My Thoughts on the Whole Covid-19 Thing.

ProvidenceMine is here and back.


I'm still working on Chapter 6 of my latest story and I promise that I will bring that to you as soon as possible, but now I want to talk about how this Covid-19 crisis has been handled.

I think it's been handled pretty poorly.

I do understand that people need to be safe, and sequestering people in their homes is believed to be the safest way to go until the virus runs its coarse.

But while the virus is running its coarse, over 900,000 people in the City of New York will face unemployment.  Many small businesses are now shuttered and will most likely not be able to resume business.  College students who have taken out loans are at best going to school by remote technologies like Skype, limiting the potential of what can be done in education.  How in the hell can you teach a ballet student at Julliard when they can't have access to a ballet studio?!  Think about the students who don't even have the internet access to take the damn remote classes!  Many college students are deeply in debt as it is most likely that colleges, from what I've heard, will not give the students their money back.  College students deserve their money back, whether they got a loan or their parents were able to pay the tuition with no problem-but they will probably not get it back.  Retail, which was already vulnerable, is most certainly doomed.  Oh, and if you want to continue watching Netflix you better hope that the film and television industry doesn't tank the way that Broadway and Off-Broadway seems to have, as all theaters have been shuttered.

No more Lion King musicals for the foreign or out-of-town tourists to go to.

Not good.

While I have been lucky not to face economic ruin, I have had to put up with some pretty shoddy service from many different places, like all of us had.  I had to put a stop on a check that never got to its destination just a few days ago when the check was mailed back in early April.  I have three other orders that have yet to come to me-one is still in the USPS system somewhere in New Jersey, the other is still in Japan and the other is in China and they have yet to  even ship the damn thing.  These orders were made back in APRIL!!!

Don't even get me started on the poorly stocked shelves at the grocery stores!  How a newfangled flu can cause a shortage on toilet paper, yeast, hand sanitizer and Lysol is truly beyond me!

Look, I can understand if we were going through something that had caused actual infrastructural damage-like a hurricane, a tsunami, an earthquake, a meteor hit-whatever!  But all of this chaos and economic ruin is happening because some out of touch people made some mandate to shut everything down.

I don't get it.

Sweden is an example of how things should have been handled.  Nothing was shut down, no one was sequestered.  It was all about taking personal responsibility and taking your chances.  They are dealing with the crisis in the most intelligent manner possible, and they are handling what comes by developing new anti-bodies in their immune system in the long run.

And there's no shortage of toilet paper either.

And no economic ruin.

People, this is only a virus.  It is not a natural disaster like a tornado that causes actual chaos.  The flu is something that we deal with all the time, and it takes out as much as 56,000 people each year.

And guess what?

Life goes on.

Why can't life go on with this Covid-19?  True, it kills more people than the regular flu but so what?

When an individual faces economic ruin because their business has been forcibly shuttered or the USPS decides to mail their merchandise to their clients when they damn well feel like it, or their job was deemed as 'non-essential' to the powers that be ( I honestly for the life of me don't know how any way to make a living is deemed 'non-essential' frankly) or their college will not give them back their tuition when they damn well ought to ( many second-tier colleges are facing economic ruin as well) I simply don't know how any of these mandates are saving lives.  A man or a woman without a job is effectively dead if they are not able to find another one and are therefore unable to pay the bills, put food on the table, or get access to healthcare, which is usually connected with one's job in this country.  So, if one loses their healthcare along with their job, then isn't this whole claim of keeping people safe and healthy just a sham?!

I can't say that I blame the people protesting the sequestering in the Midwest, and I can't say that I blame the high school students in New Jersey for suing their Governor because they see the sequestering as unconstitutional. These people are probably facing economic ruin!

I can't imagine the economy ever coming back.  This whole handling has caused more unemployment since The Great Depression, and it didn't have to come to this.

As I've said before, not good!

I don't get any of this.

I simply don't understand.

All I know is that I want my goddamn toilet paper from China :P

WHOA!

Well, Hello!

ProvidenceMine here!

I have to say that I was really jazzed when my sister told me early this morning that a new Captain Pike show was A GO!


That is really good news!


I do hope, however, that in writing the show, the production team doesn't listen too heavily to the old-timer fans on how the show should be.

For one thing, times change-and you can not have a show that is a carbon copy of all of the shows that came before.

Remember Enterprise, anyone?

Nothing was new, nothing changed, and the show failed to launch.

So, fans want an episodic show, and that's fine.  However, to make a bunch of neat little unrelated shows is something that only network tv does now, like those insufferable Law and Order shows.  I can tell you right now that you will have certain death for this new Pike show.  What smart writers would do would be to have some continuing storylines along with the one-shot episodes.  That's what you want, as it makes the show more interesting.  God, even soapy shows like Chicago Med have continuing storylines in each episode.

All I'm saying is that the writers need to have the freedom to be creative and not be chained to what the fans always want.  Remember, these are the same fans who had fits of rage when Avery Brooks was cast as the Captain in Deep Space Nine, and they also were bothered by the show's more darker approach to Star Trek.

Now, how many seasons did Deep Space Nine last?

Seven seasons was it?

How many seasons did Enterprise last?

Four, and they were a painful struggling four that only got a fourth season because of a pathetic letter writing campaign.

See what you get when you don't listen blindly to the fans?  Some fans even consider DS9 to be the best of the Star Trek shows, and that's because the writers went beyond tradition and fans wishes and took a chance.  That's what success is.

So, here's good luck to this new Pike show!

Make it good!

Don't listen blindly to the fans.

Take a chance with your own ideas and...

Hit it!