My father’s Senior Living Community in Arizona is sealed like a zip-lock doggie bag.

No family in or out. The “inmates” can walk the courtyard but not outside the building.

When I dropped off toilet paper, paper towels and his latest prescription a few weeks ago, we could only look through the double glass doors and wave.  He can’t hear shit in the same room — no use screaming against the door.

“So far they are letting us visit each other’s rooms, so I can still have happy hour down the hall,” Dad told me on the phone.

We are lucky.  The staff bring meals to his door.

“I remember going to the zoo as a kid,” he said.  “I feel like one of the seals.  We bark at our doors and they throw us a few fish.”

Just like diner time at the old folks home. Lifted the image from here.

It’s inconvenient, it’s difficult, and it sucks.

It works.

They don’t have a single case of Covid-19.  At 89, he’s the “punk” in the building. On a good day, a cold is a hazard.  The paramedics from down the street “visit” twice a week.

In the era of coronavirus, a sneeze starts a tidal wave. Who knows how many trips that red van can take.  But no one wants to find out.

Meanwhile, other states and places are talking about “opening-up.”  Let’s go bowling and get haircuts and maybe stop off on a patio for happy hour… you know the “back to normal.”

There will be a time to meet face-to-face, this isn’t it.  Let’s find out who has it — we still haven’t even tested 1 percent of Americans.

Let’s find out who had it, maybe 20 percent of people have the anti-bodies?

Let’s find out if you can get it again.  Maybe anti-bodies equal immunity?  Maybe not.

Let’s find out if this promised vaccine from Oxford will actually fucking work.  I’m suspicious — when did the last good piece of science come out of Oxford?  Sir Isaac Newton anyone?

Until then, sealed like a doggie bag is probably the best solution for us all.  Sure, we could all be Georgia or Arkansas and let everybody go wherever.  I’m all for a little Darwinism to cull the herd.

It would be great if we could identify the people who “went out” and just refuse to treat them.  That’s “Liberty and Justice for all”.

But the virus doesn’t give a fuck about justice. It sickens and kills with no regard to virtue.  “Open people” will go to the grocery store or other essential businesses.  They will generate a heavy viral load that will infect people who otherwise wouldn’t get infected.

And those people will infect other “innocents.”

Others will argue to open up to save the economy.  But crushing the healthcare system and potentially killing hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers will crush the economy faster (and last longer) than a few more months of lockdown.

Trump and his ilk fucked up testing and tracking when that could have worked. Trump personally has fucked up the communications about what we should do (shooting up lysol may kill the virus — but it will kill you too, dumbass).

For  the US, only distancing has worked so far.  If we get quick and easy tests. If we figure out efficient ways to track the virus, we can protect the innocent.

Then we can get the fuck off Zoom and back to the office, the school and the factory.

But until then, let’s stay sealed up tight and not let that fucking coronavirus bite.