Sunday, March 29, 2020 | 2 a.m.
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Please help me. I no longer understand some of my fellow countrymen.
In the midst — not the end — of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems that what I am watching, reading and hearing from the experts in the fields of science, medicine and common sense is so very different from what I am hearing from some neighbors and those strangers who have my email or phone number. And I just don’t know how to respond anymore in what my parents used to tell me was a civil tone.
I listen to America’s governor, Andrew Cuomo of New York, and what I hear is that his state is ground zero for the coronavirus war and everyone — everyone across America — should pay heed to his words. That includes even those people who don’t think they have a problem because they live in places where people don’t.
I watch as states like California, Illinois and Louisiana are sounding the alarm that their populations are just days or weeks behind New York and the same shortages of supplies for health care workers and patients that have vexed and frustrated Gov. Cuomo will soon be vexing them.
I hear from friends and loved ones — some who are in hospitals around the country fighting for their lives because they caught this virus and are of a certain age — and for the first time I realize that even I can’t do anything to help them because we are in a world where who you know means nothing and what you know means everything.
I look at charts and graphs that indicate without objection that the worst is yet to come and, yet, our president talks of reopening commerce for fear of a prolonged economic disease. Has he forgotten already that America values life first and foremost? Where are all those folks when we need them to yell in his ear?
And just after the United States Congress for the first time in years came together as one to pass a coronavirus disaster relief bill that will save America’s working men and women from financial ruination — until the next relief bill is needed in a few short months — there are some in this country who want to pick on Nancy Pelosi of all people.
In what has always been known in the legislative world as a process akin to sausage making — that means you like the end result but you shouldn’t dare watch it being made because you will never eat a hot dog again — there are some who need to play to their politics rather than cheer the result.
What started out as a bill written by and for the largest companies in America — don’t read this the wrong way, they need help in this mess too — turned into a piece of legislation that, perhaps for one of the very few times in our history, favored the needs of working men and women and small businesses in America. It is not a perfect bill but thanks to some deft maneuvering and legislative threatening, the speaker of the House and her colleagues in the Senate moved the language closer in favor of American families in the middle and lower economic classes.
So, no, I don’t find fault in Pelosi for helping regular folks. In fact, I have nothing but praise for a Congress that before the coronavirus wouldn’t talk across the aisles and has just shown America that it can act when the people of this country use their voice.
Yes, the people of the United States are speaking. They are yelling. They are crying out for help. They want our federal and state governments to keep them safe, sane and secure.
Fortunately, the voices I hear are so loud and so effective that they are drowning out the people I no longer understand. Theirs are the voices of reason, of science and of sanity.
First, they want their families, loved ones, neighbors and fellow countrymen to be safe. Second, they want — and know that they will have at some point — an economic future to tend to when this scourge recedes.
And most of them want it in that order.
So when we hear the voices around us that try to tell us otherwise — from the highest office in the land to the selfish or knowledge-deficient neighbor down the street — we would do well to do what the experts tell us.
Distance ourselves. Out of earshot would be helpful.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.
