Ever since this emergency began, I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop. I mean sure, this sickness is a bad thing, but not something you shut the country down over.
Maybe it's because I come from a time when people expected to get sick and believed that most of those who did would recover. Measles, mumps, chicken pox-- these were childhood rites of passage. Polio and smallpox entailed innoculations but rarely disease. Nuclear missiles meant duck and cover and don't look at the flash. Lockdown, shelter in place weren't part of our vocabulary. If war came to us, and I think many assumed it would, we would tough our way through to victory again just like those guys on Combat.
So when this came to the fore, I assumed it had to "really" be about something else. The emphasis on staying at home indicated credible terrorist threats or cosmic radiation or military movements that were to remain unseen. I kept asking everyone i know what they thought was really going on and got a shrug for an answer. They were as puzzled as I was. Millenials seemed to ask fewer questions and show less concern, accepting government statements at face value.
Maybe it's just boomer paranoia or an overactive imagination that leads me to assemble crazy quilts of conspiracy theories out of the bits and pieces of available information instead of just chalking current events up to massive incompetence. Maybe I just want to believe that the people in charge can't possibly be that stupid when it's obvious that they can. Maybe I'm just desperate for amusement and all out of jigsaw puzzles.
Whatever the reality is, I feel certain that trial balloons are being floated for a cover story. I've seen those Pentagon-released UFO videos. First Contact. Full Disclosure. It's gonna be aliens in the rose garden with vaccination ray guns, isn't it, Professor Plum?