Coronavirus Blues

April 4, 2020

Coronavirus blues.


The sky over Biscayne Bay, a deep blue paradigm of Florida in late March is an illusion. Sea gulls and other birds wing by while I swim; nothing seems amiss. The silky waters of the bay create soft waves brushing against the seawalls. Walking around my island, joggers run by me, impelled by their youth, evoking memories of when I ran 5 miles in the morning and played tennis in the afternoons. The ease of their steps evinces a bygone fantasy, a reminder of my growing fragility. Yet being outside is transformative, refreshing, imparting a calm that is only superficial. Still, being inside most hours of these forlorn days ominously imply an impending doom exacerbating despair.  We know not when the pandemic will end, if our economy will survive, if our destinies will transform into a new malady or possible dystopic public health landscape, lasting for years.


Wet markets in China could produce some other source of plague.  Avian flu, I am told, has a 60% death rate.


Home confinement often does not seem to be a great chore, my wife and I vacuum, cook, clean floors and toilets. We are paying our cleaning woman not to come, and think that she might have been infected a month ago, when she had an incessant cough.  After that, Catherine got a sore throat and a cold that lasted about 8 days, bestowing its gifts on me for another 8 days. We had no fever, but I thought that we might have suffered infection. Now recovered, isolated anyway, and following all the rules, Catherine insists that it was only a cold, but if not, I wonder if I could donate some plasma for antibodies to someone else who was stricken worse than me.


But without testing, who knows what we had? Not being prepared for this crisis proves that we need government. People hate lawyers until they need one. People hate going to the dentist until they need a root canal. So fans of limited government, this is your come to Jesus moment.


Each day blends into another and since we are in the most vulnerable group, we do not venture out, get groceries delivered, avoid all people and frantically disinfect letters, paper boxes arriving from Amazon, vegetables, lettuce, fruit, and canned goods. We wash our hands countless times each day and agonize over the tiny virus creeping up our noses possibly killing us, our lungs filling with fluid and gasping for an elusive breath. Someone said that if you think someone may have infected you, use a hair dryer quickly to blow hot air up your nose to kill the virus, which does not survive above 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Better check that one out.


Across America, deliveries are multiplying exponentially. Just like the virus. There is a newly involuntary languid pace to life now and that is not entirely bad. No running to meet friends for dinner, no lateness for appointments, almost a pastoral interlude. Yet it seems unnatural, forced, like house arrest. A perversion of one's freedom. How long will people comply?


We cannot see our children and our friends except on video but have each other to dispel some of the loneliness and anxiety. We drink more. The uncertainty is daunting; each day the stock market careens on a dispiriting roller coaster. But more than that, I think of the people in the undeveloped world dying and suffering in droves, clinging together in their huts in Delhi, in West Africa, in Indonesia, with no escape, no air-conditioned house, no swimming pool, no Netflix or even electricity or running water. A few months ago, I watched a documentary of Bill Gates funding a new type of toilet for the third world that uses fecal matter for energy. In 2015, he presciently spoke of the lack of preparedness for this very type of pandemic. He did charts and computer modeling of the spread and the danger. Our government turned a deaf ear. I wish Bill Gates were president.


The country is floundering like a harpooned whale, a gigantic leviathan of the 19th century unable to meet the challenges of a 21st century monster run wild, staring into the face of a Captain Ahab, abetted by a soulless senate majority leader enabling his president's malfeasance and proven mendacity. The president uses his 5 pm briefings to campaign for re-election, considering his polling above the public health, contradicting his experts, blowing hot air filled with misinformation, boasting about the "great job" he is doing. No one could handle this better, he says, and the fearful reptilian brains of his base are right in his wheelhouse.  Really, does anyone believe him? A man who has squandered his credibility on mean-spirited vindictive tweets and name-calling for three years?


Refrigerator trucks are lined up outside overwhelmed hospitals in Manhattan, hauling away corpses. Health care workers are on the front lines. Why is not the army there to help them in this war?


Donald Trump uniting the country or recognizing the truth is like asking a bank robber to give back the money after he has fled to Monte Carlo. “I don’t take any responsibility.  We are just a backup for the states. It’s their fault.” A coronavirus of lies surrounds his handling of a crisis not of his making but certainly beyond his ability to tweet away.

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