Random COVID Thoughts

I’d like to get all gushy and spiritual about how transformative the coronavirus experience is, but let’s not forget that it is a giant PITA (spelled a little differently from the animal-rights group acronym). It is NOT normal and never will be. It will end sometime and we will return to a version of our old lives, though perhaps not quite the same one.

That said, COVID-19 is part of a natural process which involves all living creatures. It’s like the weather. We can’t control it, at least not yet. But just because it’s raining, it doesn’t mean we have to stand out in the downpour and get wet. We can manage ourselves as we deal with this plague. That’s what these restrictive lockdown rules are all about.

We can write lovely poetry about how the coronavirus has taught us how much we value our families and relationships. But we are Americans, and we also like space and the ability to move around. While sitting at home with the kids doing jigsaw puzzles might be amusing temporarily, some of us simply don’t enjoy being cooped up with the same people for extended periods of time. It’s a sad fact that domestic violence is increasing under these lockdowns.

It seems our little contribution at home to pandemic heroism, then, has to be the development of  patience For the moment, though, we can celebrate with newly unlocked Wuhan, China, knowing that our own liberation will come.

One good thing for us now is that autopilot has been switched off. We are learning the true value of all those formerly invisible folks who make what we call normal life possible. We take fewer things for granted, especially paper products.

A thought I’ve had lately is that our President has missed a giant opportunity. If the man who loves distractions so much had embraced COVID-19 as a national emergency much earlier on, he might now be a genuine hero with a slam-dunk re-election in sight. Had he been more effectively guiding us through this single calamity, at least some voters might be prepared to overlook other parts of his record during the past three-and-a-half years. His late arrival to this party is now just another piece of baggage.

But as I have said before, it’s not yet the time to dwell on woulda, coulda and shoulda. The only thing that counts right now is gonna.