This House is Clean

I'm having more Poltergeist Covid 19 analogies.

In a recent post, I talked about how some of us are in the World War C stage akin to the chairs going funny in the Freeling's kitchen and Carol Ann (Heather O'Rourke) sliding across the kitchen floor. (I should also add the sports game magically switching to Mr. Rogers)

Then other people are in the more unfortunate stage akin to Carol Ann being sucked up into the closet void.

Later Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein) comes into the story. She pulls Carol Ann back from the void. Then she announces that the house is clean. I think the Freeling family was probably relieved; the audience members as well. 

Or the ignorant audience members at least. The smart ones probably knew it was too soon for the movie to be over.

World War C is probably far from over.

But Donald Trump and some of his minions have been trying very hard to Tangina us. 

I mean they're not literally telling us that this is over—that we're fine now. BUT I think their push to open up the economy pushes that message. 

And it's not a hard message to push seeing that many people don't believe there's a true danger in the first place.   

I just heard that our Texas Governor Greg Abbott is planning to open up things very soon. In 10 days. 

His initial plans are somewhat conservative. I'll give him that. He plans to open national parks, retail stores are going to have curbside pick up programs, and elective medical stuff will be back on the table.

Are we ready for that?

Probably not.

Seeing that in Texas, we haven't gotten to the child-stealing-closet stage yet. Well, I shouldn't say that. Some Texans have.  As of today, 428 Texans have died of Covid 19.  That's 428 families experiencing trauma and grief.

But we still haven't gotten to the point of hospitals being overrun.

Might we simply skip that stage?

Maybe.

I doubt it, though. Because there are just too many people being too relaxed with the rules. 

If this whole thing was a screenplay that I was writing, what I would feel compelled to write is this:

In the next few weeks, several cities/states relax their rules. People become more and more relaxed. Then in June....

Well, June makes March and April look like the easy good old days.  

I'd be killing off most of my main characters.

The thing is, Tangina saw a happy moment—a family reunited. And from this, she declared that the house was clean. The horror was over.

Or maybe, since she was a medium, she had some kind of psychic feelings to back up the declaration.  

Still, it would have prevented some grief if she or the family....or the parapsychologists showed some more diligence.  

But you know....my analogy isn't even really that appropriate.

It would work better if toys were still flying around the kid's bedroom and Tangina declared the house was clean. She might say, Yes, I know things look a little hectic in there. But it should be safe. And your kids really need to get back to playing in their bedroom with their toys. So go on. I give you permission to get back on with your lives.

Or the analogy would fit better if the curve was flattening. We were seeing hardly any deaths, hospitalizations, or positive test results.  It looks like things are okay. We open up the world again. And then...BOO.  The virus was simply hiding.  THAT would be more like Poltergeist.  

How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-beloved to talk to us via the Internet?   

The Dead are Online, a novel by Dina Roberts