For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to the news lately, there’s an outbreak of something called, COVID-19. I don’t know what happened to the first 18, but apparently this is one bad-ass virus.

So, everywhere you look, society is shifting, our world is evolving. Now, with 360-million Americans running around there that leaves rooms for all kinds of beliefs to develop as to what’s really going on out there.

There’s the theory that this all started with someone eating a bat sandwich in a wet market. I love the speculation that since 5G was first tried in Wuhan (where this virus supposedly originated), that the spread of the virus is somehow linked to 5G.  China has claimed that it’s something the U.S. put out there. There are the Bill Gates’ accusers, who say HE started this, just so we’d all need an inoculation to save us, only to use that as a path to have people inject tiny little tracking devises into our systems. Oh, and then there was the theory out of Cambridge that the coronavirus actually started last September and maybe not even in China.

Let us pause here to review what we actually know:

1. COVID-19 spreads like wildfire.  Ask the 60-choir members who got together up in Mount Vernon last month, maintaining social distance and using lots of hand-sanitizer. 45 members ended up with the virus, two died.
2. You may not show symptoms up to five days after contracting it. So, you feel fine, you get together with friends, your aunt and some neighbors and one swoop, you’ve infected a half-dozen people.
3. The virus gets airborne. It lives on surfaces for up to several weeks. You’ve got your phone out, a floating droplet latches on, you put the phone up against your face and welcome to the club.
4. Social distancing works. If you aren’t where sick people have been, you can’t get sick.
5. Wearing a mask is a good idea. That wasn’t the recommendation when this started, but probably should have been.  If you have to go out, wear a mask. It would be a shame to have made it this far, only to come down with it now.
6. Our first fatality from the virus was on February 29th. Since then, over 42,000 have died. That’s in just 51 days.

And now you’ve got people saying, “You’re suppressing our rights!” and demanding that they be allowed to go back out there.

Being a big of the U.S. Constitution, I’m all about an individuals rights. However, something that’s missing in that wonderful document is…well, maybe it’s time for a new amendment: the right to be stupid.

So, let me get this straight. Even with stay-at-home orders, social distancing, hand sanitizer, endless hand-washing and masks, 42,000 people have died and you want to get back out there and act like everything’s normal?  This may surprise you, but I completely support you.

Before I go further, let me review my political stance–right in the friggin’ middle. I like to make my own decisions, not have one party or the other give me blanket answers for every issue. I was raised Republican, live in an extremely blue state, but enjoy talking politics when it can be civil. Although, truthfully, that’s tough to come by these days.

So, as a by-stander watching history happen right before us, I see a group of people holding up their Trump Posters and saying the government is suppressing them. I would say the government was trying to save them from themselves, but I’ve grown weary. So, get back out there. Suck in the air, mingle with people, share a beer with someone you don’t know. Because the world has seen this show before.

In 1918, the “Spanish Flu” arrived and people were asked to stay indoors. One 104-year-old survivor was on our news recently and she remembers her parents telling her the story of how they took her up into the mountains to protect her from the flu. The biggest lesson from that pandemic was that there was an outbreak, that started to subside. But with the end of World War I, people were done being locked up inside and living in fear and it was during that second wave that the flu claimed the majority of its victims. The first outbreak killed 5-million people. The second wave claimed upwards of 50-million.

So, yeah, get back out there. I mean, if the Democrats and the Republicans were teams and I were coaching the Democrats, I’d be saying, “Yeah, get them back out there with the virus. Sadly, those people will lose a lot of the people they love, if not their own lives. But they won’t be around to vote in November.”

If you don’t believe me or the experts, ask the mayor of New Orleans who didn’t want to cancel Mardi Gras because of the impact it would have had on the local merchants. Ask the governor of Georgia, who at a press conference a couple of weeks ago, actually said, “Why didn’t they tell us that you could be contagious and not have symptoms?”  Apparently, common sense travels slowly.

There’s the old joke about the guy on the roof of his house after a big flood.

A rowboat passes by and says, “Hop on in!” and the guy says, “No, God will save me.”

Next, a power boat pulls up and says, “C’mon, get in!” and the guy replied, “Nope, God will save me.”

Then, a helicopter flies overhead, drops a rope and says, “Grab on”! and the guy yells out, “No! God will save me.”

Well, the waters continue to rise, the guy drowns and wakes up in heaven. The first thing he says to God is, “Hey, how come you didn’t save me?” and God replied,

“Well, I tried. I sent two boats and a helicopter.”

Use your brain. If only for a while, pretend we’re all on the same side. On the other side of this, those of us still here will have a lot of stories to share.

Yeah, I just had to say something.

Tim Hunter