Spotlight on the Out-of-Sight

One of the things the coronavirus has done is shed light on groups of people who don’t get much attention in what we would call “normal” times. Here are three that stand out now to me.

The first are the elderly – specifically, those who live in nursing homes. What are these places? It has been pointed out that there are likely more of these homes in our culture, while in others, older people tend to spend more of their senior years at home with their families. But in many cases, loving families simply don’t have the facilities or expertise to properly care for the oldest among them. Curiously, though, nursing home residents dying of COVID-19 are often not included in the disease’s casualty figures.

Then there are the prisoners. It’s said that the US is the clear world leader in the percentage of the population behind bars. Most of us are perfectly content to have these individuals locked up so that we don’t have to deal with them or think about them. This group includes those whose offenses are no longer crimes and, of course, those who didn’t commit crimes in the first place, and are disproportionately people of color. Even for those who have fairly earned their sentences, however, we might wonder if they deserve to be trapped in what amounts to a COVID petri dish.

Finally, there are the folks who work in meat-packing plants, often foreigners placed at close quarters, working with animal parts. Many of these plants are in fly-over states, and in those states, they are often COVID hotspots. Most of us meat consumers probably prefer not to know where this part of our diet comes from and how the animals (still another forgotten group) are raised. While I’m sure that most of the vegans and animal-rights enthusiasts don’t support seeing humans get sick, they may be pleased that a spotlight is shining into a corner where the majority of us don’t want to go. It has been suggested by some that COVID itself is Mother Nature’s way of paying us back for the abuse that is done to animals, as the disease itself is believed to have jumped from animals to humans, who are not naturally immune from it.

These groups are the ones currently getting some extra attention due to the virus, and I’m sure you can think of others. It usually takes a really inconvenient truth to shake us out of automatic thinking, and once in a while, we need that.

Nuts and Bolts on COVID-19

In the city I used to live in, they had a weekly festival in the downtown area on Thursday nights. It was sort of a combination farmer’s market and art fair, where vendors could set up booths. One of the most popular was called Ask the Rabbi. To borrow a line from the old billboards in the New York subway, you didn’t have to be Jewish to ask him a question. I don’t remember whether he even charged anything. But if they had a booth called Ask the Virologist, here are a few questions I’d pose about the coronavirus:

*Is social distancing only good for taking the pressure off hospitals, or does it also help cause the virus to “run out of fuel” and eventually die?

*What kind of measurement would you be comfortable with in starting to “reopen” the economy? I’m not asking for a date here, just the metrics.

*As for full testing and tracing contacts of infected people, isn’t it too late for that in places like New York and California? But cam it still be done in the less populated states?

*I know the question of immunity has yet to be settled, but who should be released from lockdown first – is it only those who have recovered from the virus? Does testing negative mean they can no longer transmit the virus to others? Should they wear a badge or carry a card saying they are “clean”?

*What about those who have not caught the virus. Must they stay locked down until there is a vaccine?

*When there is a vaccine, who gets it first? How is that decided?

*At what point can this disease be considered “over”?

*Can this particular virus mutate to another form before it runs its course?

*Most people will survive COVID-19, and many will have only mild symptoms or none at all, depending on their immune systems. Is this resistance or immunity trait passed down genetically to their children?

OK, I admit that I was too lazy to just Google these questions or ask Alexa, Siri, Cortana, Quora, or whomever to help me, but it would be nice if our media, mainstream or otherwise, dug in to some of these things.

Random COVID Thoughts

I’d like to get all gushy and spiritual about how transformative the coronavirus experience is, but let’s not forget that it is a giant PITA (spelled a little differently from the animal-rights group acronym). It is NOT normal and never will be. It will end sometime and we will return to a version of our old lives, though perhaps not quite the same one.

That said, COVID-19 is part of a natural process which involves all living creatures. It’s like the weather. We can’t control it, at least not yet. But just because it’s raining, it doesn’t mean we have to stand out in the downpour and get wet. We can manage ourselves as we deal with this plague. That’s what these restrictive lockdown rules are all about.

We can write lovely poetry about how the coronavirus has taught us how much we value our families and relationships. But we are Americans, and we also like space and the ability to move around. While sitting at home with the kids doing jigsaw puzzles might be amusing temporarily, some of us simply don’t enjoy being cooped up with the same people for extended periods of time. It’s a sad fact that domestic violence is increasing under these lockdowns.

It seems our little contribution at home to pandemic heroism, then, has to be the development of  patience For the moment, though, we can celebrate with newly unlocked Wuhan, China, knowing that our own liberation will come.

One good thing for us now is that autopilot has been switched off. We are learning the true value of all those formerly invisible folks who make what we call normal life possible. We take fewer things for granted, especially paper products.

A thought I’ve had lately is that our President has missed a giant opportunity. If the man who loves distractions so much had embraced COVID-19 as a national emergency much earlier on, he might now be a genuine hero with a slam-dunk re-election in sight. Had he been more effectively guiding us through this single calamity, at least some voters might be prepared to overlook other parts of his record during the past three-and-a-half years. His late arrival to this party is now just another piece of baggage.

But as I have said before, it’s not yet the time to dwell on woulda, coulda and shoulda. The only thing that counts right now is gonna.

Running the Numbers

 I found myself involved in a bit of an online dispute the other day when I replied to a comment on a friend’s Facebook thread about the coronavirus. I’m sure you’ve heard this one: the conventional flu kills thousands of people every year too. The implication is, of course, that what’s happening now is overblown by the media. But even the President has had to concede that this virus is a “thing.” If we do a good job, he and the experts say, we can limit deaths to maybe 80 thousand people, or perhaps 100- or 200 thousand.

Shocking numbers indeed, but it all depends on what we’re measuring against. This week, we were told, the US death toll for the coronavirus surged past the number killed on 9/11. Well, that was an apple, and this is a pretty big orange. If we’re going to compare it to anything, the obvious candidate is the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918 and ’19. Yes, it covered portions of two years, and there were three waves of it, killing some 675,000 Americans. So if we lose “only” 150K now, we will be doing relatively well.

One thing that’s curious to me is why the Spanish Flu didn’t rank higher in our history books. Even today, if you say 1918, I bet most people first think of World War I, Armistice Day and related events. But it’s also said that many of the US troops President Woodrow Wilson sent abroad to fight the war in Europe were carrying the deadly flu, and that the disease killed more soldiers than war did.

If geographic correctness were applied, it should have been called the American Flu, because it likely started here. There are different versions of its origins. One says it was caused by a nasty cloud created by the burning of a huge pile of hog manure at Fort Riley, Kansas; another says it was the result of vaccine experiments conducted on troops stationed there.

The number 675,000 was a very significant portion of the US population at the time, I bet if many of us today were to shake our family trees just a little, it would be no surprise to find someone who fell out of one of its branches, lost to that plague of more than a century ago.

I have a strong feeling that COVID-19 will get the attention it deserves in new history books and other media products devoted to reminding future generations of what went on here. That’s a good thing if it keeps our descendants from making the same mistakes some of us are making now – things we should have learned from 1918.

Feahhh Itself

We’re all familiar with the saying about the cure being worse than the disease – which probably isn’t true all that often. But FEAR certainly is worse. We have been advised not to panic about the coronavirus, but are we taking that advice? The stock market has been collapsing, meetings are being cancelled, schools are closing in many countries, and the face-mask makers can’t keep up with the demand.

There are some scary things about the coronavirus for sure. There is no cure, and it spreads rapidly. But if you catch it, there’s a way better-than-even chance you’re going to survive. According to reports, the majority of those who do come down with COVID-19 experience only mild symptoms. Yes, the death rate is higher than with the typical seasonal flu, but ALL flus are deadly to some.

My view is a contrary one. I am not an epidemiologist, but I wonder whether quarantine is working. I can see how it can slow the spread of the disease, but in this case, I think the horse has already left the barn. The US testing capability is way below what it should be. I have a sneaking suspicion that if the whole American population were tasted, there would be many thousands coming up positive for coronavirus. You may be carrying it yourself, though you don’t yet present symptoms.

So what do we do about it as individuals? Certainly it’s always a good idea this time of year to wash your hands frequently, catch sudden sneezes in your sleeve  or even lighten up on handshaking. But how far do we need to go in altering our lifestyles? Do we stop going to restaurants, movies, sports events, cocktail parties, or even family gatherings? Catching the disease from a family member is exactly the same as getting it from a stranger. Do we shun those people or lock ourselves up?

The stock market is a good barometer of hope and fear, but is not always reasonable. You may feel rushed to sell a stock that has fallen in recent days, but the product that stock represents hasn’t changed. Yes, there are supply chain problems, but are they permanent? Is the economy going to be allowed to grind to a halt?

It’s our bad luck that we don’t have the national leadership we need at this moment. The President feels this is just another hoax, and says that some miracle will cause the coronavirus to disappear. He’s dead wrong about the hoax and very likely wrong about the miracle bit, but not about the ending, which may come later than we’d like. But the coronavirus WILL end, just like SARS, H1N1, the Asian and even the Spanish flus before it. For the most part, our species absorbs these things and comes out on the other side, though sometimes not without great cost. In the meantime, science may come up with a solution that keeps this disease and its cousins from visiting us again.

Life itself is a risk. You could come down suddenly with any number of diseases or conditions much more serious than coronavirus, for which there is also no cure and that you could not have avoided.

Governments may be either prompt or slow to react to this crisis. But in the end, we as individuals are responsible for our own level of fear, and with what attitude we confront what lies ahead of us in our own lives.