SQUIDFRY: Helter Shelter

HELTER SHELTER… Squid checked the pantry once, then checked it again. “Do I have enough canned clams? What about arborio rice? OMG, where’s the shellfish stock?” Squid wanted to make risotto for day who-the-hell-knows-anymore of sheltering-in-place during the worldwideCovid-19 pandemic, and planned to ooze over to Costco, just one of the places where some of the real heroes of our time – the people who deliver our food and stock the shelves – are doing yeoman’s work at keeping everyone fed, at great risk to their own lives (as are the farmworkers who are still in the fields). Then Squid’s beloved bulldog, Rosco P. Coltrane, held up a sign: “You need nothing. Stay home. Quit endangering yourself and others.” Squid felt a wave of guilt, because Rosco is right. Squid will skip regular Sunday pickup hoop games. Squid will not ooze over to Hobby Lobby (where founder David Green reportedly told employees he’s keeping the chain’s stores open despite the pandemic because God told him to, but he’s making workers use their vacation hours if they take off) even though Squid feels that learning to knit right now might keep Squid from slowly going insane.

Instead, Squid decided to read up on the best medical advice possible, mixed with the best libertarian ideology possible, and who knew that Carmel Pine Cone Publisher Paul Miller would be the one to provide it?

In his March 20 editorial, titled “So Here We Are,” Miller took a look at math. “In this county of 435,000 people, just four are presently known to have the coronavirus, which is a mere 0.00092 percent of the population, and according to many health experts, as many as 99 percent of people who get the virus can be expected to make a full recovery.”

As for the remaining 1 percent? They’re making it bad for the rest of us!

“Yet here we are, with everyone in the county ordered to stay home except for ‘essential’ reasons, tens of thousands of honest, tax-paying citizens suddenly thrown out of work, the entire economy at a standstill, and people raiding grocery store shelves to stock up on things like toilet paper and bread.”

Squid found the piece perplexing: Miller seems to pillory the shelter-in-place order, yet in the next breath advises everyone to comply. But ah, that pesky economy again. The pandemic “must end soon, because otherwise the economic damage to this country will be much greater than the damage to its health.”

Maybe Squid’s large brain enables Squid to hold two thoughts at once. Yes, worry about the economy, but especially for the working-class and working poor. And yes, also worry about the death rate and people’s health, because it’s the compassionate thing to do.

See how that works? It’s a little more complex than arithmetic, but not impossible.