Grocery stores have been stripped of toilet paper, hand sanitizer, Kleenex, household cleaning agents, paper towels, baby wipes and bottled water. Professional sports leagues have shut down, and Las Vegas is going dark. Wall Street took another ass pounding today.
The world’s going to Hell in a handbasket.
Maybe.
Yes, there is a sense of panic in some quarters. And, yet, most people that I know are taking the pandemic seriously and acting in an adult fashion, avoiding crowds, keeping clean, and paying attention to health experts, rather than political demagogues.
The latter are still out there, but there are fewer of them this week, and their efforts to out-shout the facts are fading. It’s hard for even them to ignore what has happened in Italy, a country that got a late start on combatting the spread of the virus: many people have died there.
(Speaking of demagogues, Jerry Falwell Jr., son of the infamous blowhard Baptist televangelist, is still pitching the idea on Fox News that the coronavirus is a Chinese-North Korean manufactured bioweapon designed to blow up Donald Trump’s re-election chances. The good Reverend, and trusted Presidential advisor, knows this because he heard it from a guy in a restaurant…and, then passed along the “facts” to Fox News’ devoted listeners, including Mr. Trump.)
I feel sorry for President Trump.
Like the Italian leadership, he was late to appreciate the medical, economic, and political magnitude of this beast, and he’s scrambling to make it go away…fast. At this point, he and his Administration are probably doing as much as they can to get their arms around this thing that has a mind of its own. I think that the best thing the President can do at this point is tell the truth; stop telling lies and exaggerations, and stop blaming others for your bad luck. Get to work.
It is probably 100 percent certain that (a) this pandemic will abate in a few months, but (b) it will have kicked the economy into a recession.
The “R” word is something that President Trump hates, and particularly that it might occur on his watch…during an election year, no less.
(Actually, it’s probably not any worse pile of shit than Obama was given by outgoing President George W.; the stock market had just crashed! “Welcome to The Great Recession, Barack!”))
Right now, the Federal government is pulling out all the stops to soften the blow of recession. All manner of “disaster relief” in being conjured to help out failing industries, employees who will lose their jobs, and people who will lose their homes and go hungry. “Send money” is the plan, as I understand it. The Federal Reserve has dropped the prime rate to zero percent in an effort to keep the economy from freezing up.
If I was the President, I would take this opportunity to do something spectacularly beneficial to the Nation…reconstitute the old W.P.A. and provide jobs to rebuild the Nation’s deteriorating infrastructure. Both political parties agree that repairing our infrastructure is one of our highest priorities; maybe this is the time to do something about it. Rather than simply printing more money and giving it away, how about we use it strategically to do something that needs doing? There will be quite a few able-bodied folks sitting on their hands during the next few years. Give them something to do.
That’s what we need from our President in tough times…something positive to focus on, something that brings us together, and something to prove that government is still capable of problem-solving.
Maybe we could use all that labor to get “greener”? President Trump could put a positive spin on his Administration.
One other thing I would recommend: the Federal government adopt some kind of law that would prohibit product hoarding in an emergency. We’ve all heard of the guy in Tennessee who, as soon as he heard the news of the approaching coronavirus shitstorm, went out and purchased 17,000 units of Purell hand sanitizer. Then, he started selling it on the Internet for preposterous mark-ups, like $20 for a $2 bottle.
There will be other pandemics in the future. It would be nice if a hoarding prohibition could be implemented early on, perhaps by a Presidential declaration, where grocery retailers would immediately institute a “limit of two” per customer to stifle panicky buying.
I was lucky yesterday. I got the last chuck roast and last two packets of slow cook seasoning mix at Wal-Mart. Also, the last box of Special K cereal (that Charlie likes). For the most part, the shelves were stripped bare.
Lucky for us, I had bought a large package of toilet paper rolls a week before the pandemic hit the fan.
So, as Doomsday approaches, and our meeting with St. Peter approaches, we’ll at least have clean buttholes.