Even me, the most optimistic of people is having a hard time keeping my head up and pushing forward through this pandemic. The most problematic thing is that every time I think of something I don’t want canceled or delayed five minutes later it’s shut down:
- March Madness- Canceled
- NBA season- Postponed
- Schools- Shut down
- MVP- Shut Down
- Bowling Alley’s- Shut Down
- Restaurant’s- Shut Down (but you can get carry out as long as there are only five customers at a time waiting for their food and they remain six feet apart as they wait)
This entire thing feels somewhat arbitrary and capricious. Here’s an idea, instead of putting everyone into quarantine, how about putting those who are high risk into quarantine and let everyone else go about their normal business so this thing spreads and runs its course? Basic math would tell you that this is not as dire as the media and the government want the citizenry to believe:
3,487 known cases in the United States out of 370 million people. That is .0009% of the population that has been inflicted with corona.
56 known cases in Michigan out of roughly 9,800,000 people. That is .0006% infection rate in the Great Lakes state.
I get that there are plenty of cases out there that have not been diagnosed due to a lack of symptoms or people thinking they have something else. However, Fox News interviewed a high risk person who contracted the virus on a cruise and ended up being tested because they were on the cruise not because they were symptamatic. Neither he or his wife became sick even though they had the virus.
Of the roughly 150,000 people who die each day across the globe, about two thirds—100,000 per day—die of age-related causes.
Seasonal flu kills 291,000 to 646,000 people worldwide each year, according to anew estimate that’s higher than the previous one of 250,000 to 500,000 deaths a year. The new figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other groups were published Dec. 13 in The Lancet medical journal.
There have been 85 deaths so far in the US and 25 of them came out of one single retirement home in Kirkland Washington. Now, I understand that you don’t want to over tax the hospitals with those who need treatment, but if you quarantine the high risk segment of the population that should limit those who are likely to be admitted into the hospital were they to contract the corona virus. The biggest problem I have currently other than not being able to play basketball 12 times a week is that the one distraction from every day life is gone. Sports as we know it other than the Iditarod and MMA have been postponed. For those of you who don’t know this, I am a frequent listener to podcasts (I even listened to two podcasts that specifically addressed the corona virus) and most of the podcasts I listened to are sports related. Yesterday I was forced to listen to stand up comedy because I was out of podcast material. I stumbled upon this
but was unable to get it to play because my youtube settings were on restricted mode due to the fact that my kids frequently watch youtube on my phone. (I’m not the one who put my youtube settings on restricted mode, Shirley must have) However, I was able to easily go into Youtube and turn off restricted mode so that I could listen to the stand up comedian I had discovered. This was alarming to me, if I was able to turn off the restricted setting that easily I’m certain my kids, along with anyone over the age of 3 could also accomplish the task. I’m glad youtube makes it so easy to turn off restricted mode for my sake and the sake of my phone (I would have thrown it against the wall if I wouldn’t have disabled restricted mode, that’s how much corona fatigue I have) however, the reality is that any parental controls that parents are able to disarm can also be disarmed by children.
While this corona thing has put a crimp in my adherence to a routine, having shut down not only the basketball courts but also many courts of law through out the entire state of Michigan, there is one blessing from all of this. The YMCA canceled the rest of the winter sports seasons for all of their activities. Is it worth it to lose everything else in my life (besides alcohol) that keeps me sane? Probably not, but I am going to focus on the good that comes out of this as much as I can. Now people seem to be accepting this whole idea that anything involving human contact needs to be shut down for the time being, however if there was some link between alcohol consumption increasing the likelihood of contracting the virus and the banned alcohol consumption for the time being, that would be the straw that would break the camel’s back. There would be rioting in the streets and a call to return to normal everyday life with most of Americans ready to take this corona virus head on, that’s how much alcohol means to us, it’s even more American than apple pie and baseball. Are apple pie and baseball going to help you cope with having your kids home from school for the next three weeks? Hell no, you could eat apple pie until your skin turns red and you begin to grow a stem and it isn’t going to keep you from turning into Jack Nicholson’s character in the Shining. Booze on the other hand, is the answer to all of our problems.
While this virus has completely torpedoed most industries, it is yet to be seen how it is going to impact the criminal defense industry. My feeling is it could go a couple different ways. The first possibility is that people get so sick of being around their families that domestic violence offenses reach new highs and we at the West Michigan Defense Team end up with a record number of cases due to the amount of time people are stuck with their families. The other way this could go is that due to everyone being caged like wild animals in their homes, no one is out and about committing crimes and the only sector worse off than we are is the Cruise Ship industry. Obviously I am hoping to stay busy through this fiasco, but me staying busy isn’t always in society’s best interest.
This entire ordeal would be much easier to stomach if there was a specified end date where everyone knew life would get back to normal. The uncertainty of it all is the most perplexing part of it. I’m not speaking to the uncertainty of what the corona virus does to most people, which is little to nothing, the uncertainty of when things are going to reconvene so the economy and most importantly me, can get back to living again. While the closures put in place by Whitmer are set to expire at midnight not he last day of March, it’s not inconceivable that those temporary closures will be extended well past that point. On top of that some sports may cancel the rest of their season and those that continue likely won’t begin again until summer. The NFL free agent period can get us through a few weeks and then there is the NFL draft (the best day of the NFL year for every lions fan) but after that the sports landscape will be a wasteland until some of this shit starts up again.
So, what does besides pickle their liver in an attempt to get through the next few months. Adapt baby, that’s what you have to do. While I checked out four books from the library before it shut down (I had no idea it was shutting down) reading isn’t going to fill the void left by shutting down sports. However, I have started watching succession on HBO and there are countless hours of other streamable shows that will get me through until the weather finally breaks and I can start doing stuff outside on a regular basis. I have gotten so desperate, and I thought this was actually decades off, that I am playing pickle ball this afternoon just to engage in a competitive somewhat active “sport”. While beating Shirley in Quirkle last night was satisfying, it’s not the same as winning in sports.
(those guys put the pickle in pickle ball)
serenitynowinsanitylatercom 