Hello everyone. I hope you are all safe and as secure as possible in the strange times we are in as a species.
There has been some really good conversation in the last few pages here and I am glad that there are other people thinking about the impending financial, emotional, and relational stresses we will face in the wake of this pandemic that has not even gotten close to the top of the bell curve. I believe that this will be one of the most significant disasters we will have faced, at least in my lifetime.
I really hope I get to see people helping people; rather than selfishness and hoarding. When the toll of the inability to work becomes reality; there will be depression, anger, and even hopelessness like has been discussed in this thread. It is very sad; but I just got to thinking about how we live in the only country on the planet where our way of life, for many of us, would be greatly altered by one missing paycheck.
Someone mentioned suicide rates increasing; and I completely agree that this will likely happen. I never made that connection until I saw it firsthand after the BP spill in 2010. The loss of employment in that region of the country was heartbreaking and life-changing for people who made their living from the Gulf. I personally knew someone who committed suicide after being without pay for a while; and there were more people I was not acquainted with that I heard about.
Now whether suicide is a weakness or a chicken-out move or whatever else-----I don't know or pretend to have the ability to judge. What is is though is a death....a loss of a loved one or a dad or a son or a friend or a mom or a daughter that is final and will never come back. When these things happen there is no room for judgement on why the person made that choice-----there is most likely someone suffering because of that loss and they will need support. I won't go further with this topic.
I always try to get inside the thoughts of people when they make a bad decision. For example: I grew up thinking that drug dealers were terrible, awful, soulless people who were taking the easy way out and just trying to get rich without working for it. I'm still eating those thoughts and words.
I feel like I need to openly apologize for my flippant attitude concerning the pandemic in an earlier post. I wasn't appropriately concerned about contracting the illness because I had not dug deep enough to respect the virulence of this thing. I was discussing it with my wife, who knows about these things; and she gave me some interesting reading material. The short version is that the expression of illness, for those unfortunate enough to have severe form of the disease, is fatal in many many cases. The disease also appears to be rather indiscriminate too; and that is very worrisome.
I didn't realize we were in a fight in which our ONLY defense mechanism is avoidance. We absolutely must practice social distancing or there will be a million or more dead people right here in the US in the wake of this thing. Loss of life will not be limited to poor, non-productive, criminal, or weak members of society. There will be doctors, nurses, police officers, soldiers, preachers, parents, teachers-----people we need will die. They already have been dying.
For the love of God, stay out of the dollar stores. The length of time in which this disease is suspended in breathing air is excessive. Being in a small place like that, with unknown people who have been who knows where, has got to be one of the most terrible things a person could do right now.
I hate to say it; but closing the gyms was a good move.
I'll stop. My list will follow.
Be careful everyone.