A Journal of the Plague Year: Day 237: A pandemic miscellany
by David Ackley
In circulation, enumeration, and multiplication, the viral pandemic, like its host, has monetized us all to its own profit.
Each of us is a unit in someone else's accounting.
The rule of the virus is equivalence: to it we are all the same: vector; territory; passage; means of increase. As to capital.
Enumeration is the first stage of death, statistics the scythe, cutting swaths.
“Figures don't lie, but liars figure.” An old friend from Maine.
Trump is like —to quote E.M. Forster from a different context—the steak the burglar offers the dog to distract it from the real business at hand.
What is that business? Who is the burglar? Who the Dog? You may well ask…
To save the herd, separate from the herd. To enter the herd is to risk both self and the herd. But we know survival and herd are one. This is the paradox of the pandemic. And the herd.
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Author's Note
To sum up to date.
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* Brilliant line by line
Never big on steak, anyway...arf arf. Oh, the burglar and it business? Dare we say "oligarchy?"
Thanks greatly, Gary.
Matthew: Sure; that works.
thanks for the read.
"Enumeration is the first stage of death, statistics are the scythe, cutting swaths."
Oh my. *
Concise summary of some of the metrics that have made themselves relevant and felt across this distinctly odd year soon to end.