At the end of the movie A Nightmare on Elm Street Nancy, the protagonist, turns to Freddy Krueger, the murderer, and declares that she's not afraid of him anymore. This, she believes, robs Freddy of his power. A bewildered Freddy lunges at her and disappears. We then see an idyllic dream-like scene of Nancy's mother and fiends who died during the film welcome her. She gets in the car with her friends, only to find out (spoiler) that it was a lie. Everything is horrible. Roll credits.

I feel like the USA thinks that we're all through with COVID-19. That the horrific events of the past four months are now over and that we're back to "business as usual".

Folks: I hate to break it to you, but we're about to get mugged by the horror-show antagonist.

I went to pick up some wine today from our local winery. The time we did this before they had everything set up for curbside pickup. Today? Notsomuch. If I wanted pick-up I'd need to go into the store. I had my mask on so I went inside. What I saw were people who wonder what planet-from-last-week I was from. Folks were in there tasting wine and conversing among themselves. The staff did have masks on, but from what I saw it was like they were enacting some new health-department regulation. It felt like the end of that movie. What was I so worried about? Why the mask?

In our race for normal we're discounting the very real threat that we're going to make this a lot worse.

And what's worse, when this does blow up we'll start blaming the protests for Black Lives Matter and not the true problem, which is that folks think that the pandemic is done. Of course the ones who will be hit hardest by this are Black Folks. Taking personal responsibility for being dumb-asses is not a trait we've managed to learn.

Seriously, stay the fuck home if you can. Normal isn't here anymore. You can be fearless without being reckless. I believe in you.