No Time to Celebrate
09/04/20 16:16
It's good to hear that Boris Johnson (PM of Britain) is out of the ICU and on the mend. His country is pulling for him during these difficult times as are we here in the US. Were it up to me I would suggest to Trump that he get Boris on the telly during his afternoon presser here in the United States. Whether or not Boris is up to it is another question but it would be something to see. Not sure how the Queen would feel about it either so let's press the pause button for now.
I know Trump said something in a recent presser about sending someone or something across the pond to help Boris in his fight against the Coronavirus. I thought it was a reference of sorts to the Hydroxycholoroquine drug that Trump has been touting. If this is true, and the drug was a godsend that may have saved Boris's life, would Boris admit as much to anyone asking that very question? Would answering that question in the affirmative give people false hope or would it help one or more of them gain a much needed leg up in their fight against this disease?
It's looking more and more like this virus may not live up to its reputation as the grim reaper of all viruses. Original projections had some 1-2 million Americans dying from the disease. As the days turned into weeks, those projections turned out to be overly ambitious. The revised projections had a more modest 100,000 to 200,000 Americans dying before all was said and done. Now, to quote one Gomer Pyle, SHAZAAAAM! Projections of fatalities have been lowered to some 60,000 deaths here in the US.
Maybe it was important that they scare the bejesus out of everyone in order to get them to stay home, practice social distancing, wear face masks, etc. Yep, telling us that we'd lose millions of our loved ones to the virus would surely get that done. Televising body bags being thrown into the back of refrigeration trucks is another graphic that might get your attention. Whatever it was, it worked. The graphical spikes of deaths that were previously ticking up day after day are now flattening out and heading downward as are all the other indices associated with the virus.
Maybe the therapies that they've developed along the way including the one touted by Trump have kept patients from reaching the ICU unit. It sure as hell has not been the vaccines since there aren't any as yet. I know it takes a long time to develop these vaccines and they will help when the virus circles back as seasonal viruses are want to do. Let me quote Joe Biden Here. "C'mon, man." We have to do better than that. We can't wait a 18 months to have a workable vaccine. What if this was a virus with a 95 parent infection rate and a 98 percent mortality rate? You get the picture.
It's probably good that this virus hit New York City first. If you're going to take a lesson from anything it should be one that alarms you, gets your attention, scares you, has people fleeing in outward directions from the epicenter of the problem, and leaves a disproportionate number of dead bodies in its wake. For those who think it won't come to their town, those stories and images out of NYC are a grim reminder that it might just come to their town. Then again, if you don't know anyone with the disease you might not care that much.
So, NYC has now experienced more deaths due to this virus than died on 9/11. We're not flying flags at half mast. We're not mourning as a nation in way that suggests we've lost the best and brightest of our generation. We're celebrating the fact that we think the spike in deaths is now behind us. We're celebrating that the stock market seems to have found a bottom after cascading some 35% from peak to trough. We're celebrating that as a nation we think we can restart our economy beginning May 1 after shutting everything down for a good 5 weeks or so.
All any of us want again is a good goddamn latte'. I'm old enough to remember when I used to order a latte' on my iPhone for pickup at Starbucks. Can I even do that anymore? Is Starbucks an "essential" business? All we want now is to be able to walk down the streets of our towns and cities coast to coast and not feel like lepers. We're afraid to touch our faces, afraid to touch the faces of the ones we love, afraid to hold hands with the ones we love, afraid to get too close to our aging relatives, and afraid to get within six feet of another human being.
I'm intrigued by the stats of this virus on the West Coast. They have a population that exceeds that of NYC by a factor of 4 but they have 560 deaths compared to 7,000 deaths in NYC. It's a real what-the-hell moment for epidemiologists. Some think that the virus has been on the West Coast for a much longer period of time establishing perhaps a certain "herd" immunity within the population. I think they just don't know. And you would think that it would decimate the ranks of the homeless in that state but there just isn't any evidence of it.
If and when they get the testing kits squared away and working correctly they may be able to figure it all out. I don't know that the goal is to test all 365 million Americans but some subset of that number may be appropriate and necessary if we're going to get people back to work. One strategy is to protect the most vulnerable and let everyone else get back to work. Not every town and every city qualifies as an epicenter so we may see waves of activity over time and we can prepare for that. One thing we cannot afford to do is to allow or nation not to get back to work.
We had a bit of a scare yesterday when Nancy mentioned that she wasn't feeling all that well. She spent the better part of the day propped up in bed with her magazines and her iPad and warned Evan and I to keep our distance. "How is my little Covid-19 baby feeling today", I chimed.
We even talked, while keeping our distance of course, about alternative sleeping arrangements should her symptoms persist or worsen in the coming hours. I inquired about thermometers and the like after I spotted a bit of perspiration on her brow. She pushed back gently but firmly pointing out that she was probably overdressed and maybe even overheated lying on a heating pad as she had for an extended period of time.
Her condition improved markedly throughout the course of the afternoon and by the time the 5 o'clock hour rolled around she was on a tele-conference with her little self-help group out of Exeter. She followed that up with a nice dish of ice cream and by the time 8 o'clock rolled around she had a spring in her step that was notably absent earlier in the day.
Her color was better, her appetite had returned, she was expressing interest in her list of to-do's for the following day, and she was now on a bit of a bender which may have had more to do with the sugar in the ice cream than anything else. "You feel like calling your mom tonight", I inquired? Her calls to her mother as of late have gone from once a day to maybe once every other day. I don't know how that sits with her mom but it is what its is so you go with it.
My calls to my peeps have fallen off as well. Not much changes from call to call so there's that. None of us is feeling particularly isolated or beset by these rules we're now being asked to follow. Some of us have dogs to walk so that helps. Some of us have large yards or places to walk with our spouses that are not heavily traveled so that helps. Some of us have jobs to keep us busy and then there are those of us who are thankful that we don't have jobs to go to because of the potential for exposure to the virus. All of us want this to end.
Evan's last words out of his mouth as he left home here last night was that he would be calling early on today to check in on his mom. That was before her call to her buds on the teleconference. That was before her dish of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream. That was before she started to feel better and he never saw her out of bed by the time he left to go to his place.
There was some back and forth with Evan about mailbox keys and prescription drugs but that all worked itself out after I rifled his car in the dark and found his mailbox keys that he wasn't able to otherwise locate. Thanks, pops!
I think I saw my neighbor Betsi driving around town yesterday with a face mask on. I can't say for sure since it was raining and we were driving by each other in opposite directions so it could have been a case of mistaken identity. Betsi is a bit older so the face mask thing makes sense but while driving in her car? Who does that?
Did I miss a memo? Did I miss a CDC update? She wasn't taking her cues from me since I don't wear one while driving although she may have seen me put one on for sizing purposes while behind the wheel. Nonetheless, good to see that she is not taking any unnecessary chances with this virus thing going around.
Betsi has a friend by the name of John who comes up from Florida every springtime. He spends the summer living in his RV across the street from her house. It's a big badass RV and it is no doubt not only his home but his pride and joy. I don't know for sure but I think John was a long haul driver before he retired so I have no doubt that he hauls this behemoth he calls his home around town and to points north and south without so much as a second thought.
John is by all accounts a pleasant man with an unassuming demeanor and everyone and anyone who knows him knows that there isn't anything he wouldn't do for you in a pinch. That's just who he is.
We're all casting a suspicious eye on travelers coming in from out of town these days knowing what we know about the virus and just how infectious it is. John is traveling up from a State that has a fairly high incidence of the virus and people who fit his profile are typically required to check in when they arrive and then put themselves in self-quarantine for a period of not less than fourteen days.
John has given Betsi every assurance under the sun that he will follow the rules to the tee and she, in turn, has given us what we need so we can feel better about his returning to our neighborhood for the season. Whether or not he walks his terrier up and down our street instead of around in circles in the cul-de-sac will tell us a lot about just how seriously he takes his responsibility as a self-quarantine-er. We'll be watching.
I know Trump said something in a recent presser about sending someone or something across the pond to help Boris in his fight against the Coronavirus. I thought it was a reference of sorts to the Hydroxycholoroquine drug that Trump has been touting. If this is true, and the drug was a godsend that may have saved Boris's life, would Boris admit as much to anyone asking that very question? Would answering that question in the affirmative give people false hope or would it help one or more of them gain a much needed leg up in their fight against this disease?
It's looking more and more like this virus may not live up to its reputation as the grim reaper of all viruses. Original projections had some 1-2 million Americans dying from the disease. As the days turned into weeks, those projections turned out to be overly ambitious. The revised projections had a more modest 100,000 to 200,000 Americans dying before all was said and done. Now, to quote one Gomer Pyle, SHAZAAAAM! Projections of fatalities have been lowered to some 60,000 deaths here in the US.
Maybe it was important that they scare the bejesus out of everyone in order to get them to stay home, practice social distancing, wear face masks, etc. Yep, telling us that we'd lose millions of our loved ones to the virus would surely get that done. Televising body bags being thrown into the back of refrigeration trucks is another graphic that might get your attention. Whatever it was, it worked. The graphical spikes of deaths that were previously ticking up day after day are now flattening out and heading downward as are all the other indices associated with the virus.
Maybe the therapies that they've developed along the way including the one touted by Trump have kept patients from reaching the ICU unit. It sure as hell has not been the vaccines since there aren't any as yet. I know it takes a long time to develop these vaccines and they will help when the virus circles back as seasonal viruses are want to do. Let me quote Joe Biden Here. "C'mon, man." We have to do better than that. We can't wait a 18 months to have a workable vaccine. What if this was a virus with a 95 parent infection rate and a 98 percent mortality rate? You get the picture.
It's probably good that this virus hit New York City first. If you're going to take a lesson from anything it should be one that alarms you, gets your attention, scares you, has people fleeing in outward directions from the epicenter of the problem, and leaves a disproportionate number of dead bodies in its wake. For those who think it won't come to their town, those stories and images out of NYC are a grim reminder that it might just come to their town. Then again, if you don't know anyone with the disease you might not care that much.
So, NYC has now experienced more deaths due to this virus than died on 9/11. We're not flying flags at half mast. We're not mourning as a nation in way that suggests we've lost the best and brightest of our generation. We're celebrating the fact that we think the spike in deaths is now behind us. We're celebrating that the stock market seems to have found a bottom after cascading some 35% from peak to trough. We're celebrating that as a nation we think we can restart our economy beginning May 1 after shutting everything down for a good 5 weeks or so.
All any of us want again is a good goddamn latte'. I'm old enough to remember when I used to order a latte' on my iPhone for pickup at Starbucks. Can I even do that anymore? Is Starbucks an "essential" business? All we want now is to be able to walk down the streets of our towns and cities coast to coast and not feel like lepers. We're afraid to touch our faces, afraid to touch the faces of the ones we love, afraid to hold hands with the ones we love, afraid to get too close to our aging relatives, and afraid to get within six feet of another human being.
I'm intrigued by the stats of this virus on the West Coast. They have a population that exceeds that of NYC by a factor of 4 but they have 560 deaths compared to 7,000 deaths in NYC. It's a real what-the-hell moment for epidemiologists. Some think that the virus has been on the West Coast for a much longer period of time establishing perhaps a certain "herd" immunity within the population. I think they just don't know. And you would think that it would decimate the ranks of the homeless in that state but there just isn't any evidence of it.
If and when they get the testing kits squared away and working correctly they may be able to figure it all out. I don't know that the goal is to test all 365 million Americans but some subset of that number may be appropriate and necessary if we're going to get people back to work. One strategy is to protect the most vulnerable and let everyone else get back to work. Not every town and every city qualifies as an epicenter so we may see waves of activity over time and we can prepare for that. One thing we cannot afford to do is to allow or nation not to get back to work.
We had a bit of a scare yesterday when Nancy mentioned that she wasn't feeling all that well. She spent the better part of the day propped up in bed with her magazines and her iPad and warned Evan and I to keep our distance. "How is my little Covid-19 baby feeling today", I chimed.
We even talked, while keeping our distance of course, about alternative sleeping arrangements should her symptoms persist or worsen in the coming hours. I inquired about thermometers and the like after I spotted a bit of perspiration on her brow. She pushed back gently but firmly pointing out that she was probably overdressed and maybe even overheated lying on a heating pad as she had for an extended period of time.
Her condition improved markedly throughout the course of the afternoon and by the time the 5 o'clock hour rolled around she was on a tele-conference with her little self-help group out of Exeter. She followed that up with a nice dish of ice cream and by the time 8 o'clock rolled around she had a spring in her step that was notably absent earlier in the day.
Her color was better, her appetite had returned, she was expressing interest in her list of to-do's for the following day, and she was now on a bit of a bender which may have had more to do with the sugar in the ice cream than anything else. "You feel like calling your mom tonight", I inquired? Her calls to her mother as of late have gone from once a day to maybe once every other day. I don't know how that sits with her mom but it is what its is so you go with it.
My calls to my peeps have fallen off as well. Not much changes from call to call so there's that. None of us is feeling particularly isolated or beset by these rules we're now being asked to follow. Some of us have dogs to walk so that helps. Some of us have large yards or places to walk with our spouses that are not heavily traveled so that helps. Some of us have jobs to keep us busy and then there are those of us who are thankful that we don't have jobs to go to because of the potential for exposure to the virus. All of us want this to end.
Evan's last words out of his mouth as he left home here last night was that he would be calling early on today to check in on his mom. That was before her call to her buds on the teleconference. That was before her dish of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream. That was before she started to feel better and he never saw her out of bed by the time he left to go to his place.
There was some back and forth with Evan about mailbox keys and prescription drugs but that all worked itself out after I rifled his car in the dark and found his mailbox keys that he wasn't able to otherwise locate. Thanks, pops!
I think I saw my neighbor Betsi driving around town yesterday with a face mask on. I can't say for sure since it was raining and we were driving by each other in opposite directions so it could have been a case of mistaken identity. Betsi is a bit older so the face mask thing makes sense but while driving in her car? Who does that?
Did I miss a memo? Did I miss a CDC update? She wasn't taking her cues from me since I don't wear one while driving although she may have seen me put one on for sizing purposes while behind the wheel. Nonetheless, good to see that she is not taking any unnecessary chances with this virus thing going around.
Betsi has a friend by the name of John who comes up from Florida every springtime. He spends the summer living in his RV across the street from her house. It's a big badass RV and it is no doubt not only his home but his pride and joy. I don't know for sure but I think John was a long haul driver before he retired so I have no doubt that he hauls this behemoth he calls his home around town and to points north and south without so much as a second thought.
John is by all accounts a pleasant man with an unassuming demeanor and everyone and anyone who knows him knows that there isn't anything he wouldn't do for you in a pinch. That's just who he is.
We're all casting a suspicious eye on travelers coming in from out of town these days knowing what we know about the virus and just how infectious it is. John is traveling up from a State that has a fairly high incidence of the virus and people who fit his profile are typically required to check in when they arrive and then put themselves in self-quarantine for a period of not less than fourteen days.
John has given Betsi every assurance under the sun that he will follow the rules to the tee and she, in turn, has given us what we need so we can feel better about his returning to our neighborhood for the season. Whether or not he walks his terrier up and down our street instead of around in circles in the cul-de-sac will tell us a lot about just how seriously he takes his responsibility as a self-quarantine-er. We'll be watching.