Folks, we're moving into some absurdities.  The biggest one was last week when Anthony Fauci, the apparent anointed czar of infectious disease and chief of policy regarding the coronavirus, said that we should stay in the present lockdown, no travel, non-essential business closing situation until not a single case of coronavirus exists. 

             When I watched him say that I could scarcely believe my ears.  What world does he live in?  That's like saying we will not allow a drop of alcohol to be sold until we have no more deaths from alcohol abuse (currently 72,000 per year).  Or that we will not sell one more opioid tablet until we have no more opiod deaths (currently 70,000 annually).  That such a high level official can say such a preposterous statement and not even be questioned makes me far more nervous than any coronavirus.

             A friend in Australia emailed me this morning that the premier of New South Wales has just directed current isolation and social distancing remain in place until a vaccine is found, which hopefully will be in the next 12-18 months.  Really?  My friend suggested that this edict "may incite rebellion."  I should hope so.

             Specialty toy stores, closed due to being non-essential, are upset that Dollar General stores can remain open because they sell candy bars and potato chips and canned soup.  So rather than let the toy stores re-open, the solution is to rope off aisles of non-food in Dollar General.  Really?  You can't make this stuff up.

             Domestic abuse is now up 10-30 percent as families start to get tired of each other, cooped up in apartments 100 feet above empty pavement.  People are driving 90 mph on the interstate because cops don't stop anybody anymore. 

             Wal-Mart has a 5 person per 1,000 square feet policy.  That's 200 square feet per person; 6 feet is 36 square feet.  But since each person is only half the distance, it's actually a 3 X 3, or 9 square feet person; so what's the deal with 200 square feet?

             At the farm store on Saturday if you came with your spouse, both of you could not go in.  They had bouncers at the door--only one person per vehicle.  If the husband wanted to go get a mattock handle and the wife wanted to get canning jar lids, they couldn't go in together and go their separate ways.  They had to wait while one shopped and went to the cash register and exited, then the next one could go in and shop and go to the cash register.   Does anyone think this is necessary, or is it simply paranoid hysteria that feeds worry that  compromises the immune system that makes people sick?  All the farmers were standing around outside (yes, congregating in groups) grousing about the absurdity of it all.  They were right.

             Watch the faces of folks in the supermarket parking lot.  They're filled with depression, anxiety, a hollowness.  Is that not a real and present physical danger?  Suicides are spiking.   If we're not careful, we're going to create a new world in which nobody wants to live.  That would be a shame.

             Perhaps the most absurd is that our Virginia Blackface Governor Ralph Northam and his cabinet officials have declared shopping at Kroger's safer than shopping at farmers' markets.  Supermarkets are essential; farmers' markets nonessential.  Could anything be more absurd?

             I don't take it lightly and don't want people to die unnecessarily, but I dare to question some of this stuff as absurd.  That doesn't make me uncharitable I hope.

             Have you noted any absurdity in response to the pandemic?