A READER from Maryland writes:

A man I knew died recently under sad, but now common, circumstances. His large, senior-living facility closed its doors to all visitors, depriving him of the personal touch of his loved ones. Not only did the lockdowns prevent his relatives from traveling out-of-state to see him, his daughter and grandchildren who lived only a few miles away could not visit him daily, as they had been doing. Instead, they spoke with him every day on the telephone, and the only people he saw during his final weeks wore masks and gloves. Although the nurses and assistants might have been very kind to him, nonetheless, I would venture to say he died of loneliness.

I don’t believe that doctors foresaw the inhumanity of forbidding all visitors to patients in nursing homes and hospitals. An old woman from my church was not permitted to be in the hospital with her Corona-infected husband; he pined for her company, but the hospital forbade her to enter. Missing his wife and attended only by masked medical personnel, his illness was exacerbated, and eventually he was placed on a ventilator, dying shortly thereafter, alone. Similarly, my neighbor’s cousin died yesterday in a large, luxurious nursing home. Her sisters, cousins, and children, all of whom lived in the area, no longer came to visit and she could not understand why. She contracted the Coronavirus despite all the precautions. She stopped eating and eventually died, having not had a hug from a loved one in more than a month. Surely, the doctors and politicians could not have imagined that the social-distancing policies that were meant to be saving lives would also be hastening death.

In many plagues in history, at least one out of three people died in the plague year in many localities. [Editor: That would be about 100 million deaths in America today.] Nevertheless, people were permitted to gather together with fewer restrictions on work and worship than we have, and allowed and expected to care for their sick loved ones as we are not.

As C.S. Lewis pointed out, “you and all of whom you love were already sentenced to death before the [Coronavirus came along], and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in very unpleasant ways …. If we are going to be destroyed [by a virus or recession] let that [disaster] find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts …”

So we struggle on in this beautiful world of ours. Eating less when food is scarce. Praying at home. Bringing cheer to our neighbors who are afraid or lonely or hysterical. Paying attention to the birds and trees and giving glory to God for all his gifts. (more…)

FLUELLA de Vil writes:

Thank you so much for your indefatigable coverage of the Covid crisis.  Here for your enjoyment is a compilation of commercials which exemplify these uncertain times (which we are all in together).

(more…)

FROM LoveBreedsAccountability:

There’s a decent chance that while a large chunk of America is clearly wrapped up in their “#StayHome! #MaskUp! #TogetherWeWin!” platitudes, the ads coming out of corporate America that exploit those sentiments will be what awaken us from our media-induced COVID-19 slumber.

I mean at some point even the most preachy and sanctimonious among us are bound to say, “Oh FFS enough already.”

Even the coveted and gainfully employed “frontline” workers, at least the ones who aren’t crying into Facebook videos all day to prove to us just how rough they have it and how tremendously heroic they are, even many of them are already sick of this whole thing.

And corporate America doing what it does — exploiting that which they think is “cool” while packaging it as some value that their company really, truly, honestly believes in — might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Every single commercial out there now is some huge corporation trying to tug at our heart strings or stroke our egos with persistently holier-than-thou messages about what they’re doing for COVID-19, and what you’re doing for COVID-19, and what everyone under the sun is doing for or because of COVID-19. And while I’ll be the first to admit that I’m often the first to be annoyed by things in general, I’ve been annoyed for like 6 weeks now and I gotta think a good chunk of the country is catching up.

You can’t turn anywhere in America be it television, internet, radio or just going about your daily business without running into endless masks of sanctimony and ginned up moral servitude over how tragic it all it is but how wonderful we all are and how mindful we must remain because of how strong we all clearly are.

Hashtag Together. (more…)

    IF YOU have trouble viewing this video, go here.  

WHAT happens when a judge follows the unconstitutional orders of the Covid Crook in the governor's office and sends someone to jail for trying to make a living during the Covid shutdown? State officials, realizing the potential backlash, lie and say, "Oh, that wasn't what we really meant." In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has publicly contested the jail sentence of Shelley Luther, a salon owner sent to jail for opening her business. As I have made clear through prior pronouncements, jailing Texans for non-compliance with executive orders should always be the last available option. Compliance with executive orders during this pandemic is important to ensure public safety; however, surely there are less restrictive means to achieving that goal than jailing a Texas mother.” What chutzpah! Judge Eric Moyé was resorting to the "last available option," since Luther refused to comply with the shutdown. Now Moyé will get the blame for taking the governor's order, unlawful though it was, seriously. The shutdowns require voluntary compliance by the public. If the public refused, the whole thing would collapse.  

WE MAY never know how many patients in nursing homes died not from the coronavirus but from neglect. The case of one nursing home in Montreal is illustrative of what happens when a worldwide panic is set off and the staff in a nursing home flees, leaving the bedridden to fend for themselves. The New York Times reported last week: The deaths in Canada were discovered late last week at Résidence Herron, a private home for seniors in Montreal, after the local health authority, alarmed by staff shortages and the spread of coronavirus at the home, took control of the residence. They found dehydrated residents lying listless in bed, unfed for days, with excrement seeping out of their diapers. “I’d never seen anything like it in my 32-year nursing career,” said Loredana Mule, a nurse on the team. “It was horrific — there wasn’t enough food to feed people, the stench could’ve killed a horse.” After she left the home, she said, she collapsed in her car and wept. A skeleton staff of two nurses had been left to care for a private residence with nearly 150 beds, she said. The remaining staff had fled amid the outbreak of the coronavirus, leaving patients, some paralyzed or with other chronic illnesses, to fend for themselves. In nursing homes throughout North America and Europe, residents have been confined to their rooms and prevented from seeing the family members who might otherwise supervise their care. In some…