The asteroid had struck a hundred miles away mere moments ago. The shock wave had knocked the T. Rex to the ground, but it struggled to its feet and turned in the direction of the blast. Always an apex predator, it feared nothing. What it wanted, it took. A creature of unmatched strength and enormous appetite, the T. Rex made the only behavioral choice it could. It roared threats in the direction of the shock wave and increasing heat. Then, as other creatures ran past it in the opposite direction to buy themselves time, it trotted full speed towards the oncoming threat. As it loped into the increasingly scalding air, it never really grasped that perhaps the other animals had a better idea.
So where are we today, May 8th? The emperor has been revealed as exceedingly naked and has been, it turned out, trying to recruit us for a nudist camp. The administration's farcical official predictions and projections of the last two months have been revealed as desensitization tools. We are now lied to in other ways. Testing is overrated. We need to open businesses now. We are (with all respect to bone spur bravery) warriors of the economic front.
Puh-leese. The good news is that the general public is just about all caught up. Everybody has the information. Everyone can see the numbers. The virus tsunami is no longer some mythical event beyond the horizon. It's upon us, and we can taste the brine.
What we have now are plutocrats trying to direct us down a primrose path by muzzling cartographers who demonstrate that the path in question leads directly off a very steep cliff.
Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona uncouples his states' modeling scientists from the official data base. After the public uproar, he reinstates them (https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2020/05/07/state-un-fires-scientists-but-gov-ducey-listen-them/3092804001/). The CDC's 17 pages of detailed re-opening instructions for businesses and churches are shelved for editing. They are, evidently, too restrictive. States that do not meet any task force guidelines at all are re-opening. And, oh yes, the task force was about to be shelved, but the public feedback resulted in the task force now allegedly serving in perpetuity. Reporting rules for confirmed cases, meanwhile, are tweaked so that "today is fewer than yesterday" numbers result.
The administration is trying to funnel as much information as they can through filters, a la the Vietnam War. Too many holes in the informational dike, however, to pull this off in 2020. Too many deaths on American soil.
It's a cynical, barbaric strategy. Open the red states, where the GOP has great information control, and then spin and depress numbers and hope for the best. The way they lose is if things get really, obviously bad. Then the GOP will rotate a daily spotlight on whichever states are not taking a virus beating. If things go as anticipated, the GOP will eventually become an extension of the Montana chamber of commerce.
Basically, we have scientists and health professionals strongly warning against these re-openings. You have, opposite them, a cheerleading GOP. Reality is going to choose a side.
Bob Dietz
May 8, 2020
