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Rank ordering what to think about and write about today was quite simple for me. The clear #1 was coping with the COVID-19 virus, nothing else was even close. Still, second is the need to, and possibility of, saying goodbye to Donald Trump. A very distant third is Tom Brady, no matter the breaking-news status of his recent decision. So let’s go the potpourri route today and dabble in each of the three.
- As for slowing the spread of the Corona Virus, someone please tell me why my solution is bad, wrong, impractical, or misinformed (it probably is, but I’m not sure why). Whenever they go out, all people should wear surgical masks on their faces and place disposable gloves on their hands. In that way, they cannot pick up the virus on their skin (assuming they are careful about disposing of the gloves), they cannot inhale particulates that might have been spread by someone’s cough or sneeze, they cannot spread their own germs through the nose or the mouth, and they cannot infect themselves by touching the nose or mouth accidentally even if the virus is on their gloves. This seems so straightforward that there must be something fundamentally wrong with it. Why is this not a reasonable recommendation that might come from public health officials? I’m glad to be informed and corrected.
- After claiming that the Corona Virus was a hoax, a crisis perpetrated by the fake news to make him look bad, Donald Trump now appears daily to say how much worse the disease is than he thought and how brilliantly he has done in fighting it. It’s amazing how his agenda can be almost exclusively self-congratulation rather than reassurance or information. It’s truly beyond belief that he actually does not, cannot, feel the pain of ordinary people whose livelihoods are threatened and who aren’t sure what to tell their kids when they ask when all this will end. I’m equally amazed that his advisors haven’t scripted a few empathic lines and taught him how to appear sincere in delivering them—unless Trump himself has rejected that sort of b.s. as silly and irrelevant, which is not hard to believe.
- Spoiler alert to those of you who care about numbers and 1 & 2 and could care less about #3, just skip to the last paragraph now. Tom Brady just announced that he will not be returning as the quarterback of the New England Patriots, moving on to… who knows where, but not here. People ask whether he will be tempted to go to Team X or team Y by the big bucks and why the cheapo Patriots didn’t just up and pay the legend whatever he asked. My answer, and the one to which most fans and writers seem to have been blind, is that Brady left because Bill Belichick really didn’t want him back. What makes Belichick different from virtually all of his peers (some would say that he has no peers) is his unsentimental approach to football. His roster building approach highlights two principles. First, great players have to be paid a lot of money, which limits the franchise’s ability to have a TEAM that has terrific players from top to bottom. Bill always looks for value across the roster rather than for glitzy names, and signing Brady one more time meant not having enough for others next season and beyond. More important, however, is that Bill has always been a believer in saying goodbye to players a year or two early, even before they’ve peaked and begun to slide, rather than holding on too long. (Thinking of both principles, long-time fans might recall the cases of Richard Seymour and Lawyer Malloy.) He violated his own rules for Brady due to Brady’s long-time greatness and pressure from fans and ownership, losing Jimmy Garoppolo along the way. But this year, my guess is that Bill decided it was finally time to move on, and told Tom that, although the person who replaced him might not play as well in the short term, he could no longer invest in an aging star. It had to end some time, so why not now.
So is there a common theme here? To be honest, I didn’t really begin with one in mind. But if I had to try to abstract something, it’s about looking to the future, not the present or the past. With great anticipation, I look forward to a future, hopefully sooner than later, in which people can go about their lives freely, not worried about being infected and becoming ill. I also look forward to a future in which people didn’t have to worry that their leader is undermining the health of their democracy and in which people truly care for one another. And just as fans of health and democracy face an uncertain short-term future, so do Patriots fans, while hoping for good news in the long run. Worrying about football wins seem pretty trivial next to issues that really make a difference, but my gosh, we need a few things to distract us, so I’ll go with Tom Brady for now.
Your #1 makes sense. The only reason why we don’t do this all the time (in Lexington, KY) is that we live in a suburban area where we can easily keep our distance (30 feet at least). As we take walks, everyone crosses to the other side of the road when we see neighbors on the horizon. When we go out for necessities (when 30 feet is obviously impossible), we follow your thinking (though this is not typical for others….yet). Trump is beyond irredeemable. . . November cannot come soon enough (and I dearly hope and pray Biden takes him… Read more »