Politicians can do two things; they can arrest us and they can spend our money. Neither of those measures will save us from Covid-19. You can be safe, but only you can do that, not your mayor and not your governor.
The problem is not one of intelligence or wealth. The problem is about your unique personal information. The politician’s can’t know you and what you need. Albany can’t save you, and neither can Trenton, or Hartford, or Lansing or Boston.
To start, the governor’s public-health decrees doesn’t take account of how old you are. For young people in good health, the Wuhan flu is simply..the flu. Not so if you’re over 70 years of age and have serious chronic illnesses. The governor can’t know your family situation. If you’re a young family with kids, then you should be at the playground having fun. College students should be at the beach. Some of you will get the flu, just as you did last year and just as you will next year. I’m sorry you missed a few days of vacation with the sniffles, but that is life and you’ll get over it.
That isn’t true if you are taking care of elderly relatives with health issues. In that case, you might want to stay home, have your food delivered, and watch bad television for a few more weeks.
While staying home might be a good solution for you, it is a death sentence for someone waiting for cancer treatment. Let us go because lives are at stake. We need different solutions for different people.
The governor’s orders don’t take into account the rate of infection in your local community. One third of the deaths from Covid-19 for the entire USA are in the New York City area. Meanwhile, many counties are waiting for their first confirmed fatality.
One third of deaths in green, one third in yellow, and one third in red
The personal safety measures that work for you might not work for New York City,
and what works for New York City has devastated the rest of the USA.
We saw the New York City government put seriously ill people who had the virus into nursing homes along with elderly patients. The results were deadly. We had governors shut down their entire state, and we’re still learning how bad that was as rates of addiction and suicide grew six fold.
We asked government to solve a problem that was beyond them,
and politicians didn’t have the humility to admit it.
Your mayor is issuing decrees so he looks good in front of the TV cameras and so he looks good in front of the political bosses at the state capital. That is what politicians do. The governor is thinking about his political future, not about your future and your family’s future.
The politicians’ universal solution is to hand out money and tell you to stay home,
even if that solution doesn’t fit you at all.
I have a different universal solution for Covid-19 and it has proven both safe and effective in real-world tests. Wash your hands and avoid large crowds in confined spaces. Beyond that, think about the problem and do what works best for your situation. Maybe you should go back to work or maybe you should stay home. You make the call.
We will adapt. Maybe we will change our routines. For instance, a parish might make the first religious services on Sunday the designated “old-folks mass.” Lots of churches already have hand-sanitizer next to the holy-water font. Instead of reading from a hymnal, people can read along on their phones.
I don’t know every solution, but you are much smarter than I am. You always were. We need you to remembered that. I trust and respect your judgement more than the decisions of a politician.
To the politicians I say, get the hell out of our way.
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I gave you 700 words. Please share them and leave a comment. RM
Sources-
“https://spectator.org/coronavirus-deaths-the-most-predictive-factor/
“https://wmbriggs.com/post/30833/”https://nypost.com/2020/05/24/california-city-has-seen-more-deaths-by-suicide-than-covid-19-doctor/
“https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/19/relapses-are-through-the-roof-overdoses-are-through-the-roof-how-the-pandemic-is-upping-substance-abuse/
