At work, our CEO and corporate staff set some reopening dates for our buildings, which have been shut down since March. My building will open in July.
So there is now a target date, but why don’t I feel any better?
The 100-year pestilence (which came two years late) has left us uncertain about the future of normal life. The 1818 Spanish Flu culled the herd drastically and tragically, and what some misinformed people have called “Chinese Flu” is slated to decimate the world population again, indiscriminately killing and biologically wreaking havoc in young and old, invisibly and with blinding speed. So right now we can’t even be close to each other. Social (actually physical) distancing is not enforceable, so one leaves the home at their own risk.
Over these weeks in quarantine, I have seen George Carlin’s rant about how over-clean we are: heck, he says, he swam as a child in the Hudson River, the New York equivalent of bathing in the Ganges (if I can dare make such a comparison by stressing that some notorious public waterways just cannot be considered anywhere near healthy to use in any form), while videos elsewhere stress extreme clean at every moment.
Some things can’t be avoided. Germs are one gazillion of them. The India bathers and users of the Ganges don’t get sick, because they are exposed to germs native to their habitat. If a traveler had not gone out of China with the virus in tow, knowingly or not, the pandemic would not have been spread to people unprepared for exposure to it.
Since so many in China got sick, the virus was probably not native to China, so the search has to go elsewhere in hope of finding treatment and a vaccine.
Meanwhile, dissidents go mask-less among us, saying it is their right.
I thought murder by proxy would still be murder.
I’m a bit nervous about going back to work, but faith in the process of overcoming new diseases helps, and if everybody does what they must to keep us safe, we can get back to normal someday.
You just need to aim well and be smart to hit a target.
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