Foreign Bodies by Simon Schama

There is a lot of material packed into this volume, and it is all good information, but for me, the message was a little muddled. I can agree that the health of a nation economically depends on the physical health of it's citizens, and therefore when pandemics inevitably happen, the powers that be are looking for someone to blame at least as much as they are seeking solutions. That happened with COVID and it has happened repeatedly through history. The 18th-century development of vaccination was spurred by the mutation of smallpox into a potentially fatal virus. The English discovery that a small dose of the pus from someone with active disease worked as a shield against full-blown infection. Meanwhile, inoculation by insufflation—blowing dried, powdered pus up the nostrils—was state policy in China. The Victorian age of globalization showed that disease moved as easily as goods through steamship and rail. The need for international coordination was obvious, but rivalrous powers resisted restrictions. So was born both vaccination and the skeptics who questioned it's utility and safety. The author goes on to tell the saga of cholera, and with it, all the prejudices that were fanned across the globe.

Eat In/Go Out

As we head into winter, which could also be called the season of respiratory illnesses, I have been getting vaccinated about once every week or two, and reflecting (once again) on the changes that the pandemic brought about for me. The first is that while I was an avid vaccinator before the pandemic, I am a militant one now. I now get the flu shot because I don't want to die of a respiratory illness, but for decades I got it because I work in health care and I didn't want to kill someone else. We seem to have lost that community focus, so hand onto it when you find it, make your own community, and while it is unnecessary when someone who chooses not to vaccinate themselves or their family dies, it is not a tragedy because they made that choice--the tragedy is that they kill others. The other, far less consequential change is that I am now firmly in the Eat In camp. I started out there, mostly because I like to cook, my spouse likes to cook, and we are not billionaires and would prefer to spend many of our discretionary dollars on something other than mediocre food out. During the pandemic I realized that if I cannot eat the food in a restaurant I would rather make something at home than get take out--it just doean't hold up. I also learned to deep fry. The quality of tempura at home is so much better than what I have had out that I don't order it out any more. It is so easy to make at home, and so much better. My fear of frying is gone, thanks to COVID, and it made me one step closer to rarely leaving my house.

Travel in the Age of COVID--The French Version

I am newly home from a ten day trip to france and while it is certainly still possible that I might have gotten COVID while I was gone, France is certainly doing a good job of making both it's citizens and it's visitors feel like the risks are minimized. I was very trepidatious about traveling abroad. I was fretting and I am not one to do a whole lot of fretting. One of my friends noted it as being unlike me, what exactly was I afraid of? And what would help me to feel better? If it had been up to me, I would have stayed in the US, vacationed somewhere, to be sure, but close enough to get home without much fuss. My spouse, on the other hand, was adamant. He needed a vacation that approximated a pre-COVID vacation, and because I love him, I agreed. That did not mean that I planned. Oh no, we were still booking accomodations after we landed, but go we did. France is higly vaccinated, far more so than the US, and in order to go into a public building or a restaurant you needed to display your helath pass, issued by the government after reviewing your evidence of vaccination. They QR code is scanned at every place you enter--wearing a mask-- and so in many ways, I felt safer than I have any reason to feel at home. It was a breath of fresh air to see people masking up and protecting each other.

Pandemic 9/11 Remembrance

Today is a day of remembrance of a terrorist attack on the United States.  It was a shocking act of aggression that rocked our national psyche.  We had had some warnings that it was coming and we ignored them, and several thousand people lost their lives this day 19 years ago.
Now we are in the midst of a pandemic.  We have lost 200,000 Americans to COVID.  That is more than three times the troops lost in the Vietnam War.  Almost twice the troops lost in World Wart I and half the troops lost in WWII.  We had warnings that it was coming and yet, once again we ignored them.  Even today, months into the outbreak, a thousand Americans are dying each and every day, unlike almost every country on earth.
Unfortunately, the current administration does not see it as a war, nor do they see a national response as being indicated.  They are hanging their hopes on a vaccine.  A vaccine will help, but it will not be the end.  There is so much more that needs to be addressed, and this administration cannot and will not help.

Straight Line of Sight Decorating

I do love this because of how closely I resemble it.
The one casualty of the pandemic at my house is that we simply leave things as they are.  The impetus to clean up for company has completely evaporated.  My front porch is more cleaned up than my kitchen.  The porch is likely to host a socially distanced cocktail hour.  I have added small tables to pods of two chairs and our neighbor brought beautiful cone flowers as a center piece.  Citronella tea lights provide a bit of hugge.
The kitchen on the other hand is pumping out many meals a day and is in overdrive when it comes to production.  The inland hurricane that ran through our state could easily have cause the damage to be seen.  So when you see my lovely bookcase back drop on my Zoom call, be aware that all of the spring cleaning boxes decorate the table in front of the space I carved out for my laptop.

The Pandemic Dilemma

My parents are elderly and they both have pre-existing conditions on top of that, as do most people their age.  The pandemic poses very serious risks for them and they have done very little outside their home for the last four months while the virus has been raging all around them.  This is led to a shrinking of their world that is worsened by the poor response of our state and federal government in providing leadership throughout the pandemic, and it is people like them who suffer the most.
I read this week that Sweden's approach, which was to essentially ignore precautions, keep everything open, trust in the good behavior of others, in the hopes of saving their economy has been a total bust.  People have died at a higher rate and their economy has not fared better than those places that shut down.
That is because this is not a political force.  It is a biological one, and as Neil deGrasse Tyson famously says: "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."
COVID doesn't care if you are tired of the lock down or you think it is a liberal hoax.  It is a virus.  The more you ignore it the better it does.
My youngest son asked me the other day if I knew how the Black Plague ended, and when I said I did not, he replied:"When people learned to quarantine."  There we have it.  History, something we are poor at learning from and therefore destined to repeat.

The Infectious Nature of Bars

The problem with making public health policy decisions based on what you want rather than what you know is that when the enemy is a virus, it really does not care about how tired you are of being home, or how much you miss people.  It's success is in its patience and its persistence.
So when getting re-elected mattered more than who lived and who died, that was the point at which we completely lost the battle in the pandemic.  The superstar in this spectacular failure, which literally everyone could have predicted, is bar culture.  We already have a problem with many people being convinced that wearing a mask is either someone trying to control them or a sign of fear or weakness, so less than 50% of people wear them, when we really need more like 80% compliance.  Then there is the nature of what one does in bars and restaurants.  We put things in our mouths and so it is impossible to wear masks.  Add in alcohol, which does not ever improve one's judgement, and there is the recipe for disaster.  And overflowing ICU's.  It has been largely young people who are testing positive, but this has not stopped hospitals from filling up, and even if we improve dramatically in the days and weeks to come, we cannot fix what is already broken.

A New Risk Category

Yes, as a matter of fact I am.
I enter a higher risk category today.
In the state in which I live, which is one where lock downs are being lifted while the numbers of infected people is rising, this is a cause for huge concern.
Of all those who have tested positive for COVID in my neck of the woods, 14% have been age 61-80 and 5% have been over 80 years old.  The mortality numbers are far worse for these two age groups, with 41% of those who have died being 61-80 years old and 47% being over 80 years old.  There are two reasons to be hopeful.  My county represents 4% of the COVID + cases in the state and only 2% of the deaths.  We had a lot of cases early on, so this represents COVID being in our community for over 8 weeks rather than just now appearing, so we are doing a good job of social distancing and impeding the spread locally.
A pandemic is a scary time for everyone, and we do not know what the future holds.  What we do know is that we are not prepared, and many are not prepared to do what it takes to stop it.  So I will be staying apart for the foreseeable future.

It Would Have Been Enough

There is so much that has gone wrong with the US COVID-19 response.  It is hard to know where to start.  The concept of Dayenu, ot it would have been enough, is prevalent in the Passover story, and sadly fits our current debacle.
The first is that we do not have a leader who is capable of managing a day care center, much less a national response to a pandemic. Dayenu.  Second, he put his SIL, a man child who has nothing but a list of failures to his name, in charge of preparation.  Dayenu.  His aversion to expertise is on public display and as the death toll has risen, hospitals don't have enough PPE, he has become increasingly irrational and rambling. Dayenu.    The distribution of resources based on how much you praise him, the confiscation of imported items, and the graft in the bail out package all speak to a massively failed response.  Dayenu.  Now the GOP, which is the disease, is looking to shut down the post office so people won't be able to vote by mail. Ok, now you have gone too far. 

Mask Making Fury

I have been so angry about the federal response to the pandemic.  Nurses working without PPE in New York, how did we come to this?  Obviously because we have a grossly incompetent leader who is aided and abetted by the GOP, who care nothing at all about the people they are elected to represent beyond suppressing the vote and getting re-elected.  That fury has translated into me getting no satisfaction from making masks.  Ordinarily it is an activity that would bring me at least some satisfaction, but no, up until Tuesday I was having none of it.  Then a highly valued coworker set me straight, and she didn't even mean to.  Since the CDC recommended wearing masks in public places, she has been worried.  She doesn't even have a sewing machine, much less the where with all to sew masks.  A light bulb went off.  Really, I need to help people to the degree that I can.  And I have been sewing masks ever since.  Including seven for her and her family.

The Hubris of de Blasio

The the mayor of New York proposed conscripting healthcare workers and deploying them to areas in desperate need of medical assistance against their will it made me wonder what he himself was doing to combat the spread of the virus.  Was he driving delivery trucks or cleaning rooms in hospitals?  Was he putting himself on the line?
The answer is stunning.  He himself should be held responsible in part for the spread of the virus.  In mid-March, when the pandemic was very real in New York City hospitals, he resisted the closing of schools.  Parents were already keeping their students home when on March 15th he finally made the call.  His own staffers were ready to quit he was so slow to act.  He went to the gym the day he closed gyms.  On the eve of closing bars and restaurants he encouraged people to go out one last time and celebrate.  He resisted closing Broadway, and he was still giving out movie recommendations in March. 
He bears responsibility for worsening the spread of disease, and now he wants to force people to come and bail him out?  Without PPE or a plan to keep them safe?  All while he is making no visible sacrifices himself?  I wish I could say it is unbelievable but he is just an example that idiocy is not limited to one political party.

Sheltering in Place

 My spouse and are both health care workers and so for us it has been a rhythm of work then home then back to work.  He is an ICU physician so he will remain at work until he is sick while there is a chance that that I will transition to home only. 
So we feel in the heart of it.  At work there are furious preparations amidst a nation wide PPE and mask shortage.  This is unconscionable and the poor federal response to this will likely reverberate for months if not years.  There is nothing to say other than Republicans have blood on their hands already and we are at the very front end of this battle.  While they are worried about bailing out corporations they blanch at the cost of ventilators.  Any non-billionaire who thinks they give one scintilla about the worker needs their head examined.  And I am a professional.

The upside is that there are a lot of silver linings to being at home.  Yes, I have become an unrecognizable germaphobe.  When was the last time I chloroxed down my home and work space?  Washed my hands 30 times a day?  Never would be the answer.  But I have also returned to cooking in a big way.  I did not realize that I had strayed so far from making all my own food, but I had, and the food in my house is much better when I participate in making it.  Yes, we should explore safe ways to keep our local restaurants that are offering pick up service, but for the first two weeks we have been making do with delivered groceries and our own devices.