Day 103…
Apparently, from the moment I was born until about the age of five, I never stopped screaming.
My mother tells stories of having to take me out of stores because she was afraid that other people would think that she was torturing me. One of the only things that would calm me down, from what I hear, is a car ride. My poor Dad would put me in the car and drive me around for hours on end until I fell asleep.
One of the places he took me was to Teterboro Airport which was about an hour away from where we were living at the time in Princeton. He said I liked watching the planes take off and land. I still like doing that at airports all these decades of years later. I like to imagine where they are going and where they have been.
There is a black and white photo of me sitting in my car seat looking like the very picture of happiness. The seat had a little steering wheel attached to the front. I feel like I have a memory of sitting in it, but it may just be that my memory formed around that photograph.
I also had a massive fleet of toy cars - Hot Wheels, Matchbox and Corgies. When we moved back to the US from South Africa, the first thing I remember about our new house was seeing a large new toy mustang on the bed in the room that my father had set up for me. For Christmas one year, my Aunt gave me a beautiful picture book called “The Boy with 100 Cars” by Inger and Lasse Sandberg. I’ll have to look, but I think that I may still have it somewhere.
Getting into the car on Saturday with Michael and our nephew, who lives about ten blocks away from us in the city, then driving upstate was pretty glorious. After three months without going anywhere unless it was under my own steam, we went on an honest to goodness car trip. Because we were with my nephew, we kept our masks on in the car and opened the windows to keep the air circulating.
Last Wednesday, knowing that we were going to be seeing Michael’s family, I went to CityMD to get tested for the virus. The whole thing, including the wait, took about an hour.
When I got inside the nurse asked me if I wanted both the blood test and the swab. His eyes, above his mask, looked confused when I said that I didn’t need the blood test because I already knew that I had the antibodies.
“Why are you here then?” he asked.
I explained that I had participated in some Black Lives Matter marches and that I was going to be seeing my father-in-law who was in his eighties, so I just wanted to be sure. I have read enough to know that there is still some question as to whether the antibodies really do provide immunity from becoming re-infected. There is also a question about how long the antibodies remain in our systems.
The nurse thought I was crazy but went ahead with the test. Much to my surprise, it was very easy. I swabbed myself. There is some question now, however, given my status, whether my insurance will cover the test. In retrospect, I should have just done the blood test as well and not said anything. At any rate, in terms of this past weekend, the whole thing was somewhat moot as I won’t get the results for a couple more days.
Navigating through this weekend with the family in terms of COVID-19 was, in a lot of ways a test case. There were 11 of us from four separate family units. Michael’s younger sister and her husband have two kids - one of whom is still in high school and the other is set to start college in Arizona this fall. His older sister and her husband have one son - the nephew we drove up with. My father-in-law’s partner is younger than he is but still within the most vulnerable age group.
All of us have been careful over these past months. I’m not sure any of us, though, have been perfect. On Saturday, before my father-in-law and his partner got there, the rest of us made the decision not to wear masks with each other. Was that wise? Strictly speaking, no. Practically speaking…?
The longer you spend in the company of somebody who has the virus, the more likely you are to get it. Given that we were all basically spending about 36 hours together, I don’t think that masks were going to stop anything. Making the decision to spend the weekend together was the point at which we all accepted that being 100% safe from each other was not really going to be possible.
Once Michael’s Dad and his partner arrived, we all wore masks. Originally, we had planned on eating outside to be safer. It was so hot yesterday, however, that that really wasn’t possible or wise to leave the house. We stayed inside in the air conditioning. The masks came down when we couldn’t be understood. They came down when we all ate.
We did the best we could, but really if somebody in that group of 11 had the virus, I am guessing that we all got exposed to it. Driving home, we didn’t wear our masks in the car. As our very sensible nephew said, if any of us had it, we would have given it to the others within 10 minutes of us getting into the car right at the beginning of the trip.
We are entering into Phase 2 here in New York City today. That means that salons and barbershops can operate at 50% capacity. Retail stores can re-open with limits on how many people can go inside at one time. Restaurants can have outdoor seating. Offices can reopen with social distancing and sanitizing guidelines in place. The city is estimating that an additional 300,000 people will be traveling in the city today.
There is still a risk connected with all of this. There’s actually always been a risk of catching something from the people around us, but now we are all hyper-aware of it.
Last week, eighteen states across the country were seeing their case numbers rise. Today, twenty-three states are seeing their numbers rise. Only 17 states are actually seeing their numbers decrease. The rest are staying steady. Arizona, which is now an actual growing hotspot, has finally started mandating mask wearing.
In the worst shape of all, here in the US, is Florida. They have had 11,000 NEW cases since Friday. The majority of those new cases that are being reported are in young people in their 20’s and 30’s. Older people are staying home, but younger people are out partying and not following any guidelines.
Only 15 states in the country are actually requiring people to wear masks.
Mask wearing doesn’t guarantee you won’t get or transmit the virus, it merely HELPS. A recent British study says that the transmission rate between people not wearing masks is 17.4%. With masks it drops to 3.1%. It doesn’t take it to zero, but it HELPS.
The President’s much-hyped rally in Tulsa ultimately fizzled out.
Instead of a packed arena with 19,000 people and an overflow crowd of 100,000, there were only 6,200 people in the arena and an overflow crowd of 25. Not 25 thousand, just 25. A million people requested tickets, almost none of them came.
Some of this was due to a concerted effort among young TikTok users and international K-pop fans who, by the thousands, created fake accounts to request tickets with the intention of not using them. Many older people in the US did exactly the same thing.
Two hours before the event when it became clear that the expected crowds were not going to materialize, promoters from the campaign sent out a tweet saying there were still plenty of tickets available and people should come down. While just over six thousand people did go, many more people, even those among the President’s supporters, clearly were more than a little concerned about the virus. They stayed away. The overflow event outside the arena was cancelled and the stage and holding areas quickly dismantled.
Hoping for a huge bang to kick off his campaign, what the President got, instead, was a dull pop. The film of him returning to the White House from the helicopter on Saturday night, his tie untied, and his clothes wrinkled and hair flat against his head, is as defeated as I can recall him ever looking.
I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near him today. Somebody’s surely getting well and truly fired.
The virus is here. There is simply no getting around that fact. Those 6,200 people who attended the rally took an enormous risk.
There are now almost 9 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide. There is still no clear way to fight it. That said, the steps that we here, in New York state, took, have clearly been far more effective than the approach that states like Arizona, Florida, Texas and Oklahoma have taken.
Numbers, while subject to interpretation, don’t lie. Our cases are way down, theirs are way up.
Going into Phase 2 and then beyond, here in New York City, is going to require us all to use some common sense and understand the risks.
This weekend, my family and I made some imperfect decisions after weighing the risks and trying to rationally understand where we were vulnerable. We took some chances and only time will tell if we are going to suffer from them as a result.
For people who have iPhones, if you go into your Privacy settings, you will see that in there is now, is an option called Health. This is not the Health tab that in the overall settings, but rather another one specifically inside the Privacy settings. If you open it, you will see that a coronavirus testing app has been installed during one of the recent regular updates. You can choose whether or not to turn it on, but it’s in there. It’s supposedly in Android phones as well.
Apple does not think that COVID-19 is a hoax.
The President, in contrast, by continuing to underplay the threat of it, is making it far worse every day.
We need concerted NATIONAL leadership if we are going to come out of this any time soon. If the President had done what Our Governor, even with the mistakes he made, did, we would likely be seeing all of our numbers across the country as low as they are here in New York. It’s great to say that we are doing well in New York, but if everyone around us doesn’t do equally well, it’s meaningless. We all need each other.
I am looking forward to our next car trip a little over a week from now. We are only going to visit one person this time.
In the coming days, we are all going to be making more and more choices in regard to our own safety and the safety of those around us. We are going to make some mistakes. We are going to take some risks, some of which may end up having some consequences.
We need to keep our eyes, ears and hearts open and do the best we can. That’s all. We all just need to do the best that we can.
Spending a Father’s Day without my own Dad this weekend was bittersweet.
His wanderlust is clearly very much a part of me. I’d like to think that he was in the car with us this past weekend, looking out at the endless rolling green-covered mountains of upstate New York.
He loved a good car trip as much as I do.
car ride...sounds like a fairytale...
I think I heard your father’s wonder in the words of your post 💕