This just in: Today, I thought I would list some of the benefits and downsides of the COVID pandemic.

The first, and easily the biggest, downside is that the dirty underbelly of America has been exposed. There are those that feed misinformation for no reason other than to watch in glee as the gullible rush to the trough to eat their fill. “Bill Gates has tracking devices in the vaccine!” they say. In response, millions of Americans that are carrying cell phones which track their every movement and thought say, “I’m gonna get me some horse de-wormer to protect my freedoms.”

A win has been my ability to adapt my job so that I don’t have to travel so much. I went from flying 120,000 miles a year to ZERO and yet, my business never faltered.

A loss has been the need to wear masks nearly everywhere. I understand and support the need to wear masks, constantly wash my hands, maintain social distance and get vaccinated. However, I don’t have to like it.

A win was the lack of traffic. I could drive through downtown San Francisco faster than I could walk the same route. This was new. However, this is starting to fade as traffic resumes.

A loss is the isolation from each other. This ranges from isolation from my neighbors to empty seats at the Olympics.

A win is the newfound joy of things I once took for granted. Sitting at an outside cafe sipping coffee and watching the world go by…what a great thing!

A loss, not one I experienced directly, is the loss of income for those people in jobs that were curtailed or completely eliminated because of the pandemic.

A win is my house. We re-did everything. 2 years ago we were thinking about moving; having had enough of the wildfire smoke and power shutdowns. However, now the house looks like new and we don’t plan on leaving any time soon. There is a show called Love It or List It. We decided to Love It.

A loss was I didn’t get to see my family. My only grandson is now 2 years old and I haven’t seen him since he still had that new car smell. At one point I hadn’t seen my mom for 18 months. We missed a Christmas and a Thanksgiving. My wife didn’t see her family for nearly 2 years.

A win is my weight. When I was traveling a lot, I was eating out a lot. Since the pandemic, I’m mostly home where my wife keeps an eye on my diet. I’ve lost about 10 pounds.

And finally I circle back to the biggest loss, that slice of the American public that “did Facebook research” and determined vaccines are dangerous, elections are fraudulent and any other bit of conspiracy theory nonsense that crosses their biased news feeds.

This “biggest loss” is the worst because it is not a product of the pandemic. The pandemic merely allowed us to “look behind the curtain”. There, we found a mirror and what we saw…was disappointing and…persistent. We will still be this…thing….when the pandemic is far in our rear view mirror.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim