Nothing but the dead and dying in my little town

Friday, July 3, 2020

Jersey City has set up machines at all its municipal buildings to make sure that people who are coming in aren't dead.

“We don't want to make the same mistake we made with the nursing homes,” said one official who noted that the testing of senior citizens in nursing home and other senior buildings that started after the bodies started piling up that was a dreadful mistake.

“this official said we knew they were having a problem in Italy months earlier.

“But we thought the seniors in those senior centers were dying because they were Italian,” the officials said. “Thus, not to make the same mistake twice now we are going to make sure that when you come into a municipal building, we know you're alive.  We going to check to make sure you still have a heartbeat and that you are still breathing  -- standards we consider are two of the good classic signs that life, even if we might suspect you might be brain-dead and mumbling about tearing down statues.”

This official said the city is being proactive even though it comes six months after the pandemic hit.

“We consider this an innovation we are really proud of,” the official said. “Of course, we never stopped

tracking people in restaurants to make sure they are not dead and are relying on good citizens to report other people who might violate our rules. We simply do not have the manpower to seen police to every house to check if people are

This idea that the can protect you from death itself is one of and outgrowth of other brilliant ideas that have been generated from this administration over the last half decade – such as trying to keep people who jaywalk from getting hit by unsuspecting drivers or creating bicycle lanes to protect bike riders who would otherwise by running over pedestrians on the sidewalks.

“We admit that in the past we were so busy protecting sea turtles from unscrupulous plastic bags that we largely ignored this Public Health crisis,” this official said. “The whole idea that technology can be used effectively to detect when a person is dead is something we have not yet realized before. Technology has come a long way to saving lives now we can determine whether they are alive or dead just by having you passed through machine.

And we will assure you that when you are dead, we will know about it

The officials went on to say that the city has been vigilant in other areas.

“We made sure that you did not catch anything from the city parks by insisting you wear face masks,” the official said. “Unfortunately, we missed the fact that people who are being admitted to the hospitals for other diseases were catching it there and dying. But we managed to get enough ventilators to make sure they could breathe their last breaths.”

The new technology may prove useful in the future in preventing places like City Hall from becoming the same kind of breeding ground for disease as hospitals and nursing homes – and since the governor of the state is not likely to send sick people into city hall the way he sent them to nursing homes, the death rate in municipal buildings is expected to be very low. First responders – who were also significantly impacted by hospitals will be relieved to know they won’t face significant risk if required to respond to city hall for some medical emergency such as the mayor stubbing his toe on Frank Haig’s desk.

City officials are still investigating how they might use similar technology to check for dead people flocking into newly opened taverns – admitting only reluctantly that having locked up ordinary people for four months may have caused patrons to overreact.

“When we let people out of county jail because of the virus, we told them to go home – and we’re pretty sure they did,” the official said. “But when we told people we locked up in their homes that they could go out, they rushed to bars to get drunk. Who would have thought? What were these people thinking – that they live in free county or what?”

Prosecuting bar patrons and releasing prisoners from jail has won the city praise from Gov. Murphy.

You know if Murphy praises you, you must be doing the right thing-- although this is a little like getting praised for by Mussolini for keeping the trains running on time.