Okay so no, I can’t remember what I said. So to me, there’s a really great silver lining that came out of the dark cloud caused by the pandemic the Rona storm, the COVID 19. And that is the way people now interact on zoom or resume like products. At the very beginning of the pandemic, when there was the shutdown and suddenly everybody is scared and isolated and afraid to be near other people and having to gear up and wear masks and stay distanced and never allowing anyone in their homes and being afraid to go inside of any enclosed space and only meeting each other outdoors at a distance.
The fact that then all of a sudden you started having Zoom parties, where people were creating spaces online, where you could see an old friend who lives very far away. You could, at one point I had my 35th high school reunion, on a Zoom, on Zoom, and I got to see old friends I literally had not seen in 35 years.
Another time a group of friends of mine hired a bartender in Mexico City to teach us how to make three really great spicy Mexican cocktails with tequila. And every one of us was in a different state, we all live far away from each other. And we have a great instructor coming to us from Mexico City.
This isn’t something we were ever able to do before, and we never even thought about doing before. And now, the enduring beauty of this new way of life has turned out to be really great for, citizen engagement with the legislature because I used to have to go down to the capitol and sit in a room for hours to testify and tell my story to my local government, the state government, when they’re considering laws.
And That always happens on a weekday, in the middle of the day, and you never know when you’re going to get to testify. You never know when you’re going to be able to pull a legislator off the floor, if you want to have a meeting with them. You have to hang around the Capitol all day long, which means you have to take the day off from work.
And if you live far away from the Capitol, that’s an added problem. Now, anytime you want to testify about a bill, you just go on zoom. The whole political process has become so much more accessible to so many more people. The people who couldn’t take days off of work or the people who couldn’t drive long distances to get into the Capitol.
Pretty much anybody now can be heard and be heard. Become part of the process. And I think that is just about the best thing to come out of COVID.
And here’s my second story, which is a negative, not a good story. My closest friend who was more like a, almost like a Brother, except if you really love your brother a lot. Really the closest friend to me. We went on vacations together. We visited each other constantly. We talked on the phone for hours, usually at least two times a week.
But in the first year of the pandemic, we were talking on the phone with each other really a lot. three, four, five times a week for hours. He was absolutely my closest friend. And he’s dead now because he had a health condition. He had that left him vulnerable. He did a very good job of keeping himself safe before vaccines were available.
And even after vaccines, he was always, doing everything with the masks and the distancing and everything possible to protect his health because he knew he was Vulnerable, but at one point his health condition put him in the hospital for six weeks and At the end of those six weeks when he was about ready to go home and they had cleared up like his problem He wound up getting COVID instead, after being in the hospital for six weeks.
And I believe this wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been in Florida, where they feel like masks and distancing and actually caring about what happens to other people is some sort of liberal plot. So instead, in the hospital in Florida, Central Florida. Under Rhonda Santus, the doctors and nurses were not wearing masks.
The visitors to his room were not wearing masks, and he was sharing a room with someone else who had a steady stream of random visitors, none of them wearing masks. Instead of protecting a person with vulnerable, fragile health, They just ignored reality. Let anybody go in there and breathe inside of an enclosed hospital room.
And after being inside the hospital for six weeks, my friend wound up on a ventilator and being killed by COVID. And I don’t think that would have happened if he’d been in a hospital in a state where they are much more careful and actually understand how important it is to protect certain people.
I think that’s it.
