Strange times, these are.
It feels like it would be best to turn off the fan because everything seems to be hitting it at once. I recently lost a friend to the coronavirus, so this thing has become very real to me. We Boomers are deemed “at risk,” a rather sobering categorization, but hardly erroneous.
This nasty pandemic lingers like the insufferable, unwanted houseguest that, given a choice, one would rather prep for a colonoscopy for a full week rather than hear that doorbell ring. You get up every morning hoping this will be the last day, but instead it goes on and on, seemingly without end. Just when will it finally go away and enable a return to what used to be “normalcy”? Who knows what’s ahead. Speaking of strange times . . .
And there are more questions still: Will I contract the coronavirus? Will I survive it if I do? Will my family be okay? Are my savings about to vaporize as the market slides off into the devil’s nether regions? Are we headed toward an economic depression? I remember the old saw that “numbers don’t lie,” but the numbers are all over the board. The health models and the economic models each range from modest outcomes to catastrophic. Truth is, nobody really knows. We elect our officials at the local, state, and federal level to deal with the mostly normal and the sometimes abnormal, but they’re human beings, just like us. Try as they might, and I do applaud their efforts, they simply can’t know which way this crisis will turn. The numbers may not lie, but whose numbers are the most right?
Speaking of lying, the Chinese communist regime is of a gold-medal, world-class preeminence, no doubt. I do not trust anything I read about what this regime is claiming with regard to cases or deaths. Their lame attempt to blame the whole affair on the U.S. military would be laughable if not for the rot it exposes in the Party itself, along with the death and disruption this virus is causing around the globe. These ruthless Party apparatchiks are not our friends. They’ve threatened to withhold critical medicines and supplies. We have to coexist with them, of course, and we should trade with them when the conditions are fair. I can only hope that U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers will assess the need to change this picture and get our medicines far away from there. Critical military suppliers should also take heed. I can’t help but think that the good people of China deserve better.
I’m plenty old enough to understand that life is neither fair nor unfair—it’s just life. It’s difficult but not impossible. We’ll survive this crisis, as we have many others over the course of not just my lifetime, but over the span of our nation’s history. Americans have always been superb at recovering from hard blows. As Winston Churchill reminded us during a dark time, “We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.”
In the meantime, our healthcare providers and our first responders are owed a grand applause as they remain on the job and treat those affected by the coronavirus, at great risk to themselves. I’m heartened by the way the private sector is responding. They’re making ventilators, personal protective equipment, and trying to serve their customers as best they can—from take-out to home delivery. Our military is providing hospital ships to areas of great need, all while still protecting us in their primary role. Even the wealthy among us, from sports stars to business execs to regular private citizens, are donating significant sums for food, transportation, and supplies.
I’m thankful for this Nation and the extraordinary generosity of its people. We’ll get through these strange times, hopefully soon. And we’ll learn from it.
Finally, this from Isaiah 41:10: “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
Hang in there, and may God bless.
