Take this all with a grain of salt. Take it with a whole lump of salt. In fact, this post may create a salt shortage, so run out and buy all the salt you can right now.
But seriously folks, I'm having a hard time taking all this seriously. As a guy with a bit of a social disorder, the new social distancing rules are great for me. I've been trying my whole life to get people to stay 3ft (1m) or more away. Who knew that all I had to do was wait for just the right pandemic? Not me, or I would have been trying to create this pandemic. Not really. (You didn't used to have to say 'not really' after sarcastic remarks like that, but here we are.) I'm pretty clever, but lack the tools and knowledge to tailor my own germs. I might have gained some of the knowledge, had I not needed to spend so much time keeping distance from people. The tools remain a bit out of my economic reach, but not for long. I'm gonna make a million $ on HIVE.
What I keep asking myself is, what makes this virus so special? It's not the deadliest, scariest, or most contagious germ that's popped up to put us in our place over the last 4 decades. It's not the only one with no vaccine and few treatment options. Despite that, this is the one that shut down the WHOLE WORLD. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Your guess may be better than mine. All of these guesses make great fodder to feed the HIVE's content, which is what I'm doing here, throwing fodder in the trough.
I didn't want to post anything about COVID-19. I did want to post something besides chickens and flower, though, and the hot topics everyone likes are Coronavirus and blockchain. I don't really know anything about blockchain.
So why are people freaking out about this particular virus? Astrology. Numerology. Witches. Mind control wavelengths embedded in 5G. Light from swamp gas reflected off a weather balloon, resulting in ball lightning that resembled a UFO dropping off probe victims in Wuhan while Trump tweeted something racist, and it was all orchestrated by Putin. At least, that's what I figured out from doing research on the internet.
Nah, honestly, I think the reasons are as varied as the people of the world, and the time is just right for contagious mass hysteria. In the US, people have been freaking out for about 3 years now anyway. I think we're shutting down just to take a break. Unplug it and plug it back in, so to speak. It's like our last ditch effort to stop the country from breaking out in a big nerdy slap-fight. Tensions have been building between our haves and have-nots, our lights and darks, our people and police, and our labor and management, to name a few. The spirit of revolution has been spreading globally, so if you're in to conspiracies...
If you're a person in power, with sway over the media, and you feel threatened by all these revolutionary rumblings, a quarantine aimed at preventing the spread of a very scary virus is a great way to get people to stay home. When people stay home, the protests are a lot smaller. It didn't seem to work on the protesters in France, but since they were selfishly breaking quarantine rules to demand better from their officials, nobody batted an eye when their officials sent troops with guns to enforce the stay at home orders. Hong Kong, Venezuela, anybody still having problems with pesky protesters, just send some men with guns, to PROTECT those protesters from getting sick. It's the only way we'll all get through this.
A less conspiratorial take would be to say that people just wanted a vacation. A lot of us hand-to-mouth people out here have been needing a week or two (or four) of vacation for years now, some of us for decades. We're not really freaking out, we're just not about to let go of this chance to take a little R&R. Just a little, though. It turns out that too much time relaxing isn't really very relaxing.
So, some apologies, some self promotion, and a wrap up.
I'm sorry if any of this offends anybody, especially anybody whose life is currently being negatively impacted by this virus. You probably don't deserve it (some of you do, you know who you are, and if you think I can do anything to assist you while you struggle, ask.
I could go on for hours, but I have other things to do, and I'm not sure what the typical HIVEr's attention span is yet. If any of you made it this far, and want to see more of my unhinged and unsupported free form rambling, reflect positively on this post, and give me a follow. The more attention I get, the more I will engage here.
Thanks you for spending your time here. I hope you enjoyed reading it even more than I enjoyed typing it.