Post 20 - March 31, 2020
Day 20…
The Samaritan’s Purse emergency field hospital that is opening up in Central Park seems to be raising more and more questions with each passing hour. The leader of this organization, Franklin Graham, has stated that marriage is defined as "exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female" and the unrighteous are sentenced to "everlasting punishment in hell."
They are a huge organization with $650 million in assets. One of their programs is called Operation Christmas Child. Under that, they deliver gifts to kids in Muslim countries as a kind of conversion scheme.
There are reports that the volunteers who are setting this camp up have to agree to follow their stance on homosexuality before being allowed to help.
One wonders what kind of care the patients who don’t conform to this narrow, bigoted view will receive.
At a time when New Yorkers are pulling together and working as one, this seems like a blight. I wish that the Mayor had given this some better consideration before agreeing to let them continue.
I am surprised that Mount Sinai agreed to work with them.
Help for “some” is not what this city is about.
The whole undertaking has taken on a far more sinister air.
I look forward to hearing about what develops with this but, at the moment, my feeling is that they just need to go away.
Thank you, but no thank you.
It’s hard not to look at the escalating numbers and not panic. I think it’s important to remember that more than anything those numbers reflect the rise in testing rather than the rise of new cases. The inflating numbers are really, more than anything, identifying cases that were already there. In NY the majority of those people probably got the virus a week or more ago before social distancing really started to take hold.
Tom Viola at BC/EFA shared a post from a doctor named Dave Price who is a Pulmonary Medicine and Critical Care Fellow at Weill Cornell Medical Center in NY. In short, he says that you are going to get Covid-19 almost exclusively from your hands touching your face - eyes, nose, mouth.
My husband just said, “Well yes, but what if somebody sneezes on you?”.
If someone sneezes on you, YOU ARE TOO CLOSE TO THEM!
Back off! Keep away from EVERYBODY.
Keep away from people.
All people.
Friends, relatives, delivery people - anyone that you are not isolating with.
When you get deliveries, have them left at the door, wipe down the packages when you get them and DON’T TOUCH YOUR FACE after you’re touched the packages.
Then wash your hands.
For 20 seconds.
If you assume that everyone around you has it and behave accordingly, you can protect yourself. Fairly easily. The main thing that wearing a mask does for the general population, in his opinion, is to keep you from touching your face. You don’t need a N95 mask to do that. Let the hospitals have those.
The virus is not smart. It’s not cunning. It can’t plot and plan.
It can’t move unless WE move it.
Stop moving it.
It is really just that easy.
What is probably going to happen is that our number of cases, here in NY, is going to peak on or about April 9th as predicted.
Things will then start to improve.
Slowly, possibly, but case numbers will begin dropping.
The weather is going to get better.
Much better.
Glorious days of vibrant blue skies and perfect 72-degree temperatures.
An explosion of green Lush verdant grass and beautiful shade-producing new leaves on all of our trees.
We are going to be inside looking out at all of it.
After a couple of weeks, we are going to relax and start going out more.
We are going start getting together again.
What will happen when we do?
Cases will spike again.
Cases will spike again, and we will have to re-commit to these “new-normal” behaviors to flatten this second curve. Again.
Let’s try and avoid that.
Be patient.
Let’s help each other get through this.
Not just the people we agree with, but all people.
Like it or not this is on ALL of us.
The virus doesn’t care what we believe.
It just wants us to get physically close to each other so it can keep spreading.
We need to stop it.
And we can.