Sunday Morning Post (V.2 #10): Greetings from Montgomery County!
(EDITORS
NOTE: We must admit at the outset that we had reservations about publishing
this entry when Arteejee submitted it to us for editing.)
As you may remember, the last two entries
were full of despondency and anxiety.
Well, fear not! Those moods are
gone. The bad news: it appears that he
has made a 180 degree turn in the other direction and…well, perhaps its best if
we put it out there and you decide.
Greetings
from Montgomery County, one and all! Home to the largest mall (King of Prussia,
by actual retail square footage) in North America! Also, the epicenter of the newly minted
Coronavirus pandemic in the state of Pennsylvania! Yay and yahoo!
Pennsylvania
officials have identified 19 confirmed cases* of Coronavirus in Montco, and a
number of others have been tested. All
are quarantined and the governor declared schools should be closed for two
weeks. This was also the signal for
every adult in the county to suddenly lose their minds, instinctively switch on
their mob mentality, and race to the stores to stock up/hoard every food and
cleaning supply they could think of!
I actually
walked into this panic, not having heard what the governor had declared. I thought I could just walk in, gather up
two weeks of cat food, and walk out.
Ha! I now know I was extremely
naïve to make such assumptions, but I’ll save the details for another time.
The next day,
the governor closed all of the schools in the state in an effort to contain the
virus. After all, why should Montgomery
County have all the fun!
We couldn’t
have done it without the outright neglect and indifference to public health by
the current regime. It was, after all,
the President’s administration who defunded a government agency (created by
that Obama guy during the Ebola outbreak) which would have monitored and
identified the Coronavirus as a possible epidemic months before now. Now, as last week demonstrated, we’re trying
to catch up real fast.
American
business kept a close eye on the situation as the first virus cases were
reported on the west coast. Then Wall
Street got all panicky and started selling off everything. One day it was a few percentage points,
followed by a slight recovery as investors bought stocks at bargain basement
prices. The President gave a national
address to reassure his beloved ones on Wall Street. He announced travel restrictions to keep that
“foreign disease” from spreading, tried to advise people that anyone could get
tested for the disease if they wanted to be tested, and he was thinking about
suspending payroll taxes until after the election.
The speech
was meant to reassure everyone that his administration was on top of the
situation. No one was assured and the next
day the stock market had its worst performance since 1987, dropping over 2,000
points in one day.
Mayday! Mayday!
Mayday!
Please don’t
take our word for it. Let’s go to our
reporter on the floor of stock exchange.
Oh
dear! He seems to be taking the stock
market difficulties a bit too seriously.
You’d think that he was the one that had $2,000 evaporate from his 401k
account in the last two weeks!
The closure
announcements started the next day.
First it was the schools, followed by non-essential businesses, then
government buildings. The federal
government announced the closure of the Senate and House office buildings to
the public until the end of the month.
Federal workers – staffers and members of Congress - will probably be told
to stay home next. How will day-to-day
working of government look? Perhaps we
should look in on CSPAN for a clue.
Well, that
didn’t look good. Either the senator has
caught the virus, or CSPAN has opted to show Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in
a continuous loop until everyone comes back to work. Actually, given the current state of our
dysfunctional government today, Mr. Smith is more reassuring than reality
television at this point. I get the vibe
that our system will survive…even if we human beings don’t survive.
On second
thought, don’t come near Montgomery County and stay home for a few weeks. We’re closed: our schools and the malls. Yes, even King of Prussia!
*as of Saturday
afternoon, March 14, 2020.
(Thank you
for reading. No Wall Street tycoons were
harmed in the production of this post.
Lucky them!)
4 Comments:
Everything's cancelled or closed here too, except schools (for the moment). Our malls are open, but on reduced hours.
We're up to 5 cases here in Cumberland County. It's going to get worse, mostly because Republicans are believing their Idiot Jerk in the White House. I do not doubt they are self-infecting.
If there is anything good about all this is people may come to their senses about the present government and the failings of our systems - and do something about it.
Hi Debra.It's gotten worse here. The governor has closed the liquor stores.
Perhaps if we mark our doors with some sort of entrails then whole mess will pass over the houses in the blue states, Dave. R.
Thank you, Spo. I'm not holding my breath for that to happen, but we can still dream.
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