A Short Note on the Pandemic #12

March 24, 2020 Off By Michael

Photo by Sheldon Kennedy on Unsplash

“The cost of the cure should not be more than the cost of the disease,” the confident leader of the western world said in his daily Coronavirus update on day 6 of the government’s recommendation to stay home for the next 14 days. In western medicine, the cost of the cure has always been higher than the price of the disease. Doctors view the objective is to keep the patient alive at all cost, especially when the patient has proper insurance.

The leader seems to suggest that the health of the country is not worth the lost business opportunities of corporate America; the Covid-19 outbreak should not further penalize businesses. He may soon declare the US open for business again. A move that would require workers to leave the safety of their homes and get back to their offices and factories.

Opening the country up is a significant boost to the business of making money, at least as long as there is a good labor pool of healthy workers. If the leader opens the country too soon, it will cause workers to fall like flies. Reopening America will force some other person in need of a job to step up and take that worker’s place — what a perfect way to get to a robotic workforce, the new world order that our scientific writers have written is our future reality.

Then the leader turned reporter and squeezed a top scientist in the country by asking her to agree with his postulation that reporters unable to attend the press briefing due to social distancing requirements were outside the door angrily trying to get into the room. She somehow artfully avoided answering the stem of his question, thus keeping her position on the leader’s team for one more day.

Meanwhile, in America, the spread of the coronavirus has accelerated. And the Surgeon General announced that this week things are going to get ugly.

Harold Michael Harvey is the author of Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance. He is a Past President of the Gate City Bar Association. He is the recipient of Gate City’s R. E. Thomas Civil Rights Award, which he received for his pro bono representation of Black college students arrested during Freaknik celebrations in the mid to late 1990s. An avid public speaker, contact him at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com.