Heh. That's a helluva title. Grabs you by the short and curlies, doesn't it? Obviously I don't believe that, but a shocking number of people do. It's one of the big reasons this fucking plague has lasted as long as it has.
So I recently finished reading The Totem by David Morrell. It's a great book about a Detroit cop who moved out to Wyoming to get away from the horrors of the city and an alcoholic journalist who goes to the same place for a retrospective on a hippie commune that used to be there. Much to this duo's horror, that's when the werewolves show up.
The mayor of that Wyoming town pissed me off a great deal. When he hears about this situation, all he can think about is saving the town's economy. If word got out about the problem, then no one would buy any steers from the local ranchers ever again, and the town would dry up like the mining camp up the mountain decades ago. He does a lot of horrible shit to gloss over the problem in the name of the Holy Economy. This guy makes the mayor in Jaws seem reasonable.
I couldn't help but think of the parallel between this book and current times. Trump denied the plague existed at all, and then, when Americans started getting it, he blamed it all on China instead of his own fucking ineptitude at making sure it couldn't get to us. And then he claimed it wasn't as bad as people said it was. And a shit-ton of people agreed with him because to accept Covid as extraordinarily dangerous would kill the economy. People on the right argued until they were blue in the face that America should open up again to save the beloved economy. (Which is funny, because when Biden decided to grant their wish, the same people called him crazy for putting American lives in danger.)
But it's all crazy bullshit because Covid *is* dangerous. I know a few people who got it, and most seemed to make it out the other side OK after some pretty horrific trauma, but others did not. In the worst case, I know someone who will be breathing oxygen from a tank for the rest of his life because of this fucking plague. I recall all the dipshits who went to hospitals demanding to see Covid patients, which they figured they wouldn't find because the plague was a hoax, right? WRONG. I've been in the hospital a lot since the plague began, and when I had to stay the night (or more than a night), they had to wheel me through the Covid ward. I did not want this, but it was the only way to get through to where they wanted to keep me. That shit was scary. Covid patients kept behind giant plastic sheets like they were burn victims, hacking and wheezing and . . . it fucking sucked, all right? Let's leave it at that.
Is the economy important? Of course it is. But when you put people's lives at risk just for the sake of the economy? Go fuck yourself. You're like the mayor from The Totem. If he'd seen Tiger King, I'm sure he would have had the same thought as portrayed above. Try having an economy when there isn't anyone alive to enjoy it, cocksucker. Safety to humans first. After that, you can have your precious fucking economy.
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