We were Sick way before Corona

The sickness before corona. 

I welcomed a little time at home. Thought it would be a break for us all. something to slow life down a little and reset some things. Boy was i wrong.

Right now its August, and most of us have been stuck in the house since march. MARCH. I’ve never been to Lowe's so much and amazon arrives multiple times per day at my house. I’ve learned that I have way more projects at home to tend to and teachers should make $100k/year because these kids are WILD.

In our lifetime, we’ve never been confined in any way for more than a few days and that’s usually because of the weather on the east coast. Influenza rocked the country, but that was more than 100 years ago at this point and i’m sure i wasn’t alone in thinking that we’d never see anything bring our society down in such a short amount of time. Well, here we are. Most of us a little fatter and suffering from severe cabin fever but, most of us are still here. Adjusting to the new normal really has us examining the way we go about our everyday lives in a way that quite honestly, we should have this whole time. The sanitizing and social distancing is something that I’m a fan of even when there isn a pandemic so I’m low-key hype. What’s made me nervous, is all of the side effects of this virus that are mental and social. Theres so many layers to the ripple effect of the condition of our country right now and they’re impacting people’s lives in a major way. 

Ok let me back up. So in march when it was announced that everything was shutting down, I initially thought that it might last a few months, max. If this was a game show I would have gone home empty handed because i couldn’t have been more wrong.  I usually don’t have much faith in my fellow Americans because people usually just do what’s best for them, but this time i thought it would be different because we were all going the be affected. I was in high school on 9\11 and I remember how people had never been nicer to each other in the following weeks and months, so I naively assumed this would be somewhat similar. A time to look out for the person next to you, because it’s all of our lives we’re fighting for. Yea….if you’ve turned on a tv this summer you can see that my assumption was misguided. In fact, the exposed selfishness is being used to catapult political campaigns on both sides of the isle. I’ve always thought politicians aren’t really the best of us, but rather, individuals that seek the spotlight and power that comes with us. But it seems that the more time goes on, I’m realizing they are a reflection of a lot of our citizens. This isn’t a political term paper so I’ll move on in a minute, just stick with me. I don’t believe for one minute that there’s no cure or treatment, and I’m not a conspiracy theorist by any means, but I’m of the mindset that anything can be eradicated if the proper people make the effort to do so. Homelessness is an example. Trillionaires and governments could end it quickly if they chose. How do i know? Because the government came up with a few trillion in a matter of days to provide a stimulus. If you couple the jobless element, to the restriction, and now paranoia that exists and is peddled by the media, you end up in a situation that we’re in now. The level of uncertainty involving paying bills, kids going to school and a virus on top, is ruling our country. I come from an extremely dangerous city, and i kept asking myself, “if we are all supposed to be quarantined except essential personnel, how is it that he murder rate has sky rocketed in recent months?”  Seems like things would be so much safer now that we’re all supposed to be at home. But then a co-worker asked me if i was afraid of the virus. My response to him gave me some insight to what others are probably feeling as well. I said “ I’ve survived a lot of things and have much more to worry about than something I can escape by simply washing my hands”. It kind of clicked for me. I can imagine there being a large number of people who put the concern for the virus on the back burner because they simply have too many other things to worry about, OR there’s more immediate and present danger waiting for them on the other side of their front door.  Now, mix in a large dose of unemployment and a healthy dose of misguided paranoia and that same disregard for the safety of yourself and others. That can create a slippery slope for violence, misunderstandings and  ton of other things. Once hope is lost in the lack of compassion from one person to another, we become primal in our thinking. A survival mode based off our circumstances. understandable in ways, but, in others, A SICKNESS

Domestic violence is at a peak right now, which just tells me that people aren’t choosing their partners wisely and this time at home is very telling. We all know it’s wrong and despicable, so, pick people YOU ACTUALLY LIKE. A SICKNESS.

Watching politicians turn our issues with society into political positions and the extremely rich become grossly wealthy, I can’t help but wonder if this is all a ploy, like once election day gets close, all of a sudden we’ll have some sort of cure. Hearing that hospitals are over or under reporting deaths and attributing unrelated deaths to corona because of extra grant money they’ll receive is…..whats a word for disturbing but worse? I don’t know but its all bad. Power and money have become the only concerns that most people seem to have and they’ll use the deaths and protests of others to do so. A SICKNESS WE’VE HAD FOR CENTURIES. It’s nothing new.

We love to pretend that we’re all progressive in our thinking. That everyone and everything is and should be accepted. We don’t like criticism and any accountability turns into “hating”. Accountability is where you grow, but can’t tell the internet anything. No matter how twisted an opinion is, there’s someone out there that will agree with you and there’s probably a facebook group or 5 out there that’ll make the nonsense seem normal. On some part of the country they’re changing the name “manhole cover’ because it's “offensive”. yes. That is an issue that someone took to their local government to solve. Look it up. We say we don’t want bullying but the worlds largest gang runs around with badges and guns every day and somehow with out progressive minds, we can’t slow them down. If you said something offensive 15 years ago you can lose your career but today is august 24th and I watched a man shot 7 times in front of his children while being unarmed and I know somehow the media will try to make him into a criminal and that he deserved it. I watched certain communities fight for their rights and I genuinely believe everyone should be able to live however and love whoever they want. What I can’t understand is how there are shows on tv now about accepting pedophelia and how we shouldn’t judge. As a father, no way in hell can I think that’s ok. But society is willing to go that far, to where they’d rather recognize a sinister sexual sickness and orientation, than to properly protect its citizens from a virus and rapid police brutality. I watched a group of officers subdue a 20ft alligator cause “they didn’t want to kill it” but if i get pulled over and breathe the wrong way…..well, you know. I’m “a bad man” as Muhammad Ali would say, but how am I more scary than an alligator? how….A sickness.

I said all of this to say, I don’t know how we move forward, but corona taught me that we have a longer way to go than any of us realized. The NFL owes Colin a massive monetary apology, Wayfair is shipping kids, and I’m terrible with at home workouts. 2020 is a sham.