Post 112 - July 1, 2020

Day 112…

Yesterday was a completely normal and unremarkable day.

It was a busy day, relatively. I had more things scheduled to do than usual - a couple of zoom meetings and some work on some upcoming virtual projects. A meal with out of state friends.

What was remarkable about my completely unremarkable day, though, was that everything that I did to fill it was something that I never would have done three months ago.

One of the moving companies that is possibly going to pack up and ship my friend’s stuff to Australia sent me an app to create a cost estimate for the move. They had been using this app before the virus hit, but now they use it exclusively. You stand in the middle of a room and film around you with your phone camera. You then add in the measurements of some of the large pieces of furniture and hit send.

Walking down to the apartment, nothing leapt out at me enough for me to want to take a picture of it. I’ve been trying to document this time in New York both through these posts but also with photographs of the things I see. The city looked and acted in a thoroughly unremarkable and normal post-COVID-19 way yesterday.

The line at Trader Joe’s only went about half-way down the block meaning that the wait to get in was under an hour. Some of the restaurants along Columbus have started to improve their outside dining. More defined barriers between the tables and traffic have gone up in some places. It was not brutally hot yesterday, so there were more people outside eating. Some places were more successful than others in terms of following through with health precautions.

17 States are now rolling back or pausing their re-openings because their cases are spiking. Even with their massive rise in cases, Governor DeSantis in Florida refuses to institute a state-wide mask wearing mandate.

Dr. Fauci, the chief advisor to the White House’s coronavirus task force has been pleading with the public to wear masks and maintain social distancing. Rather than looking at these measures as obstructing reopening, he is begging us all to look at them as tools to HELP us reopen.

Goldman-Sachs, the multinational investment bank, issued an analysis yesterday that says that a national mask-wearing mandate could save the US economy as much as a trillion dollars of its Gross Domestic Product. “It could be valuable not only from a public health perspective but also from an economic perspective because it could substitute for renewed lockdowns that would otherwise hit GDP.”

Dr. Fauci is warning that our current national rate of 40,000 new infections a day could easily rise in a very short time to 100,000. Former FDA chief Mark McClellan says that that even that number may be too conservative.

The bigger the numbers get the faster they go up. We hit 10,000,000 cases world-wide two days ago. That number has gone up by 500,000 since then. We hit 2,500,000 cases here in the US two days ago. That number has already gone up by 130,000 cases since then. 130,000 people have tested positive for COVID-19 here in the United States just in the last two days or so.

Texas reported nearly 9,000 new cases yesterday. 160,000 people in total have now tested positive.

Arizona has hit an all-time high. The Mayor of Mesa is saying that the largest hospital in his area is already at 90% capacity with the numbers still rising. To handle the overflow, they are now going to start creating adjunct hospital areas in much the same way we did here in New York during the worst of our surge.

These numbers are so enormous, that they are almost impossible to comprehend.

The White House needs to be removed from our coronavirus response. This is simply not a political issue. At every point that the White House could have helped our situation. They, instead, continue to make it all jaw-droppingly worse.

We have all seen the charts comparing the results of the actions taken by the leaders of the European Union as opposed to the actions we took here. They initiated a national coordinated response and, as a result, they are way down. We did not and we are way, way up. It is no wonder they have issued a travel ban against people going there from the US.

When this started, New York became the epicenter for the virus. On the national virus map we were a bright red dot in a sea of different greens. The rest of the country looked down at us with a mixture of pity and outright horror.

The map today is exactly opposite.  The Northeast is a tiny island of different hues of green surrounded by a horrifying ocean of red. We are looking at some of these places incredulously. Their complete lack of response is extremely hard to process.

Here in New York, when we were drowning in red, we attacked the problem with a massive coordinated effort led by our Governor and Mayor. Yes, there were bumps and disagreements, but we largely ganged together and followed the guidelines. Today our infection rate is down to 2%.  Now, across the country where areas are now approaching the same situation, officials there are responding in the EXACT OPPOSITE way. The Miami-Dade county infection rate is at 22%.

To be clear, we did not find a cure for the virus here in New York. We, like the EU, just figured out how to contain it. New York doesn’t have the ability to close our borders the way they can in the EU. The best we can do is put a quarantine in place for people arriving from the hugely infected states. That measure, however, relies on people being responsible for themselves. Why anybody thinks those people would be responsible here when they are clearly not being at all responsible there, is beyond me.

Today looks like it is going to be yet another unremarkable coronavirus day.

It is dark and gloomy outside, and it has just started thundering. The cat is well and truly hidden somewhere he feels safe. I guess I am not going out for a while.

When this storm passes, I will put on my mask and helmet and go out and take a ride. Riding a bicycle again has been a wonderful addition to my life that has only happened because of what we are all going through.

We are, here in New York, living in a bubble of sorts for the moment. Rather than worrying about our bubble bursting, we should take advantage of this time and enjoy it.

That doesn’t mean that we should all just run out and resume the lifestyles we had last year. It means that we can go out, have a meal if we are so inclined and take a walk. Not the same as going to a rave, maybe, but enjoyable, nonetheless.

We’ve had more than our share of drama lately.

I say, bring on another unremarkable day.