It has made the virus-lockdown easier for me to focus on the good things that came out of it. For instance, I have always been in favor of 6 feet of distance between people. Being greedy about it, I would prefer 6 become 10.
I like seeing those plexiglass sneeze-guards go up to protect people who work in retail settings and get sneezed on 100 times per day, during a typical flu and cold season. Let's hope the plexiglass stays up.
It is disappointing that half the parking spaces at stores haven't been painted off. Wouldn't it be nice to open your car doors and not worry about smacking somebody else or getting smacked by them?
Many people eat "out" less than in the past, and save a small fortune by that discipline. And if you do eat out, the diners next to you aren't bumping into your chair every time they shift a little bit.
If I were a Democrat I would be worried about the nonchalance of people in ultra-blue Colorado about mask-fear-compliance. (Granted, the San Luis Valley isn't Boulder.) But if mask-fear-fatigue is setting in, they had better come up with something new, soon!, or their whole program is in jeopardy.
Imagine yourself a highly paid political and marketing consultant, hired by the Democrat National Committee, to revive the fear-c0mpliance-regulation program. What would you recommend?
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Virus 2.0? Nah, it's getting old.
UFOs, alien invaders? Well, that makes for an interesting trial balloon.
The Russkies are coming? Once again, that would just be recycling something that is rather stale. In order to be effective in instigating mass-fear and a total submission to "temporary" emergency powers for government, you need to find something that seems new and unprecedented. That isn't so easy.
Domestic Terrorism? Kinda' lame.
What about a Planetary Lockdown against Climate Change? There have been years of harping about climate change from the usual suspects so it isn't all that new. It doesn't inspire fear in a human individual like disease does, but there might be a coalition of powerful interests to make it work.
Step One should be locking down tourism. Why has the world not noticed how stupid (wasteful, expensive, and silly) scenery tourism is? All that effort and money and CARBON!!! just to amuse your eyeballs for a few seconds. You could do the job just as well without using any CARBON!!! by going online and looking for free photos to look at.
Ahh dear me, it is no fun being ahead of my time. But imagine a world without tourists: wildlife and vegetation would be happier. Traffic would be lighter. Less litter and noise. A billion people would have more money in their bank accounts. Queues would be shorter.
And the Planet would be more likely to survive the CRISIS!!!
Of course there are weaknesses to this approach: there is no visible symbol of virtue-compliance, such as a mask. And statistical changes in climate are gradual, so they lose all sense of urgency. So people are going to have to be pretty clever to make a climate lockdown as rigorous as the Covid lockdown. But there are plenty of smart people in the Democrat party.
Very well then, I have just admitted that I am not worth hiring as a political/marketing consultant.
Comments
That would certainly put a crimp in Scenery-Tourism and nothing like a nice steep gas price increase to spark fear in the hearts of Happy Motoring Americans.
And you're right. There are still special places where you want to go to in person, for some experience more authentic than mere eye candy.