That’s how many names are inscribed on the Vietnam memorial. The first name is recorded under 1959. The last, 1975.

58,276 names. Sixteen years.

The first diagnosed U.S. death from the coronavirus is now dated to February 6. Since then, 54,171 have followed.

54,172 deaths. Eighty days.

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We think we can say now, with some certainty, that things are going to get much, much worse before they get better.

We’re not, collectively, paying attention to the science. We’re not paying attention to the circumstances. We’re not paying attention to the reality.

Nothing new there. We’ve been ignoring global warming for thirty years.

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Last we visited the subject, eighteen months ago, we made a startling discovery:

White people are stupid fucking idiots.

Okay, not that startling. It’s not a plot twist if you knew it all along.

But there it was, in every poll, not just recently, but going back generations: You want to find the trouble with America, how we keep ending up on the wrong side of history, it’s White Americans making the call, or at least being distressingly ambivalent about it.

And now they want us dead.

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Maybe we’re indulging in some wishful thinking here. We’ve certainly seen a lot of it lately.

But we’re having a hard time seeing the normal things will return to. The normal of four weeks ago. Or forty years.

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We want him to die.

And not a peaceful death, either. Something ravenous, like vultures in the desert, peeling his flesh bit by bit, leaving some for later, inflicting great pain, unendurable pain, pain that lasts forever, pain that even death cannot relieve, because death is always near but never final.

Something like that. Something with style.

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Here’s all we really know right now:

It’s gonna take eighteen months to get through this.

That’s the time it takes to discover, test, manufacture, and distribute a vaccine.

Eighteen months.

Best case.

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We had planned to write something wry about March Madness being canceled this year, something to replace our annual Stinque Braquet, something fun — something unlikely to be overtaken by events.

Until we went shopping Saturday.

We shop every Saturday, stocking up for the week. The neighborhood Whole Foods was slightly odd, an empty shelf or two, employees wearing blue gloves. Out of our coffee beans this week, but that’s not unusual.

And then on to Safeway.

Which was thoroughly ransacked.

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