Holy Sh*t - Notes on 2020, Vol. 4

I happened upon a meme that compared being exposed to COVID to eating raw cookie dough. The conceit of this meme was that we all know both of these are bad for us, so if we’re going to put ourselves at risk just leave us alone about it. One thing you can say immediately about this logic (or lack thereof): eating raw cookie dough, while fucking disgusting, is not a contagious situation. You can eat raw cookie dough and not run the risk of anyone near you catching a serious condition, because you don’t have one. The only condition you’d be carrying in this scenario is stupidity, because we all know eating raw cookie dough is a great quick way to get diarrhea. And should you actually get a fever by eating this, you get antibiotics, or you do nothing at all, because most bounce back from this within a week without any trouble. It’s safe to say COVID and raw cookie dough should not be compared. Please don’t do that.

And please don’t use old communique from founding fathers to justify reopening the economy. Someone I know sent me a letter Thomas Jefferson had written at the time of the Constitutional draft in 1787. It was within this letter Jefferson conveyed the idea that the “tree of liberty” must be replenished “from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” It isn’t hard to decipher what is being said here, and if I was the original recipient of this letter, I might’ve even agreed with Jefferson. But that would have been 233 fucking years ago. Is it accurate to say this tree knows a slightly more complicated society now than at a time when we still had yet to see the appointment of an American president? We can’t just go back into the archives like this, and use historical relics to explain what we should do in the future. Or perhaps I’m just not American enough to align ‘tree of liberty’ archetypal thinking with our economy.