By Elona Baron as told to Laurie Baron
SAN DIEGO−While pawing through the newspaper today before I chewed it up, I noticed a report about the first case of a human transmitting Covid19 to a dog. Given the incompetence shown by the Golden Deceiver when he advised ingesting or injecting bleach or Lysol as a cure for the disease (which is akin to telling dogs to eat rat poison if they don’t want to be bitten by a rat), I have decided that the United States needs to appoint a top dog to manage the pandemic.
As I’ve noted in earlier columns, dogs don’t mind staying at home. A top dog would not be in a hurry to reopen the economy. He or she would be comfortable with mandating wearing masks outside the home for two reasons: it would require only a minor adjustment to shift our bandanas from our necks to our snouts, and it would protect us from catching the virus from irresponsible people. From what I’ve seen of the Liberate protests on television, there are lots of these folks around.
A top dog would order contact tracing too which would entail humans being implanted with chips to monitor their temperatures and whereabouts. They would have to wear tags around their necks indicating whether they tested positive or negative for the coronavirus. What’s good for the pups should be good for their owners.
A top dog would expect humans to get coronavirus vaccine shots once they have been developed. Most dogs aren’t anti-vaxxers and appreciate not having to worry about getting rabies when bitten by other dogs. Finally, a top dog would create a Human Control Department and train herding breeds to be people catchers rounding up stray humans who endanger others by disobeying social distancing guidelines, refusing tests, or wandering aimlessly without their masks or tags. I know this all sounds pretty strict, but that’s how dogs are treated to protect the public from harming or infecting humans.
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Elona resides with Bonnie and Laurie Baron. The latter is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He may be contacted via lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com. No animals were harmed in the writing of this column.