Rebuilding the Anthill

Once, I accidentally kicked over an anthill in the backyard. It wasn’t complete destruction, though the damage was significant. Almost immediately, the ants came out and began the process of rebuilding. If I were their size, it would have seemed like a monumental task that would take a long time.

Now I am no entomologist, but it certainly appeared as if every single ant was involved in the repair work. There were no ants hanging back, as in, it’s not my job, it doesn’t affect me, it doesn’t align with my goals, or I’m being deprived of my Constitutional rights. They were all busy carrying whatever they needed to repair their home. I guess the only ant not visibly working was the queen (OK, she really did have another job!).

I may be romanticizing a bit here, but all those ants seem programmed with one purpose and one agenda. We are not quite like that, but situations come up when we need to be. The last big thing that seemed to involve most everyone in this country for a long period of time was World War II.

Our current pandemic is not just about testing, tracing, mask-wearing, social distancing, staying home or going out again. It’s about logistics and distribution. The swabs are over here, the reagents over there. Some states have more than enough personal protective equipment and others don’t. People are in five-mile food lines in Texas while milk is being poured out on the ground in California. Hogs are put down in Minnesota without being turned into food, because the farmers can’t feed the animals while the meat can’t be processed, and if growing crops doesn’t pencil out on some level for the agriculture folks in Kansas, they don’t get picked. I’ve heard that the military is really good at logistics. Why haven’t these forces been mobilized on a national level, and someone with military experience put in charge of logistics and supply-chain repair?

Even when it comes to distributing relief money, it still takes months for the government to actually put it into everyone’s hands. At some point, there will be a COVID vaccine, and hundreds of millions of doses will be available. How will all that be distributed, and who will get it first?

COVID is not a drill, or a conspiracy, or a competition, or some other country’s fault. It’s an emergency happening right here, right now, and we haven’t really been acting accordingly, especially at the highest levels. Those of us who have anthills in the backyard might learn something about how things get done.

Unmasked Marauders

Last week I saw TV coverage of protesters outside a state capitol building. One of these folks, not wearing a mask, was a man carrying a sign with a message to the effect that it was his body and the government couldn’t tell him what to do with it. I thought, geez, haven’t I heard that somewhere before?

What do you want to bet that this fellow is in favor of seeing the Supreme Court strike down Roe v. Wade? Yet, I’m also willing to bet that if his neighbor’s house was damaged by a tornado, he would rush right over to help out

The coronavirus is pushing us to behave in ways that go against human nature. Staying home doesn’t feel very heroic. If we do go out, we are still asked in many jurisdictions to wear at least a cloth mask, not to protect ourselves from COVID but to protect others from US.

The preacher who says that if God wanted us to wear masks, we would have been supplied one at birth does have a point, but for the moment, it seems to be prudent to wear one when we’re out and about. Even as things start to re-open, following this simple rule is the least of our burdens. There’s a lot of debate about whether masks are sanitary, but it seems they are better than nothing. We could have a spare or two available if we need to clean or wash the one ye’ve been wearing. I’m not into shaming people not wearing them. But circumstances may force these non-participants to change their ways, even those in the White House.

A couple of things I have noticed: Though a mask doesn’t cover the eyes, it seems to contribute to tunnel vision. When we’re in a supermarket, we may not always see the folks on either side of us while we are on our particular mission. While masks are  uncomfortable, unlike medical workers, bus drivers, and store clerks, most of us have them on for relatively short periods of time for those external trips.

There is something almost Middle Eastern going on here. We Americans, especially we men, get to feel like  those women in strict Islamic countries forced to cover most of their faces. I have a little joke that those women could teach their counterparts in less-restrictive regions a thing or two about eye makeup, but it must be awful having to wear what some like to call a bee suit.

To get back to those protesters hereabouts, however, they can say all they want about being patriots and how forced mask-wearing interferes with their Constitutional rights. All I can say back is, when it comes to defending the Constitution, there must be better battles to pick than this one.

Running With the Herd

We aren’t cattle, sheep, or wildebeest, but as fellow mammals, we all can be considered part of a herd. The coronavirus has introduced discussion of the term “herd immunity” and how to get there. In Sweden, rather than suffering under the strict limited-contact measures adopted by most countries to fight the spread of the disease, citizens are allowed to interact fairly normally. Yes, more people will get sick, but the idea is that if up to 70 percent of Swedes contract the disease and recover from it, the herd will eventually develop immunity to COVID.

While the death rate in Sweden is higher than in the rest of Europe, and the World Health Organization has not yet concluded that people recovering from the disease are immune, the Swedish model sounds attractive. So why aren’t we doing it?

Well, as one of our own top  epidemiologists has pointed out, only 30 percent of the Swedish population has been infected so far, and they have a long way to go before herd immunity sets in. Here, we are doing what we can under the circumstances to limit death until a vaccine comes, which will allow the inoculation of members of our own herd at a level necessary to achieve immunity.

Disease is a natural process, like the weather. When the rain falls, there are two ways to go: getting wet and waiting for the sun to dry us off after the storm clears, or seeking shelter. We Americans are seeking that shelter in the form of accepting restrictions and looking forward to the quick development of treatments and a vaccine.

We may be saving lives with this approach, and life is precious. But what if you have lost your job, can’t pay bills, and you and your family may have to join the herd of the homeless? You have a life, all right, but there isn’t much quality to it.

The thing about rain is that it falls on the just and the unjust, as is often said. The coronavirus respects no boundaries or social status, or red and blue. It has no morals and doesn’t read the Constitution. There aren’t any haves or have-nots,  just catch and catch-nots. It gets increasingly hard for people to hold on to lofty principles when they can’t eat, and that is as dangerous as the disease.

As I have said in previous posts, there is a tipping point coming, where a level of risk has to be accepted to keep the economy from going off the cliff. It actually has already done that; we are simply clinging on to one of those branches growing from a crevice in the rock face that keeps us from falling all the way down. It is not  about an either/or choice, life versus the economy. It is going to have to be about both.