"Start panicking!"

 At 10 a.m. on Monday, October 5, 2020, Chief Justice John Roberts will mount the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States.  

Dressed in a black robe, followed by seven others dressed in black robes, he will bang his gavel, call the court to order, and issue the following proclamations:

• Abortion is now illegal.
• Roe v. Wade has been overturned.
• Gays can no longer marry.
• Transgenders no longer have job protection.
• Blacks can no longer vote.
• The South can revert back to Jim Crow.

From the way people are reacting to the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that is exactly what it going to happen.

Monday, October 5, 2020, 10 a.m. is when the new session of the Supreme Court will convene.  It will do so without Ginsburg, who died on Friday after a battle with pancreatic cancer.  Pancreatic cancer is an awful disease, and I am glad she is no longer suffering with it.  

Her death has sparked discussions about her legacy (there was a time in this country where a married woman couldn't open a bank account without her husband co-signing, for example.)  

Her death has also sparked near-panic among many in social media.

Because now, there is a new spot on the SCOTUS, and there's a rush to fill it with a conservative justice before the November elections.  

Never mind that the party rushing to fill the vacancy is the same party that insisted that a SCOTUS vacancy under Obama shouldn't be filled until after that particular upcoming election.  

The last I checked, the SCOTUS does not have the power to unilaterally grant or take away the rights that I just listed above.  Chief Justice Roberts does not have the power to bang a gavel and say that gays can't marry, for example.  

What the SCOTUS does have the power to do is to listen to a case and decide what the law is.  Granted, the SCOTUS has made some dreadful decisions in the past.  No pun intended, but the Dred Scott decision comes to mind; also, Plessy v. Ferguson.  

The SCOTUS has also responded to changing times and bad decisions with decisions that reversed previous rulings; probably Brown v. Board of Education is the most famous.  

But Brown, and Roe, and others had to follow a long process to get to the SCOTUS.

This isn't the time to panic.  If you are genuinely worried about the direction the country is going in, educate yourself, make plans to vote in November, follow the docket of the SCOTUS, and write your representatives. And if you're genuinely afraid of the direction the country is heading -- and a majority of people are afraid -- then start looking for another country to call your own.  Maybe that is the best case for some who are able to do it. 

Panic feeds on panic, and it's panic that leads to bad decisions and ultimately to mob rule.  I don't want to live under mob rule, but I fear that in these days of social media cancel culture and fake news, it may happen.

Then it may be time to start panicking.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Twinkle, twinkle, wash your hands

"OMG, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIEEEEEE!!!!!"

There, now that I have gotten that out of my system . . .

Was it only a month ago that I went to the doc for my regular checkup and we had a quick conversation about "no, I haven't been to China lately, so I don't need to worry about getting sick with this new coronavirus"?

How quickly things can change!

I went to Walmart on Thursday, after a visit to the chiropractor, and saw with my own eyes the gaps in shelves that people had been talking about.

The gaps existed with:

• rubbing alcohol
• Clorox wipes
• toilet paper
• probiotics
• hand sanitizer
• liquid soap
• disposable gloves

.... and, believe it or not . . . Family planning!!


Now, I've read where people are using condoms in place of gloves (I have this picture of a weird version of Edward Scissorhands) but I also suspect that some people are taking precautions to guard against a nine-month-from-now baby boomlet of infants bearing names with variants of "Corona". 

(Side note:  I did the math a few years back and as a result, I'm convinced that I owe my conception to a flood in March, 1963.  Hey, when you're cooped up in the house, you gotta pass the time somehow!)

I had a "conversation" with an Asian man who ended up using his phone to translate what I was saying to him.  I was trying to explain to him that getting the last bottle of hand sanitizer couldn't hurt and it could help.  Not sure if his phone properly translated what I was trying to say. 

I didn't see anyone fighting over toilet paper, like they recently did in Sydney, Australia.  Then again, I use Amazon Subscribe and Save to get mine because I got tired of running to the store all the time. 

The cause of this hysteria is now officially known as COVID-19, the name given to this tiny mite of illness by the World Health Organization.  For those of you who, like I was, are curious as to where the name came from, it stands for COrona VIrus Disease 2019.  
Currently, according to Worldometers.info, which is frequently updated, there are 105,965 cases worldwide.  3,569 people have died.  58,628 people have recovered.  The number of people ill number around the population of Tallahassee, Florida, with the majority of them recovering.

So why the freak-out?  To borrow a Victoria Justice song, why are we freaking the freak out?

One, because this is a new virus.  We have no idea how it works.

Two, we have no vaccine.

Three, because it is now officially on all continents with the exception of Antarctica, which makes this disease a pandemic. 

Four, because people have died from this disease.

So how do we keep from getting sick? 

Well, the number one way is to practice good hygiene, which means, wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands.   The CDC recommends 20 seconds of good handwashing whenever necessary.

Twenty seconds is enough time to sing "Happy Birthday To You" twice, or "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" once.  So for about the last week or so, every time I've gone to the bathroom, afterwards, I've  mentally hummed "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" while I'm doing the following:

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are."  (Begin the song only after you have wet your hands and lathered with soap.  Then rub palms together while humming the first line of Twinkle.)

"Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky" (Pretend you're wringing your hands over the coronavirus or whatever disaster you want to panic about.)

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are."  (Lace fingers together and rub.) 

Twenty seconds of handwashing is now complete.

Depending on what mood I'm in, I may mentally hum "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat", a parody song from Alice in Wonderland.  And at least one Twitter thread has listed 20-second portions of songs you can wash to just in case you get bored with Twinkle, Twinkle or Happy Birthday. 

I admit to being concerned about this illness.  There are five confirmed cases in the metro Atlanta area and one possible one in my county.  And I'm hearing daily about new cases popping up in different states.  But the absolute worst thing in the world I can do is panic. 

So, if you hear someone screaming about, "OMG, Amazon is out of N95 masks, CVS is out of rubbing alcohol, Kroger's out of bleach, and Walmart's out of toilet paper!  WE'RE ALL GONNA DIIIEEEE!!!!"  just smile, pat the person on the head, and say, "Dude.  Chillax.  Here's some soap.  Go wash your hands." 

Then hand them a loop recording of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star".

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Manic Monday: Let the panic begin!

The Dow opened this morning with a loss of 1000 points.  This after it closed in correction territory on Friday.  

News commentators and experts are reassuring everyone that there is no need to panic.

So let the panic begin! </sarc>

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.