May 19, 2020 --

Dr. Anthony Fauci has placed himself into stay-at-home quarantine. LPR would go further to suggest that Dr. Fauci, after so many years of productive public service to the nation, go into retirement, particularly as symbol to public officials who are becoming afflicted with the enjoyment of power. 

This affliction was called to our attention recently by the case of the Texas judge who was earning his living by sentencing to the hoosegow a salon (not saloon) owner who insisted on earning her living. Fortunately, the governor of Texas stepped in before the seven-day sentence had run its course.

LPR is concerned that Dr. Fauci, in bringing to the fore worst case scenarios, has become something of a worry wart.  But as my late father, Sol Zukerman noted, "You can't live forever," a fact documented by my reference to him as "my late father."

Or consider the closing line of the wonderful boxing movie, "Body and Soul," where the champion, played by John Garfield,  who won a match he was supposed to lose, told the gambler, "What are you going to do, kill me?  Everybody  dies."

Dr. Fauci, everybody dies - even if we stay at home.  And if everybody stays at home, doesn't the nation become paralyzed -- leading to the death of society?  If we are going to hold, better that we stay at home, than one person should die from COVID-19, are we next to say, better that we stay at home, ,than that one person should die in an auto accident? 

There is no such thing as risk-free life, however much we seem to have taken steps in that direction, by making it against the law to ride in a car without a seatbelt buckled, or making it against the law to some in many venues.  And see how these laws and rules and regulations interfere with individual liberty -- to the point that, at present, home confinement has been imposed on all persons who do not come within the unwritten parameters of "nonessential work."  Where is the place for the concept of "nonessential work" in a land of liberty where all have the freedom to follow one's calling, except in the precincts of those arrogant souls who puff themselves up  to dismiss their fellows as "deplorables?"

President Trump should, and seems on the way to, federalizing the limits of governors to act as petty tyrants.  It seems not entirely coincidental that those governors who would maintain the brakes on normal living, thus causing economic difficulties for all, are Democratic governors.   This, in turn, would suggest, certainly, that Democratic governors are not above politicizing COVID-19 as a re-election 
preventive for Mr. Trump. Republican officials and office-seekers, take note.