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• Author: Singleton, Marilyn M.

IT SEEMS LIKE some folks have used the ghost of Marxist Ernesto "Che" Guevara--a major figure during the Cuban Revolution--as their guide through the COVID-19 epidemic in the U.S.: "To send men to the firing squad [job loss, suicide, substance abuse], judicial [scientific] proof is unnecessary.... This is a revolution!--and a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate [of Pres. Donald Trump]."

Apparently, Guevara was on to something. Forty-three percent of U.S. adults and 52% of low-income adults say they or someone in their household has lost a job or taken a pay cut due to the outbreak. How can any American stuck at home not be disgusted by politicians who still are collecting their full paychecks while the middle class and working poor descend into an abyss? To be fair, Michigan's governor announced that she would take a 10% pay cut in solidarity with the people who had a 100% pay cut. Nonetheless, many have unquestionably accepted the government's ofttimes contradictory mandates.

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that, despite the disruption of their lives, 80% of Americans say strict shelter-in-place measures are worth it to protect people. This blind acquiescence is evidenced by unthinking individuals wearing masks while driving alone in their cars with closed windows--and perversely, designer face masks are proliferating. Wearing a mask is a sometimes necessary, serious, unpleasant thing to do. It is not fun.lt is not cute.

It is not only the evil Chinese Communists that caused panic about the coronavirus in the U.S. via text messages falsely saying Pres. Trump was imminendy going to lock down the entire country. The media are complicit in the hysteria. Again, Guevara had it right: "Foreign reporters--preferably American--were much more valuable to us at that time than any military victory. Much more valuable than recruits for our guerrilla force were American media recruits to export our propaganda." Media hacks are collecting their paychecks to scare our bodily fluids out of us with day in, day out COVID, COVID, COVID. We are all going to die! (Of course, they do not discuss the 1,300 people a day who die of complications from high blood pressure.)

Coronavirus' angel of death spares most people: 80% of COVID-19 deaths have occurred among persons aged 60 years and over; about 25% of all deaths were sick and elderly residents of long-term care facilities; nearly 90% of persons hospitalized have one or...