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All Paranoids Now?
Townhall.com ^ | March 9, 2020 | Gil Gutknecht

Posted on 03/09/2020 4:50:52 PM PDT by Kaslin

The hourly reports of suspected cases. The images of healthcare workers garbed like aliens from outer space. Stories of frantic mothers dousing their children’s chubby fingers with Smirnoff since Costco ran out of hand sanitizer. Experts describing the situation in grave tones. Helpless people trapped on luxury cruise ships.

Is it any wonder we’re all becoming paranoid?

“There’s always something,” Gilda Radner’s SNL character Roseanne Roseannadanna famously said.

Everything is going along swimmingly and then something unexpected comes along and seems to change everything. The latest something is called the Covid-19 Corona Virus. It may be the most publicized communicable disease since the Spanish Flu. We are learning more about it every day. In the process, we are learning more about ourselves.

Politicizing how this all got started and who is to blame misses the point. It is. It’s a fact. Now deal with it.

Frantically running back and forth like those terrified lemmings on Wall Street will do absolutely no good. Panic makes rational thought impossible.

Blaming the Trump administration is akin to the A## in the Escalade who lays on the horn in a traffic jam. As if obnoxious noise will get cars moving any faster. It only makes everyone else even more agitated. Pointing fingers right now won’t score any political points either. Americans have no appetite for Chicken Littles, especially among those who aspire to be our leaders. We admire strength in our leaders. Indeed, we demand it. Lincoln and Roosevelt are chiseled into Rushmore for a reason. Their critics are not. Teddy told us that it’s not the critic that counts. It is the one who is actually in the arena.

Fortunately, the man in the center of this arena is named Donald J. Trump. He is no Chicken Little. We can all draw strength from our president and thank God that we have a leader like him in times like these. Courage, like the virus itself, is contagious.

Winston Churchill reminded us that we did not “journey all this way, across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.” We come from strong stock, we are Americans.

Our ancestors did not get to the Mississippi River only to stop and say, “Wow! That’s a mighty wide river. I guess we’re going to have to turn around and go back home.” No, they figured out a way to cross that river. It’s what Americans have always done.

This is a time for us to come together. We are all in the same boat. And here’s a scientific fact about a boat: you can’t sink half of one of them. This is no time for handwringing. We know what must be done. We must endure and eventually defeat this thing. We will buck up our neighbors and not give in to fear.

Whenever there is trouble in the world, where does the world turn? You know the answer. Just as we draw strength from our president, so the world takes its cue from us.

Are more people going to become infected? Yes. Will it become a pandemic? Maybe. Are some, perhaps thousands of our countrymen going to succumb to this malady? Yes. Will the rest of us survive? Absolutely. Does anyone seriously doubt that we will create a vaccine, in record time? And then share it freely around the globe with friend and foe alike? Within days our scientists had sequenced the genome and produced a computer-generated 3D model of this new virus.

It’s all part of what makes us proud to be Americans.

The future is uncertain. The only thing we can be sure of is that there will be unexpected challenges and that one crisis will follow the next. There will always be something. It’s part of life on this blue marble hurtling through space. Great nations are not nations that shrink from challenges. They are nations that figure out how to overcome them. As long as we meet this thing head-on, we will come out on the other side even stronger.

Mother had another expression that she frequently shared, “This too shall pass.”

And so it will.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: coronavirus
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To: Elsie

It’s always something.

“ Agent K: There’s always an alien battle cruiser, or a Corellian death ray, or an intergalactic plague intended to wipe out life on this miserable little planet. ”


21 posted on 03/09/2020 7:25:10 PM PDT by VanShuyten ("...that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals.")
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To: gandalftb

“Costco has permanently ended the food sample stations in their stores.”

The the walking morbidly obese crowd will have rethink their vacation plans.


22 posted on 03/09/2020 8:13:14 PM PDT by Amish with an attitude
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To: Socon-Econ
This illness does not require shutting-down America.

Actually, it probably does.

This will be a learning experience for everyone.
23 posted on 03/09/2020 9:47:41 PM PDT by cgbg (No half measures.)
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To: Kaslin

The word needs to get out that people can catch the virus by watching TV, or looking at cell phones.


24 posted on 03/10/2020 1:52:22 AM PDT by Herakles (Diversity is applied Marxism!)
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To: Truthoverpower

Thank you...most of the “extra precautions” are directly due to the ill-informed panic.


25 posted on 03/10/2020 4:43:41 AM PDT by trebb (Don't howl about illegal leeches, or Trump in general, while not donating to FR - it's hypocritical.)
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To: Kaslin

This is a practice run for the next virus. When they shut down 80% airline travel and private automobile use.
Go Green or we will kill you.


26 posted on 03/10/2020 4:47:49 AM PDT by Leep (Everyday is Trump Day!)
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To: Kaslin

As an extra precaution i will not do the fandango in public.
Oh wait, i never did the fandango.


27 posted on 03/10/2020 4:50:28 AM PDT by Leep (Everyday is Trump Day!)
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To: cgbg; Socon-Econ
This illness does not require shutting-down America.

We didn't 'shut down America' for AIDES; why this disease?

28 posted on 03/10/2020 5:00:58 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Leep
It's definitely a practice run for something!!
29 posted on 03/10/2020 5:02:00 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Amish with an attitude

You got that right.


30 posted on 03/10/2020 9:15:03 AM PDT by gandalftb (You got that right)
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To: Elsie

Watch these videos and then you will understand:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD2-QVBQi48RRQTD4Jhxu8w


31 posted on 03/10/2020 9:23:18 AM PDT by cgbg (No half measures.)
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