Shelter-In-Place Involuntary Quarantine, Day 11: On Day 11, I'm starting to lose sympathy for my species. Stopping this pandemic is actually the easiest thing in the world, we just have to literally do nothing for two weeks, but that's apparently too complicated for some people. Maybe we deserve a swift extinction for our stupidity . . .
House cleaned section five of seven today, but nothing interesting to say about that.
I actually got out of the house today! My dear friend and frequent concert buddy Lesley was kind enough to do me a stellar favor and sew me a couple of cloth face masks, and I drove by her house to pick them up today. Traffic was light, but hardly non-existent - it wasn't a bumper-to-bumper crawl like most hours of most days now. It was not unlike what afternoon traffic would have been like on a weekday in Atlanta back in the 90s.
I had earlier called my former employer and asked if they had any face masks left (I recall once seeing a case or two of them in the storeroom for asbestos work), but the boss said they were all out, meaning he had them but he wasn't sharing any with me.
As long as I was out and about, I stopped at the supermarket just to replenish some of my stock. Still no toilet paper or paper towels (although I'm still good), but if they're sincere about all the signs they have up encouraging people to practice social distancing in the store, they should remove all of those promotional bins and tables of sale merchandise from the center of the aisles so people can maneuver around without having to squeeze past each other. "Stay six feet apart as you squeeze through this two-foot-wide passageway we created for you!"
And then there's our dumb-ass, cheating, Republican governor, Brian Kemp.
As you may recall, as Secretary of State, he purged Georgia's voters rolls and then continued to oversee the very gubernatorial election in which he was running. During the campaign, he ran ads in which he pointed a shotgun at a teenage boy he claimed wanted to date his daughter, and rolled around in his pickup truck saying he might have to round up the "illegals" and drive them back to Mexico himself. Despite enormous pressure otherwise, including an endorsement from our so-called "president" for a different candidate, he picked the politically inexperienced multi-millionaire Kelly Loeffler for the Senate seat vacated by Johnny Isakson. Loeffler promptly got caught with her hand in the cookie jar after it was learned that she dumped stock after a closed-door Senate hearing on the coronavirus pandemic, although she continued to publicly say that there was no crisis, everything was under control.
Anyway, dumb-ass, cheating, Republican governor Brian Kemp is now claiming that he hadn't ordered a statewide shelter-in-place rule earlier because he didn't know until this week that people without flu-like symptoms can still spread the disease. That was a game-changer to him, and he finally ordered a shut down until April 13. I don't know what rock he's been living under, because I knew the virus could be transmitted by asymptomatic people even back when it was being reported that it was still confined to China.
He must be getting his pandemic information from Kelly Loeffler's press releases. Or maybe he doesn't know what the word "asymptomatic" means (he's dumb).
Either he's incredibly stupid and is willfully ignoring all of the CDC's advisories and public information about the pandemic he's charged with protecting Georgians from. Or else he knew and he's lying, but he thinks Georgians are stupid enough to either believe him or let him get away with it. The man continues to dismay with his every action.
So to summarize for those of you keeping score at home, I started self-isolating back on March 13 when I developed a sore throat and raspy cough, and 10 days into my self-quarantine, the mayor ordered Atlanta shut down for two weeks, i.e, through April 7. Then 10 days into the city-wide shutdown, the governor had his moment of clarity and extended the shelter-in-place rule until April 13. At that point, I will have been in isolation for 30 days, but as people are still leaving the house and mingling and partying and hooking up, the pandemic will continue even longer and 30 days probably won't be the end of it.
So don't call me a cranky old boomer for getting so dismayed at my fellow sapiens that part of me is wishing for my species' swift extinction.
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