Brilliant … But Bouncy

I’m Not Going to Contribute to the Problem.

I keep thinking about March – the day the world started shutting down. I remember telling my kids: “If we all stay indoors and don’t go anywhere for awhile, the virus will die because it won’t have anywhere to go.”

Science supported this, of course, but that didn’t matter. The “world” shut down, except… the hospitals stayed open. Firefighters, police officers and garbage men continued to work. Gas stations and auto repair shops stayed open. Banks. Grocery stores. And lots, lots more were “essential.”

So of course, people went out. The world never actually shut down, because people were too busy taking care of people.

And the virus continued to spread. At first, we bemoaned the losses of great doctors and nurses who were trying to heal the sick. I remember watching a video of a doctor in the spring, with the doctor saying, “Hand to mouth, hand to mouth.” He was demonstrating how you get COVID, while assuring us that we could stay healthy by staying clean.

That doctor was on national TV. Then he disappeared, like viral sensations often do. Theories of how to stay safe abounded, vanished, started anew.

More than six months later, the country is “open for business as usual” in many places. Where I live, it is not. Our county is still on the uptick with viral counts and, like many places, we plan to stay closed until we have the illusion of control again.

But every day, since I am doing nothing else, I read the news. There is a great divide between people. There are those who are still in their homes – like me – carrying a mask in my pocket even while I walk the dog in solace. And then there are people who talk about “not being afraid,” who seemingly don’t care if they get – or transmit – the virus. The most frightening photos are the White House photos from September 26. But politics doesn’t determine common sense, does it?

Like everyone else, I want it to be over. I want to go back to my life, my job, my friends. I want to find a way to exist – for my family to exist – outside of this bubble. But I’m not going to contribute to the problem while I’m waiting for a vaccine.

I believe with every ounce of my being that there will be a vaccine, and that it will be available by summer of next year. It’s going to be a very long, agonizing wait to see if I’m right. But one day at a time, I am willing to wait, to stay masked, to stay away from people, to do the right thing.

It’s working in other countries. Yes – there’s virus everywhere. But the numbers – the sheer numbers – are staggering. Spain, Italy, Germany, France, and the U.K. combined have only 152, 271 deaths as of today. We have almost 210,000.

Lest we think it’s a population thing, Brazil – which is struggling mightily – has 4.9 million cases and it’s still nowhere near our 7.4 million. And Brazil didn’t even report cases until May – more than two months after we found the virus here. We had 35,500 cases JUST YESTERDAY! Brazil? They had less than 8,500 yesterday.

On this side of the pond, Canada swiftly shut its borders, which proved to be an act of brilliance. Canada – the entire country – has 2,000 fewer cases of coronavirus than our state of Pennsylvania.

There are three times as many people living in Canada. If that doesn’t say something about being spread out and staying away from people, I don’t know what does.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why so many people refuse to just do what is needed to get us out of this mess.