Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
My Pearl Harbor Moment
On April 5, the Surgeon General warned us that we needed to brace ourselves for the worst week in our lives. The coming week, and the week that followed, were expected to be the pinnacle of the crisis, and we had to be prepared: “This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it’s not going to be localized. It’s going to be happening all over the country, and I want America to understand that.”
But now that we have made it through the hell that was the last two weeks, I find myself with a moment to look back on the miseries I have just survived, as difficult as it is to think about some of them.
Like the time last week when my daughter put a particular flavor of gelato on the grocery list. But the first store I went to didn’t have that flavor, so I had to go to another store.
Or the time I was in the mood for a good burger, but I discovered that our favorite local burger place was temporarily closed. I thought about just going to McDonald’s, but they’re offering only a limited menu right now, and I didn’t feel like compromising.
And then, on another night when we were in the mood for Mexican, the local place was so busy that they didn’t answer the phone the first time I called to place an order. I had to call them again from the parking lot and then sit there and wait for almost 15 minutes before they brought our order out to the car.
Meanwhile, the liquor store has adopted a “one customer at a time” policy, so I had to wait in line outside for almost five minutes before my turn.
But on a more serious note, I have been watching as our state grapples with a health-care crisis of unimaginable proportions. According to the statistics I’ve seen, our hospitals are almost nearly overwhelmed, with several hundred of the state’s 7,000 hospital beds occupied.
I knew, before the Surgeon General’s wakeup call, that this pandemic was going to be very hard on some people in some places. That there were people who were sick, and others who were putting their lives on the line to help them. But if I hadn’t been warned, I wouldn’t have known that during these last two weeks the suffering would spread to every corner of the country and be the “hardest and saddest” time in most of our lives. And yet somehow we survived.
Someday people will ask me what it was like to live through the national hell that was April of 2020, and I will just have to tell them: “There’s no way you can possibly understand.”
Published in General
You need to sneak out of the harbor and go someplace friendlier.
Oh, for crying out loud.
Phil, he’s joking. But you’re right, it’s not funny. I get that reaction from people i long considered sane.
Ironically, just yesterday I mentioned the boat situation to a friend, hoping for some sympathy. He has been out sailing with me several times. Instead I got a stern look, and a “Bruce, c’mon. Boating is non-essential. Better safe than sorry.”
[insert teeth grinding]
It would appear that a certain type of madness has been spreading faster than any Chinese virus…
Reverse Bill of Rights: Anything not specifically allowed is forbidden.
That’s why all governors are going to have to require the sarcasm font when their underlings post sarcastically. It’s getting more difficult to tell the difference.
Maybe this isn’t necessary, because most commenters seem to have gotten my point. But since this post got promoted, I feel like I need to add some comments of my own.
I wrote this post and saved it and debated for a while before finally deciding to publish it. I was hesitant because I knew that someone would miss my point. Nowhere did I say that the pandemic was trivial, nor did I suggest that people weren’t suffering; in fact, I revised my post before publishing it, going out of my way to acknowledge those facts explicitly.
My point was simply to draw attention to the overblown, apocalyptic statements some of the experts had made, in which they warned that all of us, everywhere in the country, would be enduring unprecented misery during the middle of April. The experts naturally have their attention focused on the places where the crisis is at its worst, and that’s as it should be; but they need to be careful not to let their laser focus make them think everyone, everywhere, is dealing with the same problems they are. Quite simply, we aren’t.
So when the surgeon general said that all of us, in all parts of the country, needed to brace ourselves for the worst week in our lives, that was counterproductive, in that it accomplished little but to stir up anxiety and despair, and to detract from his own credibility. This pandemic is extremely serious. It doesn’t need to be exaggerated.
I like those last two sentences in particular.
By the way, I wasn’t reacting to your post when I objected to the use of the word “trivial”. It was a comment made by someone else, who has since clarified what he meant.