Wait, what? Haven’t our local governments told us schlubs that grocery stores are “essential” in the pandemic? And that they could remain open?

Well, about that. Now CNN has found “experts” who are advising that the stores need to keep customers out. Because of COVID, of course.

You cannot make this stuff up.

It’s too dangerous for store workers because of “careless customers,” says Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. According to his union members, 85% of you customers are not practicing social distancing in stores. How does he know? Does he have union toadies tallying up bad shoppers who break the rules of non-engagement?

By the way, this union president is one of the “experts” CNN cites. But for backup, they quote John Logan, a professor of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State University. A professor of labor at a university in San Fran must be a legit expert, right?

Logan also gives a big thumbs-up to actually closing grocery stores.

“Anything that reduces the need for interaction with the public and allows for greater physical distancing will ultimately better protect grocery workers. Shuttering stores and repurposing them for pickup and delivery only would be a positive step.”

Dear reader, have you used pickup or grocery delivery during these stay-at-home times? My husband and I did, and the result was a total clusterf*ck. At first we could not reserve a time for pickup, which was our preference. Then, when we did use the delivery service, we had to wait two days for a delivery that arrived hours late and was missing items. Nope, not doing that again.

Credit: giphy.com.

But “experts” have been warning us about grocery stores and their inherent dangers ever since the word “coronavirus” entered the national lexicon. They sounded the alarm about the dangers that lurk between the aisles.

For example, they showed us scare videos like this one, which shows how far a cough can spread.

They also advised us how to disinfect our polluted groceries when we come home from the store. One family physician even recorded a 13-minute tutorial to show us how to use “surgical techniques” in our kitchens.

“Imagine that the groceries that you have are covered with some glitter, and your goal at the end of this is to not have any glitter in your house, on your hands, or especially, on your face.”

Oh, please. Make it stop!

But you know the real reason for all these scare tactics, don’t you? It goes beyond the standard “if it bleeds, it leads” credo that journalists use.

Journos want to frighten us because secretly, deep down they want the economy to fail, and people to suffer. Oh, they may deny it and take great umbrage if someone were to suggest it. Brian Stelter, CNN’s “hall monitor” as Tucker Carlson calls him, would probably post a long-winded Twitter thread on how CNN reporters are better people than us rubes.

After all, if the economy goes South, that means Donald Trump may go down in electoral flames. And that’s what they really want.

So when a large-scale study came out last Friday which purported that COVID-19 cases are vastly underreported, leading the actual death rate to be much lower than “experts” previously thought, most of us felt hopeful. But the next day media detractors emerged, citing other “experts” who questioned the results.

Plus, over at the New York Times, writer Don McNeil Jr. cites “nearly two dozen experts” who tell us that “there will be no quick return to our previous lives.” People may be “trapped inside for months.”

Oh, and. . . Trump!

“Yet President Trump this week proposed guidelines for reopening the economy and suggested that a swath of the United States would soon resume something resembling normalcy. For weeks now, the administration’s view of the crisis and our future has been rosier than that of its own medical advisers, and of scientists generally.”

I’m tired of the “experts.” I’m also fed up with journalists who gloat with the prospect of keeping people from grocery stores, churches, ball games, and concerts. Journalists who want to frighten us into thinking that “it’s the end of the world as we know it.”

Sing along, with defiance: “And I feel fine!” Let’s ignore the media naysayers and applaud the president working to open the country.

Welcome Instapundit readers!

Featured image: David Prasad/flickr/cropped/CC BY-SA 2.0.