Surviving the flu but dying from quarantine
In my elongating lifetime, we as a nation, have somehow survived – Vietnam, drug crisis, assassinations, Watergate, the Cold War, Inflation, The Hostage Crisis, earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, domestic and foreign terrorism, 9/11, mass shootings, and the near-collapse of Hostess Twinkies, the extinction of cheap gas and a scarcity of affordable meat and dairy.
Who would have thought a microscopic virus would lead to the total and absolute shutdown of our economy.
In my 58 years on Earth, I never would have guessed, and didn't plan for, an epidemic that could threaten my business – and more importantly for you – small businesses all across the country.
Seriously, I have been saying for weeks that I will survive the flu but die from the quarantine.
Some might have noticed that my hero and alter ego, Vlivertarian, has been pretty quiet lately. With the death of journalism, our citizens' complete inability to discuss controversial subjects, and the major whiplash against me personally, I decided to bury that part of my career. I am done taking punishment to give a voice to the voiceless then getting clobbered by the Good Ol' Boys who run every town in America and especially the small ones. (Lake County abuse of power makes Flint, MI, and Cook County, look like Cub Scouts fishing without a license.)
But now, in the Modern Apocalypse of The Caronavirus, I am running out of reasons to stay quiet while my country collapses around me.
As I have told many of my Christian friends, thoughts and prayers are nice but a steady income keeps my bills paid. And, as I have told many of my Big Government supporters, death often comes in the form of collateral damage.
I am simply at a point where I think we need to start asking ourselves if the treatment is worse than the disease, and if we need the treatment to begin with.
Now, as anyone who has witnesses by nefarious and cynical mind work, I have also started wondering about a lot of things surrounding this “pandemic.”
I will not pretend to know the answers to the following questions but I am compelled to ask them...
Is the threat of this virus any worse that the threats we face of any communicable disease all the time? (Science tells us that people die of flu and communicable diseases all the time and that 40,000 people die in auto accidents every year and the the No 1 causes of death are too many Big Macs with Super Sized Fries and using legal tobacco products.)
How do us non-medical types know if, and how bad, the threat really is, and how we will ever know, now? (If the quarantine works and we survive to emerge into a post-Apocalyptic dystopia, how do we know if we needed it, or not? I'm just askin'.)
Isn't a quarantine meant to keep sick and susceptible people away from healthy ones? (Seriously, if your loved one is very young, elderly and/or in poor health, quarantine them! If not, let's figure out a way to get the economy moving again, even if we do look like we belong in an Armageddon Syndrome.)
Yes, I am a small-government guy but I did, and do, support the self-quarantine orders but we should all start to wonder: If this is all it takes to gring America to a halt, why fly planes into buildings or blow up a federal building.
Just tell people, “The Microbes are coming, The Microbes are coming!” and watch as Rod Serling stands to one sides warning us about the danger of mass hysteria and hallucination.