Don’t Stop Now…

While our offices are still closed to the public here at the paper, there are four of us who come in and get things done that we can’t do from home. Fortunately, none of us have gotten sick and we’re still practicing social distancing with each other.

But during a recent conversation, one of my co-workers made a couple of astute observations.

“I’m not seeing nearly as many masks,” he said, “and there’s a lot more traffic in the past few days.”

He was right on both accounts. About a month ago, you could drive down Highway 77 and there might be two or three other vehicles on the road over any given stretch.

Today, it’s basically back to regular normal flow, outside of the before and after school rush.

Same thing with the masks. On my first couple of trips to Walmart during the pandemic, it was practically a ghost town, and I’d say about half were wearing masks (some folks apparently never did get the memo). I went again this past Sunday and I’d say it was down to about a third (althogh most, if not all employees were wearing them).

Look, I know this pandemic is a pain in the butt, but it’s less of a pain to wear a mask or to socially isolate than it is to catch COVID-19 or spread it to someone who might die from it, but we’re not out of this yet. We might not even be over the hump (or the curve might not be flat enough).

So, don’t stop following guidelines for keeping you and everyone else. Wash your hands, wear a mask, stay at

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least six feet away from everyone. Keep it up… please!

Or, for some of you… you know… start.

I say that last part, again, because the longer this goes on, the more I think about all the people who completely blew this whole thing off. I’ll admit, I was very reluctant to be a party to this whole isolation/quarantine thing. I thought it was completely crazy to shut everything down and cancel all the important events.

But the more I learned about what was happening and how it could be a complete catastrophe, I came around. I did my part, and the least some of these people who could not care less about being a part of the problem is wash their freaking hands and throw on a mask.

Yes, the more I think about the “oh well, who cares?” attitude of many people, the madder I get. Not just because they are running around like people aren’t dying and not just because they feel the need to spin everything like they are the only ones being reasonable about the pandemic, but because when this whole thing is finally over, they’re going to be the ones saying, “See? I told you it wasn’t going to be that bad. I told you everyone was overreacting!”

They’ll see the efforts that everyone went to to “flatten the curve” and think they were the smart ones. I even heard someone actually proudly proclaiming victory because “only seven people in the county have died.”

I wish I could put them in the same room as the families of those who have died from the coronavirus.

I wish they could tell them just how smart they really are…