So once we get a vaccine or other treatments, what then?

Will we be good for a while, or will we just be facing a series of pandemics from here on out? What’s to keep this from happening with a different strain next year? How do we recover from this, and make sure it’s a rare occurrence?

How did this get so out of hand?

A pandemic and campaign advertising. These two things alone are gonna make for a long hot summer.

And the ones who are all bent out of shape over masks? It can’t really be about constitutional rights. It’s more about contrived indignation, ignorance, selfishness, and people reaching their breaking points. Hints of an inability to cope. It’s so lame how these statistically insignificant brats are the ones we hear the most about. They’re the “news makers.”

Might as well turn off the TV, shut down the computer, find a cave, and just wile away the hours staring at a wall.

It’s hard to find a trustworthy source of information. Everyone has a slant, a stake, an opinion. In the rush for the scoop, truth has taken a back seat to being first, or loudest. The power of words, the power of getting there first, wherever “there” is. Then again, would anybody really appreciate an unbiased news source anymore? That sounds… boring.

Trump gets his soapbox by default, spewing nothingness, with the help of Fox News and the likes of Rush Limbaugh. It’s difficult to imagine him having any peers when it comes to the level of insincerity and disinterest displayed. And despite everything he’s said and done, he still has his adoring minions, and millions. Too much damage control, too little integrity.

Information comes at us relentlessly. Some of it resonates, most of it doesn’t.

We search until we find what we want to hear. We have trouble understanding the value of listening to conflicting opinions, don’t want to take the time to do that, because we always come out in the same place: disagreement, often vehement disagreement. We’ve been there many times, heard the same things many times. One says “up,” the other automatically says “down.”

No progress made, just two camps, miles apart, marching to different beats, convinced of their own legitimacy and righteousness, each finding it hard to believe that the other can think the way they do.

My Christian faith, such as it is, lacks real substance. In fact, I doubt that it can be called “faith” at all, because whatever I have resides more in my head than in my heart. I don’t know what the proper ratio should be- 50/50, 40/60… 1/99, head to heart? Believing without seeing might be a leap of faith, but it also feels like weakness and foolishness, an act of desperation and last resort. A reluctant embrace of the much-maligned “God of the gaps,” the God we turn to when no other explanations are available.

God being God, why can’t Jesus still be walking among us today? You know— swooping in and saving the day, spending a few weeks stateside, then moving on to Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Down Under. He could probably handle being in multiple places at the same time. Oh, that’s right! According to the Bible, that’s already the case.

And why did he have to ascend? Why couldn’t he just stick around? Ascension cheapens the whole thing, makes it seem even more like a fantastic fairy tale. It’d make for an awesome visual at Sight and Sound, though.

Barack Obama may have stepped over some line when he made a thinly-veiled foray into Trump-bashing during a commencement address over the weekend. Fox News went predictably ballistic and got all indignant, but nothing new there.

Yes, #44 probably could have shown restraint and taken a different tact, but let’s take a step back from jumping on that bandwagon and consider the larger moment. As a matter of course, #45 uses his lofty bully pulpit for all manner of self-promotion and character assassination. He routinely hides behind incendiary Tweets he may or may not create on his own. He eggs people on, goading them into retaliation or expecting no response, and counts on them being the ones who end up looking bad.

Mr. Obama has been biting his tongue for a long time. But perhaps because of covid fatigue or an election that grows ever closer, he’s giving some indication that the gloves are coming off. This is risky and I hope he knows what he’s doing, because Trump is well-versed in this mode of give and take (he and his ever-faithful base will probably take that as a compliment).

It’s just that Trump has an infuriating knack for landing on his feet. And those around him are mystifyingly loyal, no matter what he says or does. If someone decides it’s time to go toe-to-toe with him, they better be all in.

Godspeed, Barack. Here’s hoping you are a worthy opponent, and that it’s soon time for the other shoe to drop in this agonizingly long game of West Wing charades.

One thing that needs to be made perfectly clear is that the more Donald Trump bellows about how “we’re back” and we need to resume our daily activities, the less we should listen to him. The more he urges a return to “normalcy,” the more we should dig in our heels and ignore him and wonder what the hell he’s up to. He and/or those around him are so desperate to win in November that he is going to say and do whatever it takes to make that happen, and to hell with the coronavirus.

We may have a vaccine before the end of the year, and does anyone doubt who’ll be yakking about who should get the credit? If there is a God in heaven, we’ll find Donald Trump crying in his non-alcoholic beer on the sidelines, wondering how he could have lost an election when it seemed, in his pea brain, that so much had ended up going so right.

He can’t emerge from this shit show smelling like a rose. He just can’t. (He sort of didn’t…)

You say stuff over and over again, you start believing it.

You get good at sounding like you mean what you say. You even sound patriotic when you need to. Take Joe Biden, for instance. I’ve never thought much of him, really. He’s always seemed a bit too slick for my liking. But Barack Obama liked him as a running mate, so he must have something going for him. And he’s the almost octogenarian we’re pinning our hopes on to end this nightmare that now includes a pandemic. Which seems entirely appropriate– that a pandemic unfolds on Trump’s watch. Why not? It’s somehow fittingly symbolic of the last three-plus years. The natural progression of things.

So who do we believe regarding the origins of the virus? Did it indeed jump from animals to humans in Wuhan, or was it manufactured and intentionally spread in order to disrupt the world order? Either scenario sounds plausible. While the latter sounds more like it comes from a place of paranoia and the minds of Fox News and conspiracy theorists everywhere, the former sounds like something born of and perpetuated by a certain naivete.  

Who knows what the truth is anymore?

I’m no economist, but the massive price tags for relief packages beg a number of questions. Is there a piper to be paid at some point? Are we watching, in real time, the groundwork being laid for a day when it will take a wheelbarrow full of money just to buy a loaf of bread?

Will the short-term relief provided by millions of $1200 deposits and billions$ in business loans (and more to come?) eventually give way to a river of tears, and hardship many of us cannot possibly imagine and would be unprepared to endure?

This pandemic is shaping up to be an unwelcome scourge of unprecedented scope and reach, sowing economic ruin from which many will never recover.

Or I could be wrong about this. I hope so.

Let’s be honest with ourselves.

The quarantines and stay-at-home orders aren’t going away anytime soon. People can ignore them, call them unnecessary and oppressive, over-reaching and “Draconian.” They can buy Donald Trump’s take on things if they want, but that would be the opposite of patriotic, whatever that is. How about idiotic?

Without widespread testing and such– never mind a vaccine– we are a long way from feeling confident about a return to anything close to our former ways of going about business. How can people not know this?

At some point- and that point has already arrived in places- people will decide for themselves how much risk they can tolerate, and then try to resume BAU. But this isn’t going to make the virus go away. They will need to prepare themselves for further avoidable sickness and loss of life, perhaps affecting themselves or someone they love. And they will reconcile all that with bluster and bravado by saying it’s just the price we pay for living free and not under the thumb of a Governor they’re convinced is some sort of dictator.

The coronavirus doesn’t give two shits about your need to be “free.” It won’t take into consideration your gullibility or refusal to think. In fact, it will feast on your stupidity and recklessness. And worse yet, it will infect and kill some who want nothing to do with the choices you’ve made for yourself.

Somehow, and sooner than later, this needs to be more about “us” than about “me.”

Donald Trump is a Twinkie that has actually reached its expiration date. It’s time for him to go. He and the rest of the empty calories who pass for… leaders?

It is enormously frustrating to see how a single comment from Orange Man can shift a conversation. Tom Wolf calls on the people of PA to abide by the stay-at-home order and threatens consequences for not doing so, then Trump opines that this stance is not only oppressive, but more a case of milking the quarantine to make him look bad on Election Day.

No one else has to work to make Donald Trump look bad. He does that all by himself, the heartless bastard.