Bill of Goods?

 Why blogs are stupid. I wrote this in late March 2020. Little did we know.....Many died with this disease. Some died because of it. Its insidiousness lay in how it affected people individually. The Spanish flu pandemic had similar symptoms for everyone, and was more deadly due to poorer health care. (I just wrote a novel about it.)  Anyway, I read this with some embarrassment and some sense that I still have some agreements with it. I'll always feel we overreacted, but at the time it was hard to know what to do. Notice I say "feel;" in my vocabulary that is different from "think."

https://medium.com/six-four-six-nine/evidence-over-hysteria-covid-19-1b767def5894

I tend to agree with this writer. According to the John Hopkins website, .0003 out of 100 on the planet have died with COVID-19, there have been .004 deaths per 100 cases. There are no confirmed cases in my county, Catoosa, in North Georgia, or in Dade, Walker, Gilmer, Murray or several others. Georgia's confirmed cases are .005 per 100. The further one is from a big city, the better off (and I'm within ten miles of Chattanooga).  There is only one confirmed case in Whitfield. Why might that be? We have millionaires living here, and the desperately poor. We have a lower education rate than many places, and we have colleges. Whitfield has a very high Hispanic population. We have one of the busiest interstates in the country running through our counties. So we have diversity and connections. 

As the writer of the article linked at the top mentions, viruses don't recognize political borders.

My suspicions aside, I recommend we do what we're told. I will be a good person and citizen and keep doing what I'm doing; I don't have a big choice. And I may get sick and even die. Any one of us might die tomorrow from any reason. But I'm much less concerned about it than I was six days ago, at least for me. Panic is never a good thing.

I spent way too much time in Walmart yesterday; maybe that will make the differences. From what I could tell, folks around here weren't afraid to shop; they did take all the beef and chicken and Prego spaghetti sauce! Only the Angel Soft brand of toilet paper was left!

We are more fearful about the fear and hysteria than we are the disease. I truly think that as the incidences of deaths go down, the American people will change their tunes and behaviors and realize we've overreacted and allowed the media and governments too much power over us.

All that said, be extremely careful and clean. We are seeing lowering rates dues to precautions. Be a good neighbor, in all the meanings of the word. The Good Samaritan is the the model, and he crossed ethnic barriers and got "dirty."

For me, I'm going to fast from media for a while. But it's hard.