Cap if the cost of beating this disease, and saving tens of thousands of lives, and other related pain and suffering, (health and economic) is one lost football season, is that too high a price? Is that too much of a sacrifice to ask?
I really think if we had shut down in July and stayed shutdown for about 2 months there would have been a good chance kids all over the country preschool to college could have safely return to schools maybe by mid-late September, parents wouldn't have to make gut wrenching choices, and maybe we could start returning to some normalcy.
But we couldn't even do that.
We didn't lose our balls, we lost our fucking common sense.
It's a new age, and by some ways of thinking you're right Rich. If we're willing to change the paradigm of how the human race lives from now on you're right. Sports is history the way it was. Mankind is now going to drop, duck and cover anytime a new virus cuts loose. Social gatherings will be gone. Wearing masks will be permanent from this point on. And as science develops will we all become bubble people in the future. No contact whatsoever. Assuming Science, mankind's new religion, doesn't eliminate all virus anytime soon.
It's a flu bug. Flu kills people, that's nothing new. This one kills a lot more than the regular flu bug because we have no vaccine for it. This bug is no stronger than than any of the rest more or less. We just don't have a shot for it. Will we shut the country down every time a new strain of the flu comes along? The answer is probably yes. Is this the new future for mankind? Again probably yes.
Me personally, I'd rather take my chances and live the way I always have. But I have to think of the other chickenshits I know that. So I follow the rules and gripe about it. But I follow the rules, because law is ,"supposedly", what sets us above the animals.
Nobody was forced to get the flu shots before. Voluntary. Nobody was forced to wear masks in the beginning of this one. VOLUNTARY. The flu was a killer too of the old farts like you and I. Why is this flu somehow different? Where. how and when, did we cross over into the "new world". I dunno, but we're in it.
Bottomline freedom has always been an illusion. So i'm just bitchin because it hasn't been outlawed. Yet.
Cap-if you want real freedom then live on an island by yourself. But if not then you should recognie that society as we know mandates all sorts of laws and regulations to function. You might not like all of them all, but most of us obey them, and when we don't we pay the ticket.
I'm not going to argue about covid v the flu, or whether its just a nastier killer than the flu, I will argue that we should learn from observation, search out facts, beleive in science, and adapt our behavior in a common sense way. Its called learning. And everything we've learned of this disease from observation and science is that social distancing and masks seem to control te spread of the disease. We've seen that in areas and countries strict social distancing stopped the spread of the disease, but it came at a sacrifice.
But in the long-term what's worse, an economy hobbled for 2 months (the time for an effective quarantine to stop the disease),but the disease is controlled, or a half-assed patchwork of do what you want non-regulations that allowed this disease to control us for 6 months, kill 180,000 of us, cripple our healthcare systems in many parts of the country? And there is no end-point of certainty in sight. This motherfucker is voracious and is feeding on us.
And now with some of the effects of wide spread social distancing and mask-wearing finally taking place, BUT with the disease still spreading, we can't ask for college football to delay or postpone the season to save lives?
I hope all the kids that go back to school from pre-school to grad school, can do so safely as its the best learning environment, and solves a lot of problems for working, or hope to be working parents, and I look forward to stadiums full of fans, but to bitch about losing our balls, when we see 180,000 dead Americans and more in the future mostly because we did not use our common sense, seems really misplaced.
No one likes the steps needed to control this thing, or the sacrifices, but they seem so minimal, compared to other sacrifices others have made to protect us over our history, from colonial farmer-soldiers to current day ER nurese exposing themselves to death every day. Bitching about wearing a mask and being bored on a Fall Saturday afternoon seems so fucking selfish, it seems weird even to have to bring it up.
Stay well cap and wear your mask even if you, like me, hate the fucking thng, because I think you're smart ebnough to understand it saves lives.