OPINION
BY DAVE PRICE
Daily Post Editor
The coronavirus pandemic is bad enough, but why does it have to come with annoying slogans?
Here are a few that are grating on me:
• “We’re all in this together” — This is total B.S. You’re telling me the people who have jobs that allow them to never leave their homes are “in this together” with people who have to go out and earn a living every day, like grocery store clerks, gardeners or plumbers? A housekeeper takes considerably more risks on her job than the typical Facebook employee.
• “In these uncertain times” — When have times been certain? In certain times, nobody gets fired and nobody dies. If things were certain, everyone would have married their high school sweetheart. There would be no point in betting on sports or playing the stock market because the outcome was certain. Life has always been uncertain and unpredictable.
• “This is our new normal” — When I heard Santa Clara County Manager Jeff Smith say this, I felt like vomiting. When an authority figure tells us this is the “new normal,” it means the government feels it was able to take away our rights without a fight. But it’s not normal for a waiter in a mask and rubber gloves to serve you food. It isn’t normal to have first-graders taking online classes. We will return to normal, and the government should either cooperate with the people or get out of the way.
• “Stay safe” — Oh, gee, thanks for saying that to me. I was thinking of slitting my wrists during lunch today, but instead I’ll have a second cup of coffee because of your sage advice. Of course we want everyone to stay safe. We want it so bad we’re willing to wreck our economy, destroy jobs and businesses, and derail our kids’ education.
When people say “Stay safe,” they don’t know what else to say. They’re trying to come up with something that sounds palatable and kind. It’s the COVID-19 substitute for “have a nice day.”
But all of these terms sound like something made up by an ad agency that tested them with focus groups and polling.
Why would big corporations and big government push these phrases on the public? These slogans reinforce the idea that we shouldn’t ask questions, we shouldn’t demand our constitutional rights and, most of all, we shouldn’t revolt.
Because, remember, in these uncertain times, we’re all in this together. So stay safe.
Editor Dave Price’s column appears on Mondays. His email address is [email protected].
Thinking of “slitting my wrists”? That sounds a little extreme, and would probably hurt. Why not just use an electric razor, where the worst you will get is just a severe chaff?
I think that was sarcasm.
I know. So was my comment.
I agree with some and see Dave’s point about the others. However one of these “slogsns”–“In these uncertain times”–has relevance, significant relevance.
“When have times been certain?” Never. However, there are times when things are a lot more uncertain than other times. Ask anyone that has lived through war, civil war, extreme economic turbulence that is different than the garden varieties covered in academia and textbooks, pandemics and epidemics for which the medical establishment was unprepared for, had no grasp of the cause, and certainly no understanding of the treatment or cure.
“Life has always been uncertain and unpredictable.” Sure, but then there are white swans, gray swans, and BLACK swans. There’s uncertainty and unpredictability when water is ice, when it is liquid, and when it is gaseous.
That unpredictability and volatility and possible consequences are is not the same in each state. It is naive and foolish to compare garden variety uncertainty with that arising from extreme events. One is tame-able, the other is wild, untame-able. We are dealing with the latter and the failure to acknowledge it to be what it is, to mistake it to be the former has extreme consequences.
It is suspicious that they had all of these slogans ready to go when they announced the shutdown, as if this had been planned in advance and they were trying to stop us from storming the Bastille.
Hahahah. Totally agree!
Dave, I agree with you! “We must be locked down until there is a vaccine” is the biggest lie being perpetrated on Americans and the whole world now. Look at these Wuhanites partying in a pool with no social distancing, no masks, all without a vaccine!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRuCv0yxpaA. Folks, this was last weekend. We already have a cure for Covid – it is called Hydroxycholoroquine and Zinc! Why did the CDC ban it? Because of money guys. Just follow the money! Where are the investigative journalists when we really need them!
This is not a conspiracy. Look at Renowned European scientist Professor Giuseppe Tritto, an internationally known expert in biotechnology and nanotechnology, says that the China Virus definitely wasn’t a freak of nature that happened to cross the species barrier from bat to man. He just published a book August 4, detailing exactly all the players involved in creating this Covid crisis. The book is only available in Italian now. To read more about it please go here: https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/renowned-european-scientist-covid-19-was-engineered-in-china-lab-effective-vaccine-unlikely
Plandemic II: The Indoctornation, please see it folks and you will find your answers. The best piece of investigative journalism out right now. I am not sure you can find it on Youtube or Google as they have banned it. You have to go to Brighteon dot com, if Padailypost will allow this post to go through.
You can find plandemic here too: https://plandemicseries.com/
Thank you Palo Alto Daily post! You are the real bastions of free speech allowing my post to get published! Thank you!…unlike the fascist propaganda arm also known as the Palo Alto Weekly that deletes anything and everything that does not agree with the WHO and CDC.
“Social distancing” — I haven’t noticed more folks indulging their hermit tendencies. As the several replies to your column testify, people remain as socially engaged as ever, reading the news, waving to neighbors, making and taking phone calls, and communicating on social media. An accurate term is “spatial separation” — maintaining a wider personal space than usual and keeping physically away from others in public locations where people are normally forced together, as in markets, libraries, buses, and elevators.
We’re going to be in lockdown mode until November 3, Election Day. If Biden wins, the coronavirus will magically disappear from the news as if it were the annual flu bug. The headlines and the TV news stories with the scary music and flashing graphics will be a thing of the past. If Trump is re-elected, look for the lockdown to continue until they’re able to impeach him again, and with control of the Senate, remove him from office.
Yeah, like just goes to show how biased California and the Palo Alto Weekly is: no one bothered to report that Trump’s new health advisor Dr. Scott Atlas, comes from Stanford’s Hoover Institute and served as a professor and chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center from 1998 to 2012. He is pro opening the country and getting people back to work. Fauci, on the other hand has stated publicly that life will not go back to normal “until there is a vaccine.” You have to wonder why Fauci said that. Palo Alto Weekly ofcourse reports nothing on Atlas, but has to do a story on Fauci visiting the area. I wrote as a commentor that Fauci was a criminal and did anyone read the investigative report by Newsweek on him? You can read the fascinating article here: https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741. The Weekly deleted my post.
The other Palo Alto online paper and Weekly censor everything and present only the government-media narrative, which is pro-lockdown, pro-mask, close the schools, etc. for at least two more months, until election day. They delete all comments that promote a different viewpoint.
Based on my observations, Palo Altans love to virtue signal with their masks, especially when outdoors or alone in their cars. They look like libtards to me.
So Dave’s opinion piece skeptical of some of the “sloganeering” was pretext for the nutcases and conspiracy theorists to come out of the wood works and wax eloquent!
“If Trump is re-elected, look for the lockdown to continue until they’re able to impeach him again, and with control of the Senate, remove him from office.”
Not just remove him from office but put him (and those who enabled him) in prison. Lock him and them up, no less. For his and their conduct justifies it entirely.
If a CEO or manager hired several people, and most if not every one of them was convicted (Gates, Manafort, Stone, Flynn…) or arrested and awaiting conviction (Bannon…) and that manager/CEO was impeached and escaped owing to the backing from his enablers (Trump, the Senate), it makes eminent sense the underlings conduct leading to their convictions could NOT have occurred without the tacit or outright endorsement and approval of the leader. Ergo, it is a matter of mere time before Trump is held accountable. Cry me a river for all I care! And may it be the Attorney General that “locks him up” be none other than Hillary Clinton! Just desserts as far as I’m concerned.
I found, “We’re all in this together”, and “In these uncertain times”, in Sara Cody’s 6/26 statement announcing the current health order “under development” (released 7/2). She didn’t mention the drastic changes it would contain:
1. Drop the travel ban,
2. Ditch the essential business list,
3. INCREASE sector-specific rules,
4. Add residential services, even the gardner, to requirement for corporate-style Protocols,
5. Conscript business owners as unpaid County health trainers, enforcers and informants,
6. Threaten businesses with purjury (i.e. $10,000 and 4 years in prison) by requiring then to sign affidavits containing false statements (written by the County) and limitless worksite procedure commitments. Yes, even the gardner.
According to Wikipedia the “New Normal” traces back two crises, to Paul Grover in 2009 and Mohamed El-Erian in 2010, regarding the Global Recession. We now seem to be in the midst of a Global Regression — to our primal state as cave-dwellers under club-wielding dictators.
“Stay safe” — My idea of safety is going on 100-mile treks in clean mountain air to strengthen my cardio-vascular and immune systems. Care to join me Dr Cody?
I know. So was my comment.
>the parasites feeding off government and taxpayers subsidies
I suppose you meant Trump and his fanboys who availed of the trillions of dollars dispensed by the Feds, depriving those more in need? Or perhaps you meant those others who fattened on government largesse under the purported “War on Terror” and other wars waged owing to fabricated WMDs, etc.????
I guess not. My intuition tells me you don’t mean them at all. Could I be wrong?
A few more words to add to the list —
Covidiots
Mask Holes (people who hassle others about not wearing a mask)
Stronger Together (assumes we’re “together” and that will make the company using the slogan “stronger”)
WFH (working from home)
Learning Pod (the schools won’t teach our kids, so we’ll figure out how to do it ourselves)
Well said, totally agree!
Dave, Thank you for your opinion. Those slogans irritate the hell out of me too. Sadly, there is near 100% compliance (and support) in Palo Alto to the restrictions and mask orders (guidelines). Hopefully this all goes away on November 4th – destroy the economy and our kids and grandkids futures over a single election!