We’re in it now. As of this afternoon, Vermont has 95 cases of COVID-19 and five deaths; but those figures represent only a moment in rapidly moving time.
When I take my little dog out for our daily walk through the empty streets of St. Albans, I am largely impressed by my neighbors’ self-discipline. We pass only the very occasional individual or couple, also out for a walk; we wave from a careful distance and wish each other health.
If only this sort of distancing was being observed everywhere.
Social distancing is the single most important thing we can do in this crisis, but the President of the United States is dangerously using his “bully pulpit” to undermine that message and the urgency of the situation.
Rather than focussing on supporting the needs of the poor, the sick and the unemployed, Donald Trump has turned his attention on the fantasy casino that is the U.S. stock exchange.
As it gyrates wildly in a largely downward trajectory, he’s throwing good money after bad to prop it up, yet another time.
His daily press appearances get longer and longer, further and further distanced from reality: orgies of self-congratulatory nonsense. He doesn’t want to listen to anyone who isn’t singing his praises, yet he assumes that the American people have an endless appetite for his repetitious blather.
This isn’t news. We’re all stuck indoors, at the mercy of the ever worsening news cycle; and a side helping of Trump talk goes with every serving. I promise myself daily that I won’t get sucked-in, but it’s damned hard not to peek every so often to find out what he’s been up to.
The answer is always the same: no good.
So I go back to knitting, reading, writing and planning our storeroom dinner, with the occasional reach out via Skype or FaceTime to family and friends.
It feels, for all the world, like the end of one of those “Twilight Zone” episodes, where an ordinary family awaits the apocalypse, all the while maintaining the routines of an irrelevant past.
“Bolt the hatch and pass the potatoes, Ma.”