A Commentary on the Passing Scene by Robert Paul Wolff rwolff@afroam.umass.edu
Monday, August 3, 2020
AS I AND EVERYONE ELSE PREDICTED
No sooner were the schools opened then cases of Covid popped up and were given a great deal of attention in the media. I confess I did not anticipate how much trouble baseball would have getting started. And now we will begin to hear the stories of evictions and foreclosures as the virus spreads across the country even into rural counties. This is simply terrible and it is going to get worse, much worse. Even if a usable vaccine is in fact developed by early in the new year, it will be six months or more after that before it is widely available and used. I continue my obsessive routine of cleansing everything that comes into our apartment, leaving the apartment each day only for my early morning walk, a check of the mail, and a trip to the end of the hall to put a bag of garbage in the garbage chute. My wife and I are among the lucky ones. We have more than enough money, live in a retirement community that labor is continuously to keep the virus out, and there are few if any trips that we must make outside our little world.
Things seem more surreal as the days pass. The Emperor rants about TikTok while Rome burns. It seems also that we are getting closer to armed conflict every day. My routine is not as strict as Dr.Wolff’s, but as things get worse, I am reconsidering matters. My brother-in-law sent me the following, a brutal but on the mark, joke: “There IS no pandemic” - Herman Cain, “There is no Herman Cain” - Pandemic
ReplyDeleteTo continue in the surreal vein, in New Mexico, most sheriffs will not enforce the Governor’s health orders. In the southeastern section of the state town governments are trying to help restaurants evade restrictions by such brilliant maneuvers as defining indoors as outdoors if the windows are open. In one town the police force, en masse, ate lunch in a restaurant that had its license revoked by the state.
UNM is trying to open. The major fear driving this is the loss of revenues. UNM is going to great lengths to try to ensure a safe environment. But here again it is money prioritized over people. I suspect that if Jack Benny’s “your money or your life” sketch were performed today nobody would laugh.
Glad you and Susie are being smart and staying safe and healthy, Dr. Wolff!
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