I’d Like to Talk About Something Else, But …

The last week or so, all the talk on radio and television has been about the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and the competition of Democratic would-be presidential candidates, who were dropping like flies.

My philosophy is, when we have a Democratic candidate, I’ll vote for him. I will not go into the back yard and eat worms because candidates I liked better did not make the final cut.

I will be voting for what I hope will be the beginning of the reclamation of the United States of America.

Both parties have a lot invested in Business as Usual, but we have not had Business as Usual the last four years, and we have not had the former two parties.

Some Republicans are now former Republicans. Some call themselves Independents. The Republican Party they signed up for no longer exists. It has been stolen like a car with the keys left in the ignition and is being taken for a spectacular and dangerous joyride. At some point, it will be left wrecked in a ditch.

Most former or disaffected Republicans can’t hold their noses and call themselves Democrats – that would be going too far. According to Chris Vance, former chairman of the Washington State Republican Party and now an Independent, these people meet to discuss, “What are we going to do?”

I feel your pain, kids.

I’ll tell you what I would like to see out of the next Democratic President and Congress (I do like to dream big):

I would like to see the country pulled back from the abyss into which we have been plummeting the last four years, starting with getting rid of that ruinous tax package, and raising taxes on the wealthy.

I would like to see a renewed separation of church and state, because as Martha Stewart would say, that’s a Good Thing. I would like to see legislation and behavior based on rational thinking, and rational decisions based on (wow) facts, and science, and the Constitution and the rule of law. I would like to see legislators stop trying to control everyone’s, especially women’s, bodies, and the executive branch stop making racism an overt, legal, national institution. I would like to see anti-Semitism and the violence it spawns brought to a full stop.

I would like a new government to get busy repairing the many catastrophic blunders and intentional wrong-headed screw-ups of the current administration.

I would like to see the United States of America stop becoming a banana republic ruled by a crybaby Caligula and his cronies. We deserve better.

Then there’s that coronavirus/COVID-19 thing.

King County has the distinction of being the epicenter of the outbreak of novel coronavirus in the United States. Most people who get it have mild or no symptoms, we are told. They infect people around them, though, and some people die, mostly people who are elderly and have health issues already, as did most of the people in the Kirkland nursing home who died. You have all heard or read this information by now.

Dr. Lisa Gilbert, MD, FAAFP, CTropMed (no, as a matter of fact, I do not know what all those letters after the MD mean), a specialist in infectious diseases, says in an interview in the March 4, 2020 issue of The Living Church, “We know that coronavirus or influenza are the pandemics that are likely going to circulate worldwide.” She goes on to say that this coronavirus is going to kill our elders more than anyone else.

So I have the impression that public health people believe that this novel coronavirus will be or already is a global pandemic, and our older generation will be hardest hit by mortality.

Speaking as an elder, not too chuffed by that.

So. We have a president who has been doing his best to gut the Centers for Disease Control since he got into office, so now the CDC does not have the people or the budget to effectively deal with a pandemic.

This is a president who began by saying that the virus would disappear in April when the weather got warm.

He has also said that the virus is a hoax perpetrated by the Democratic party, which is trying to injure his chances of being re-elected.

He has also said that there are plenty of tests for the virus (not true).

I read this morning that he is saying that the virus is having the positive impact of making people shop and stay at hotels within the US instead of going abroad.

I wonder if he thinks that his usual ration of hyperbole will stop the progress of the coronavirus.

I don’t think so. The coronavirus is not part of his base.