost several employees in the NYC market to the virus and we don’t want to lose anymore. I’m guessing we’ll be working remotely for another few months, at least.

I just hope that our national leadership can provide enough for the have nots to keep us out of the worst trouble.

Hope is not a strategy. Voting? Now, that’s a strategy.