Stay home, stay safe. Alone, together. Stop the spread. SHUT.UP.
I say this with deep concern and love. TRULY. It’s no secret I don’t write here much anymore… mostly because I’m too busy doing real things with my daughters these days. Things like:
- Supplement-teaching daily — because distance-learning is inane, unnecessary and ineffective (despite what teacher-unions have bamboozled us all to believe),
- Playing a constant new game that I’ve aptly named “Does This Make Sense” — because Covid-19 doesn’t get you if you’re standing up for 5 minutes at In-N-Out Burger, but it WILL get you if you sit down at that empty table right next to where you’re standing for 5 minutes while you wait for your takeout to be ready,
- Educating about the dangers of believing slanted media headlines and narratives that are specifically designed to generate fear-based clicks and/or fulfill an “if it bleeds, it leads” directive that most newsrooms cater to for the sole purpose of keeping audiences addictively glued to the TV in order to preserve careers of hard-working, mostly-honorable producers and reporters currently employed in a dying television news market (speaking from 15 years of television news and media experience and direct observations — I mean, when you get texts and direct messages from credible working anchors and reporters who are friends, expressing how annoyed they are about the constant fear-mongering and death counts put forth by their own stations, you start thinking more clearly….)
See? Too many real things to do these days — too busy to write here. My fresh, main purpose for 8 months now (and counting) is to teach my kids and anyone else who feels like listening to be CRITICAL THINKERS. Because battling the fear-based, frantic, non-logical mania of Covid-19 is rightfully motivating me to stand up against what’s become dangerous, brainwashing nonsense.
For what it’s worth: I visit the CDC, California.gov and my local LA County Public Health websites and do the math — DAILY — around the same time I have my morning coffee. I bust out my calculator and divide the number of daily deaths by the number of daily tracked infections and pretty much get the same number every day: .019 (ish). About ONE PERCENT of TRACKED INFECTIONS [tragically] die from Covid-19. “Most of these deaths involved a person over the age of 65 with one or more co-morbidities” — that’s an often-repeated quote per LA County’s Health Director Barbara Ferrer, from one of her dozens of press conferences I’ve watched and taken notes on. I only offer my findings here because I know we all are very concerned with following science, right? Oh yeah.
“So wait, Jill! You mean I have a 99% percent chance of surviving Covid-19 if I’m otherwise generally healthy and under the age of 65?” Yes. (Now you’re getting it.)
[And yes, Covid-19 can be awful. And I know death well. I know *horrible death* well. I’ve looked it in the face and been right next to it when it claimed my mom by way of cancer. Death from illness = AWFUL. Also, a side note: My mom would be SO PISSED about all the stupidity happening right now.]
Yet who could’ve ever guessed that a 1% death rate of *tracked infections* would prompt our idiotic California politicians to justify destroying people’s livelihoods and businesses and also threaten us into shutting down Thanksgiving. (I emphasize *tracked infections* because any reasonable person will admit that not all those who are or have been infected have been identified and tracked — meaning, the death rate is likely even lower than 1%.)
SO YEAH, WE DID THANKSGIVING. AT MY HOUSE. WITH A 22-POUND TURKEY, MY MOM’S FAMOUS ARMENIAN SPECIALTY [YALANCHI] AND 26 IMMEDIATE FAMILY MEMBERS WHO HAVE BEEN SEEING EACH OTHER CONSISTENTLY SINCE MAY.
Don’t worry: We were all outside. (Thank you sunny and mild Los Angeles weather!!!) For kicks, I pulled a damn-fun disco ball out of my basement and let it spin above our heads….
Some of the grandparents wore masks upon arrival. But! Watch out for those kids — can you believe they had the guts to actually sit NEXT to each other while eating! (Gasp. The horror. Should we have called the cops?)
There was piled-on food, Armenian wine, a Thanksgiving-themed tree jammed with crosses, angels and glitzy pomegranates and bunches of fall flowers I threw together with sprigs of fake wheat in the spirit of harvest.
We may or may not have also had a dartboard featuring the smiling faces of California Governor Gavin Newsom, U.S. Senator (CA) Adam Schiff, U.S. Senator (CA) Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi… but I’ll let you use your imagination to picture that. (Humor heals pain, right?)
We prayed for health, we prayed for a return to logic, we prayed for freedom, we prayed for Armenia, we prayed for our United States of America. And we prayed that our children grow to learn to think critically beyond being bullied through fear while being smart, safe, gracious and respectful for this already-too-short tryst called LIFE. Because ceasing to live without reasonability against over-exaggerated risk is not living. For anyone.
THINK CLEARLY, parents. (And tell the kids.)
