Look, I’m your friend, right? So let me repeat a bit of advice I gave you a couple of days ago. Stay the hell off social media during this public health crisis! It’s a cesspool of terror and misinformation. It’s Panic City.
Once again, here are your indispensable and authoritative resources for information on the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak:
- The World Health Organization
- The Centers for Disease Control — although keep in mind the CDC is operating under public relations constraints imposed by the president and his vice president
- The Cleveland Clinic
- The Mayo Clinic
- Johns Hopkins University
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Criminal Mouth
So shoot me. In the car today I had to tune to Louisville’s NewsRadio 840, WHAS. From my time living in that town I know the station carries the likes of Rush Limbaugh and a bunch of other even more delirious Right Wing bleaters (if that’s even possible). I was dying to find out how they’re treating this development. I was in time for the start of the second hour of Limbaugh’s program. Natch, he was blathering about the pandemic.
And, trust me, not in your wildest imagination could you conjure a more irresponsible and hateful rundown of the crisis we face.
First, I lost count of how many times he characterized the virus as something “foreign.” I guess that’s the watchword right now, thanks to our Dear Leader who himself employed the term during his crazy, mixed-up nationally televised speech Wed. night. Then, Limbaugh went on a rant about how, if this thing were a hostile foreign power with guns and airplanes and nuclear weapons, we would all be banding together to fight it tooth and nail but, No-o-o-o-o! the goddamned liberals are politicizing this thing and hamstringing our great president from acting as swiftly and effectively as he can.
Then, as if someone flipped a switch, Limbaugh started ranting that the virus is really nothing. Golly gee, only 39 people have died in this country! Why isn’t the fake news media headlining that key fact, huh?
So, after a few minutes, I had to flip the radio off before I had a brain aneurysm. In fact I did one of those annoying bend-your-fingernail-back thingies because I hit the button so hard. Anyway, I was left confused: Is the virus the equivalent of a war against a vicious opponent armed with the most destructive weapons ever conceived or is it no big deal at all?
How luxurious it must be to have everything both ways.
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COVID & Me
Here’s what I’m doing for the next few weeks:
- Laying way low so I don’t infect anyone
- Avoiding all gatherings of more than three people (me included — and I have to be assured the other two are healthy as horses)
- Shunning everybody with the slightest sniffle, not to mention any sneezing and/or coughing
- Washing my mitts as often as I normally do (which has long bordered on an OCD symptom)
BTW: let’s stop telling each other not to touch our faces. It’s flat-out impossible. Every single time I touched my face today, I thought, Oh yeah, I shouldn’t have touched my face. I won’t reveal how many times that happened.
In any case, if this thing gets into me and I end up checking out, well…, it’s been occasionally nice and occasionally miserable. Life, right? For pity’s sake I’ve been figuring I’ll likely take my leave sometime within the next 20 years anyway, considering how certain maladies have kicked the shit out of me of late. A COVID-19 death’d just be an unexpected moving up of my sell-by date.
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Let’s Do It The Right Way
Bunches of people have been saying they hope President Gag catches COVID-19 and dies from it.
Me? I figure that outcome would cheat us out of the opportunity to gleefully vote his no-good ass out of office come Nov. 3rd
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