In comparison to now, March was a delight. We were asked to temporarily stay indoors. Everyone took up how to make sourdough and banana bread. Bands were live-streaming concerts from their backyards to help us pass the time. People took walks, kids rode their bikes down to the fishing hole. It was only fifteen days to flatten the curve. Those fifteen days ended eight months ago. Now politicians tell us they want to cancel Thanksgiving and Christmas. Folks are in despair, and one despairing folk reached to Mike Rowe for advice.

Rowe is a source for common sense when it comes to all things coronavirus. No, he is not a scientist or an expert (see A WRITER TELLS MIKE ROWE TO LEAVE COVID TO THE EXPERTS. ROWE WRECKS HIS FACE INSTEAD... and MIKE ROWE DELIVERS REAL COMMON SENSE THAT COVID PANIC ADDICTS WILL HATE). He's a guy with fingers and a platform, and those fingers usually write common sense. Rowe answered our despairing friend. But not without taking obligatory dumps on California, where he was back in March.

It wasn't just the makeshift homeless encampments that stretched for nearly two miles along the beach, or the boarded-up businesses with their handwritten "Closed for COVID" signs hanging sadly in the windows. It wasn't just the dogged joggers, leaping over the slumbering souls strewn about the sidewalk like human speed bumps. It was the sense that something even more terrible had settled over the entire city. Like the plastic coverings my Aunt used to wrap her best furniture in, there was a film between me and everything around me.

Now for the good stuff. What to do when all the government mandated nonsense around you makes you want to cry like you've been punched in the nads. Or realized after all these years, you are still a New York Jets fan. Mike Rowe has a simple, two word nugget of advice: Safety Third.

"Safety Third" is not a call to take unnecessary risk, it's just another way to say, "be careful out there, but not so careful that you're unable to function." It's also a good-natured reminder that nothing worthwhile in the long history of our species has ever been accomplished by those whose who were unwilling to assume some degree of risk. (And perhaps, a not so gentle reminder to our elected officials, that the rules and regulations they would have us follow are a lot more persuasive when they follow them too.) I'm not arguing that guidelines and regulations aren't effective and necessary - I'm just saying that extreme measures often come with a long list of unintended consequences, and these lockdowns are no exception.

One might argue these are the INTENDED consequences of our elected officials. One could find plenty of examples to back up those claims. One would also be my editor Courtney, who has sung from that songbook since the beginning. Fa la la la la.

Right now, however, we can only control ourselves and how we live our own lives. Take any precaution you feel you need to. Remember to look after your neighbor and not be the snitch @$ little b*tch who calls the cops if you see eleven people in their kitchen. Support local businesses when you can. Most importantly, if you feel yourself having a nutty, remember to just take a deep breath.

If you want to tweet at elected officials what they can do with their restrictions and what orifice they can insert them in, that would be a simple way to release a little stress.

Trump's MASSIVE WINS Prove CNN Wrong! Full Economic Recovery! | Louder With Crowderyoutu.be

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