Post 38 - April 18, 2020
Day 38…
I have had very little negative response to these postings.
Surprising, really, given that I have made them public.
Somebody the other day said that they were a nurse and that everyone that needed a test at the hospital she worked was getting one. The point that I was making that day, though, was that to reopen, we are going to need to test close to everyone, symptomatic or not. The response to that seemed to be willfully missing the point, so I went onto their page and sure enough, no friends, just a bunch of pro-Trump postings. It was clearly just a bot so I deleted the comment and blocked them.
Yesterday, however, someone from Maine who was a friend of a friend posted that they supported the President’s ideas of staggered roll out because they had no cases where they were and the shut-down was really hurting them. They were fine with New York being shut down but felt that it was high time that Maine be reopened.
From where this person stands, that seems to be the truth.
The message that the great middle swath of our country is getting is, at the very best, mixed and confusing.
Yesterday, the President tweeted that states should rebel against their Democratic Governors.
LIBERATE MINNESOTA!
LIBERATE MICHIGAN!
LIBERATE VIRGINIA!
In the middle of a global pandemic, our President is actually encouraging the population to rebel against their leadership.
It might be one of the most shocking things that has happened during this crisis yet.
These tweets are going to be interpreted as a way to make this nightmare be over.
He is telling people that their issue is not with the virus but with their Governors and that they should rise up against these oppressors.
There is an implicit call to violence in those tweets and it is being heard.
Up until very recently, most of the news has been centered around the large urban areas that have been hit hard by this.
It doesn’t help that these large urban areas all tend to be liberal and Democratic.
This doesn’t mean that the rural areas haven’t been hit, they have, just not in the newsworthy numbers that the big cities have.
In these large urban areas, we are privy to a whole array of information and reporting that isn’t trickling down to other areas.
Rural areas are only listening to the White House, or their Republican Governors who are parroting the White House, so it is no wonder that they think that this is all a hoax.
That the stay-at-home orders are just designed to destroy our economy and by extension, America.
This isn’t going to end well if this messaging continues.
If Maine opens back up and the rest of us don’t, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what is going to result. It just takes an informed person to be able to see where that action will lead.
My friend Jana’s meme about the checkerboard reopening of areas being like having a peeing section in a swimming pool has gone viral for a reason.
It’s completely apt.
You can’t shut down PARTIALLY.
Think it through.
Maine opens and the rest of us on the eastern seaboard don’t.
Does Main then close its’ borders?
What stops infected people from New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts from traveling there and spreading it further?
There ARE cases of COVID-19 in Maine.
837 as of yesterday.
29 people have died in Maine of COVID-19.
That’s nothing compared to what’s going on in New York. A drop in the bucket, but still 837 cases.
If you re-open Maine, then those 837 people infect another 837 people. Or 1600 people. Those 1600 people infect 3200 people and… you get the idea.
New York has gotten to the point where the infection rate is only one to one. 800 people are infecting 800 people.
That’s WITH strong social distancing measures in place.
Without them, those numbers go through the roof.
If Maine lifts social restrictions there is going to be far more than one-to-one transmission.
The Governor of Florida started reopening the beaches last night.
Summer’s coming.
A hoard of people may not go to Maine, but a hoard of people is sure as hell going to want to go to the beaches in Florida.
The White House issued a series of lax, unthought out measures that is their plan to reopen the country. No testing measures mentioned. Sounds easy.
THAT’S what the great center of the country is hearing.
Of course, they are pissed off.
The White House is telling them that it’s easy and that it’s the Dems that are overreacting.
Of course, they feel like they are being oppressed and victimized by the rest of us.
How can we blame them for that response?
They think that this is all nonsense and the President is telling them that they are RIGHT.
Food plants in rural areas of the United States are starting to have to close down because intense clusters of new cases are breaking out.
Food workers, who are keeping us all fed are getting sick because they are all working on top of each other and passing the virus around to each other.
Governors in those states MUST deal with this.
As those food plants continue to close, we could potentially start seeing food shortages.
Again, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to take that problem forward to a very unpleasant conclusion for the nation.
“Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.” Matthew 12:25
I can’t blame the person from Maine for not seeing the big picture.
The information being disseminated by our leaders to the great majority of this country is contradictory, confusing, and politically biased.
The great failure of this Administration is now not the delay in taking action against COVID-19, but, instead, what is happening now.
And what is about to happen.
The great failure of this Administration is how they are now disseminating untruths and discord at the very time they should be unifying us all against this insidious virus.
“A house divided against itself, cannot stand.” Abraham Lincoln.
Should we panic now?
No.
We should definitely not panic now.
As strange as it may seem, we actually have all of the power here.
It may not seem like it, but we do.
We elected the people who are currently in office to represent us.
They are PUBLIC SERVANTS.
They aren’t the master they are the servants.
They are working FOR us.
They aren’t anointed by God with ultimate authority, they are chosen by us to lead us through crises like this.
They don’t have all the power - far from it.
WE THE PEOPLE.
Governor Cuomo mentioned both of those quotes this morning.
He doesn’t have all of the answers and doesn’t pretend that those answers even exist.
There honestly are no easy answers for us on how to move forward.
If it seems too good to be true then, sadly, it’s probably too good to be true.
Anybody who tells you that there are simple solutions should not be listened to no matter how much we want to believe them.
How much we NEED to believe them.
We are all smart enough to take in the information we get and play it forward to see what the end result will be.
We should do that.
And we have the time to do it.
Discuss what is happening.
At home.
With our friends and family on the phone or on our computer screens.
We have the power.
And we have each other.