Dan Mason
Do ya feel lucky punk?
Ladieees and Gentlemen!!!”
Gather ‘round the table and place your bets! Everybody gets a chance, everybody is REQUIRED to make a bet. The only bets accepted are your lives… or one of your family members (the older the better), or the life of a neighbor, an acquaintance, or just some stranger you happened bump into.
We are going to reopen the country, and I’m gonna spin the wheel. You get to bet on either the RED (the coronavirus R0 infection rate levels out and then steadily decreases until we get herd immunity), or the BLACK (the R0 infection rate spikes due to increased crowding, death rates increase markedly, and eventually we get herd immunity anyway, but with a somewhat smaller population.)
That’s what it comes down to. Except that we don’t get choose whether or not we want to play. We only get to choose RED or BLACK.
Our, gulp, President is playing the cheerleader in this vast gamble. He has made the calculation, for purely ego pumping political reasons, that if the wheel comes up RED, he will be heralded as Abraham Lincoln incarnate, and if the wheel goes BLACK, well then he can say that he didn’t force the states to re-open, so it’s not his fault. The Chinese did it, and the democrats helped them do it, and the WHO was in on it.
Despite the utterly despicable display of America’s dysfunctional politics whether repub or dem, it is truly ironic that this farcical, but terrifying, not-greek tragedy is being played out between the two extreme ends of the evolutionary spectrum.
- In one corner, we have our lightweight contender, the lowly micro-virus a single strand RNA contraption known to the world as Covid 19, or as Trump knows it ’the Wuhan virus’. It is so simple that science has not yet even decided whether or not viruses qualify as a life-form. In fact it is so simple that it only understands one rule, ‘GO FORTH AND MULTIPLY.’
- In the other corner is our grand macro-virus, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, the epitomey, the culmination, the apex consumer of all that there is. Theoretically, he, she, or it, whatever, is the most complex creation in the world, or maybe even the universe, if we change the definition as we go.
In either case, one side is not going to wipe out the other side. It is just a matter of the mortality count. No matter the outcome, Trump views it as a win for him, and he is the one that counts most. No matter the outcome, we all get to play, whether we want to or not.
“You gotta ask yourself one question, DO I FEEL LUCKY. Well do ya, punk?”
Through an unbelievable stroke of luck the US Army drafted, then trained Dan Mason as a telecommunications tech and sent him to Thailand during the Viet Nam war. So began a thirty-five year adventure, working and living overseas, to include Thailand, W. Germany, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, and China. Those experiences helped him to see and absorb different perspectives on world events and to read behind the headlines.
The Contrary Perspective 
If we lived in a rational society, we would be confident that this administration’s bungling and diversionary, pathetic fingerpointing over this very real health crisis will cost Trump the election that we still believe will take place come November. The incumbent’s team is scrambling to try to shut down all efforts to make voting easier in presumed Dem-leaning states. Ain’t it great living in “a democracy”?? But as humans are very frequently IRRATIONAL animals, I see the presidency totally up for grabs at this point. All Trump needs do is win the same states he did in 2016 and the Electoral College will crown him again. We ARE in uncharted waters, and of course people need to regain their paychecks. We’re talking about tens of millions of people. They likely don’t love their jobs, but they sure need the income! And the corporations need the labor of these workers to resume raking in the profits. That said, rest assured these companies will seek to run “leaner and meaner” than ever once the economy gets more or less back up to speed. Oh, happy days! Thus it is primarily on behalf of the corporations that Trump hankers to “reopen the country.” This is indeed a crap shoot, an experiment in real time with real lives at stake. It will be fascinating and frightening to watch it unfold, and become a willing or otherwise participant.
Very cogent analysis. Trump followed up today with a diversionary tactic that would make any carnival barker proud, ignoring the almost 100,000 deaths, and greater than a million infected. He promised that his brilliant plan from his “stupendous” team will bring us a vaccine by the end of the year. With promises like these, the American people need to be very cautious that a rushed vaccine does not lead to a repeat of the Thalidomide tragedy of the 1950s. -b. traven
Indeed, a RATIONAL POTUS would not only have acted sooner to address (recognizing is the first step, eh?!) this crisis, but would not float absurd notions of guaranteed success in developing an effective vaccine by X date, or any date. I had major objections to Barack Obama, but good Lord, think of how much better a start we’d have gotten in dealing with this under him! There is much Science still needs to learn about this nasty entity, and its trillions (!) of fellow virus strains lurking about. I sincerely hope that the most pessimistic projections–of this thing staying with us for multiple years–are wrong!