thependulumswings

Many, many moons (Bang!  Zoom!) ago Ralph Kramden had a chance to win big, big bucks as a contestant on the $99,000 Answer Game Show.  He chose music as his category of expertise.

He convinced his buddy Ed Norton to quit his job working in the NY sewer system to help him prepare in the week prior.  Norton, as Ralph called him, was an accomplished pianist.  In the Bensonhurst apartment, he played song after song, and Ralph would know the name, the singer, and the year of everyone.

But, prior to each song, Norton would play a little bar or two of a jingle, then get to the actual song.  Norton described the need like a pitcher warming up in the bullpen.  This angered Ralph so. But, it was a small price to pay for very cheap labor.

A week passed and it was time for the big show.  The bus driver strode onto the stage with a wide girth and a wide grin, confident that he was going all of the way to the top ($99,000 in a geometric progressing fashion).

The MC asked for the first song from his show band.  And, wouldn’t you know it, it was the Norton warm-up jingle.  “Humanah, humanah,” Ralph muttered.  He also broke out into an immediate sweat.  He had no clue.  He had heard it two hundred times in the last seven days, but.

The buzzer sounded and ended Ralph’s run to fame and fortune before it started.  “Swanee River,” said the MC.  “That’s Swanee River,” Ralph stammered.

So too went the President Joe Biden national address yesterday.

He told us that the international travel testing window he instituted gave us a look at what the virus would do in the foreign lands before it got here.  He then told us that Omicron came upon us so fast that no one would have predicted that.  Odd.  “That’s Omicron,” he muttered.

Humanah, humanah!

Unlike Ralph, he said we are prepared though.  While you’ve been shopping his team has been stockpiling hospital gowns, masks, ventilators, and the like. No reporter asked if that would stop or slow the spread.

“And get vaccinated, NOW!  And get your booster, NOW!,” he urged in between coughs of his own.  No reporter asked if either would help in short order given 73% of all new cases are Omicron in the US, and the totals are doubling every three days, NOW.

Also, note, that the Director of NIL Immunization publicly stated yesterday, as Biden was lecturing, that he thought vaccines should be administered every three months from here on out.

The day before, the good Doctor Anthony Fauci said publicly that we will very likely NEVER be able to ride in an airplane again without a mask.  This was a day or two after American Airlines and Delta questioned if masks on planes were any deterrent.

He’s sending relief to hard-hit areas where testing lines are long with more tests, in-home tests, and more testers.  He sounded testy telling us that.  No reporter asked if by the time our government got to those currently higher infected areas if the virus would already be ramping up elsewhere.  “Skate to where the puck is going,” Dr. Wayne Gretzky once brilliantly stated.

“You can still work, but even if vaxxed, wear a mask inside,” he implored us.  Norton wore a mask in the sewer for his job.  It was definitely needed.  No one asked why we have never defined what a good mask is from, say, a thong.  No one asked if any studies showed the effectiveness of masking.

You can still enjoy the holidays if vaxxed and boosted said Jolly St. Joe.  You’re in for a dark winter of death if you’re unvaccinated said Joe Grinch.  No one asked why the vaxxed are getting and spreading the virus.

What about deploying the floating hospital ships, the USNS Mercy, and the USNS Comfort?  He didn’t offer and no one asked.  Hopefully, he didn’t go executive order rogue and is trying to send them unannounced to Colorado and Nevada.  Drydocks both.

What about therapeutics? He offered nothing and no one asked.

Schools can and should stay open.  We can test every day if we need to starting in mid-January.  Surely the virus won’t replicate much in three weeks.  Surely the band won’t play Swanee River.

Luckily, vaxxed or not, Norton got his job back in the sewer.  Ralph went back to driving his bus.  Normalcy at last.

But here is the $99,000 question.

What is lunacy?

The answer?  Doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.

That’s Swanee River?

To the moon Alice, to the moon.  Has the virus reached there?