Getting what we deserve from coronavirus nightmare

By this time in the year, we should have been in much better shape. Thinking about stadium and possibly even arena events. Looking forward to football played before fans. Watching our children head back to real school. Watching our safety protocol produce results and shrink the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the sad reality is that we are nowhere near those results and that we are hung up in earlier and regressing phases of the reactivation of our society. Vaccines and treatments that can rescue us and crush the pandemic are certainly on the way. But we will not do much better until they arrive or until so many people test positive that we begin to develop some sort of population immunity or until the virus just runs out of places to grow.

Not happening anytime soon.

Here in town, we have the best and the brightest working for us. In my view, Mayor Cooper seems to have a weird sense of enjoyment about shutting down businesses and shoving the cost to the taxpayers. Some would say that the Democrats are the party of the lockdown, secretly loving the mayhem and eagerly anticipating the first week in November and the defeat of President Trump's reelection campaign.

But Dr. Alex Jahangir & Co. are highly qualified to lead us through this mess. At the state level, we have Dr. Lisa Piercey. At the national level, we have Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx.

And we had grand reopening plans at the national level, the state level, and the Nashville level.

The truth is that we lost our focus and let our guard down. And instead of thinking of the greater good, we began thinking selfishly about how we could make it through the rest of the COVID-19 nightmare with minimal interruption and hassle for Number One.

So easy to talk about the need for sacrifice and discipline and the often-repeated phrase that "the health and safety of ___________________ is our top priority".

So easy until it means a change for ourselves, inconvenience, loss of income/lifestyle, and taking steps we aren't used to taking. Easy to point the finger at others. Hard to look in the mirror.

Our health care workers are heroes, but we also have health care workers who have no problem with everyone else being unemployed as long as their respective jobs remain intact.

I love the energy and talent of our young people, but young people are also the most self centered when it comes to changing habits in a time of crisis.

What we are being asked to do is a "new normal" for sure, but it is not all that complicated. And the smart money says that the masks and the social distancing won't be around for the long haul. 

After all, the pharmaceutical companies have a big incentive to get us vaccinated/treated as soon as possible. And money talks.

For some practices that weren't very sanitary and healthy to begin with, i.e. food buffets, we've seen the last of them. And hopefully our lives will be much cleaner in many ways as we move forward.

The sad part is that we have short attention spans and very little patience.

And it will mean a longer run of time with COVID-19 as a major force in our existence.