What has the coronavirus cost us all?

      The damage from the coronavirus pandemic, economic and otherwise, continues to pile up.  Bankruptcies.  Lost jobs.  Entire industries (such as hospitality) decimated.  Stock market plunge.  The deaths and sickness.  And the separation and loss of togetherness and loss of celebrations, festivals, and other social activities that strengthen the bonds between us.

      My wife and I are extremely fortunate in that neither of us suffered job losses.  She works in the medical industry, one of the few industries where commerce carried on.  I teach online classes, and in fact, demand for my services increased greatly during the lockdown!  (And my Social Security deposits kept coming, too.)

      Yet, we lost much.  Both of us had travel cancellations.  She had planned a two-week trip to Europe; me, a four-day scuba diving trip to Mexico.   All of my musical activities were cancelled, including my community concert band, and my Saturday night jam sessions with "the boys".  Worst of all was the high school musical where I was to play in the pit orchestra.  (The kids who had auditioned and rehearsed and worked hard to learn their songs and their lines had it a lot harsher than me, of course.)

      Five years ago, we made ambitious retirement plans for the year 2020.  We were to sell our house, buy a boat, and the two of us go on an extended cruise.  As of today, we're in limbo.  We don't know whether any of it will still happen, and so we sit and wait in a holding pattern.

      And now for the political fallout.

      When our nation was attacked by terrorists on Sept 11, 2001, the death and destruction was pretty awful.  But as I watched the horror, I knew that the political aftermath would be just as bad, if not worse.  I predicted - correctly - that the U.S. government would use this event as an excuse to become much larger, more powerful, spend a LOT more money, and destroy a LOT of our freedoms.  And so, the U.S. government launched two ill-conceived wars in the Middle East.  In the Iraqi war, tens of thousands of American troops died, tens of thousands more were wounded, and $Trillions of taxpayer dollars were flushed down the drain.   In Afghanistan, the death and destruction and terrorism and waste of $dollars continues, nineteen years later, with no end in sight.  Meanwhile, here on the home front, we have the taxpayer-supported Patriot Act and the Natural Security Agency, whose mission is to harass travelers at airports and other ports of entry.  See my article.  Oh, and nobody flinches anymore when the annual budget deficit tops a $Trillion or two.  Or three.

      And so now here we are in May 2020, and our nation is once again under attack by an evil force known as the coronavirus.  Yes, there are some differences between this "attack" and the 9-11 attacks; this attack is not quite as deliberate, and it affects the whole world, not just our nation.  But just the same, it is a national crisis.  And just like the last big attack, the worst aspect is not just the immediate and obvious damage, but rather, the not-so-obvious damage:  the enormous increase in the size, power, and cost of government. 

      "This is an emergency!" they scream.  "This is no time to cry and moan about sacrificing your freedom and fortunes!  Only government can save us!"  Thus you have government at all levels - federal, state, and local - forcing people to stay home, banning people from working, from going to church, going outdoors or to the beach or to the park, and so many other social activities.  And you have politicians and pundits who don't even bat an eyelash over multi-$Trillion dollar budget deficits.  The only people complaining about these unimaginable deficits are the government-worshippers who say it's NOT ENOUGH!

      In a few scattered locations, some few liberty-minded protesters have gathered on the street to speak out against this latest assault on our liberty.  Although I agree with their basic sentiment, I question the strategy of congregating like that.  There's a contagious virus out there, guys; you are clearly NOT setting a good example of individual responsibility in action.  Furthermore, if asked whether they think the government should continue to toss out boatloads of money like it's just paper (which it is, by the way), I wonder how many of them would protest that?

      At some future date, we will beat this virus, I assure you.  The history books will include this pandemic along with all the others throughout the ages that have killed great numbers of people.  But the increases in the size and cost of government will be here to stay.  As I have often said:  it's easy to come up with an excuse to make government bigger, but nobody can ever think of a reason to make it smaller.