I have decided to treat this time at home as my retirement. I honestly believe it is as close as I’m going to get, as the real thing passed me by. When the virus is controlled to the extent it is going to be, and our economy rises like the Phoenix as Dr. Trump has assured us it will, I am just a tad sceptical of quite how high it will soar.
Scores of businesses have already closed their doors forever. Retail is starting to look like a dinosaur, something that has outlived its usefulness. When a business model is replaced over history, there is pain, but recovery is aided by the need for new workers for the new paradigm. Blacksmith begets mechanic, that sort of thing.
Oh but they fooled us this time. We love shopping at home. We love instantaneous delivery, or nearly so. We love the lower prices. This is awesome, right?
Here’s what they didn’t tell you. Much of it is mechanized. There is no mechanic job waiting and they don’t need your horseshoes. The people who sold in, managed, stocked, cleaned and guarded all those millions of square feet of retail space are no longer required, and tons of the businesses they toiled for have already given up the fight. The doors have already locked.
The businesses that survive will face a new fiscal reality. So will the workers. A few months ago, they were most likely to be employed, and fairly easily. Most people were working so if you were looking you could probably find a gig. Maybe two or three, as they paid shit, but they were easy to get. A few months from now people will be an enormous economic burden. We already are. This medical care stuff is expensive. But this burden is one that the economy will not be able to ease. Government will fill the void, for a time. Until it doesn’t.
The Golden Years.
I’m like the vast majority of people my age. Financially unprepared for retirement with no time or magic pill to fix it now. I was coming up with a strategy for how to survive when I started collecting Social Security, how to supplement it enough to eat AND have a roof.
Erase the blackboard and start again.
Why so negative? Such a doomsdayer. How come? Lighten up!
Watching today’s pep rally, I saw little reason for hope. The medical experts have told us that if we do everything perfectly, 100-200 thousand American souls will perish from this disease.
Perfectly.
The President, however, prefers to let the states take the blame if he can possibly help it. He refuses to take a stand, lead from the front and shut it down. He praises Governor DeSantis of Florida for the great job he’s doing, who chose to leave the beaches open to benefiit spring break and the short term state economy, and also refuses to issue a stay at home order, insuring the wild spread of Covid-19 in the Sunshine State. No serious observer of what’s going on can come to any other conclusion. Yesterday the President told the Governor of Montana, after the state executive had told Dr. Fauci that his state couldn’t get tests, that he hadn’t heard any problem with tests in weeks. Never heard of such a thing, so you are dismissed. I have declared what you have just said as untrue.
Next.
Isolation is the single hope of mitigating this crisis. That’s it. There’s no vaccine. No palliatives. All months away. Not being negative here, those were Dr. Fauci’s words from the podium today. He’s trying to tell you. Isolation is our one weapon right now, and the President is pushing back against that with all the force he can muster, and it’s a lot. But isolation is the very definition of what it means to do everything “perfectly”. We all know that. Fauci. Birx. Cuomo. One voice. Isolate.
But Trump will end that sooner than wiser. He went for Easter, but that quickly became embarrassing, but all that humiliation bought us was an additional two weeks. End of April. That will not be enough. He will risk the lot of us for his crew. If you are confused, if you have any doubt as to whether you are part of his crew, it will be a very short trip to the revelation.
You’re not.
We will not do everything perfectly. We won’t be anywhere close to that. We will let our greed define us to our great detriment, and many more people will die.
Trump is very much like your worst employee. He came late and now he wants to get off early.
He’s not a very bright guy, but Trump has created himself a potential president killer. The estimate of deaths presumes we do everything perfectly. This has produced a line that if crossed on the high side by definition reveal him as a failure, on his terms. He has endorsed this number for whatever macabre reason, and he will live or die on it.
I’m kidding again, of course. He will deflect the blame on some poor slob, declare his victimhood and his enablers will repeat the fantasy. It will work, because it does work, it has worked, and he knows it. We run from what we fear faster than toward what we aspire to. He is the master of that psychology. He will define what to fear, listing all those others that killed so many of you while he tried to help, and he will portray what people fantasize about. You will learn to fear your governor and the doctors who had to triage for who might benefit from that ventilator that just got freed up, one way or the other. You will know who your enemies are, and you will long to live the way HE does, financially carefree and powerful enough to destroy your foes, anyone that ever disagreed with you for right or wrong.
The President has stated that he never used to be very big on shaking hands. Wasn’t really his thing. He found he had to as President and he adapted to it, but now it seems like he was right about that, too! He said we may never go back to hand shaking.
I think fairly soon, people will be bowing to him instead.