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Surviving C-19
July 18th, 2020
1:41 PM
179 Days since first US infection

For some odd reason I keep hearing this song in my mind, I wonder why?  I am sure you know it, it became a standard in my childhood.  In light of our news today it is downright prophetic, only the dates are wrong.  The realities expressed in those lines exist, and not to our betterment or as envisioned in the song.

“In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find-

In the year 3535
Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, and say
Is in the pill you took today

In the year 4545
Ain’t gonna need your teeth, won’t need your eyes
You won’t find a thing to chew
Nobody’s gonna look at you

In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine’s doing that for you

In the year 6565
Ain’t gonna need no husband, won’t need no wife
You’ll pick your sons, pick your daughters too
From the bottom of a long glass tube

Whoa-oh-oh

In the year 7510
If God’s a-coming, he ought to make it by then
Maybe he’ll look around himself and say
“Guess it’s time for the judgement day!”

In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head
He’ll either say, “I’m pleased, where man has been”
Or tear it down and start again

Whoa-oh-oh

In the year 9595
I’m kinda wonderin’, if man is gonna be alive
He’s taken everything this old Earth can give
And he ain’t put back nothing

Whoa-oh-oh
Now it’s been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man’s reign is through
But through the eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it’s only yesterday . . . “ Zager and Evans  1969

If you go back to that old  song and consider social media, which was never envisioned then, you can see how it has made that song more reality than not.  I do not ‘do’ social media, not on FB, Twitter, Instawhatthefuckever, none of that.  However when I look around me I see people all reacting to it as in the song.  Observe . . .

In the year 2019 (works better syllabically)

Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, and say
Is in the post you viewed today

In the year 2019
Ain’t gonna need your teeth, won’t need your eyes –your car parks itself and your food is soft
You won’t find a thing to chew—fb food posts are inedible
Nobody’s gonna look at you–No one ‘looks’ at anyone in the modern world, we meet new people through photographs, handpicked and chosen by the poster, their selected photograph.  We meet representations of the people we may someday meet, only to find they are not at all how they presented themselves.

Or how about this as a description of the cubicle life so many inhabit at work?

In the year 2019
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine’s doing that for you

I do not think Zager and Evans had any intent to be prophetic, but to warn humanity, and they made that road a long way off, but we are already here in part aren’t we?

Just food for thought. 

No headlines, it is my day off.

July 18th, 2020

4:00 PM–Numbers time

                                                                Yesterday                                           Today

Global Infected                 13,921,699                                           14,126,035
Increase Infected            255,581                                                 204,336

Global Dead                       593,072                                                 598,098                
Increase Dead                   6,703                                                     5,026

USA Infected 3,622,709 3,676,942                                            
USA increase Infected      75,838                                  54,233                  

USA C-19 deaths              138,910                                                 139,098
USA C-19 deaths increase            541                                                         188

Maine Infected                                3,636                                                     3,646
Maine Increase                    38                                                           10

Maine deaths                    115                                                         117
Increase Maine deaths                  1                                                              2

and Climate Change Keeps on Truckin . . .
Massive wildfire in rural central California

While I worked in isolation on this another 5,026 of my fellow humans succumbed to C-19, of those 188 were my fellow Americans and 2 were my Fellow Mainers.