Hopes and prayers: Mike Pence leading a prayer meeting in the White House to wish the coronavirus outbreak to just go away.

The coronavirus pandemic has a silver lining for us introverts.  We can finally claim we're not being anti-social, we're only self-quarantining.    

My self-quarantine this week was as much due to the four days of heavy rain as it was to any fear of infection.  But the rain finally stopped today and it was finally sunny outside, and I used the day, in part, to drive a few miles north and visit the empty condo in Vinings.   

Atlanta looked like a police state.  There were City of Atlanta cops and Georgia State Troopers parked at every intersection.  Police cars were idling in every public parking lot. They were everywhere and the presence was unmistakable.  For  awhile, they completely shut Interstate I-75 to all traffic,  not allowing anybody on the highway.

Although it looked like a post-apocalyptic scene from a 28 Days Later sequel, it was actually a response to a visit to our fair city by Dumbledorf Pumpernickel.  Our president decided to use the day today to shut down our roads during afternoon rush hour so he could get a 15-minute photo op at the CDC to create the appearance that he was doing something about the pandemic.  People were unable to commute home on the highway and the side streets were clogged with traffic just to he could use the authority of the CDC as a backdrop for his political grandstanding.

The news this morning - it was all over the radio - was that the president had cancelled his planned trip here today so that the CDC "could do its job" without the distraction of his visit.  But he apparently dithered on his decision ("Should I or shouldn't I?")  and then decided to come down anyway (happy, happy, joy, joy). I don't know the reasons for his changing decisions, but I will guarantee you they had more to do with polling and perception than with anything to do with actually fighting the pandemic.

And what a press conference he gave!  He wore his stupid red MAGA hat as if the CDC visit was just another campaign event and interrupted the briefing to ask a Fox News reporter if his town hall on the network the night before had good ratings.  He called the governor of Washington state, the epicenter of a major outbreak, a snake ("I told Mike (Pence) not to be complimentary of that Gov because that Gov is a snake. . . Let me just tell you we have a lot of problems with the Gov and the Gov of WA. That's where you have many of your problems, OK? So Mike may be happy with him but I'm not, OK?").  

He made false and exaggerated claims about the availability of coronavirus tests, ignoring the reality that there is a shortage of test kits among US healthcare providers right now.   He said he would prefer if people on the Grand Princess cruise remained on the ship so that US numbers would not go up.

He gloated about his innate ability to understand the pandemic, claiming that the doctors around him wondered "How do you know so much about this?" "Maybe I have a natural ability," he answered his own rhetorical question. Sad.

Today, it was announced that the massive South-By-Southwest music festival had been ordered shut down by the mayor of Austin due to coronavirus concerns.  I'm anxiously watching the Big Ears festival's web site for any announcements about that event (three weeks away!).  But the president said he has not considered canceling any of his campaign rallies and that he is not worried about the risks.

Meanwhile, here in Georgia, confirmed coronavirus cases are still limited to just two - a father and son who, along with the rest of their family, just returned from a visit to Milan, Italy.  But now two schools have also been shut down.  The affected family home-schools their children, but they still attend some classes at private schools, and despite coming back from a global virus epicenter while experiencing "flu-like symptoms," they still let one of their children go to the private school.  That school shut down when it learned that the potentially infected student had visited, and then a second private school shut down when another student who also attends classes at the first shut-down school started exhibiting flu-like symptoms.  

And this is the banality of how an epidemic spreads, observed at the personal, victim-to-victim level. I haven't heard their side of the story yet (names are being protected for privacy) but it seems incredibly irresponsible for a family to return from Milan and send their kids out to public classes while other members of the family are obviously ill.  Maybe there's a good reason but I can't think of it, other than some people just think rules don't apply to them, and that they couldn't possibly be responsible for anything bad that might happen.  

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they're a family of white people (you don't see perceived privilege like that in other communities).  I'm going to go further out on that limb and guess that they're affluent and probably Trump supporters.  

Dumb bastards.