Post 177 - September 4, 2020

Day 177…

Early today. My brother and sister-in-law are on their way into New York City to stay in our apartment and Michael and I are about to hit the road again and head back up to Provincetown, MA.

When my father-in-law and his partner’s time share up there became available again this week, we both immediately said YES! before either of them even had the opportunity to actually ask us if we wanted to use it. There is no reason not to go and plenty of reasons TO go. So, we’re off.

We are 177 days into a world-wide pandemic and a mere two months away from a national election. Where exactly are we?

As of this moment in time, there have been 6,146,524 cases of COVID-19 reported in the United States. As of this moment in time, there have been 186,698 deaths that have been attributed to either the virus itself or complications that have arisen from people with the virus who have underlying conditions.

For some reason, there are people out there who are discounting those numbers saying that there are many people who are being wrongly reported as having died from COVID-19. They are saying that a lot of those people being counted would not have died if they were otherwise healthy. Hmm.

Say there are four people in a car and one of them is a hemophiliac. The car becomes involved in a terrible traffic accident and the shattered glass cuts all four of the people in the car. Two of the people survive but the other two, including the hemophiliac, die.

Glass cuts through the femoral artery of the one without the condition and that person bleeds out. Because of the fourth person’s underlying condition, a fairly minor cut that any of the others might have survived, causes that person to bleed out and perish.

Both of the people who died in that scenario, died as a result of the car crash. The hemophiliac did not die of hemophilia. The hemophiliac died as a result of injuries sustained in a traffic accident. Had the traffic accident not occurred, then that person could possibly have lived a long and happy life managing their hemophilia. That person’s death counts as a traffic fatality.

To state the obvious, COVID-19 is the car accident. People are dying from it directly as well as from what it triggers because of their pre-existing conditions. Regardless of how they get there, it is COVID-19 that is killing them. Without the virus, both categories of people - those with and those without pre-existing conditions - would still be alive.

The argument that a good portion of the victims are elderly and would die soon anyway doesn’t wash with me either. To everyone who thinks that, I would ask them: if you knew that you were going to die in three years, would you be OK just dying now since you were going to go anyway?

We are still in the early days of understanding exactly how this novel coronavirus works. Research is being done. We are learning new things about it all the time. It now appears that victims can become re-infected with it. So far, however, I don’t think that anyone has been re-infected with the same strain. Yet.

Inside spaces seem to allow the virus to spread faster than outside spaces. Despite that, indoor businesses such as gyms and hair salons have started to reopen in New York City. You still can’t eat in an indoor space or watch a performance together, but you can get your hair done or lift weights inside. The logic behind those distinctions escapes me.

Schools are reopening inside without any real clear coordinated instruction on how they should do it. Some of what they are coming up with will work and some of it may allow infection to spread.

As the election looms ever closer, the President of the United States continues to sow dissent and spread outright lies. Both the CDC and the FDA have become compromised by buckling under the pressure of trying to make him happy. Their health guidance to all of us has become erratic and contradictory.  Health directives have become politicized and, therefore, potentially dangerous and wrong-headed. It’s getting to be impossible to know whom to listen to.

The President is betting everything he has on there being a vaccine in production by the time we hit the election. The truth is that there is simply not enough time between now and then to guarantee that any vaccine that gets released in this rushed way will be either safe or effective.

Many people are already saying that they are not going to be vaccinated by whatever is offered. At this point, I am not sure exactly whom I would trust to tell me that a given vaccine was safe. It certainly won’t be any governmental agency.

Throughout all of this, the country is roiling through a period of extreme racial unrest. Rather than doing anything at all to try to address the root causes of it, the President, instead, is doing everything he can to make it worse. We can all see that he seems to believe that if he can scare us all enough, we will turn to him to save us from it.

Nobody besides his core base is buying it.

The President went all the way up to Kenosha, Wisconsin and didn’t see any unrest there. He’s now taking credit for stopping it.

While there, he never met with the family of Jacob Blake, the man who was paralyzed when law-enforcement officers pumped seven bullets into him. The President has never even mentioned his name.

Back home, we are now five weeks past our final pandemic assistance payment.

The GOP-led Senate is on vacation. We are waiting, living on our savings and the meagre amount we might still be getting from regular unemployment payments.

The stock market has been booming, but experts are cautioning that its growth is unsustainable. The DOW plummeted 3.5% today. The NASDAQ was down 5.8%. They may both rebound tomorrow, but this volatility is a red flag. The GOP would do well to heed it.

All of this is somewhat beyond our ability to actually solve ourselves. These are major national and international problems that our leaders and the leaders of our allied neighbors need to figure out how to solve.

Our job, coming up, is merely to choose the most likely person of the two running to do it.

One has already more than proven that he cannot fix it. He has shown us time and time again that he doesn’t actually seem to want to fix any of it. He keeps making it worse.

On the other hand, the other one has been a part of other Administrations that have managed to get us through similar problems. I will say it again, how many people do you know who died from Ebola? Through immediate and decisive action, that particular potential pandemic was stopped.

For many people, it seems, the thing that they can’t get passed with Joe Biden is his stance on the issue of abortion.

Let’s be clear about this. Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is not pro-abortion. I cannot imagine that anyone in their right mind is actually pro-abortion. Joe Biden supports a women’s right to CHOOSE.

Before you judge a person, walk a mile in their shoes.

We cannot know what is in the minds and hearts of the people out there who have to grapple with this most painful of decisions. Whatever their reasons are, they are personal ones and none of anybody else’s business. The government should not be able to intrude upon that and neither should any of us. One of the main things that the Republicans believe is that government should keep out of people’s business. Why is this issue any different?

If you do not support abortion under any circumstances, then there is something very simple that you can do.

Don’t get one.

If you are going to vote against the Democrats because of that issue alone, then you are missing the big picture completely.

It’s against the Bible. It’s against God. You’ll go to hell. Whatever you believe, it is completely fine. If you believe that the poor person who chooses to get will suffer the flames of eternal damnation, well, I’m afraid that still has nothing to do with you. That is purely between them and their god.

Perhaps some of that righteous energy could be redirected towards trying to save the men and woman of color whose adult lives are being aborted by misguided actions of Police officers across the country. Let’s try and educate the Police so that they can help to make our streets safer. For everyone.

I thought that this post was going to be a short one. Apparently not, lol. And, yes, I realize that I am preaching. I know that there is a lot in here that nobody wants to hear, but it’s out there and all around us.

It’s going to keep happening no matter what we do as individuals, so, instead of running around in a panic, we should concentrate on what we can do.

We can try to be kind to each other.

We can try to understand that something that does not affect us very much can be the very thing that destroys another person.

I am not a religious person and I deeply distrust all people who wield their holy books as weapons.

The founders of the world’s major religious preached love and acceptance. The people who have come after them and formed groups around them have, in some cases, perverted those original teachings to various personal ends.

“Thou shall love thy neighbor as yourself” is from the book of Leviticus in the Christian Bible.

That’s what it says. There is no “unless…” or “except when they…” or ‘except for…” mentioned. It simply says, “Thou shall love thy neighbor as yourself”. Whatever one’s religion might be, and I have to say that I don’t follow any of them, I can find the strength of those words.

That is something that we can all try to do. We don’t have to rely on our leaders for that. We can simply be kinder to each other. We can try to choose people to lead us who possibly might do the same.

Michael and I are going to be kind to each other by going to the beach. Again.

New York City has gotten infinitely better with the re-opening of some of its museums. Yes, they are indoors, but, as opposed to gyms, hair salons and restaurants, you don’t need to be near anyone inside and you don’t need to stop moving forward. I would urge everyone to wander through one and put yourself in somebody else’s shoes for a moment.

Try and figure out why artists painted what they painted. What inspired them? Maybe go to the American Museum of Natural History and imagine for a moment what it must be like to live in another culture. With different rules.

Michael and I will be at the beach. But we will be back. Knowing that our city’s great museums are there for us again, will make it that much easier to come back.

You know what Dorothy said.

If you don’t, I suggest you travel up to P-Town, because, I promise you, there isn’t a soul up there who doesn’t.