News that I missed, courtesy of The Babylon Bee:
U.S.—After state governments across the country directed their citizens to shut down their businesses and just kinda hope things worked out, a new order has been issued: everyone is to jump off a bridge immediately.
A government official issued the order to solve our current crisis, and everyone immediately complied.
“Everyone jump off a bridge,” said a representative of the government.
“OK,” said everyone. “If the government says so, it’s probably a good idea. Besides, what can we do? It’s the government. They definitely have the best people working on it.”
Go here to read the rest. The Bee has my sympathy. In times this absurd, satirists have a hard time keeping up.
The University I work at has not only made all courses online this semester, but also all summer courses. Currently the administration is debating whether to move all courses for the 2020-2021 academic year online.
There’s not even a hint of information suggesting that we will be in the slightest danger come the fall and especially not the winter of 2021, but they’re making plans now as if the world is going to end. It’s not hard to read between the lines and see that they are hearing that other universities are considering similar plans and they are worried that if other schools go online and they do not that they may be seen as reckless and uncaring.
All of this despite the last couple of weeks proving that our online systems are woefully inadequate for the demand placed on them by moving every course online, and that many courses cannot function in an online format (ex. laboratory courses for science classes).
There is one thing to note. For those companies, such as mine, which are working through this debacle, it has been proven that we do not have to come into an office every day to do our work. We don’t need a corporate nanny watching over us to get the job done. The need to commute isn’t really there. Medical workers, factory workers, construction workers…..they gotta be able to move. Lots of us dont, at least most of the time. Therefore, the clean air crybabies who constantly want tighter emission and mileage regulations are not necessary.
In our formative years, my brother and I were warned about the popular ‘bridge’ option when ‘no’ was the answer.
Looking at the map above the post, it seems to me the only free states in the former Land of the Free are North & South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska and Arkansas. Wyoming, Utah, Oklahoma and South Carolina are semi-free. (Or maybe just more sensible than the remaining 41 states.)
I won’t say any of them are the Home of the Brave. At least not yet. The Great Plains hasn’t been hit particularly, so things may change as the situation with the Wuhan Flu changes.