From 1965-71, CBS aired a sitcom entitled Green Acres. The show’s protagonist, Oliver Wendell Douglas, was an NYC lawyer who bought a farm and, several years ahead of the zeitgeist, went back to the land. In Hooterville, his adopted domicile, Oliver wears a three-piece suit while he rides his tractor and is surrounded by hicks, hucksters and bumbling bureaucrats. The show portrays this naive romantic’s daily encounters with the loony locals and his ingenuous, Hungarian immigrant, incongruously glamorous, reluctant farm wife, Lisa, who’s also a very bad cook. Every interaction ends with Oliver exasperated by the ludicrous statements or conduct of those in his new sphere.

I remember this surrealistic show as having been quite funny. Seeing other people at wit’s end is often amusing.

But living through Coronamania put me at wit’s end. I didn’t fear The Ro for one minute. Having developed, over time, some working knowledge of Biology, Systems Ecology and human health, and being skeptical about media and government, the viral threat seemed to me way overblown from Day 1.