George Packard, combined his already-questionnable, journalistic zeal with his definitely dubious physical fitness regime and rode his bicycle to the beach. By now, George Packard was well aware that it was highly unlikely for him to chance upon any Breaking News stories while at the beach. However, the way George saw it, during a pandemic, if you needed to be to be looking for a Breaking News Story, then the beach was probably the safest place to be doing it.
George let the ocean breeze pass over him. It was still early in the day. In Los Angeles the early morning fog kept thing cool most days. Thank goodness for the fog from the ocean. That’s why LA is a cooler place than, say, Bakersfield. Indeed, in nearly all respects LA is cooler than Bakersfield. Well, except for Country and Western music.
The beach would get a little more crowded when the sun came out. George didn’t go to the beach on weekends anymore (the bicycle paths get too crowded). Still, once you do get to the beach, once you get on the sand, social distancing is as easy as pie. It’s these parties, these big gatherings, especially indoor gatherings, that are making all the trouble. George avoided those crowded places like the plague… Er.. I mean, George Packard avoided restaurants and indoor places like anything.
The scoop is that the populace of the great United States of America is spoiled. Unlike other countries, the American people, led by a demagogue, are non-compliant, and unwilling maintain the simple self-discipline and patriotic sacrifice that is required to limit this virus. Nearly every industrialized nation in the world has been able to do this better than the great United States. What a disgrace. We don’t even have enough swabs and surgical masks.
The number of new cases per day has to be taken down to 1 – or maybe 10 – per million population. More cases than than that, and the tracing becomes impossible. But when you can contact trace quickly and thoroughly, you can lower the rate of transmission, i.e. the average number of people that a covid individual infects. The rate of transmission is the key piece in the equation. The medical teams need to catch the virus early and then quarantine effectively. Nipping the seed in the bud, as it were. If we’re going to live with this virus for the next year, if we want to have a somewhat normal life, if we want to open the schools, we have to get the incidence, the case numbers, down. And even when incidence goes down, there will still be sporadic breakouts of the virus. But the risk of (re)infection will be low enough to send the kids back to school. People might have to manage without bars and restaurants for a while.
What a shame that we have to wait til January for some re-direction in this country. Too many people will die. This man, this monster, does harm at every turn. What a shame he wasn’t convicted of abuse of power this past February. Remember that? Mike Pence would have become President and 50,000 people would still be alive.
We have no choice but to vote Democratic. A Blue Wave. Go Democrats!!!!
Hurray for the Democrats!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As George Packard sat on the bus he eased back in his seat and opened a book. Without all that pressure to come up with a big story every week for that silly magazine, George was able to relax. The book was Language and Species by Derek Bickerton, a most interesting book that explored the roots of language in humans. Surely the development of language was the key event in our evolution as humans: Yes, language, the great accelerator of our evolution and enabler of our “success” as a species. Our use of language and ability to work with abstractions sets us apart from the other animals, and allows us “mastery” over nearly all the land, not to very laudable results so far.
An Occasional Story or Magazine 