I really hadn’t planned on writing more than one post on COVID-19. I thought I got all my snarky venting out and was done. And yeah, this probably isn’t going to be a snarky post, but a more somber one. Almost 17,000 Americans are dead, so far. And the current badministration is fetching about, attempting to cast that as a WIN. Because it must be a win, right? We are NUMBER ONE again. (No, not quite; Italy still has a higher death count, but they’ve been at this a lot longer. Don’t worry, we WILL gain the top of the podium soon.)

So, yeah. THAT didn’t happen. So, Revisionist History 101, we change the story. We have 325 MILLION people, ok? What are you, crazy?? Never gonna happen. Who needs stinkin’ tests anyway?? ( the story as of 4/9/2020)

Just REMEMBER THIS little tidbit, will you? IF you are not TESTED for COVID-19, you don’t HAVE COVID-19. IF you don’t have COVID-19, you can’t DIE from COVID-19. Wraps it up in a pretty bow, doesn’t it?

There’s more than one way to keep the number of cases low, isn’t there? If you don’t want to really enforce social distancing or wearing masks because your tan may rub off, just stop TESTING. Presto, the COVID-19 positive numbers will stop rising. Maybe all those pneumonia deaths are simply coming from somewhere else…

Irrevocably damaged or destroyed–families, communities, companies. THAT is what we will find, on the other side. Because at some point, we WILL find the other side. Each city and town will get there in their own time. But no place will be truly unharmed. Some towns will just have scraped knees, some counties will have broken bones and some cities will sadly find they lost limbs. But, in the end, no one will be able to escape SIX DEGREES of separation.

I already, with this disease not getting anywhere near my personal, physical, geographic circle, exceed all my fingers to count the number of People I know who know People who lost People. And it’s early. And, it’s talked about in the most banal and impersonal terms. Because how else can one manage talking of the death, day after day, of so many?

It DOES feel like a slow-roll 9/11. I was in NYC and watched the towers fall, and for weeks; it was never “personal” unless the death was an immediate relative…. if you were asked, “were you ok”, it wasn’t the the time to say you lost a childhood friend or a cousin or an in-laws neighbor, because didn’t EVERYONE?? No, you lost someone if it was a spouse. A child. A parent. There was a surrealness to deaths that were once individual, with wakes, funerals, obituaries, gatherings of loved ones together, laughter at memories and tears at reality… suddenly becoming also-ran.

Now, with COVID those deaths are now reduced to they died, alone, of course, and three others in that household are sick and….multiplied by factors of scale that dwarf 9/11; geographic impact that isn’t just something that happened somewhere else….and something that just keeps going, rolling downhill, gathering speed.

And, all of us, deep down, have to admit, we have to know it didn’t NEED to be this way. We HAD warnings. And so, I felt compelled this morning to gather some screenshots, some tweets. For posterity, for clarity of the vision around me, in my mind. And you, dear reader, get to partake. To see in black and white the absolute trainwreck that got us to this moment. To see the revisionist statements. The I AM NOT AT FAULT-ness, the bareness of the way this government is trying to evade any blame.

Look at March 5th. ELEVEN dead. 36 days later, there are SEVENTEEN THOUSAND DEAD. And that number is nowhere near the end of this horror show.

STAY HOME. Hearing that as many people who were expected to die haven’t died DOES not mean this was all an overreaction.

IT MEANS IT IS WORKING.