There is a danger

We're all talking about it, living it, fearing it and hunkering down because of it. It's been a great leveler of class and status over the past few weeks, and is now more a cloud of despair and suspense, enveloping the entire horizon. The Doc and the door attendant; barista and bank official; house hubby and Homeland Security boss....they all anticipate flattening the curve; they all want it, exclaim it, preach it, and attempt to work towards achieving it. We SLP's want that to happen, desperately, and want to do our part to make this nightmare evaporate like boiled grain alcohol. We want to do our jobs, as difficult as they can often be - we just want to serve somebody.

"Flatten that COVID,
Flatter than a cake;
Flatten that COVID -
Let our national fever BREAK!"

That's just pure silliness, though. Every waking hour of every day, we're all fully realizing now what a horrible predicament into which we've found ourselves...it's oozing under the cracks of our doors, under and around our closed windows, and then - it's coating everything! It's on our skin! It's in us?? With each day, it seems as if the scientists, the clinicians and the politicians are bantering about new facts about this disease, and we're suddenly shifting gears on precautions - what should we believe?!? How can we keep up? How do we stay alive?

That is all wild fantasy, of course. All that naked fear - with all that is in the news, and in the public service announcements, and on billboards and in social media up to our bandwidth's width - we know it is, COVID-19; it is just a conglomeration of nucleic acid particles, in the air and on surfaces, that loves to make new friends that tend to herd together. We are faced, worldwide, with the threat of this little bugger who just wants to cover the world with its mischief. It wants to infect us and make more of itself; it doesn't care who any of us are, but that we help perpetuate the species. Something so simple, and yet so powerful?!? Laying waste to world economies and civic life everywhere?? Why can't we stop this?

In the final analysis, we know we can stop this. The steps, the processes are hard but - we know they will work. In spite of all the political warfare and backstabbing; in spite of the dire shortages of material experienced among health care workers, first responders and other front-line warriors in the virus war; in spite of the lack of thorough information on how many persons are infected - we know that the recommendations to slow transmission do and will work, until we get a vaccine. We've crossed the bar, realizing that life has fundamentally changed because of our need to stay safe. Now that that's done - the SLP picks up her equipment bag and goes back to work.

"Flatten that COVID,
Flatter than a cake;
Flatten that COVID -
Let our national fever BREAK!"