This and That:

              Your Key To The Secrets!

What will happen next? You have been going along, living your life, doing the things you feel you have to. All of a sudden things seem to be spinning out of control. Your life has been turned into a turmoil of events. Governments are making decisions about what is best for you, what your priorities should be, where you can go, what you should be doing. People are dying of something you can’t see, or taste, or feel, as if the Black Death of the Middle Ages has come back. And this thing is changing from day to day, along with the rules of the road.

We are being poked and prodded, have to carry identification as if we are crossing borders just to get into a restaurant. We are hiding our features behind a mask to carry out the ordinaries of our daily lives. People can’t see if we are smiling or angry, and it’s the same for us looking at them. How can we socialize? It’s isolating!

Some people are rebelling and we understand that. But if they resist and don’t follow the science our officials are telling us about, they may be endangering our lives. So, even if we understand and sympathize, how can we stand for them risking our lives along with their own. So their anger just makes me angry with them. I want them out of my life because I believe in the science. But that is not the way it is. That’s the secret; we just have to lump it.

We are the lucky ones, living as we do in a place where society is ordered. We have public servant who seem to appreciate that they have responsibilities, chief among them doing things that serve the interests of the public that it paying them. Unfortunately, we also have politicians we pay, and they don’t always behave, or speak, like their interests are aligned with ours. There is definitely too much lying going on in too many places from too many people and it’s giving the truth a bad name. Think about how bad it can be in so many other places when truth never even gets a chance to be heard.

What a miraculous job our scientists and administrators have done with getting us the protections so many of us our benefitting from. From a standing start we have quickly received these protective medicines which in the past have taken years and years to develop. And our administrators have developed the distribution mechanisms to bring them quickly to our neighborhoods so we can access them. All this without paying a dime so every one of us can benefit, whether rich or poor. Think about all that! Those people responsible can never be rewarded generously enough but we likely won’t do a thing about it.

As for those evil ones who are playing politics, (for their own narrow ends,) with this human tragedy that has killed millions and may cripple more millions before we are done, they should be shot, but I would settle for civil actions in the courts that will render them penniless. Those who have suffered losses as a consequence should launch actions in the courts. These malefactors should receive their just deserts. That’s the secret; one way or another, we’re going to make them pay for what they did. We just have to get together to make it happen. Our time will come and we won’t quit. That’s another secret we have to learn over and over again.

What of our economic actors who have their prospects turned inside out through no fault of their own? We have little in the way of answers to offer.

We are beginning to see that the virus we have been dealing with is moderating in important ways with each passing day. It appears that we will have to cope with it as something endemic like our flu virus, with preventive vaccinations every year. Each day we hear more and more good news that will enable us to better cope with this new challenge.

We know it will take years for the poorer nations of the world to cope with it nevertheless. It is obvious that we have much to do to strengthen our international institutions so that they can do a better job. It is clear that none of us are safe unless all of us are safe. The way the virus spread so quickly around the world has proven that for all of us. And leaving the virus to mutate freely among the unvaccinated endangers every single of us.

What’s the secret? We are going to have to treat everyone as our neighbor, even the one’s we still hate for what their dead relatives did to our dead relatives. I know it’s hard, but we are going to have to get over it for our own sakes, ‘cause we are all swimming in the same bathtub. Maybe my swim suit will still have something in the pocket we can protect ourselves with. SHHHH! That’s a secret!

So, maybe the sky is not so dark after all. We can see light just over the horizon.