Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Saturday, October 24, 2020

Covid Crisis

We were always warned that there would a second wave. Many assumed that the surge this summer was the second wave, but that was more the first wave washing over parts of the country on a delay from the spring.

The second wave is upon us.  While some of this is increased testing, it is also simply a case of schools being open and "Covid fatigue" leading to people abandoning best practices. Because it is happening almost everywhere, the numbers are greater than when there were staggered spikes over the past 7 months.

Meanwhile a country that is currently being ravaged (again) by Covid, Belgium, offers a chilling look into where we could be in a few weeks. The point of "bending the curve" was to allow us time to build PPE and therapeutics to combat the illness and its spread. But if the numbers are bad, then we simply won't have enough healthy workers in critical areas.

Our rural county is beginning to see growing cases. Our school's league has elected to cancel its winter sports season (and while it is contingent, the current growth of the virus suggests there won't be any opportunity to reopen athletics). 

Maybe this will register with voters. Maybe it will impede the counting of votes. But can you imagine if we continue down this road of ineptitude? A million Americans will die.


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