TomFlannery.com

Everyday I wait for news.

And when it comes, it’s never really good. More cases. More dying. More pointless arguments that don’t change either of those things.

Everybody wants this to end. Somehow. People need to get back to work. To earn. They need to pay their rent. Kids need to go back to school. A nation cannot survive with everybody sitting in their homes. It’s nice to get a $1200 check, but for most that’ll cover maybe one month’s rent and a trip to the grocery store. What happens then?

(Our Treasury Secretary is an obscenely rich (worth $300 million) predatory cyborg criminal asshole with the PR skills of a diseased toad. His name is Steven Mnuchin, and he thinks $1200 will last “10 weeks”. Steven Mnuchin is an cruel, evil, fucking monster, which is precisely why he was named Treasury Secretary in the first place. He also married the female version of himself because of course he did. Don’t be like Steven Mnuchin.)

Nothing seems coherent anymore. This state has one set of rules. and that state has another set of rules, and the only thing in common is that residents ignore each with impunity. The federal government is like a punch drunk fighter at this point, lashing out and assigning blame instead of salving wounds and fixing what’s broken. Millions go here and billions go there and in a matter of days it’s all gone and nobody can really explain what the expectations were in the first place. The self-employed have been pretty much ignored. Local businesses have been decimated. You can get this booze but not that booze….and you can get it here but not there. Seventeen million Americans are currently out of work, and that number is rising much faster than positive COVID-19 cases. There’s been a lack of leadership at every level. We’re whipsawed with advice. Don’t wear a mask. Wear a mask. Don’t use gloves. Use gloves. This treatment works. No, it really doesn’t. Only the elderly are affected. Oops….now the young are dying. Facebook is filled with expert epidemiologists who just happened to not go into epidemiology, for whatever reason. But they’re good at sharing memes and calling everybody who doesn’t agree with them derogatory names.

Bodies are piling up. Stacked in hallways. Coffins are being delivered to nursing homes. Everywhere caregivers remain overwhelmed. Underpaid. There’s still not enough tests. There’s not enough supplies. The truth is out there somewhere, wrapped in a bundle of lies.

There’s some sort of plan being readied for opening the nation back up. Somehow. Presumably it will be a place filled with social distancing and masks and people taking your temperature before letting you into buildings. Schools will be forced to cut up large classes…..I’m guessing by some type of staggered schedules. Some kids in online classes on the same day other kids are in the building. Everybody sitting 6 feet apart. Everybody wearing masks. Colleges are already discussing not having in-person classes until 2021. Restaurants and bars….who knows? Do we sit together? Do we wave at each other from across the room? How do we eat and drink with a mask on?

So nothing that’s going to happen is going to resemble what has gone on before. Nothing.

And if we all break out of our homes and half-panic and half-forget and start to pile on each other and kick-start another wave of this thing, the dams that have managed to hold up ’till now might just give way. I don”t see how we can go through the entire cycle all over again without creating a cataclysm.

When the nation’s top infectious disease expert makes a statement like “I don’t think we should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you…” you know you ain’t in Kansas anymore. Life as we’ve known it is over.

When we get back out there, awkwardness will rule the day. Forget shaking hands….folks are gonna want to hug it out. We wanna look each other dead in the eye so they can see how much we’ve missed them. And instead we’re gonna have to live with invisible barriers. We’re gonna run up to long quarantined friends and then be jerked back like a dog reaching the limit of an electronic fence.

That’s what this thing has taken from us.

In a bit..

–tf