Too Old To Fly

May 6, 2020 The Long Haul Day 48 The silent majority! It is time to speak up, to speak up loudly. It is time to open your window and scream into the night: “I am mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore.” No, I am not invoking the words of Howard Beale from the 1976 film “Broadcast News” to issue a clarion-call for an end to quarantine. Just the opposite. We must open slowly, pay attention to the science and listen to the medical experts. My message. Stay home, wear a mask, respect others. Keep us all safe. The majority of Americans support the stay-at-home orders and social distancing rules that have kept most of us in our homes for the past six weeks. Most Americans wear masks willingly when they do venture out. Many make their own masks and do what they can to support the front-line medical staff and first responders. Most Americans have responded admirably to the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some have not. A noisy, dangerous minority arguing that live...

  May 4, 2020 The Long Haul Day 46 Dairy farmers are dumping millions of gallons of fresh milk in Wisconsin. Acres of cucumbers are rotting in sun-baked fields in Florida. Pigs on sprawling feed lots across Iowa are being euthanized and composted. A billion pounds of surplus potatoes have been stuffed into Washington State warehouses. And tens of thousands of laying hens have been butchered in Minnesota. Slaughterhouses and meat-packing plants have been shuttered. The massive, refrigerated 18-wheelers that move food along Interstate highways all across America sit idle. Thousands of workers have been displaced and many are afraid to return to a workplace they consider to be a Covid-19 breeding ground. It sounds biblical. It is not. It is America today. The supply-side of the American food chain is broken because the demand-side, as it existed before the coronavirus, has collapsed. Americans still have enough to eat for now but most restaurants are closed.  This by it...

May 2, 2020 The Long Haul Day 44 Herd immunity is a dangerous, deadly, irresponsible concept. If it becomes public policy a million Americans, most of them old, poor and disenfranchised, will die needlessly.  Politicians who embrace the concept should be removed from office. Businesses that embrace the concept should be boycotted. Protesters who ignore the facts in favor of their narrow self interest should be publicly shamed. Seniors need to step up. They have enormous political and economic clout. It is time to stand tall and be heard. Call your congressman or woman, the governor and state reps. Tell them herd immunity is not a solution and a non-stop trip to defeat at the polls in November. Herd immunity is an epidemiological concept. It describes the point at which people are immune and an infectious disease has nowhere to go so it dies out. There are only two sure-fire paths to immunity: be infected and survive or be vaccinated.  There is no vaccine for Covid-...

April 30, 2020 The Long Haul Day 42 George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant and William McKinley. Who are they? Presidents of course! But their mugs adorn our paper currency, specifically the $1, $2, $5, $20, $50 and $500 bills. To the extent that Americans know what these guys looked like, it is because they stare quickly at their faces before paying for a gallon of milk, a six pack of beer or Ben and Jerry’s  latest. We do not want to mistake a $20 for a $1; George keeps us from making that costly error! You are out of my league if you pass over a William McKinley to pay for a pint of Chunky Monkey. You are out of my league if you have ever seen a William McKinley. You are either a banker or a drug dealer if you have ever seen a William McKinley! We learned about the presidents in school but most of us know these guys because we carry their image in our wallets, purses and pocketbooks. Will our grandchildren know these pr...

April 28, 2020 The Long Haul Day 40 We are all socialists now! The word “now” is relative; the phrase is not new. It crops up every time a major crisis disrupts our lives. After President Obama was first elected, a Newsweek cover declared:  “We are all socialists now.”  The American right attacked the Obama presidency as socialist, meaning foreign and un-American. The Obama stimulus package was socialist. Obamacare was socialist. This was the right-wing, bird-song for eight years. Bernie Sanders brought some legitimacy to the term in the 2016 election. Before Bernie, socialism was a synonym for communism and the deadly, the iron-fisted rule of its most infamous adherents: Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Pol Pot. This is especially true for the “boomer” generation that is only just now beginning to cede power in this country. Bernie’s vision never had a chance. It did not matter that he embraced the politics of Sweden and not the Soviet Union. A socialist is a socialist is...

April 26, 2019 The Long Haul Day 38 Quarantine fatigue is the latest weapon in Covid-19’s well-stocked quiver. A Trojan horse has suddenly appeared outside our sturdy, fortified homes, sweetly luring, enticing, cajoling survivors to lower the drawbridge and breach the walls that protected us during the six-week Covid-19 siege. A simple, hypnotic, siren-song, quietly repeated thousands of times each day, draws many like lemmings looking for a cliff. “Come out! Come out! All clear! All clear!” Quarantine is difficult. It is growing harder to huddle in the safety of our homes. We are anxious to return to our “old” lives even if it means marching into the bright light of an uncertain future. So it is clear that if a poison arrow does not drop the first to slowly cross the moat, the numbers returning to the world will swell and produce a surge that for some will be a short march toward disease and death. Covid-19 has an agenda: Infect everyone on the planet. Left unchecked, re...

April 24, 2020 The Long Haul Day 36 Nothing about the Covid-19 virus makes sense! The more we learn, the more confused we become and the less we know. It is a given that politics will do little to help us understand and defeat the virus. Our political system was irreparably broken long before Covid-19 reached our shores. It will not be repaired in the next election either, no matter who is elected president for we are a nation divided against itself. We are politically divided by almost every demographic: age, geography, income, education, race, religion etc. The list is endless. Doubters and optimists need only look at the political makeup and actions of Congress to come face-to-face with the inescapable reality: Nothing unifies us, not even the greatest threat our nation has faced since World War II. A vibrant, roaring economic comeback will not help us understand and defeat the virus either. It will surely make things worse, prolong the outbreak and lead to more cases an...