30 Percent Wasted Food. That Will Catch Up With Us.

Sometimes you run into statistics that blow your mind. Here's one: The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that 30 percent of our food is wasted.

I saw it in the Sunday New York Times, which, as opposed to what 45 says, doesn't make things up. It was in an article about refrigerators on the street, packed with extra food that people don't need--not cream puffs and candy, either; fruits and vegetables. One guy tried that and stocked the frig full. In a day, half of it was gone.

Now that, of course, is New York. But that's not the only city in the country. People need food and many are going on subsistence diets if at all. Think nearer the border.

30 percent. How many homeless people could that feed? I'll bet all of them. How many people would eat better, get more vitamins, be healthier? A whole lot of them.

It means, too, that although some people have ways of organizing the distribution of excess food, like restaurants, much of it just becomes garbage. That staggers the mind, especially now that the virus has sidelined so many of us and the unemployment monies are running out and Congress hasn't yet decided whether to extend any of those payments to people who are still out of work.

Some members of Congress are counting on the schools opening soon, and want to run out the clock. But for all kinds of reasons, that's magical thinking. All it will take are a couple of virus cases within the school population, and the parents will, if they haven't already, withdraw their kids and stay home again. Then they won't work, get fired, and lose money.

That will deepen our recession into a depression. That will reflect upon the food supply chain. It will run low. We haven't seen much hoarding to this point: We will if that happens.

Beyond that, a lot of food that has already been produced will go uneaten. The waste will, at least for a while, compound itself. And, of course, there is no anticipation for this. The mentality is much like Betsy DuVos': You can't plan for something that hasn't happened yet.

Like hell you can't. That's what infrastructure's supposed to be about. But everybody's hoping that human nature will somehow change over the next month, will somehow convince parents to keep their kids in school despite the clear and convincing evidence that they'll get sick.

Not gonna happen. And parents can't pay for the child care they're going to need to keep on working. The economy, teetering on the backs of kids who haven't had to go to school, will now collapse.

August is just around the corner. People are going to get very, very nervous. They're going to want reassurances, and they just aren't there.

For reassurance of this lack of reassurance, just check the sports world. The Miami Marlins have 13 players down with the virus now, and the postponement of their games affects five other teams. And that's just one team: Others may be affected similarly. If so, the experiment to bring baseball back will come to screeching halt.

The Big Ten has said that it won't play any non-conference games, as if that alone would guard against the spread of the virus and somehow will be able to contain it better when they go play each other. The Ivy League, those Eastern elitists, have shut sports down completely this fall, in a rare and stunning bow to common sense.

Everybody's trying as hard as they can to either avoid the obvious or fight it. Some very deluded people think only liberals will get the virus and real Americans won't. I have no idea who or what they're listening to, but that's crazy.

Maybe the virus will kill craziness, too. Maybe, in the big karma of the universe, it has chosen to rip through us like a knife through hot butter to attack it. All this is even before a vaccine comes out, and all those issues will emerge, too.

Five months after this has hit the country, there are still 21 "red zone" states, which include Wisconsin, which are or on the cusp of having new spikes in cases. Nothing, in other words, has changed. Chicago is now demanding that anyone who stays within its borders from Wisconsin must quarantine in place for 14 days. I can't even see the Field Museum anymore.

I don't know much, but all that food has to get organized better. It has to get to people who need it. And they're going to need it now more than ever. We are not only not getting this under control, we are losing control of it. And the opening of schools can only accelerate that by the day.

Don't open the schools. Pay the unemployment. Commit to shutting down until this is brought under control. We still haven't done it. We still lack the leadership to do it. Waiting until, hopefully, 45 is gone is waiting another five months. We've seen what's happened in the first five months: will another five bring us close to the end of this pestilence?

I think you know the answer. We've been through a lot because of this lack of leadership. The toughest time's about to start. Get ready--ready to lose some weight, because beyond what we normally waste, we also waste food in the millions of tons.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark