On Flu Follies – UPDATED

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

Example No. 437,419 that the Country is loosing its collective mind over COVID-1984:

Ol’ Robbo was out on the sidewalk in front of Port Swiller Manor late yesterday afternoon industriously pruning back the front of his holly hedge.  (If I neglect to do so and it grows out too close to the sidewalk, I get nasty little anonymous notes in my mailbox from the local Karens reminding me of the relevant county ordinances governing such things.)

As I have mentioned here before, we live on a fairly busy street and people drive very fast.  (Indeed, this is why I planted the hedge in the first place.)

Anyhoo, as I was working, a couple came along on a walk.  Before I could move away or even say anything, they cut up my neighbor’s driveway and on to the street.  A few seconds later, somebody in a muscle car came roaring up the hill, at which the couple (the car was behind them) broke into a frantic run and got to my driveway just as the car went bombing by.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or weep, but I did think to myself that had they actually been hit by the car, they very likely would have been included among the Corona-related fatality stats for our area.

A good rule of thumb is that if your precaution is more risky than the thing against which you’re taking it, you may need to reevaluate your priorities.

UPDATE:  Ace has a post up today about the New Expert Authoritarianism that relates to this and also to a thought I’ve had repeatedly over the past few weeks:  The “New Normal”?  “We can never go back”?  “Reimagining our world”?  Who says? Nobody asked me about any of this.  Am I just supposed to go along quietly because the new Big Brother wears a lab coat?

I don’t think so.