Commentary
Ocean City Today May 1, 2020
Page 27
What can we do? Exercise caution As politicians, businesspeople, some economists and libertarian-minded individuals agitate for an end to the covid19 lockdowns, the argument invariably brings up the relatively small percentage of virus-related deaths versus the economic ruin these restrictions will cause. But the question that’s seldom discussed, as we argue over whether the exercise of common sense might negate the need for these repressive measures, is what the covid-19 numbers might be now if governors had not acted as they did. The anti-restriction perspective asserts that, given the devastating economic problems that could lie ahead, we might be better off with less government control and more responsible common sense behavior by the citizenry. If only common sense was that common. If it was, to cite some examples from everyday life, we wouldn’t have motorcycle helmet laws, or speed limits. We wouldn’t have laws that prohibit throwing objects at vehicles, property or persons, or have, as Ocean City does, a law that prohibits landing an aircraft in town. Obviously, government officials and ordinary citizens have seen common sense thrown out the window so many times that it defies the imagination to believe that suddenly it will dominate our behavior. Hence these shackles on our liberties. The question, however, remains: have these lockdowns done more harm than good? That is unknowable. The only estimate of the death toll of an unchecked covid-19 pandemic in the public conversation comes from Imperial College, London, where researchers in March concluded that the covid-19 fatalities in this country alone would be in the range of 2 million ... as compared to the current 60,000-65,000. Is that overblown? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. Common sense suggests that governments need to react to what’s in front of them based on the advice of experts and their own opinions of public behavior. After that, no one can say definitively what we need to do, other than to proceed with caution and not swing too far in either direction.
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EDITOR ............................................ Stewart Dobson MANAGING EDITOR ................................ Lisa Capitelli STAFF WRITERS .................. Greg Ellison, Morgan Pilz, ...................................... Joshua Kim, Elizabeth Bonin ASSISTANT PUBLISHER .......................... Elaine Brady ACCOUNT MANAGERS............................ Mary Cooper CLASSIFIEDS/LEGALS MANAGER .... Nancy MacCubbin SENIOR DESIGNER ................................ Susan Parks GRAPHIC ARTISTS ................ Kelly Brown, Kyle Phillips PUBLISHER........................................ Christine Brown ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT ...................... Gini Tufts Ocean City Today is published weekly by FLAG Publications, Inc. at 8200 Coastal Highway, Ocean City, Md. 21842. Ocean City Today is available by subscription at $150 a year. Visit us on the Web at www.oceancitytoday.com. Copyright 2020
PUBLIC EYE
Navy reveals aliens
This explains everything. I’m referring to the Pentagon’s revelation this week that videos taken by Navy pilots in 2004 and 2015 really are recordings of Unexplained Aerial Phenomenon in our skies. So now, when we have reached a point where nothing makes any sense, we know why: we have been and continued to be secretly ruled by aliens. Obviously, Trump has been worrying about the wrong By aliens all this time. Instead of Stewart focusing on the southwest, he should have gone to Congress Dobson for funding to build not a wall, but a space shield between us and Alpha Centauri. Not that it would have mattered, because it’s way too late for that: we have been taken over by the Pod People and didn’t even know it. We realize now that the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” in which the Pod People debuted in 1956 and then reappeared in several remakes, was not an unsettling piece of fiction at all, but a documentary shot by someone who, as is always the case with Pod People invasions, is no longer with us to explain how he or she got the footage. If you think I’m wrong and are skeptical of the existence of Pod People, I offer two strong pieces of evidence, the first of which are these Navy films. Clearly, someone or something was here that did not file a flight plan. Secondly, why do you think they call them Podcasts? Or iPods? Or Storage Pods? Well, that’s exactly what these latter pods are for: they harbor the extraterrestrials until they can take over a human body, which is then discarded as inferior, presumably along with Win-
dows 8, tape cassettes, and fondue. And iPods? It makes complete sense now that the reason Apple Inc. was so far ahead of its computer-code writing competitors in those earlier years is that Steve Jobs was not from this planet. Interestingly, Elon Musk, Strange-Dude-in-Chief of Tesla, just seems like an alien, while Justin Bieber ... oh come on, we’ve all known for a long time. And Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg? Has anyone ever actually seen him blink? I did just one time: his eyelids closed sideways. Fans of the fact-based television show “Ancient Aliens” will read this and go, “Yep, u-huh, tell it like it is, brother,” because they have been tuned into the truth for years. I mean just think about how our society has changed over the last several decades. At one time, for instance, this country’s favorite condiment was ketchup, Heinz 57, in fact. Now? It’s salsa. What does that tell you? Further, if you asked your grandparents if they could imagine gathering around the television to watch “My 600-Pound Life,” they would call you nuts. The truth is the stars are Pod People, multifamily occupancy. Politically speaking, the Pod People have been in charge for decades. Look at Sen. Mitch McConnell. Any questions? The continuing uproar over disinformation campaigns, nut-job conspiracy theories, the unstoppable spread of surveillance, paralyzing political discord and, yes, the invention of Almond Milk, are the products of one thing: Pod People aliens. Thank you, U.S. Navy, for revealing the truth, because some of us were having a tough time believing that we were really that crazy. Now we know, it’s not us at all. Oh, and this fascination with taking Selfies everywhere, apparently to prove your own existence? Alien all the way.
