Opinion

October 13-19 is National School Lunch Week.

Covid-19 continues to have a stranglehold on Arkansas and much of the country as we prepare to enter our ninth month of the pandemic. Our spirits are wearing thin of the virus and many are suffering from what I term, “Pandemic-itis” or “the P-demic”. You’re suffering from “the P-demic” when you’re a mask wearer who has worn thin of hearing Covid numbers, and living under pandemic protocol. You’re tired of trying to maintain a constant sanitized bubble. And although you love your friends and neighbors, when you see them enter a building or store maskless when a sign clearly states, “Masks required before entering”, you want to yell, “For the love of Clorox Wipes, put on a mask so we can rid our lives of this plague on humanity!!!”

It’s no secret that the year 2020 has worn out its welcome. Everyone is weary of one climate, weather, political and health issue after another. We’re becoming numb to bad news. I’m reminded of how those living in the 1950s may have felt hearing about the atomic bomb. They say that the unknown is always the scariest as our minds tend to worry about what we can’t foresee. Cue the locusts. Back then schools across the United States were training students to dive under their desks and cover their heads in what were called duck and cover drills to protect themselves in the event of an atomic attack. This was in response to the Soviet Union detonating its first nuclear device on August 29, 1949 in Kazakhstan. This event bolstered a panic over an intensifying arms race and an alarming chapter in the Cold War.