This week’s Here’s Something continues a three-part series concerning pet peeves inspired by life during the coronavirus. Without further adieu, let’s get to it:
It’s severely frustrating, five months into this outbreak, that we don’t even know where this new coronavirus originated.
John Balentine, a former managing editor for the Lakes Region Weekly, lives in Windham.
Was it from the “wet markets” in Wuhan, or was it deliberately or accidentally released from a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology? The Chinese are saying America’s military created it. You’d think we’d concretely know how this world-changing illness originated by now. I’m guessing we’ll probably never know.
In a related pet peeve concerning origins of outbreaks, I’m thoroughly peeved that big city leaders and many in the media don’t blame, ever or in the slightest, Black Lives Matter demonstrators and rioters for spiking cases. We were doing OK regarding overall cases before the protests started in late May and then, about two weeks after the first mass demonstrations took place, we got hammered with positive cases and rising deaths.
I’m sure the spike wasn’t completely caused by BLM’s close quarters and oftentimes maskless protesting and rioting, but the fact that the media has gone to great lengths to minimize their potential impact tells you all you need to know about the politics of this pandemic. If there were KKK protesters burning the streets down, you can be sure they’d be fully blamed for rising cases.
Mayors of big cities, to this day, are still outlawing bars, restaurants, churches and other mass-gathering places while allowing protests to continue unabated. That’s wrong. New York City’s Democrat Mayor Bill de Blasio is particularly famous for choosing who can assemble and who can’t.
“This is a historic moment of change,” de Blasio told CNN in July regarding why he’s allowing the mass gathering of protesters and not other groups. “We have to respect that but also say to people the kinds of gatherings we’re used to, the parades, the fairs – we just can’t have that while we’re focusing on health right now.”
Picking winners and losers, that’s what Democrats do best.
Another pet peeve of mine regards how people are referencing the faltering economy. We hear constantly how the coronavirus has caused the economy to shrink. No, the pandemic is not causing our economic malaise; the government response has caused our economic troubles. Critical thinking is in critical condition here in gullible America.
Politicians’ heavy-handed, overly cautious and stretched-out shutdown – not the virus – is hamstringing our country. We were sold on a 15-day shutdown, not the ridiculousness that is now approaching the half-year mark.
An associated aspect of the government response irks me, too. The terms “essential worker” and “non-essential worker” make my blood boil.
Just as all lives matter, not just Black ones, all work is essential, too. We are all essential because we need everyone’s talents to keep America great.
Speaking of workers, and especially those “non-essential” ones staying at home, I’m peeved in general by video conferencing.
Every Zoom user and every TV host and commentator broadcasting from home has backdrops of bookshelves and other views of their home living space. I’m intrigued by these backdrops and find them distracting.
I can’t wait until everyone gets off Zoom so I can focus on what they’re saying rather than trying to figure out their biases based on what books they’ve read, or, more aptly, purchased because they look good on a bookshelf.
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