On March 16, 2020, a nationwide COVID-19 emergency was declared for 15 days – to flatten the curve.
And now, a mere 1,135 days later, the 15-day nationwide emergency is lastly over, with an announcement signed behind closed doorways on the White House and this terse official assertion from the White House:
“On Monday April 10, 2023 the President signed into law: H.J. Res. 7, which terminates the national emergency related to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
And, er, that was about it.
No ticker tape parades. No huge celebrations in Times Square with sailors grabbing younger ladies and kissing them. No honking horns. No two-hour specials on state-run TV networks with Dr. Anthony Fauci reminiscing concerning the Good Old COVID Days.
So that is how the Panic ends, to paraphrase the poet, not with a bang however a whimper.
You couldn’t name it V-C day, as a result of the Red Chinese flu remains to be round. But then, the rip-off was by no means about COVID. It was about Trump, and eliminating him. But that was years in the past now – it simply looks like a long time.
I couldn’t let it go, although with out some commemoration. A few nights in the past, I requested my radio listeners for his or her reminiscences of these magic moments.
Here’s a variety:
From space code 603: “Who can forget the COVID snitch lines?”
From 617: “Remember TP & paper towel shortages?”
From 617: “COVID took the weekends off. You could stay out an hour later at the bars on Friday and Saturday nights and not have to worry about getting infected.”
From 267: “At my college they covered each individual banana with saran wrap to ‘mitigate the spread of germs’ as if germs wouldn’t be on the plastic when you pick it up… and as if bananas don’t come with their own natural covering that you peel off before eating.”
From 978: “So COVID lasted longer than JFK in office? Gross.”
From 603: “One percent death rate.”
From 781: “State House ‘working from home’…. Didn’t go to work before COVID and suddenly they’re ‘working from home.’ Not a single hack laid off.”
From 978: “I remember you weren’t allowed to open the egg carton to check if there were broken eggs. I was reprimanded once.”
From 781: “People at my nursing home were literally starving to death because no one was allowed inside to feed them. Nurses and CNA’s do not have time to sit with some old lady for an hour so she can get oatmeal down her stomach.”
Justin: “My doctor is still trying his best to make me wear a mask even though on the box the masks come in it says ‘Not for medical use.’”
From Rambo 413: “How about the ‘no coins’ BS at casinos. Coins still haven’t returned to cash-out kiosks, you only get paper money & lose out on the coins. Another win/scam for the house, which always wins.”
From 603: “Sept. 2021. NH had returned to normal. Niece had a mask mandate at her outdoor wedding. I politely sent regrets and have been disowned ever since by my family.”
From 508: “I blame the loss of my wife on the pandemic. While she wasn’t in the best of health before it started, she was unable to get out for exercise and that led to her health failing quicker. My experiences with nursing homes were criminal. She did not die from COVID but having the medical system screwed up by state regs didn’t help.”
From 781: “Guys wearing the same filthy masks that they kept hanging from the rear-view mirror in their trucks.”
From 919: “Local watering holes became speakeasies. Boards over front windows, had to go around back and knock on door and know somebody to get inside. Not just bars, barber shops too.”
From 508: “Charlie Parker telling us that pretzels or chips is not a meal so you can’t get an alcoholic beverage but if you order a whole meal the virus will leave you alone.”
From 508: “Don’t you miss the daily updates on ‘the folks’ and ‘the community’ and Karyn Polito’s keggers on Lake Quinsigamond.”
From 617: “How about social distancing? When COVID hit, bus service in Boston was reduced so the few buses that still came by were packed with people breathing on each other.”
From 617: “The one-way aisles in supermarkets, then the suspended Plexiglas ‘shields’ they had you stand behind at checkout, talking through a mask. But then when you paid, you had to rub your hands all over the credit-card screen after the guy before you had wiped his nose on a postage-stamp-sized tissue.”
From 978: “Dr. Sudders. What a bunch of feckless frightened morons they all were.”
From 508: “I’m a medical courier. Hospitals closed their main entrances early each day causing more hours of the day having to enter through the emergency-room entrances WHERE SUPPOSED SICK PEOPLE ARE! Talk about backwards.”
From 617: “Count on this: 30 or so years from now, people are going to look back at the ‘pandemic’ exactly the way we look back on Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of ‘War of the Worlds.’ The fake panic that people believed totally, as ridiculous as it was.”
The distinction between then and now could be, in 1938 the Mercury Theater was solely on the air for one hour, after which everyone realized they’d been had. This hoax went on for greater than three years, and anybody who dared name BS on it was canceled, or shunned, or fired.
When the Cold War was winding down, any person made a documentary about all of the craziness again within the Fifties with fallout shelters, air raid sirens and so forth. It was referred to as The Atomic Café.
As I recall, it was sort of humorous. If they ultimately make The COVID Café, although, it gained’t be a comedy. It’ll be a tragedy.
Flatten the curve? To do away with Trump, they flattened the whole society. Mission completed.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”