A Bit Surreal

There was something about today that just doesn’t seem quite…right. I’m finding it a little difficult to articulate just what it is, but it’s real. Watching it all unfold, in real time, like a slow motion train wreck, however, is a bit surreal.

Everything about today, in one way or another, felt like it was being experienced by me, but from afar – sort of from an observer’s perspective. The conversations I had, the people I encountered, the weather, the interviews on tv – the videotape of statements made by DT – the headlines. I feel like I’m watching it all play out before me in some grotesque nightmare. But surely, I tell myself, it has to be something from which I’ll awaken.

It doesn’t seem possible that I’m seeing what I’m seeing and hearing what I’m hearing.

It doesn’t seem possible that we are actively being lied to about something as serious as a pandemic. By our own president. By our own vice president. It feels like a surreal horror show to be watching officials from governmental agencies staffed by the highest caliber scientists in the world stand behind a man who makes it all about him, whose only concern is ‘the numbers’ associated with how many people in our country are infected with the coronavirus – as if it is a game show. As if real people are not losing their lives every day as a result of his egotistical need to massage ‘the numbers.’

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

A Crisis Worse Than the Virus

Far worse than any virus is the crisis of VERACITY we’re witnessing. We’ve been groomed for this for at least three years, fooling ourselves that truth didn’t matter. Allowing the blatant lies to stand. Laughing it off in that screwed up, ‘boys will be boys’ attitude that dismisses and permits an astonishing amount of bad behavior in our society in all sorts of situations.

Remember the lies about inauguration crowd size? Well, that didn’t actually matter, did it? I mean, it was – what? A lie that everybody could see was a lie but, since it was The Donald, and – ho ho ho – he’s such an exaggerator – we could let him have that little white lie. Meh; soothe that ego. What could it hurt?

What it hurt is coming home to roost now. And we can be sure it is directly resulting in scores and scores of people – our most vulnerable fellow Americans, our elderly, our already sick and compromised – suffering from unnecessary profound illness and even dying.

How? By inuring us to the lies about things that we can see unfolding before our very eyes. By telling us that we cannot trust facts and figures from scientists or independent journalists who’ve spoken directly to hospital personnel and know the truth of how many are being tested. No – we’re supposed to trust someone who doesn’t want to allow 3,500 people essentially trapped on a cruise ship off our shoreline because allowing them to disembark and receive treatment on land will ‘hurt his numbers.’

The Big Lie About Tests

Do we fully comprehend the insidious nature of the lies we’re being told about the lack of available testing kits? We had months to prepare for this crisis. We had months to have reliable tests at the ready for when the virus inevitably arrived on our shores.

But did we have our act together? No.

We were told to disbelieve the experts. The virus’s arrival wasn’t inevitable. Not according to the best hunch of you-know-who.

And are we being told the truth now about the impact of this lack of tests? No.

Why Does This Matter?

This matters because it fosters a head-in-the-sand approach to this entire mess. The lack of tests perpetuates an illusion that only a few people are infected. This denial of reality, coupled with the fact that many people who are infected actually do not suffer serious symptoms, is what is creating the crisis and making it exponentially worse.

How? The ‘leaders’ of our country are actually encouraging people to continue going to work and to go about their daily lives in a ‘nothing to see here’ attempt to stave off the trauma to our economy that consumers staying home will create. And if people who are carrying the virus but are not showing symptoms borrow your pen at work, touch the ATM machine, handle your produce, offer you change, touch door handles, faucet handles, coffee cups – you get the picture – then anyone who is vulnerable because of age, underlying conditions, breathing difficulties, exhaustion, or any other condition that weakens their immune system could become very, very sick or die.

Knowledge is Power

What no one in the Administration is apparently thinking about is how far and wide this can be spread by people who show mild or no symptoms. That is why we need access to hundreds of thousands of tests – if not millions. Because knowledge is power.

Knowing you have the virus requires taking responsibility to refrain from infecting others. And that is why the testing crisis is bigger and worse than anyone wants to admit.

Telling ourselves that there are only X number of infected people (because we’ve only tested a small number) is self-delusion. It will not result in fewer serious illnesses and deaths. It will only enable the virus to spread undetected far and wide, thereby sickening and killing exponentially more people.

The emperor has no clothes. The virus is running rampant through our country – just like it’s running rampant across the planet. Pretending it’s not – ‘thinking positive’ by telling ourselves there aren’t that many infections (because we’re not testing to discover those infections) is incredibly naïve, delusional, and when deliberately implemented as a governmental policy? Criminal.