Chained to Freedom

The perfect analogy today made by a NYTimes reporter: America’s response to Covid19 is equal to our response to guns; somehow dozens of other countries are able to control the problem but the US is too chained to it’s freedoms to allow control to actually happen.

Chained to our freedom might seem an oxymoron but it’s true. Our freedom is more important to us than our safety and even our lives.

More than that our addiction to money and capitalism supersedes any call to health. “Some people will die if we open the economy? Let them die. It’s a risk we have to take - thousands of lives for millions of jobs.” Fair trade? Hell no.

They say the disease doesn’t discriminate but that’s bullshit too. Some people can hide from the “invisible enemy” on one of their yacht in the South Pacific while another person tries to figure out where he can lay his tent for the night without being told by cops to “move along.” And even when the virus takes us down it is the rich who will have the private care needed to come back from the beast. Nobody is going to tell the largest donor to the hospital that there isn’t a ventilator available. They’ll pull it from the older uninsured vagrant who “probably would have died anyway. Right?”

The virus is not an “equalizer” and this is not the “great pause.” Romanticizing these months perpetuates a myth that will fool generations. Can we call it what it is? A screeching halt made toxic by a lack of unifying leadership over a divide that this virus has pushed to the limit.

I’m not seeing any good way out of this. But I remain curious to see how it unfolds. To be clear: I did not say hopeful. I said curious and I mean that in a myriad of ways.

The Dance

May 3 and we’re in this weird spot. The state government is loosening things ever so slightly ... giving an inch, so to say ... but people are taking a mile. So many people in the park today, nobody wearing masks.... you wouldn’t even know there was a pandemic if it wasn’t all over the news all the time. It makes me angry. Then I feel bad for feeling angry .... I mean, not everyone has a yard and people need to get out somehow. Fine. But everyone is pushing boundaries and I’m not sure how far I’m willing to go or what I’m willing to tolerate. Without clear rules it’s hard to know what is safe and what is not. I hate it.

I feel like the next natural step would be for each household to combine with another. Keeping mingling between two or three households and introducing more slowly ... maybe once a month. Until a vaccine or cure is plentiful.

Meanwhile I dislike taking the Sam (the dog) for a walk. I’m constantly crossing streets or changing direction to avoid oncoming pedestrians. It’s like a big zigzag dance. We need to make rules .... walk on the sidewalk in the direction of traffic... I think that would at least help. I read somewhere that that’s how they “do it” in Europe but I have no proof that it’s true.