This is the thing that worries me: 

Mr. Trump, when he said he was considering a quarantine for the region, offered no details about how his administration would enforce it. Speaking to CNN, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York criticized the idea, calling it “a declaration of war on states.”

He also questioned the logistical challenges, as well as the message, that such an order would present. “If you start walling off areas all across the country, it would just be totally bizarre, counterproductive, anti-American, antisocial,” he said.

Because: if my state is closed and yours is open, how do I get to you if you are sick? And don’t tell me I can’t, if I love you, if you’re my mother or brother or child, I will tear my way through your barricades, anyone would. We’ve had these walls before and people always find a way to scale them.

We don’t know how long this is going to last. This is why federal action matters, why we’re one country: we have this openness between us, or at least we used to, and it works as long as somebody can make a rule that applies to both you and me.

But “state’s rights,” amirite? The feds are always the enemy until you need them.

If some states are cut off and others aren’t, then you’ll start seeing the shortages people initially worried about when supplies were plentiful and shipping was open. It’s not like we make things everywhere; we depend on trucking, on rail lines, on airplanes still flying. Commercial air travel, okay, shut it down, but you ground cargo planes and suddenly that decision to buy 500 packs of toilet paper looks only sensible and right.

(I have told Mr. A he is no longer allowed to make fun of my propensity to hoard flour and yeast, and he will no longer suffer my mocking him for buying hand soap no matter how much we have in the house.)

We used to hear this every six months or so, what happens if Texas or South Carolina or Maine or somebody secedes, travel and treaties and repercussions for anyone on the borders, but with Dickhead L’Orange shooting his mouth off while his feet are up on the Resolute desk it goes from being hysterical to horrifying with a quickness.

Scout and I were joking on Twitter the other day: the Midwest needs to have a non-aggression pact. Can we open shipping lines across the Great Lakes? Who owns enough barges and paper factories to make this stuff work? We don’t grow everything everywhere; hydroponic farms and the window herb gardens aside we ain’t growing much for the next 4 months anyway.

I have a freezer full of food and this is the kind of talk that has me browsing for basement chest freezers and looking up deer hunting season. You barely have to hunt the ones in our forest preserve, they’ll come right up to you for some Cheez-Its. The plans for the garden gets more elaborate every time he opens his mouth. I’m not joking, this is what causes people to panic. To flee.

Are we going to stop them at the border? What happens when they don’t stop? I wish we didn’t know. 

A.