Yes, I have finally found something more divisive than politics and Donald Trump. It’s the Wuhan coronavirus. There are three camps. 

Camp A is scared to death, won’t go out of their homes unless absolutely necessary, complains about anyone else who does and they are mostly willing to give up all of their liberties and rights to “flatten the curve.” Everything is black and white with no middle ground. Camp A contains people who are either immobilized by fear or people with real medical concerns (lung issues, compromised immune system, etc.) who don’t want to take any chances of getting sick. 

Camp B contains those of us who are still working, taking precautions, wearing masks and gloves, washing our hands, are semi-scared but still trying to live our lives and don’t accept most of the tyranny coming from our politicians. We are “live and let live” people which means we respect the people from Camp A but don’t join their current lifestyle or complain about what they are doing. 

From what I have seen, both Camp A and Camp B have no specific political persuasion. There are Republicans and Democrats in both camps. It comes down to a level of fear and how people respond to it that puts them in one camp or another. 

And then there is Camp C. They are the nuts who piss off both Camp A and Camp B. They are walking around with no gloves or masks, standing close to people, gathering in large groups, etc. Basically prolonging the house incarceration for the rest of us. And because of them, politicians keep coming up with one rule after another to punish us for their stupidity. 

Some of the local Facebook pages, even in the small towns, are getting pretty nasty, mostly with Camp A people lecturing everyone about how to live their lives. That’s fine if they want to complain about Camp C people but the Camp B people don’t want to hear it. 

Now we have complaints about Camp B and that if we talk about needing to re-open the economy, we don’t care about the people dying. Give me a break. It’s not an either-or choice. We can’t go on like this forever and everyone knows it. We really can’t go on like this for more than another month. Businesses are already going under. Politicians are taking advantage of the crisis to cancel our rights. Things are happening that might not be able to be fixed. 

We have every right to worry about the kind of country we’re going to have left after we get through this. And some of the Camp A people don’t seem to understand that this virus is going to be around for a while, just like the flu. We’re going to have to learn how to live with it. 

Obviously we’ll be a lot happier and safer when there is a cure, a vaccine or on-the-spot testing so life can return to semi-normalcy but the Wuhan virus is probably going to become just another risk in our lives like Influenza or driving a car. 

Every day, we take risks driving a car and doing other things in our lives. We make calculated choices and do what we can to make ourselves as safe as we can. 

But we have to find a way to get out of this. This isn’t Little House on the Prairie where we hunt for our own food, produce our own lighting and heating, grow our own vegetables, make our own clothes, ride horses around and educate our own children. 

Aside from the people getting checks from the government for social security, disability and other things, most of us work to pay for all the stuff that other people do for us. I work to pay for food. I work to pay for electric. I work to pay for transportation. I have to work to survive. And the businesses I buy things from need to stay open. 

If the businesses aren’t allowed to open soon, how many people will be affected, financially, mentally and medically? 

How many suicides will there be? How many heart attack victims will there be from stress or lack of care? 

How many husbands and wives will be separated from each other because one of them is in a nursing home or dying in a hospital? 

How many businesses will be destroyed? How many weddings and funerals cancelled? How many bankruptcies? How many divorces? How many robberies? How many domestic violence incidents? 

Who’s keeping track of those numbers? Where is the “dashboard” for the ancillary effects that are happening to us? 

We have every right to ask these questions and worry about the fallout from the response to the virus. We can do that, and at the same time, be upset about the lives lost and worry about our friends and family getting the virus. Yes, we can do all of that at the same time.